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UK
Casino Times
> The Story Of Vegas
13 September
2005
Las Vegas History. The Story Of
Vegas (Part 3)
(continued from
Las
Vegas History. The Story Of Vegas Part
2)
As
every online gambling fan knows, Vegas is the ultimate
gambling experience, the capital of world punting. As
Las
Vegas
celebrates its 100th birthday, we look at how a tiny desert
town turned into the ultimate gambling Mecca.
The Rat
Pack
Las Vegas may be the
favourite gambling destination for online casino fans and UK
casino punters, but the stars that have performed there have
also played a huge part in its evolution as a major world
entertainment centre.
From the Beatles to Elvis,
there is hardly a major entertainer who hasn't played Las
Vegas. But Frank Sinatra and his friends - nicknamed The Rat
Pack - made the town their own in the late 1950s and 60s.
They were also partly responsible, some would say almost
completely responsible, for its transformation from a
relative backwater to the glamorous, sophisticated gambling
and entertainment metropolis we know today.
Sinatra and his friends
Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford
became known as the Rat Pack in the late 50s. The
multi-talented entertainers, who fooled around on stage and
partied hard off it, were a magnetic attraction for all the
great stars and public figures of the day. They were the
ultimate icons of sophisticated glamour: everyone wanted to
know them and be a part of the scene.
It didn't always look that
way though. Sinatra's first visit to the Nevada city for a
gig at the Desert Inn in 1951 wasn't a particular triumph,
coming in the wake of scandal just after he had left his
first wife for Ava Gardner.
But loyalty to Jack
Entratter, general manager of the Sands, was to bring
Sinatra back to Vegas. Gradually he and the Rat Pack became
kings of the town, entertaining audiences and bringing huge
amounts of money and celebrity in their wake.
When Sinatra teamed up
with Dean Martin, Joey Bishop, Sammy Davis Jr and later
Peter Lawford, they brought their own special brand of
glamour to the Sands. The Rat Pack also played a major role
in the desegregation of Las Vegas hotels and casinos,
refusing to patronise those which wouldn't serve Sammy Davis
Jr. Not wanting to lose the custom of these celebrities,
many soon revised their policies.
The pinnacle of the Rat
Pack's domination of the town came in 1960. With Peter
Lawford now included in the team, they filmed the original
Ocean's
Eleven there by
day and took the Sands by storm every night for nearly a
month with a playful show called Summit at the Sands. This
freewheeling entertainment, which even had a visit from
Senator John F Kennedy, has become the stuff of legend and
is widely held to be the best ever in the history of
Vegas.
Sinatra also famously
became involved in the Vegas's gaming and business side,
buying interests in the Sands and the Cal Neva casinos.
However, in 1963, he lost his gambling licence after crime
boss Sam Giancana was seen in the Cal Neva. Sinatra would
not regain his licence in 1981.
Sinatra left the Sands
when it was taken over by Howard Hughes in 1967, but he was
to carry on playing in Vegas through to the early 1990s,
with a final performance at the MGM Grand in 1994. The Rat
Pack is now long gone, with Joey Bishop the one surviving
member, but its legacy in making Las Vegas one of the
world's greatest entertainment centres, both for gamblers
and lovers of showbiz spectacle, lives on.
Also in this series:
Las
Vegas History. The Story Of Vegas - Part
1
Las
Vegas History. The Story Of Vegas - Part 2
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