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CREDITS
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Biopic
of the man who, according to legend, built Las Vegas.
The real Bugsy – sorry, Benny – Siegel was
gunned down, shot through the eyes (see the tasteful
picture in Kenneth Angerís wickedly pleasurable Hollywood
Babylon) at his home in Beverly Hills, 810
Linden Drive.
The 1940s Beverly Hills of the film, though, is largely
represented by LA's eastern neighbour, Pasadena,
where the houses of Jack Dragna and Bugsy himself were
filmed. Virginia Hillís home is in LAís Wilshire district
in the Hancock Park
area.
Siegel is met on arrival in LA by George Raft at the
wonderful Spanish-style Union
Station, 800 North Alameda Street. Thereís
impressive attention to detail ‚ the famous sign in
the hills, glimpsed only briefly in the background during
the drive to Hollywood, actually reads ëHOLLYWOODLANDí,
as it did until 1949.
The Flamingo of the movie looks very different to the
Vegas of today, and had to be rebuilt in its original
form out in Thermal,
south of I-10 between Palm Springs and Salton Sea in
the Southern California desert.
The pink neon Flamingo as itís seen today appears at
the end of Bugsy.
Bugsyís rose garden (it was alleged, only half jokingly,
that several of his enemies rested beneath it) was finally
paved over in 1990, and in 1993 Siegelís on-site penthouse
was demolished to make way for the new water park. The
Flamingo is at 3555
Las Vegas Boulevard South.
The 'Hotel Nacional de Cuba', where the gang leaders
gather to discuss Bugsyís future, is a conflation of
two buildings. The grandiose lobby is the familiar Park
Plaza Hotel, 607 South Park View Street,
downtown LA. The exterior is the astonishing Castle
Green Apartments, 99 South Raymond Avenue
at East Green Street just south of Colorado Boulevard
in central Pasadena.
This Moorish fantasy, which you have to see to believe,
was built at the turn of the century as an annexe to
an older hotel across Raymond Avenue. The older hotel
was demolished in the thirties, leaving the stump of
the strange connecting bridge straddling the avenue.
The Castle Green can be seen in lots of films including
The Sting,
The Man With Two Brains
and The Last Samurai.
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FILMING
LOCATIONS FOR BUGSY
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CHECK
OUT
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If you're visiting Las Vegas, see how much the Flamingo,
has come on since Bugsy's day.
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ASSOCIATED
FILMS |
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You can see shots of the Vegas strip in 1950,
four years after the original Flamingo opened,
in Charlton
Hestonís first Hollywood movie Dark
City. See the Flamingo as it appeared
in 1960 in the original film of Ocean's
Eleven.
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