Originally posted by plawrence:
"Your casino loses money" Michael tells Moe Greene.
My guess is that Michael thought that Moe was skimming a bit too much, hence his very sarcastic comment to Moe: "You're unlucky".
If there's one thing that's practically an impossibility, it's the proposition that over the long haul a casino can lose money.
But apparently - altho it was probably Moe's greed in skimming more off the top than the business could support - Moe and his casino had a cash flow problem, and needed an infusion of money to keep operating.
Probably this was Puzo/FFC cribbing from real life:
Bugsy Siegel's Flamingo Hotel lost a pile of money on opening night, December 26, 1946, probably due to the newness of his cropiers and dealers. The hotel was too new for Siegel to be skimming money from the casino. But, as you know, the original estimate of the hotel's cost--$1 million--had soard to more than $5 million before it opened. Siegel's NY mob associates suspected that he and/or his mistress, Virginia Hill, had skimmed the construction money. What's more, the Flamingo's sleeping rooms hadn't been finished by opening night. So, Siegel closed the Flamingo after opening night and sold thousands of points in the hotel to unwary investors--another form of "skimming" if you define the term loosely. That's what led to his demise the following June.
