Gaming legend Sachs dies at 76

Monday, Feb. 18, 2002 | 10:44 a.m.

Allan David "Al" Sachs, whose meteoric rise from dealer to casino owner and whose abrupt fall in 1984 amid innuendo served only to add to the mystique of his gambling legend, died late Sunday in Henderson. He was 76.

Sachs, who in the 1980s owned the Stardust, Fremont and Sundance (now Fitzgeralds) hotels, died of complications of pneumonia at St. Rose Dominican Hospital. He was a two-time cancer survivor and had battled Parkinson's disease.

Services for the Southern Nevada resident of 60 years are pending.

Sachs lost co-ownership of the Stardust and Fremont in 1984, when state gamers took his and Herb Tobman's licenses amid skimming allegations. Neither those charges nor allegations printed in a 1979 Wall Street Journal news report claiming Sach's had ties to the mob were ever proved.

"There was never any bitterness on my husband's part," said Janice Sachs, Al's second wife. "He'd see the guys (ex-gaming regulators) who had thrown him out and say hello to them."

Sachs and Tobman had taken over as owners of the Stardust and Fremont, which today are Boyd Gaming properties, when state regulators in the late 1970s ousted gaming golden boy Allen Glick and Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, a colorful gambler upon whom the movie "Casino" was based.

In the early '70s Sachs was president of the Stardust, which he left in about 1976 over disagreements with Glick and Rosenthal about casino operations. With Tobman, he took over ownership in 1979. For the three years in which he was out of the Stardust, Sachs ran the Sundance and in 1977 was casino manager at the Aladdin.

"I was proud to say I knew Al Sachs, a man who knew how to treat casino customers and knew how to operate a gambling hall," Tobman said. "No one ever worked for Al Sachs, they worked with him. That's how he used to introduce his employees to people 'this guy works with me."'

Freddie Glusman, a longtime Las Vegas businessman, said, "Al was just a good person -- when he gave you his word you didn't need a 20-page contract. He was one of the old gamblers who built the foundation of Las Vegas and paved the way for the big corporations to come in."

Born July 17, 1925, in Chicago, Sachs quit high school at age 16 and lied about his age to join the Navy, where he served on a destroyer in the South Pacific.

After his service he entered the illegal but lucrative Chicago gaming industry and from there worked in the legal pre-Castro casinos in Cuba, in gambling halls in Panama and briefly in Las Vegas as a dealer at a small Strip hotel.

He opened the Royal Nevada Casino in 1955 before heading to Cuba from 1955-58 to work in casinos there. He returned in 1958 as a minor investor in the Tropicana.

His pleasant personality caught the eye of casino bosses. His easygoing style and vast knowledge of the gambling business made him a popular casino boss.

After the skimming allegations surfaced, Sachs and Tobman in 1984 signed an agreement to sell the Stardust and Fremont hotels and their interest in the Sundance, pay a $3 million fine and surrender their gaming licenses by mid-July of that year.

In a 1985 federal court document the two said they did so "under duress." They continued to deny any wrongdoing and said they took the action to spare their families the ordeal of drawn-out hearings.

Sachs retired and spent his remaining years out of the limelight at his residences in Malibu, Calif., and Southern Nevada.

In addition to his wife, Sachs is survived by four sons, Dale Sachs of Seattle and Rudy Sachs, Michael Sachs and David Sachs, all of Las Vegas; a sister Shirley Deland of Saginaw, Mich., and one grandson Aven Sachs of New Jersey.