While neither regulars nor high rollers - we don't gamble at all - from time to time my husband Rodney and I find ourselves in Las Vegas, a place with a plethora of nicknames. It was in the City of Second Chances at Emeril Lagasse's Stadium (a pandemic casualty) that we endured the seven overtimes it took the Texas A&M Aggies to defeat the LSU Tigers in 2018. But, with the exception of the LSU/Southern Cal match-up coming up, in early September 2024, football is rarely the draw in Vegas.
It is the entertainment that is paramount in what is called the Entertainment Capital of the World. And it all began in the mid-1940s with the mob and their money, which American mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel used to construct the Flamingo Hotel and Casino smack dab in the desert. Though we haven't lodged there - Rodney and I stay on the strip at the Bellagio and Caesars Palace - for a vivid synopsis of Las Vegas in the beginning and a whole lot of drama, I rely on "Bugsy" - one of my all-time favorite films.
The glitz and glam of the city brings to mind a litany of lyrics, but Elvis Presley's "Viva Las Vegas" floats to the top, a musical film released in the summer of 1964 in which Elvis starred with Ann-Margret. Belting out a tune about the bright lights and "a fortune won and lost on every deal," Elvis illuminates with day turning into night and night into day. He described Sin City to a "t," a place where there really isn't any difference in night or day. And by year's end - I was born that December nearly sixty years ago - the movie, loved by the public though not as much by the critics, was a smash hit at the box office.
I was reminded of Las Vegas not that long ago when friends from Franklinton enjoyed a grand time on the strip. In all likelihood by the time this column runs - I'm slow as a turtle - they will have made another trip or two there. But this time last year, Becky and Dean Thomas; Tina and Mike Creel; and Ricky Magee with Tanda Schilling had a terrific time together in Las Vegas. And while they missed the king by a few decades, they saw Barry Manilow who has done an excellent job filling Elvis's very large shoes in Las Vegas. From his hit "Here's to Las Vegas" to old favorites like "Mandy" and "I Write the Songs," which we reveled in during our 1970s' youth, Manilow's residency at the Westgate Las Vegas has been beyond popular.
It was my impression that Becky and Dean, who stay at the Venetian, may be regulars in Las Vegas. The standard of measurement in Washington Parish for what constitutes "regulars" in Las Vegas was established by another Washington Parish couple, who likely hold the record in our neck of the woods. Bogalusans Don and Georgia Spiers - my dear friends - were featured in my column in early 2022. During my research and writing, which included reading prominent Bogalusa businessman Don's splendid autobiography "The Boy From Bogalusa," I discovered the couple had been to America's City of Lights a time or two - at the time of the manuscript, sixty-three trips to Vegas!
This certainly makes Don and Georgia Spiers regulars in Las Vegas. With 63 journeys under their belt in 2014, they should have their own residency. A handful of these trips were what is known as "junkets" with infamous banker R. Morton Roche of Bogalusa but that's a story for another day. Borrowing from Mr. Don's book, the Spiers's first trip to Vegas was in the late summer of 1969. As he eloquently explained, Elvis was performing for one month for an unimaginable $1,000 for the opening of the famed International Hotel. Mr. Don penned, "I wanted to see Las Vegas, and Georgia wanted to see Elvis Presley" - she is a loyal fan.
To put the 1960s in context, according to Mr. Don, prime dinners could be had on the strip for $1.97. And Elvis appeared twice nightly, with the eight o'clock show featuring dinner and three drinks or a bottle of wine for $15.45 inclusive and the midnight two-hour performance including either drinks or wine for $7.50 - an unfathomable bargain.
And for folks not keen on the king - though I don't know them - there was other first-rate entertainment up and down the strip. Mr. Don reflected, "Wayne Newton was at the Frontier, Dean Martin at the Riviera, Frank Sinatra at the Desert Inn, Sammy Davis at the Sands, Tom Jones at the Aladdin, and many more." In the late 1960s ownership of the hotel casinos was transitioning from mob ownership to corporate ownership - a delicate but definite shift.
Mr. Don's memories, shared in his book, were merry. In 1969, on their first visit to Vegas, he and wife Georgia stayed at the soon-to-be demolished Sahara Hotel and Casino. A behemoth thermometer stood atop the hotel, and it read 112 degrees on their first morning there. It sounds like the summer of 2023, in South Louisiana. Yet, in the casinos and for the shows and dining, the men wore jackets with ties and the ladies cocktail dresses - it was a classy era.
And while, since the 1960s, Vegas may have lost some of its formality, it is still drawing Franklintonians and Bogalusans. Of course, it costs quite a bit more these days. Frank Sinatra said it best, "Las Vegas is the only place I know where money really talks - it says, 'Goodbye.'"
