Frank Sinatra Playing with The Rat Pack 1960s & 70s John Oliver: Las Vegas Is the Worst Place on Earth! Don Rickles' Last Carson Appearance Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy Ernest Borgnine on Frank & Dean Harlan Ellison vs Frank Sinatra Demond Wilson on The Dean Martin Roasts, Las Vegas, and Walking Out on Sanford & Son TV's The Magician and Las Vegas Liberace, Frank Sinatra, and Jackie Gleason Attempted an Intervention on Elvis in Las Vegas What Las Vegas Looked Like Under Lockdown Sammy Davis Jr.'s Home Was Looted! Very Revealing Interview with Sammy Davis Jr. Frank Sinatra's Last Major Interview
Drummer Hal Blaine on Recording with The Rat Pack What Was Frank Sinatra Really Like? Home Movies of Las Vegas During The Strip’s Golden Age Donny & Marie Are Calling It Quits Sinatra's First Palm Springs Home Phyllis Diller: An Appreciation Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme How Las Vegas Has Changed Since the 1970s How Las Vegas Has Changed Since the 1960s |
THE MOB AND LAS VEGAS From a Vegas entertainer: The entertainers and folks I know who worked in Las Vegas pre-1980 liked it better than what came after, When the big hotel chains muscled in on Sin City the mobsters, even with the skim, didn't have the money to compete. They were eventually marginalized and Vegas became a corporate playground. But in the days of the mob it was a much more personal place. You went to one person and they could give you an answer, comp a room, book a night spot. You didn't have to go through layers of corporate lackeys like you do today and apparently pretty much left everyone alone to do the best job they could. Of course, there were those who felt the sting of the Mob - if someone ran afoul of the wrong people or they tried to rip off a casino.
The casinos were go-go-go from the late-1940s on, and there were rivers of cash to be made on all sorts of gambling schemes - slot machines, card games, In the 1950s big name entertainers were the lure that brought in the suckers, that and the chance to hit it big if you bet the right numbers on the Roulette wheel or hit a lucky streak in Blackjack. It was also an elegant place where men wore coats and ties to the casinos, ladies were decked out in their finest with glittering jewelry and designer dresses. Beginning in the 1980s, just as mob influence was waning, slovenly tourists were arriving wearing tacky vacation wear, short shorts, jeans. Las Vegas lost that high class edge it had. Time magazine cover story, May 16, 1977: Helen Costa, wife of Frank Sinatra’s musical arranger Don Costa:
|
THE MOB AND LAS VEGAS
YOUR GO-GO HOST: Billy Ingram
The original 1970s Dark Shadows movies Walter Murphy's 1970s
|
