Wednesday, July 20, 2005 | 8:23 a.m.
When chorus line dancer Dottie Goffstein was ordered by an executive at the El Rancho Vegas in 1951 to mingle with the gamblers after a performance, she refused and instead went to the bar alone and ordered a Coke.
She believed that mingling with the gamblers was not the proper way for a professional dancer to act.
"I got fired," Goffstein recalled in an Oct. 24, 1991, Sun story.
But a year later, while she was working as a member of the Lindsay Sapphire Dancers at the Flamingo, she met casino Vice President Benny Goffstein, her future husband.
Together, they would leave an indelible mark on Las Vegas.
Alice Virginia "Dottie" Goffstein, the mother of the Four Queens of Las Vegas -- Michele, Benita, Faith and Hope -- for whom the downtown hotel that the Goffsteins opened in 1966 is named, died Monday of cancer. She was 81.
Services for the Las Vegas resident of 53 years will be 7 p.m Saturday at Palm Mortuary-Eastern.
Dottie and Benny, who died of cancer in 1967, were among the leaders of the social scene for many years. He was a co-founder of Variety Club Tent 39 and she became the three-time president of its women's auxiliary. Together they helped raise tens of thousands of dollars for local charities.
"My mother's main work was with the Variety Club and of course being a mom and a grandma," said daughter Michele Teriano of Henderson, who was designated the Queen of Spades by her family.
"She loved the old Las Vegas very much. And, with her dance background, she choreographed the benefits for the Variety Club."
When Benny Goffstein met the then-Dottie Wood, it was love at first sight for him, but indifference for her, her family said.
Benny pursued and courted Dottie for two years until their good friends, then-Pepsi Cola President Al Steele and his then-future wife actress Joan Crawford convinced them to get married on New Year's Eve 1954, her family said.
Later, when Steele and Crawford got married, they forgot the ring and Dottie loaned the bride her wedding ring, her family said.
When the couple opened the Four Queens, Dottie took on the official title as interior designer and unofficial title of "joker," which she had printed on her business cards, her companion of 35 years, Bob Bingham, said.
She was born Jan. 30, 1924, in Cincinnati, but Dottie's father died when she was young.
Though the family was poor, her mother scrimped and saved to send Dottie to dance school. By age 15 she became a professional dancer, quit high school and went on the road to perform in chorus lines in Buffalo, N.Y., and Windsor, Ontario. She eventually made her way to Miami and then to Las Vegas.
Dottie Goffstein's philanthropy over the years included working with the American Cancer Society in the 1960s and donating to Nathan Adelson Hospice, the Ronald McDonald House and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in memory of her granddaughter, Jessica, who at age 7 died of that disease.
On March 14, 1975, the Variety Club honored Dottie Goffstein with the Heart Award, the organization's highest honor.
In addition to Teriano and Bingham, Goffstein is survived by three other daughters, Benita Moore, the Queen of Clubs, of Oregon; Faith Goffstein, the Queen of Hearts of Henderson, and Hope Goffstein, the Queen of Diamonds, of Las Vegas; and four grandchildren.
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