Every Light Was On: Bill Harrah and His Clubs Remembered

William Fisk (Bill) Harrah was the most influential figure in the history of casino gaming in Nevada, and one of the least accessible. A revealing book from the UNOHP puts his life and career in perspective. Every Light Was On is the story of Harrah and his clubs as told by twenty former employees and two women who were among his six wives.
    Nevada casinos of the 1930s were rough-and-tumble businesses, deeply rooted in the frontier ethos from which legalized gaming had emerged: cheating, profit skimming, and employee theft from the house were rampant. By background and temperament, Bill Harrah was ill-prepared to succeed in such a business when he opened a small bingo parlor in Reno in 1937, but by the mid-1960s his Harrah's Clubs were the most profitable casino gaming operations in America and he had become the de facto leader of the industry.
    Bill Harrah's life and career were marked by paradox. The privileged son of a southern California attorney, he lasted less than one term in college before sliding into a line of work which at the time was largely populated with cheap hustlers and petty crooks. Harrah was honest, but he was also a drunk and a womanizer and a habitual gambler, and for years it appeared that he would never amount to much. When his second wife got him off the bottle, he focused his attention on building his business, but he never really cared for it. Bill Harrah's passion was old automobiles: he sank tens of millions of his company's dollars into buying and restoring them, and he spent much more time with his auto collection than he did with his executives.
    From a slow start operating a little bingo parlor in a downtown Reno alley, Harrah went on to build hugely successful hotel-casinos in Reno and at Lake Tahoe that were glittering examples for the industry, replete with gourmet restaurants, lavish accommodations for guests, and the very finest in service and hospitality. His insistence on perfection in everything extended even unto lightbulbs: when one burned out, it would be replaced immediately or his managers would hear from him. Yet, Harrah's personal life was always messy, and when he died in 1978 he left no plans for his business, the automobile collection, or anything else beyond establishing trusts for his family.
    Every Light Was On ranges widely and deeply, covering most important aspects of Bill Harrah's life and the operations of his hotel-casinos, from the 1940s through the purchase of the company by Holiday Inns in 1980. It is both an exploration of a singular personality and a detailed account of how Harrah's Clubs became the standard by which all other gaming properties were judged.

Every Light Was On: Bill Harrah and His Clubs Remembered. Reno: UNOHP, 1999. (454 pp, 56 photos, paperback, $24.95)