Vegas Visions

silverslipper01

I love old pictures of Las Vegas, especially ones in which you can read the marquees on the casinos. They give you some idea of how wonderful that place must have been, once upon a time.

This photo, which I'm guessing is from some time in the mid-to-late sixties, has a lot of information if you look closely. The Silver Slipper, which ain't there no mo', is offering a show called The Wonderful World of Burlesque with performances at 10:00 PM, 12:30 AM and 2:45 AM. The time clock was different back then. I don't know the last time any Vegas hotel had a regular show that started after 11 PM. (The Luxor currently has a show called Midnight Fantasy. It starts at 10:30 PM.) The $1.57 "World Famous Buffet" at the Silver Slipper was open 'til midnight so you could chow down late, then go catch the 12:30 AM burlesque show, which was probably a pretty good one. The lead comic then might have been either Hank Henry or Tommy "Moe" Raft, both of whom were Minsky's veterans who were said to be among the greatest. Johnny Carson, when he played Vegas back then, never left town without seeing whichever of them was then working.

Also while you were at the Silver Slipper that evening, you could have strolled by the lounge and taken in a "Dixieland Singalong" with George Rock. I'm assuming that's the same George Rock who previously played trumpet for Spike Jones and sang on many of his records, usually doing a baby-like voice, as in "All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth." If so, I'd sure like to have seen him perform.

At left in the pic, you can see a little of a marquee for a show called "Pzazz." That's at the Desert Inn, and it was said to have had the best-looking showgirls on The Strip. The Desert Inn ain't there no mo', either.

Those two shows would probably have made for a very full, fun evening. But if that wasn't enough, you could have gone across the street to the Frontier — which is still there, though probably not for long — and seen the offering in their showroom. The headliner was Phil Silvers, probably with Leo DeLyon as his sidekick and accompanist. And it looks like his opening act was Vic Damone. These days in Vegas, you rarely even get an opening act and when you do, it's always someone you've never heard of before. Vic Damone was a pretty big star back then and it was not uncommon for one big star to open for another. Anyway, those three shows must have offered an awful lot of entertainment for relatively little money, and you didn't even have to get in a taxi.