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.
