Hosted by veteran journalist Steve Barnes, this program features conversations with a wide variety of prominent people from many areas of interest and backgrounds.

Hello everyone, Thanks very much for joining us.

It is a book about Arkansas and America in a certain time, in a certain place, and if we should have got to it a little sooner, better now than later.

The Nation Today is awash in wagering.

All but a half dozen states have casinos on land just offshore fresh or saltwater, or on Native American reservations.

And now, with casinos operating lawfully in three Arkansas cities, soon possibly in a fourth, it's difficult for the generations that came of age in the past half century to comprehend what one of those cities once signified to the state and the country.

Hot Springs was a gap in the Bible Belt, big enough for the nation's most notorious gangsters to step through, Big enough and lucrative enough that decades of political and civic leaders at just about every level looked away.

And the jewel of that time, that place, was the vapors.

The book itself is a gem, and its subtitle sets the stage.

A Southern family, the New York Mob and the rise and fall of Hot Springs, America's forgotten capital of vice.

As a son of that city and whose family was familiar with its dynamic, journalist David Hill was uniquely equipped to capture that epic.

And now he joins us from his home in suburban New York.

David Hill, thanks very much for making this time for us.

Well, it's truly my pleasure.

Thanks a lot for inviting me.

Let me begin, obviously as the son of of Hot Springs and whose family was, shall we say, mindful of the of the dynamic there in Hot Springs.

Other than that, what drove you other than a journalist?

Trained eye instinct.

What drove you to do the book?

Well, I had written about Hot Springs once before, back in like 2012.

I think I was doing a story for ESPN about Oak Lawn and I wrote about some of this history in the piece that I did about the horse races.

And I was surprised that the reaction that I got from the piece because, you know, a lot of people, you know, said they'd never heard about this before.

And I think growing up there, I took for granted that this was just something people knew, since I sort of grew up surrounded by this sort of legend in the lore of the heyday of Hot Springs.

But once I wrote that piece, I I found that there was a lot of curiosity and a lot of interest about this kind of, you know, hidden history of this, this place in Arkansas.

So I think that was when I had an inkling that there might be something, you know, there there might be a large an audience outside of Arkansas to tell the story too.

Well, the audience, probably much of the audience for this program in fact really can't, as I said at the beginning, really doesn't have an appreciation of what Hot Springs used to be.

So let's start at the origins of the hot spring that Hot Springs that you are writing about how what created the Hot Springs of the casinos, what made them possible?

Well, you know the thing that's I think if you look around the world really at what we would kind of call spa towns, right, Places like Baden, Baden or places like Carlsbad or Monte Carlo around the world where people sort of flock to bathe in hot waters and to, you know, to take beds and naturally occurring hot waters.

Resorts and you know, kind of a hospitality industry has grown up around all of those communities around the world forever.

And Hot Springs was no different.

I mean, you know, Hot Springs is the only place in those latitudes that have naturally occurring Hot Springs in North America.

So it it was a very unique place and from the very beginnings of America, people were coming there to you know to take baths in this hot water and around that grew hospitalization when when doctors started to prescribe these baths, it's sort of for medicinal purposes.

People would really, they would come and stay in Hot Springs for months and months at a time to try to get better.

And so that meant there needed to be hotels and restaurants and entertainment and and what came also with that was grifters and people looking to make a buck off of folks from out of town and and and and the gambling business kind of built up around that.

So it's really much older than the this book begins in 1931 but gambling in Hot Springs really starts from the almost the very beginning.

Yeah.

Was there something though about it that lent itself to shall we say sin?

Yeah.

The fact that people, that, that people were coming from literally all over the world to come stay in Hot Springs for months or even years at a time, it became a place where people from all kinds of different cultures and walks of life kind of intersected and intersected for, you know, temporary periods of time.

And so I think that, you know, there's something I think that lent itself to people acting outside of their own, you know, normal boundaries the the Hot Springs became in its in its heyday.

And we're talking here about not just today.

It's tough to know what the heyday actually was because it had a good 30 or 40 year run, but.

But it was, I think it's fair to say, a Demilitarized Zone for some of the nation's best known and most fearsome characters.

They could come to Hot Springs without fear of one another or the law.

Correct.

Well, that's that's part of the legend of Hot Springs was that it was a place that was sort of neutral turf or whatever for gangsters.

But it's not true.

I mean Al Capone was almost assassinated in Hot Springs driving down the street by one of his rivals at one point.

There was certainly a lot of, you know, there was a number of, there was some bloodshed that happened Hot Springs, there were gang leaders that were found killed in Hot Springs.

So, you know, that's a story that I think that people have told over the years, but there's definitely some exceptions to to that particular rule.

Well, the, the culture that prevailed at the time though was certainly one of you want to call it toleration tolerance.

Yeah, definitely.

I mean Hot Springs was, you know, was tolerant of a lot of things that the rest of the state of Arkansas wasn't tolerant of.

And I think that led to a lot of political, a lot of political difficulties for the political leaders of Hot Springs in dealing with their their colleagues from around the rest of the state.

Well, well, plainly Hot Springs benefited of the economy as a whole benefit if there was a downside to it as well.

But it could not have survived for as long as it did without the acquiescence of figures much higher than at the at the municipal level.

Correct.

Oh, absolutely.

Required the governor always to be in on it.

I mean, the way that the sister, the way this whole thing was set up and the way that it were, was that local, local government, the municipal government would be completely in on it, right?

They'd all be sort of like bought into it.

But at any point, the state police could come in and shut it down.

So the governor was kind of the last person you had to pay off.

And if the governor, throughout this period of time, the gambling existed in Hot Springs, you know, back then Arkansas elected governors every two years.

Well, every time there'd be a governor that wasn't, you know, that wasn't willing to take the take the bag of money from the gamblers in Hot Springs, then gambling would get shut down for a couple of years.

So that was just sort of a a normal occurrence and throughout this history is that you'd have the wrong governor and then you'd have the right governor.

But that was definitely the, the most important piece was the governor.

Is is there more than anecdotal evidence of that?

Were you able to.

Oh, yeah, more than anecdotal evidence about governors being in on it, right.

I mean, it depends on what kind of evidence you're looking for.

I mean there was what governors would say throughout.

The governors who were OK with gambling would say this is a local issue.

I'm going to let the local police and the local courts deal with it.

I'm not going to get involved.

I'll let, I'll let.

If the local leaders come to me and ask me to get involved, I will.

That was kind of the that those were the governors who are OK with gambling and whenever an anti gambling governor would get elected, they wouldn't say that they would just send in the state police and raid the casinos with the state police.

So go ahead I'm sorry.

As far as as far as people getting paid off, you know, I mean there's definitely, you know there's definitely a lot of talk about that.

But I mean there had there was never any law enforcement that caught anybody handing off money to Governor Faubus or anybody else.

This was a lot of I'm sorry, yeah, this was a culture that produced.

They were legendary at one time anyway.

Or to to a preceding generation, the Southern Club, the Ohio Club.

There were other enterprises not quite well as well known and the standout I guess was the Vapors.

Yeah, The Vapors opens up in 1960 and prior to the Vapors opening up, you know most of the clubs in Hot Springs were, you know, I don't, I don't want to call them necessarily sawdust joints, which is sort of a pejorative term for clubs that were kind of like, you know, more proletarian establishments.

But The Vapors was definitely open with the idea that it would be a cut above the rest of what gambling joints in Hot Springs would be like.

And Dane Harris, who opened the papers, was inspired to open this place based on clubs that he had seen in Las Vegas but also that he had seen in New York.

And he really envisioned that Hot Springs could offer the people of Arkansas, but also all of the sort of tourists that came in from around the world a level of entertainment that was as good or better than anything they could get anywhere else in America.

I mean he was spending $10,000 a week on bringing in top class entertainment, you know, premiering Broadway shows there and really trying to like create a place that had a sense of like, you know, class and was was a little bit of a, you know, it was a little more hoity toity than some of the other places that were just down in dirty gambling clubs.

And this was a little bit anathema to what how other guys ran the gambling business in Hot Springs before Dane came around.

Now the other clubs, as you mentioned, basically the entertainment was the gaming itself, the gambling itself.

The entertainment was the blackjack table, the roulette wheel, the crap table, and that's it.

Yeah, a lot of these guys in the sort of gambling leaders of Hot Springs thought Dang was crazy that he was putting up this big showroom and putting on these big shows because they felt like if somebody's watching a performance they're not gambling.

But Dane really thought we're going to offer people the full package.

You know, we're going to offer them everything and we're going to wine and dine them and and make sure, you know make it so that folks can come here even if they don't like to gamble and spend money.

And and Dane's bet worked.

I mean the the Vapors opening in 1960 really ushers in an era that of of incredible growth in Hot Springs.

So that by the by the time that gambling shuts down, you know, five years later, we're talking about 5 million visitors a year and we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars getting invested into developing, you know, giant hotel resorts.

And you know, I think there was a sense that Hot Springs was going to grow and grow in Arkansas with legalized gambling.

And it really all started with Dane opening up this one little club on Park Ave. Dad and the New York aspect of it, as per the subtitle.

Fascinating part of the story.

Yeah, well, there was a guy named Oni Madden who was one of the major crime figures in New York City during Prohibition.

Oni Madden owns the storied Cotton Club.

If anybody's ever seen the famous Francis Ford Coppola film, Oni Madden was a he was a really important gang leader and mobster, and he goes to prison for murder.

But he gets out in the early 30s and he's they convinced him to come down to Arkansas and kind of lay low there because that was part I think the deal that they've cut with with the governor in New York to get him out.

And so he comes to Hot Springs to lay low, but he falls in love with a local and he gets married.

He ends up sort of living in Hot Springs and becomes kind of the mobs man in Arkansas to kind of keep his eye on what was happening there.

And only Madden ends up being a really important figure in the history of Hot Springs.

I mean he's really in a lot of ways a founding father and he puts millions of dollars into the community.

He brings a lot of other people who are connected to the gambling business into Hot Springs, and he brings the important racing wire to Hot Springs, which is a kind of a key, the key thing that you need in order to take and take and pay off bets on sports and horse races.

Some of the audience has never heard of a racing liar explain.

Well, you know, back in the days before there was any Internet or anything like that, people who bet on horses or bet on sports sporting events would place a bet with a bookie.

And then they'd have to wait until the newspapers showed up some point the next day to find out whether they won or lost.

Gamblers during the this period of time were able to build their own kind of informal Internet in a way.

They they had Western Union offices all around America that connected cities across the country where they could send racing and sports information results almost instantly through Western through sort of bootlegged Western Union wires.

And that control of this kind of like, you know, almost like pirated, you know, network was an incredibly important thing for the mob to to to control because they could put their hand in the pocket of every bookmaker in America.

In order to, in order for them to get access to this wire, they had to give up a piece of their profits.

So it was very lucrative and it created a lot of profits for the mob.

And only Madden was sort of given the franchise of the wire for the state of Arkansas.

And he controlled it not only for Hot Springs, but for Fort Smith and Little Rock as well.

Yeah, you mentioned that Mister Mr. Madden had some some interesting friends who came to visit periodically.

Yeah, only Madden had friends.

Not only he wasn't only friends with mobsters, only Madden he Because you know when he was a sort of the when he did run the Cotton Club in New York, he managed the careers of a lot of important movie stars and professional athletes.

He managed Mae W he managed George Raft.

He managed Primo Carne.

He had a lot of famous friends and they would all come to visit him.

He also was the person who really launched the career of Duke Ellington through the Cotton Club and he would bring Duke Ellington to town.

He would bring a lot of African American entertainers who would come and stay at his house and go out on the lake on his boat with him and and and spend time with him, which was, you know, during the segregation in the South was, you know, kind of a notable thing, the fact that only Madden was keeping company with a lot of really important and famous African American stars in Hot Springs.

But yeah, in addition to bringing a lot of gang leaders to Hot Springs, he brought a lot of really fascinating celebrities as well.

Yeah.

And there's 1111 story about how he had he had failed to appreciate Mr. Madden's wife's cooking.

Yeah.

Well, Frank Costello was kind of the the he became kind of the head of the New York mob at one point when Frank Costello was visiting the Maddens home.

At one point he insulted Agnes who's Oni's wife.

He insulted her spaghetti and she reportedly dumped the bowl on his head.

So she wasn't too afraid of the boss of bosses from the New York mob.

Yeah and everyone survived that particular the but date back to Dane Harris who who probably the the the glamorous figure and and and maybe the most forward thinking of of his industry at the time.

He kind of broke the model he want, as you noted, he wanted.

He wanted a different sort of club.

Yeah.

You know, what's what I think is very cool about Dane Harris is that he's not somebody who I think has been written about a lot, and he's not somebody that a lot of people in Hot Springs know a lot about.

Even though I really think that he's a really important sort of civic leader and an important figure in this history of that community.

Because I think Dane Harris had a real progressive vision for what Hot Springs could be, you know, and he remain throughout his life.

He was very frustrated by the fact that it was difficult because of Arkansas politics to legalize this industry that he could see was going to make you know, fortunes for people in that community but also was going to help them build, you know state-of-the-art schools and and and and hospitals and facilities and you know had really helped Hot Springs become a kind of a world class city during the middle of the last century.

And he knew that in order for that to continue, they were going to need to do something so that they didn't have to rely on political corruption in order for it to continue.

And Dane really saw that that Hot Springs could could do more than they could use the money that was made from gambling to do to really elevate, you know the rest of the the the hospitality industry and the rest of the community too.

I don't think that I don't think that he just thought that they should all just get rich off of taking bets but that they should also you know attract and like I said before world class entertainment the Hot Springs that they should use the money to develop both sides of the community.

And another thing that I think was important about Dane was that he was somebody who really helped try to bridge the gap between white the white community and the black community in Hot Springs that time by figuring out how he could make sure that that that that folks from what they used to call black Broadway right Malvern Ave.

The segregated part of Hot Springs that those folks also could participate in and and benefit from everything that was happening in Hot Springs too.

And so I think Dane had a very progressive vision for the kind of place that Hot Springs could be, and he was seeing that vision come to life in the 1960s.

It was almost too successful because it was the success that Dane ushered into Hot Springs that really led to its downfall.

Not everyone, David, Not everyone shared Dane Harris's vision for Hot Springs, nor his, nor his approach, his methods.

There was trouble for Dane Harris.

Yeah, there was, I think, you know, one of the things that he, you know, when he became kind of what was known as the boss gambler, right, The gambler who the casino leader who organized and controlled the other casino leaders and sort of paid off political officials and whatnot.

Part of his vision for Hot Springs, too was that there would be a limited number of casinos that they should have a certain standard that they uphold.

They shouldn't cheat their customers.

You know, they should invest a certain amount of money into the benefit of the entire community that they should all pool their money for, you know, advertising for all of Hot Springs rather than just their club, things like this.

And there were some casino leaders that weren't that didn't weren't on program with that and felt like, well, if you don't like the way Dana Harris runs things, all you got to do is get your own candidate elected as sheriff or mayor or county clerk or whatever.

And you can upset the whole apple cart here and you can, you know, extract your pound of flesh.

And so the sort of there was a a whole nother kind of combination of of gambling leaders who were opposed to Danes vision who constantly organized against him, tried to get other people elect ran candidates against his candidates and it eventually ended up resorting to violence and you know a bombing campaign where they put a bomb in the vapors and blew up the vapors.

They put a bomb in Dane Harris's house and blew up his house.

They blew up the, you know, the local prosecutor's car, a local judge's car.

So there were a number of years where there were, there was a sort of a campaign of violence against Dane Harris and his and his sort of political combination.

Well, but he if he lost some traction.

He never lost faith in his own vision though.

No, he didn't.

And I think that he understood that this, this infighting was going to be to the detriment of the entire, you know, to the whole operation, the whole enterprise.

And he was right about that.

You know, if he if there was ever any hope that the state of Arkansas would would eventually give in and allow gambling to be legalized in Hot Springs, that was put to rest pretty quick once the bomb started blowing up.

But Dane continued to try to push forward, and up until the late 1960s, he kept looking for a solution.

You know, he always wanted to legalize gambling, but short of that, he tried to find little workarounds, right, like turning them into private clubs, trying to have give out memberships to tourists who were staying in, in hotel, local hotels, things like that.

But by the by the time that Rockefeller gets elected governor, I think they knew it was time to hang it up and call it quits.

Well, and on to that period now because it's just, it's sort of a rule of thumb that they accepted that that they the end of the Hot Springs as it once was known, came about because of the election of Winthrop Rockefeller.

That's right.

Rockefeller was When you know Rockefeller, getting elected was a big deal for Hot Springs because, you know, Favas had been an important backer of everything that had been going on in Hot Springs for a long time.

And Rockefeller, when he campaigned against Favas, used gambling as one of many things that he campaigned against Favas on and tried to embarrass Favas about.

And so it was almost like he had put himself in a corner where he had campaigned about this so much that he couldn't support it.

There were some stories that at one point gamblers, not springs, were told that if they could get a bill passed through the legislature that Rockefeller would not sign it, but he also wouldn't veto it and it would pass through inaction.

And the bill did pass the legislature, but Rockefeller did end up signing the bill and I mean vetoing the bill and and then sent in a state, the state police.

He appointed a, a guy named Lynn Davis as the head of the state police.

And this guy was a real.

You know, this was a real attack dog.

I mean, he came in, you know, both barrels blazing to try to shut down gambling Hot Springs, and for a number of years there in the beginning of Rockefeller's term, played a real cat and mouse game with the remaining gamblers on Hot Springs until he was able to finally get collect all the old slot machines and burn them and bury them 30 feet underground.

And that was pretty much the end of it for Hot Springs.

Yeah, there were periodic bonfires in those days.

What the IT would was he disappointed or or was he resigned Dane Harris in his in his closing years and he was surely disappointed.

I mean, one of the things that I remember reading that he had said at the time was that it was that he, when he was disappointed about all this, was that that he regretted that the old slow train through Arkansas image would persist.

And that he said, I guess we're happy being 49th and 50th and everything and we're just going to just continue to be poor but proud.

And so that really frustrated him.

He ended up going into business with the guy who started on Holiday Inn from Memphis and they opened a casino in Istanbul, Turkey.

And Dane tried to fly all of his old customers over to Turkey to gamble in this casino in Turkey.

And ironically that casino too ended up getting shut down when a new government got elected.

A new kind of Muslim government got elected there that was opposed to gambling.

So twice in Dane's life he had his business shut down by kind of God fearing, pious, our political leaders.

You're a son of Hot Springs, as we noted.

Now having grown up there and spent a lot of time and and did all this research, you know, for the book, to what extent can we say the Hot Springs that we know today was shaped by the Hot Springs of the 20s, thirties, 40s, fifties and the 60s?

That's a very good question because I think Hot Springs is a lot different today than it was then in a lot of ways.

But yeah, I think that the spirit is still there.

I think that there is.

There's still, there's something different about Hot Springs.

And I think anybody in Arkansas who's spending time there would probably agree that Hot Springs feels unique.

And I think that that quality is something that comes that goes all the way back to Hot Springs is really early days and there's just something in the water, I suppose.

David Hill, thanks so much for the time.

Thank you for the book.

I appreciate you having me on and thanks for your interest.

All right.

Thank you for watching.

We'll see you next time.