Pass memories

'Hollywood' Jack Davison's craps feat immortalized

Imagine walking into a casino with just $6 and walking out a couple of hours later with your life changed forever by the roll of the dice.

"Hollywood" Jack Davison doesn't have to imagine it. He lived it.

For his historic run of 34 passes at the craps table at Binion's Horseshoe on the afternoon of Aug. 12, 1979, the Las Vegas legend was immortalized by Binion's -- now owned by the MTR Gaming Group -- on Dec. 8 with a commemorative plaque. It displays a vintage black-and-white photograph of Davison on the east wall of the old casino, just yards away from the famous table where his life was forever changed.

The story goes like this: Davison, who earned his "Hollywood" moniker from his days as a stuntman, had been playing poker all of the previous night and a good part of the following morning at Caesars Palace when his luck took a turn for the worse. Holding four deuces, Davison got beat. A little later, with a full house, aces full, he lost once again.

Down around $500, Davison headed downtown to Binion's to try and collect $500 he had loaned to a cab driver friend who said he would meet him there.

"I was supposed to meet the guy down there because I had called him and that's where he was supposed to meet me, and that's why I was there," Davison recalled. "I knew all the dealers and I was talking to them and talking to Teddy (Binion) who was in the pit and then one of the dealers said, 'Why don't you start a game?' And I said, 'C'mon, I only have six bucks. Who am I going to scare with this?' So I started out with spit and took the odds.

"Believe this or not, I started with $1 on the line and 75 cents on a number -- in those days you could bet 75 (cents) on a number. And I started with nothing. And I just kept pressing it up and pressing it up and kept rolling and rolling and rolling," he said, still unable to stop laughing some 26 years after that memorable day.

Almost two hours, 34 passes and who only knows how many rolls of the dice later, Davison was suddenly standing in a room that was as noisy as Grand Central Station with a massive pile full of multi-colored chips in front of him. He was the center of all the action.

Davison said Jack Binion, who was helping run the casino for his father Benny at the time, said there were people six-deep trying to get in on the winning action at the craps table once they caught wind that there was a guy who had been rolling for quite a while.

Davison, who had made himself into a somewhat respectable gambler after growing up in New York City -- where he said his father helped run a gambling room for the mafia -- and spending years living in Las Vegas, said his good friend Teddy Binion gave him some really sage advice at the time.

"Teddy was my buddy anyway and I'd known him for such a long time, and he was in the pit and he said to me, 'Hey, you better start taking some of that stuff off the table.' So I started stuffing my pockets with everything," Davison said. "I left the green and red ones on the table."

Davison admitted that being in his sleepless state actually helped his flow.

"I was like in a trance," he said. "And I couldn't believe it because it just kept going and going and going. I could never imagine I'd keep rolling like I was and never hit a seven."

Davison previously stated publicly that he won about $37,000 during the famous roll, but when pressed during the unveiling of the plaque at Binion's he smiled like a Cheshire cat and said, "I won enough to really make myself happy for quite a while."

Davison told how the entire place changed during his roll of the dice.

"There was nobody at the table when I started rolling," he said. "By the time I stopped rolling the place was jammed. I rolled for about two hours."

Davison, who had small acting parts in "Midnight Run," "Rain Man," "Casino," and "Ocean's Eleven," still has no clue how many times he exactly threw the dice during his unprecedented run.

"God only knows. I have no idea," he said. "It was a large amount. The people from the college that do the numbers and figures and stuff said it was a trillion-to-one shot."

Davison never collected his $500 from his friend that day, who fortunately "got tied up," but he had a heck of a story for him the next time the two met.

Several close friends, including Rick Poppe, Sal Garafalo and Wynn Hoeffler, came out to pay homage to their longtime friend at the commemorative ceremony, which was organized and put together by Binion's advertising/creative manager Ione Conquy. Terry and Hank Cartwright of Monster Framing supplied the plaque, while Poppe supplied and reproduced the photo.

Davison, the father of seven children -- five girls and two boys -- told how much the ceremony meant to him.

"It made me feel really great," he said shortly after the plaque's unveiling. "It made me feel like at least they (Binion's) made me feel like I had done something different. I really appreciated it."

At the ceremony, Davison looked like Johnny Cash's brother, dressed in a mid-length black leather jacket and wearing a black hat he received as a gift from John Wayne. He told how he got the hat while working as a stuntman with Wayne in the classic 1969 film "True Grit."

"We were talking back-and-forth and he was kind of a friendly guy and kind of a funny guy and we got to talking and I said, 'You know something Duke, you never gave me nothing,' " Davison said. "And he said, 'Why should I ever give you anything?' And we got to joking and I said, 'Because I do all the stunts for all these movies and nobody ever gives me nothing. How come?' And he said, 'You get paid for it.' And I said, 'Yeah.' Then he said, 'All right kid, after this movie I'll give you the hat.' He was a real movie star."

Davison landed in California around 1953 when he was discharged from military service and began selling cars for Ben Alexander, an actor who played officer Frank Smith in the popular television series "Dragnet." Alexander helped Davison get into the movie industry as a stuntman.

On weekends, Davison would travel to Las Vegas. While spending time between Redondo Beach, Calif., and Las Vegas, Davison took a job at the Bonanza Casino downtown before dealing for a while at the Boulder Club in the 1950s.

"I was working as a dealer for a while and took a little liking to it, but then I got to realize it wasn't my type of thing, working for the club," Davison said. "I'd rather gamble against the club."

After traveling "back and forth" for around two decades, Davison decided to move here permanently in 1975.

For those who want to see if they can turn a dollar into a million, Davison, who also had a 45-minute roll at Sam's Town that netted him $37,000, has some pretty good philosophies, for all games as well as craps.

"I realize that you don't need a lot of money to start the game out with, but you have to take advantage of what happens when it happens because it doesn't go on forever," Davison said. "I go up with the winners and go down with the losers. You can win a lot of money with just a small amount of money if you play correctly, and that's because you go up on winners and down on losers and basically that's to use their money to increase your bankroll."

For Davison and his style of play, greed is not a good thing.

"I don't try to get rich. If you go out, you have to have a set amount to lose, but not a set amount to win," he said. "Always remember that. You can win any amount you want to win, but have a set amount to lose.

"You have to have enough control to realize ... I don't want you to think I was born with this control. I wasn't. I took me a long time to realize this but I realized it as I took a lot of body blows (losses). When you win money, you've got to lock up at least half of what you win so you go home with something. The reason a lot of people lose is because they increase their bets (amount) when they lose. When I gamble now, I don't try to win the table."

Davison said there's a special quality about the momentum-driven game of craps that he really loves.

"There's just something about the game that really energizes you," he said. "It just does something to you. It starts the adrenaline running through the body."

When asked if he had played craps the night before being interviewed, Davison said he had at The Orleans.

"I went to The Orleans and had a few cool ones," Davison said. "I started with $100 and I picked up $160. It wasn't a lot."

Easy to say for a man who once went two hours without rolling a seven.