As a longtime Las Vegas newspaper columnist, I was fortunate enough to grab interviews with a remarkable variety of characters.
Some were important, others colorful. From priests to panderers, they all agreed — sometimes with great reluctance — to share a few minutes with an ink-stained irritant.
I consider Clifford Perlman one that got away.
Perlman, who died Sept. 4 at age 90, is best known as the former president and CEO of Caesars Palace who, with brother Stuart Perlman,made the hotel-casino an internationally recognized entertainment venue with attractions ranging from Sinatra in the showroom and heavyweight championship fights and world-class tennis matches in the sports arena, to Formula One racing in the parking lot.
Some sources credit Perlman with bringing championship boxing to Las Vegas, but that’s not exactly true. There were big fights nights before Caesars Palace, but it is accurate to say that between Perlman and promoter Don King championship boxing found a home on the corner of Flamingo and Las Vegas Boulevard.
Frankly, I was more fascinated with the intriguing road that led the Perlmans to take over Caesars Palace in 1969 from the incomparable Las Vegas ringmaster Jay Sarno. Cliff Perlman was born in Philadelphia, won a bronze star in the Army in World War II, attended university in Florida and passed the bar there.
But it was after the Perlmans started the Florida-based Lum’s fast-food chain in 1956 that the story starts to get interesting. They eventually added businesses and built their bankroll, betting it all on a $60 million purchase of Caesars Palace at a time federal law enforcement was starting to smell trouble from Sarno’s shadowy Teamsters Central States Pension Fund associations. The Gaming Control Board was relieved.
In a few years the Perlmans expanded the holdings of the company named Caesars World, but reports of their own problematic associations began to appear in the press. Most of it seemed more historical than current, but the notoriety of Meyer Lansky and some senior members of the Genovese crime family appeared in close proximity to the casino executives’ rise in business. There were business relationships with reputed Lansky protege Alvin Malnik and Teamsters racketeer Cal Kovens. Perlman had allowed Malnik and Lansky associate and former Flamingo part-owner Sam Cohen to buy thousands of shares of Caesars World stock through a front company.
When casino gambling was legalized in Atlantic City in 1977, the rush was on to grab a piece of what was then a promising and lucrative market. The Perlmans moved swiftly, taking advantage of a new Nevadalaw that enabled gaming licensees to do business in other states where casinos were legal.
In retrospect, they probably should have fought temptation. Their old associations collected dust in Nevada, they were big news in New Jersey, where Boardwalk casinos were already showing connections to organized crime. But, then again, at least one official with the New Jersey Casino Control Commission resigned in disgrace after his close proximity to the FBI’s Abscam political corruption sting was revealed.
Other New Jersey gaming officials remained focused on the Clifford Perlman and his tangled and shadowy business associations with “questionable characters.” Caesars attorneys fought fiercely to deflect and deflate what they called the “innuendo” and “false and misleading information” presented during a 23-day licensing hearing.
Caesars World was eventually licensed, but only after the Perlmans were cut from the management team. They later sold their interest in the Atlantic City end of the company.
Clifford Perlman remained chairman and CEO of Caesars on the Strip, and in 1983 both brothers were found suitable for licensing for a plan to buy the Dunes from Morris Shenker.
The purchase failed, but Perlman felt vindicated by the seal of approval from his good friends inside Nevada’s gaming regulatory system.
For Clifford Perlman, there was no place like home.
John L. Smith is a Las Vegas journalist and the author of several books, including a collection of short fiction, “Even a Street Dog.”
