Racing and Las Vegas: Randy Cannon Has Another Sizzler In Works
By Susan Wade
Anyone who assumes Bruton Smith’s gleaming multipurpose Las Vegas Motor Speedway represents the desert oasis’ first dice-roll on auto racing needs to pick up a copy of Randy Cannon’s first-published book, “Stardust International Raceway: Motorsports Meets The Mob in Vegas, 1965 – 1971.”
But Cannon has more to come.
The manuscript for his newest effort, “Caesars Palace Grand Prix,” is in the hands of publisher McFarland & Company. And tentatively is scheduled for release in McFarland’s Spring-2021 offerings. As designed and delivered, the book will feature about 400 pages, complete with nearly 250 photographs, more than 30 of them in a full-color gallery.
“Caesars Palace Grand Prix” is another labor of love by Cannon, taking well more than a year in its development. But the time investment was well worth it.
He says the book “presents a deeply intriguing storyline. The thesis studies the threads of Grand Prix racing in America, from its early origins, to its debut at Sebring in 1959, to Riverside, Watkins Glen, Long Beach, and – finally – Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. On the other side of the show, though, the book considers the threads of the organized crime influences involved in the development and operations of the luxury-branded Caesars Palace resort and the convergence of those influences with motorsport, through to the Caesars Palace Grand Prix from 1981 to 1984.”
If his initial book, which he wrote with Mike Gerry, is an indication, it will be chock-full of details.
“Stardust International Raceway” is a meticulously researched and documented treasure trove of civic history that’s far more than a chronicle of the sports-car, open-wheel, stock-car, and drag-racing spectacles in the 1950s and ‘60s. Certainly it’s a thorough account of the L-shaped 480-acre property wedged between Flamingo Road and Tropicana Avenue to the north and south and Rainbow and Piedmont boulevards on the west and east. And it’s complete with performance details of the most respected and cherished names in motorsports, and on the flip side, a litany of America’s known and suspected organized-crime figures from coast to coast.
It’s a true tale spun through E.T. slips and timing sheets scattered among land- and corporation-deal documents, court papers, and a trail of paperwork that courses through some serious connections among the Teamsters, FBI, the growing Las Vegas casino scene, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Hollywood, Corporate America, and the U.S. Congress. Wiretapping, Watergate, surveillance, racketeers, indictments, and murder aren’t words normally associated with auto-racing books.
But Cannon uncovers saints and sinners, high rollers and low-lifes, smooth talkers and rough customers, fast racers and folks just trying to pull a fast one. Rising as the redeeming, reassuring stabilizer in the swirl of waywardness are the racers who ultimately were the stars at Stardust International Raceway.
“From the first three professional motorsports events at the long-shuttered Las Vegas Park thoroughbred track in the shadow of the famed Las Vegas Strip, to organized legal drag racing on Highland Drive west of the Strip, to Thunderbird Speedway in Henderson and finally, to Stardust International Raceway, the book covers it all,” Cannon says.
He tackles – in his words – “how the venues came to exist, sometimes shady promoters, corporate chicanery, curious sanctioning bodies, prominent racing events, and – certainly not least – the typically unwary racers themselves. Stepping back into the shadows, however, the twists and turns of the gamblers and racketeers standing behind the properties are pervasive – and take on a surprising national reach.”
The book is available from McFarland Books and other major online booksellers: McFarlandBooks.com/product/stardust-international-raceway.
Expect the same fine-tooth-comb approach to “Caesars Palace Grand Prix.”
“Perhaps not surprisingly,” Cannon says, “those two constituencies [motorsports and the mob] crossed paths long before Caesars Palace.
“Research for the book drew on over 2,500 documents, articles, official records, and period accounts. As one might imagine, the study also involved a dig into the files of the FBI,” he says.
Interviews include some of the Caesars Palace Grand Prix racers, among them Mario Andretti, Al Unser, Wally Dallenbach, Jr., and Lyn St. James.
“The book, however, also follows the paths of the primary Formula One and CART IndyCar influencers of the period: Bernie Ecclestone, Chris Pook, Jack Long, John Frasco, and Roger Penske,” Cannon says. “The thesis then ponders the “splits” in their respective racing series, notably dropped into the north parking lot of the Caesars Palace host resort. Conversations with former Caesars Palace executives involved in the Grand Prix planning and production provided a behind-the-scenes narrative, as well as a peek into the throne room of Caesar,” Cannon says.
According to the author, “Caesars Palace Grand Prix” is “the story of a glimpse in history and the trajectories launched decades earlier toward its existence – an unholy alliance of the desert Palace of Caesar, the shadows of the American organized crime syndicate, and the international czar of Formula One – allegedly!”
R E V I E W S
“Stardust International Raceway: Motorsports Meets The Mob in Vegas, 1965 – 1971” . . .
From the publisher:
Professional motorsports came to Las Vegas in the mid–1950s at a bankrupt horse track swarmed by gamblers—and soon became enmeshed with the government and organized crime. By 1965, the Vegas racing game moved from makeshift facilities to Stardust International Raceway, constructed with real grandstands, sanitary facilities and air-conditioned timing towers. Stardust would host the biggest racing names of the era—Mario Andretti, Parnelli Jones, John Surtees, Mark Donohue, Bobby Unser, Dan Gurney and Don Garlits among them.
Established by a notorious racketeer, the track stood at the confluence of shadowy elements—wiretaps, casino skimming, Howard Hughes, and the beginnings of Watergate. The author traces the Stardust’s colorful history through the auto racing monthlies, national newspapers, extensive interviews and the files of the FBI.
From Steve Bornfeld, LasVegasNewswire.com, December 21, 2018:
“Unearthing revelations that the raceway was a convenient concealment of racketeering, casino skimming, money laundering, and shadowy transactions — even touching on early intrigues that would evolve into the Watergate scandal — the book reads as both a compelling narrative and a fresh history primer.”
From Ron Kantowski, Las Vegas Review-Journal, November 1, 2018:
How’s this for a cast of characters:
Mario Andretti, Parnelli Jones, Bobby Unser, Dan Gurney, Mark Donohue, Bruce McLaren, Roger Penske, Jackie Stewart and “Big Daddy” Dan Garlits.
Moe Dalitz, Meyer Lansky, Sam Giancana, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.
And TV’s Dan Blocker, who played Hoss Cartwright on “Bonanza.”
All are persons of interest in “Stardust International Raceway: Motorsports Meets the Mob in Vegas, 1965-71.” The recently released book (McFarlandPub.com) about Las Vegas’ first major league auto racing facility was written by Randall Cannon, a freelance author from Henderson, and Michael Gerry, a drag racing mechanic from North Las Vegas.
The part after the colon wasn’t in the original title.
“I grew up here in the valley and got to attend some of the prominent races, and it created indelible lifelong memories for me,” Cannon said of the flat and dusty 3-mile, 10-turn circuit that hosted international sports car races and an IndyCar event before it was black-flagged by real-estate developers. Spanish Trail eventually rose from the straightaways and chicanes upon which world-class drivers and their cars once roared.
“Returning to the valley I really got intrigued by the track, what happened to the track,” Cannon said of his research. “It was pretty early when it turned into what was pretty much a classic Las Vegas story. It wasn’t just the racing. It was the influences of racketeering, of gamblers and, to some extent, of organized crime in that time period during ‘The Golden Age of Las Vegas’ — the way it used to be.”
In the manner of the boulders that littered the racetrack’s run-off areas and tore up suspensions, Cannon leaves no stone unturned about the raceway that “stood at the confluence of wiretaps, casino skimming, Howard Hughes and the beginnings of Watergate …”
Spoiler alert: The feds and Hoss Cartwright’s car were both big winners.”
From Brian Lohnes, BangShift.com, November 28, 2018:
“When one combines the topics of 1960s motorsports, politics, the mafia, and the formation of what we now know as modern Las Vegas into one 492-page book, a reader’s expectations are going to be high. Mine were exceptionally high when I flipped the first few pages of the Randall Cannon and Michael Gerry McFarland Books release, “Stardust International Raceway – Motorsports Meets The Mob In Vegas, 1965-1971”. The book is exhaustively researched, is amazingly thorough in its story telling, and does a masterful job of weaving the racing that we wanted to learn about into the politics and mafia craziness that permeated the 1960s in Vegas. It is a book that was not only a fantastic read but also one that will live on my shelf as a reference material going forward…”
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