When Eldorado Resorts and VICI announced in January that they’d sold Harrah’s Reno to a non-casino developer, it marked the end of an era in American gaming. The Reno property was once the flagship holding of William F. Harrah, perhaps the most influential figure in modern gaming. Several authors seem to agree on that status, as no other gaming industry executive is the subject of more books or articles than Bill Harrah. He is either the main subject, or a major influence on the subjects of, at least eight or nine volumes. What follows is a look at some of the best.
William Fisk Harrah: The Life and Times of a Gaming Magnate
Leon Mandel
223 pp.
Doubleday & Company, 1982
Mandel had had a long and distinguished career as an automotive journalist at AutoWeek and Car and Driver before tackling this biography. It was his second character study, following Speed with Style, about race car driver and cosmetics heir Peter Revson. Those credentials allowed Mandel to get often-difficult access to Harrah. The casino magnate particularly enjoyed sharing his auto collection with someone who could appreciate what he’d assembled, and Mandel certainly fit the bill.
This book is thorough and well-researched, but more importantly, Mandel’s writing style is extremely enjoyable. While the oral histories below contain more detail, this work is a much better read, and it’s likely as much information as any non-Harrah scholar will need.
The book is laid out in loose chronological order, beginning with Harrah’s move to Reno in 1937 in a chapter called “Arrival in Gomorrah”. The titles of many other chapters are also intriguing: “Pilgrim’s Progress,” “Gold Bars and the Red Menace,” and “Maxwells and Smarts.”
The book is now out of print, unfortunately, but used copies can be readily found online, and you can try borrowing the PDF from Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/williamfiskharra00mand.
If you just want a primer on this influential gaming pioneer, this is the only book you really need. But for those of you who want a deeper dive:
Every Light Was On: Bill Harrah and His Clubs Remembered
Dwayne Kling, ed.
444 pp.
UNR Oral History Program, 1999
This collection of 22 interviews of those who either worked for, or with, Bill Harrah presents a well-rounded portrait of his management style. The interviews cover his early days in Reno until his death in 1978. Interview subjects range from senior managers to competitors to Harrah’s wives (there were six of them) to junior employees. Each offers a slightly different perspective on the man.
From an operator’s view, the testimony of Lloyd Dyer is perhaps the most insightful. You’ll learn how Harrah leveraged aloofness to build his legendary image. While he seldom liked to make the difficult choices between various strategies, preferring to hear the recommendations of others, he would always make the final decisions.
Most historians feel the Harrah legend was based on three elements: his desire for perfection, his relationship with entertainers, and his auto collection. These points are covered in the Mandel book, but the interviews with Dyer (casino perfection), Holmes Hendricksen (entertainment) and Clyde Wade (cars) in this book are very insightful.
William F. Harrah: My Recollections of The Hotel-Casino Industry, and as an Auto Collecting Enthusiast
Mary Ellen Glass, interviewer
334 pp.
UNR Oral History Program, 1980
PDF download link: https://archive.org/details/HarrahWilliam/mode/2up
As mentioned earlier, Mandel’s book is by far the best read of this bunch and will give you a more-than-adequate summary of the man and his operation. However, both it and the wonderful oral histories above can’t seem to keep themselves from describing the Harrah legend almost as much as they do the man. Not so here: this is Harrah, unfiltered, in his own words.
Harrah didn’t give many interviews, despite the best efforts of his talented PR guru, Mark Curtis (see below). When he did, they were brief. The exceptions were for Mandel and Mary Ellen Glass. These conversations were collected in 1977 and 1978, shortly before Mr. Harrah died, and they’re informal enough that most readers will get the impression they are having a candid chat with Bill that goes on for hours and hours.
Without putting this interview in the context of how things were done 40 to 80 years ago, you might mistakenly conclude that Harrah wasn’t that innovative – that he got lucky, essentially, and was simply in the right place at the right time. Only a little of that is true. You’d also be forgiven if you felt that many of the ideas he talks about here are so elementary that they’re nothing more than common sense. But that’s the point of his genius. No one else was doing any of these things before Mr. Harrah and his team made them standards. He laid the groundwork for the rest of us. His list of gaming “firsts” is lengthy.
- “Gaming” instead of “Gambling.”
- Casino carpeting
- Major bussing programs
- Premium Points – today’s equivalent of Free Play
- Concentrating on slot machines
- Daily performance summaries
- Public financing via the American and NY Stock Exchanges
- Treating entertainers equally and royally, regardless of sex, race or religion
- Competitive headcounts
- Casino golf tournaments
- Extensive use of consultants to develop policy and strategy
- Detailed job descriptions and equally detailed training manuals
- Extensive data collection (on both casinos and cars)
The list could go on. Perhaps even more impressive is the roster of Harrah’s supervisors, managers and junior executives who later held – and in many cases still hold – senior management positions at major casinos around the world.
Perhaps surprisingly, you’ll learn that in his later years, Mr. Harrah cared more about Harrah’s Auto Collection than he did about his casino operation. Indeed, many said that Harrah’s groundbreaking IPO was done more to get cash to support his car collection than to finance the casinos. Yet you can also see that he built such a strong and talented team of operators in the early years that they did just fine on their own without his day-to-day guidance.
Also worth a look:
Playing the Cards That Are Dealt: Mead Dixon, the Law, and Casino Gaming
R.T. King and Ken Adams, ed.
257 pp.
UNR Oral History Program, 1992
Available as a PDF here: https://archive.org/details/playingcardsthat00king
This oral history autobiography is about Mead Dixon, who served as Harrah’s attorney and later handled the first sale of the casinos to Holiday Inn in 1980. CDC readers will recognize one of the editors, CDC senior analyst Ken Adams. Here’s a provocative quote from Dixon: “There was never, in my observation, any skilled management at HAC (the auto collection).”
And another: “I was able to turn (the Harrah estate) around from the unsatisfactory condition it was in when Bill died, and make it into something that had a good outcome for the heirs as well as for Harrah’s as a company.”
It Was Great While It Lasted
Mark Curtis
163 pp.
Black Rock Press, University of Nevada, 2001
After a stint as a WWII ball-turret gunner in B-17s, Curtis began writing for Variety in the transitional years when Nevada discovered big-time entertainment could attract gamblers. As Army Archerd says in the liner notes, “Mark Curtis helped put northern Nevada on the map, and made Bill Harrah’s name more famous than any other Nevadan.” This one’s unfortunately fairly obscure now, but it’s worth hunting around for.
Harrah’s Automobile Collection: One Man’s Tribute to The Great Automobiles Of The World
Dean Batchelor
256 pp.
GP Publishing, 1984
If you like cars, this book is a classic. At its heyday, Harrah’s Automobile Collection, the HAC, was the biggest and best assemblage of important autos ever. At its peak, the collection housed more than 1,400 vehicles. It was truly special, and it’s all captured here. You can still see a great representative sample of the collection, 220 or so vehicles, at the National Automobile Museum in Reno today.
American Cars
Leon Mandel
448 pp
Steward, Tabori & Chang, 1982
At more than six pounds, this is one of the heaviest books I’ve ever reviewed. The main reason is that it’s filled with stunning photographs by Baron Wolman and Lucinda Lewis. For the auto aficionado, this is a coffee table masterpiece of the finest quality, but you won’t find a mention of Harrah until the “Afterword and Acknowledgments” on page 423. Here the author says, “The man who established, assembled, and owned the museum saw the automobile as both an object of beauty (or strangeness, or wonder, or delight, or humor) as well as the manufactured centerpiece of our national life.” He then quotes a line from a national car magazine, “Henry Ford built the car; Bill Harrah built its monument.”
Virtually all these magnificent photos were shot at Harrah’s ranch home in Reno or in local scenes around his adopted “Biggest Little City.” These visuals, along with Mandel’s words, are a sweeping study of the automobile, its genealogy, and its impact on our life today and yesterday.
RIP, Mr. Harrah. While your casinos may be disappearing, your pioneering practices and never-ending quest for perfection will continue to serve the gaming and auto industries for generations to come.
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