“His time is limited”: The Las Vegas mobster James Stewart ran out of Hollywood
Nice guys don’t always finish last, with James Stewart living proof. As far as everyone in Hollywood was concerned, he didn’t have a bad or malicious bone in his body, and he became one of the defining stars of the ‘Golden Age’ without having to resort to feuds, fistfights, or underhanded tactics.
However, there was one thing that was guaranteed to piss him off, and it was organised crime. Usually, thespians wouldn’t take much of a vested interest in the goings-on of the mob, unless they were in league with them as several stars were purported to be, but Stewart was a different case.
He knew that several syndicates were making moves to sink their hooks into the cinema business, and he didn’t like what he saw. That led him into direct opposition to Bugsy Siegel, who became the closest thing the It’s a Wonderful Life and Mr Smith Goes to Washington star had to an arch-nemesis.
Siegel wasn’t the wisest person to make enemies with, though, since his fearsome reputation was solidified by the hit squad he ran in New York that was literally called Murder, Incorporated. They did exactly what they said on the tin, but Stewart didn’t give a fuck, which was either brave or stupid.
The mobster eventually upped sticks to Los Angeles to worm his way into Hollywood, and in the 1930s, he made a trip to Las Vegas to sound out potential business and investment opportunities, which manifested a decade later when he set up shop in ‘Sin City’ and took control of the Flamingo Hotel.
Stewart and Siegel had a heated confrontation at Jean Harlow’s funeral, and when the former’s friend, fellow actor, and mob acquaintance, George Raft, told him to cool it, the Vertigo headliner was having none of it. “His time is limited,” Stewart informed him. “And so is yours.”
He was ballsy enough to tell Siegel to his face that “if I ever get the chance, I’ll see to it that you and your kind are driven out of this town.” While a movie star threatening a high-ranking figure in the criminal underworld doesn’t sound like a particularly smart idea, the fact remains that he’d relocated from Los Angeles to Las Vegas by the mid-1940s.
Siegel probably should have stayed there, too: in June 1947, Siegel was shot and killed in his Beverly Hills home, with whispers insinuating that the losses he was making in Vegas, coupled with rumours that he’d been siphoning off mob profits for himself, led to a hit being placed on him by his organised crime cohorts.
Stewart once told Cary Grant, “That so-and-so Siegel is in just as much danger from me,” and the actor got the last laugh when the man he swore he’d drive out of Hollywood was forcibly removed from the mortal plane in a hail of bullets.
