There was a great sense of anticipation about the venture to Las Vegas. It was a sort of mental foreplay before the final act of consummation on the bed of green felt, in an amorous tryst with lady luck.

 

 

When most visitors think of Las Vegas, images of "The Strip" come to mind.

Big hotels with thousands of fancy rooms, exploding volcanoes, pirate ships, waterfalls, and white tigers. But that's all fantasyland. To know and appreciate the look and spirit of what Las Vegas used to be like, to know what made Las Vegas the great place it once was -- you have to venture downtown.

Downtown Las Vegas was once the epicenter of the gambling universe! It was what Wall Street is to business, what the Pentagon is military power, and what Hollywood is to glamour. It was THE PLACE TO GAMBLE.

In the 1950s and 60s -- before air travel became widely popular -- most visitors came to Las Vegas by automobile. Tourists drove in on the old Los Angeles Highway. Staying in a motel -- not a hotel, but a motel or "motor lodge" -- back in those days was quite common for visitors. Dozens of motels surrounded the downtown area -- up and down Freemont Street to the East and along Las Vegas Blvd to the north and south. Today, the same motels are still here, but offer mostly weekly (or hourly!) rates. The weekly rates are mostly for the disenfranchised poor who come to Las Vegas looking to start a new life from scratch and don't have the money to go elsewhere. The hourly motels are quite something else. It's hard to look at these eyesores now and understand that they were once full of happy families and station wagons. Now, they are full of drunks and prostitutes. Times have changed. So has Las Vegas.

To drive up the old Los Angeles Highway was once an adventure! When you first arrived at the landmark diamond-shaped sign in the desert, "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" 6 miles to the south -- it was as if you were crossing into a different country, or landing on a different planet. On the horizon off in the distance were the dizzying lights of downtown Las Vegas. The closer you got to downtown, the bigger and brighter the signs became. The hotels grew in size and dimension. The lights became more colorful. It was a dizzying spectacle. You had to squint your eyes, which were used to the pitch black of the Nevada desert and which were now gazing on row after row of neon.

There was a great sense of ANTICIPATION about the venture to Las Vegas. It was a sort of mental foreplay before the final act of consummation on the bed of green felt, in an amorous tryst with lady luck. Your heart started to beat faster seeing the lights, knowing the excitement that lay ahead. That romance is not quite the same anymore.

Today, when visitors come to Las Vegas, they are funneled by the planeload -- airliners which might as well be greyhound buses in the big blue sky dumping loads of flower-shirted tourists onto The Strip like brainless cattle running full-force towards a meat packing plant. Pit bosses waiting with sledgehammers disguised as credit lines. The excitement of that anticipation is not the same anymore. It's still there in many ways, but it's different now. The culture shock of landing in Las Vegas and being blasted by 115 degree heat in the summer time doesn't allow one time to adjust. The modern visitor is literally thrown onto a heap of lights, luxury, and vice -- and then left to his own sense of discipline to avoid the temptations at every turn. Many fail.

As much as Las Vegas used to center around gambling, the real fact is -- it used to center on its own mystique. Back before Las Vegas got to be "too big" (as the natives like to say) and became another Disneyland, it was not uncommon to see the best entertainers in the world performing in free lounge acts all over town.

Up and down what used to The Strip (the north end) the world's best singers, dancers, and comedians were on stage almost every night of the week! Those were the days when entertainers had genuine talent. Usually -- the actor on stage could SING, DANCE, and TELL JOKES. That's talent! One old-timer recently told me he remembered when he saw Rosemary Clooney at The Thunderbird, Jimmy Durante at the Desert Inn, and Liberace at the Sahara ALL ON A SINGLE NIGHT! And it was all free! Back then, there used to be a dinner show, then a cocktail show around midnight. Then, the casinos often had a late show as a nightcap. It was not unusual for Sammy Davis, Jr. or Dean Martin to jump up on stage inside one of the lounges after they performed in the showroom and belt out a tune. Sometimes they would go all night long -- until sun up. Henny Youngman, Norm Crosby, Red Skelton, Abbott and Costello -- the list goes on an on -- they all put on free shows in the lounges of Las Vegas. George Burns used to do free lounge shows. So did Don Rickles. Consider the following quote:

 

"I was playing the lounge there at the Sahara. Shecky Greene and I were the rival comedians at the hotel, and I followed Louis Prima, who was the biggest thing in Las Vegas at the time. Shecky and I would do shows at midnight, 2 and 5 in the morning. Oddly enough, I was in the lounge when Johnny Carson, who was performing in the main room, got sick one night. I went into the main room to take his place, and I did very well. From then on, I began getting hired for main rooms." -- Don Rickles, 1992 Las Vegas Style Magazine

Now, you can't get a decent seat at a show in this city for less than fifty bucks. Indeed, times have changed.