Chapter One
An Inspiration
Dust
William S. “Bill” Boyd’s first Stardust memories are of a dusty, wind-swept construction site circa 1956. Work on the project had been halted when the first owners ran out of money.
“I remember driving by it for a long time half-built,” said Boyd, today
chairman and CEO of Boyd Gaming Corporation. “The story was the guy who started it had a heart attack shooting craps at the Desert Inn.”
That guy would be Tony Cornero, one of a string of … ahem … colorful characters associated with the Stardust during the first half of its life.
Cornero (whose birth name was Stralla) had owned two gambling
ships, the S.S. Rex and S.S. Tango, which ferried 1930s-era gamblers
by motorboat from Depression-insulated Southern California to the Pacific waters just outside the 3-mile limit. The story – in an era filled with rich stories – was that Cornero lost the Tango in a poker game, and the Rex was seized by authorities annoyed by the blatantly illegal operation.