The Tallyho, seen here in a 1963 photograph, once existed on the property where the current Aladdin resort sits. REVIEW-JOURNAL FILE PHOTO This 1982 photograph of the Aladdin was shot from the top of the Dunes. REVIEW-JOURNAL FILE PHOTO Click image for enlargement. Dancers entertained arriving guests when the Aladdin reopened in 2000 after being rebuilt at a cost of $1.1 billion. REVIEW-JOURNAL FILE PHOTO

The new Aladdin formed a riddle as it pressed up against the boulevard dressed in its Vegas-meets-Arabian-Nights theme. It was at once intriguing and perplexing.

If not quite a mirage, the 2,547-room megaresort offers walk-up customers a mystery in the form of a question: How could a gambling palace that cost $1.1 billion be built without a front door?

In truth, the entrance did exist. Nor did visitors have to shout "open sesame" to access it. It was just that throngs of tourists might have found it easier to make a carpet fly than to step inside the building from the street. Las Vegas megaresorts like to market themselves as exclusive-but not that exclusive.

Such were the troubles of the new Aladdin when it premiered in the year 2000 on property where its namesake and the original Tally Ho casino project had been cursed with everything from bad location to hidden mob ownership.

A smart-aleck columnist christened its tumultuous history "the Curse of the Tallyho," and within a year of its grand opening, the all-new Aladdin, with its handsome shopping mall and exclusive gambling salon created to attract the world's biggest players, had fallen under the curse.

Insiders talked about restructuring or even dumping the property as late as the day before its financial collapse. It managed to lose money even in the casino and was said to be $725 million in debt. Officials said they wouldn't seek bankruptcy. As the days passed, their denials became less credible.

What most observers did not then appreciate was that the jumbled design and inefficient way the Aladdin had been rebuilt had doomed it from the start. Others blamed its failure on the layered ownership and lack of a vision.

But that came later. What Las Vegas historians noted with arched brows was the almost eerie run of bad luck the property had suffered from its earliest incarnation in 1963. Then it was the Tallyho, an oversized motel that touted itself as Las Vegas Boulevard's first nongaming luxury resort. It fizzled from the start because few visitors in those days came to Las Vegas for any reason other than gambling.

Investigators smelled the distinct scent of organized crime in the Tallyho's financial structure, most notably in the razor-faced hit man Aladena "Jimmy the Weasel" Fratianno. He'd risen in mob ranks by eliminating shakedown artist Russian Louie Strauss and sports-book robbers Tony Trombino and Tony Brancato, among others.

But Fratianno couldn't keep in the shadows, and the Tallyho changed names and ownership, reopening a second time. Now it was called the King's Crown.

In 1965, it was purchased for $16 million by former Sahara owner Milton Prell.

Prell was serious about making the property a winner, and he was responsible for envisioning the Arabian Nights theme. When it reopened as the Aladdin on New Year's Day 1966, Prell had added restaurants, a lounge, and a 500-seat showroom.

Prell had the Vegas idea when it came to design: He knew whatever was worth doing, was worth overdoing. He added the property's signature beacon, a fifteen-story-high Aladdin's lamp.

The curse seemed to be broken. ...

(Prell) was a gutsy fellow. But even guts couldn't keep the magic lantern burning. The Aladdin was sold to Al Parvin, the mobbed-up financier who operated the Stardust and other casinos from behind the scenes. It had all the signs of a joint destined to fail when it was sold a few years later to a group fronted by Morris Shenker and a list of St. Louis and Detroit investors, some of whom were later tied to a mob skim.

The Aladdin added a 20-story hotel tower (later found to have a severe structural flaw that made it unsafe to occupy during high winds) and a 10,000-seat Theater for the Performing Arts (with help from the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund). The tower and theater construction was a scandal. Parvin had new carpeting torn and replaced by one of his companies as a way to divert extra money into his pockets.

Even more shifty was the property's true operator, former Detroit resident James "Little Jimmy" Tamer. The slightly built Tamer's official title was entertainment director. His real job was directing the casino skim.

He didn't do a very good job, and he and several of his crew were eventually caught, convicted, and sentenced to prison terms. Tamer was also placed in the state's casino Black Book.

With the mob's frontmen and financial experts out of the picture, new owners were needed. For a brief time, Wayne Newton and Meyer Lansky's old friend, Ed Torres, reopened the place, but found the going too rough. When the Aladdin went into bankruptcy in 1984, the fault couldn't be attributed to its current owners.

It was headed that way for years thanks to the 40 thieves who'd operated it.

When all else failed, the Aladdin was sold for $51.5 million to Japanese businessman and high-rolling gambler Ginji Yasuda. Yasuda, appeared to be in love with the idea of owning a casino.

He certainly was not like the hands-on owners of previous generations. He seemed confident in hiring high-paid executives to run the show for him. Yasuda died in 1989, and the Aladdin was again put on the market.

After slipping in and out of bankruptcy, the Aladdin wound up in the hands of Jack Sommer ... .

The all-new Aladdin boasted 2,500 rooms, a half-million-square-foot shopping mall, and an expansive casino-including the exclusive London Club high-roller salon.

(T)he resort finally reopened in August 2000 ... . Less than a year after it opened, the Aladdin was once again hemorrhaging on the accounting books. It faced the daunting task of meeting its high-interest bond payments. After Sept. 11, 2001, everything went into a tailspin. ...

By July 2003 ... (t)he bankrupt Aladdin was auctioned off to an investment group called OpBiz led by Planet Hollywood CEO Robert Earl. The purchase price: $635 million for a resort that cost an estimated $1.1 billion less than three years earlier. ...

By the summer of 2004, Earl was approved to reinvent the Aladdin once more. With industry veteran Mike Mecca as president, the new Aladdin group planned to invest $500 million to renovate the old white elephant, $100 million of this would be spent on a new high-rise apartment complex and other millions to transform the Theater for the Performing Arts into a state-of-the-art facility. This time, they hoped the curse of the Tallyho could be broken.