Columnist John Katsilometes: Casino museum awash in LV gaming history

Sunday, Sept. 19, 1999 | 1:27 a.m.

John Katsilometes' column appears Tuesdays and Sundays. Reach him at 259-2327 or kats@vegas.com

A year ago it was a basement bingo room with adjoining cafeteria, where low-stakes bettors could cut away for a $2 ham sandwich served on a Styrofoam plate placed on a plastic tray.

Today it's a tribute to the nefarious history of Las Vegas: the Casino Legends Hall of Fame at the Tropicana hotel-casino. At its heart, the Hall of Fame is an unapologetic and prideful account of Las Vegas' gaming history and related famous characters.

Over generations, the "donations" of luckless casino customers have given Las Vegas a rich, variety-spiced heritage. Only at the Casino Legends Hall of Fame museum can visitors observe:

* The haunting, life-size statue of Bob Stupak, awarded to the casino magnate by the City of Las Vegas after the opening of the Stratosphere in 1996.

* A sizzling video presentation entitled "Fires and Implosions," where we nostalgically revisit the infernos at the El Rancho, MGM Grand and Las Vegas Hilton, and relive the rush of the Sands demolition.

* Dozens of photographs of the Rat Pack, a 1965 mug shot of Shecky Greene after he was arrested for hydroplaning his car through the fountains at Caesars Palace, hundreds of rare gaming chips, old showgirl costumes, and even a comically macabre shot of Bugsy Siegel's toe tag.

(Further expansion might include a "Losers" wing, decorated with torn-up horse-racing tickets, ATM slips reading "insufficient funds" and a list of bettors who have picked nine out of 10 winners on parlay cards.)

"We're not just a museum, but a functioning hall of fame," curator Steve Cutler says. "In spirit we're like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, or the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown (N.Y.)."

The museum has already inducted two dozen entertainers, including the Rat Pack, Siegfried & Roy, Liberace and Louis Prima. The next ceremony is set for Oct. 28 at the Tropicana. For now, there is no entry fee at the Hall of Fame, although a $4 fee ($3 for seniors) will be adopted in March.

Along with the growing list of inductees, Cutler boasts of having the largest collection of Nevada gaming memorabilia, brimming with more than 100,000 items (15,000 of which are on display at any given time) dating back to the early '30s. The museum opened in February and occupies a floor below the busy Tropicana casino, tucked away like a smoky basement poker room.

Cutler, nattily dressed in a dark suit with his hair pulled back into a bushy pony tail, estimates that about 1,000 visitors wade through the museum every day. Most wear the familiar astonished, eyebrows-arched expression of all Las Vegas visitors. In one corner they watch a fuzzy black-and-white video clip of Sam Butera; in another they gaze at a glass case filled with stacks of melted MGM Grand chips from the fateful fire of 1980.

As Cutler says. "I'd like to see this grow into one of the 'must-see' things in Las Vegas." The impassioned Cutler, a former executive baccarat host, serves as a consultant to Tropicana parent company, Aztar Corp., and has been collecting casino memorabilia for more than 25 years.

"My wife says I have a disease," Cutler says, laughing. "Maybe I do. But we have to save and preserve a part of Las Vegas history."

And it's a history best depicted, in stark and shameless honesty, on the bottom floor of the Trop.