Vegas Valley Book Festival

 

 

The Vegas Valley Book Festival begins later this week! 

A Celebration of the Written, Spoken and Illustrated Word

The Vegas Valley Book Festival, the largest literature event in Las Vegas, will be held November 4 – 8, 2009, with most events taking place at the historic Fifth Street School downtown. Now in its eighth year, this annual community festival was founded on the simple premise of bringing together those who write books and those who love to read them. The five-day festival is presented by the City of Las Vegas Office of Cultural Affairs, Las Vegas-Clark County Library District, Nevada Humanities and the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

 

 

 

 

Arlene Dahl: Classic Las Vegas Performer

Arlene Dahl may not be known by those who trip the light fantastic of the modern Las Vegas Strip but for thousands who remember the Classic Las Vegas Strip and it's heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, they know Arlene Dahl.

 

From Stephen Michael Shearer:

When beautiful red-haired film actress Arlene Dahl made her "world premiere nightclub engagement" for four weeks at the Flamingo in 1962, she had the creme de la creme of legendary Las Vegas entertainers to give her advice.

"On opening night (March 15, 1962), we had a tech and dress rehearsal," Dahl told me recently. "And this was in the afternoon about 3 o'clock. And it (the theater) was dark -- I didn't know anybody was in the audience except the waiters, maybe. The lights went up after our dress rehearsal before the opening, and I saw Marlene Dietrich, Sammy Davis Jr., the Ritz Brothers and Georgia Gibbs. If I had known they were there I would have been terrified!"

"What I was told was that Las Vegas was like family," she explained. "They all come to the rehearsals to give tips and suggestions. Dietrich relit my whole show because she said: 'Whoever you sent to New York for does not know how to light a redhead. Do you mind if I relight your show? ... She was almost late for her own opening. I learned everything from Dietrich."

"Now Sammy, because I danced with the boys, gave me a few steps to make it easier for me to get into the opening number."

Davis gave her other dance tips and rehearsed a chat number with Dahl and the boys, which was included in the show.

"The Ritz Brothers gave me a joke," she added, "and Georgia Gibbs gave me a spray for 'Vegas throat,' dry throat. I mean, I got something from everybody. I mean it was just an eye-opener -- I never had such an audience in my life in show business!"

I asked Dahl if she was nervous or frightened to perform before a live audience. "I didn't know enough to be afraid," she said, chuckling. But performing live was not entirely new. "I had started in theater before I went to Hollywood. I had done musicals, you know, before I appeared at the Flamingo. But I had never had an act. I never put an act together."

Of Norwegian descent, she was born Arlene Carol Dahl in Minneapolis on Aug. 11, 1928. She was active in a local drama group and theater at an early age. (Her mother was involved in local theater as well.)

After graduating high school, Dahl made her Broadway debut in 1945 as Mrs. Taylor in the short-lived musical-comedy-romance "Mr. Strauss Goes to Boston," which was choreographed by George Balanchine. (Dahl also appeared on Broadway in a revival of "Cyrano de Bergerac" in 1953, and "Applause" in the early 1970s.)

She was voted the Miss Rheingold Beer Girl of 1946 -- later winners included Grace Kelly and Tippi Hedren -- while pursuing her career in New York. That led to a brief Warner Bros. contract in 1946.

In 1948, she signed with MGM and later Paramount. Her best film work was in "Reign of Terror" (1949), "Three Little Words" (1950), "Here Come the Girls" (1953), "Woman's World" (1954), "Wicked As They Come" (1957), and "Journey to the Center of the Earth" (1959), opposite James Mason and Pat Boone.

Dahl married six times, including to actors Lex Barker (once a movie Tarzan) and the late Argentine heartthrob and fellow MGM contract star Fernando Lamas, father of her son, Lorenzo Lamas. Dahl and Fernando Lamas were wed on June 25, 1954, at the Frontier's Little Church of the West in Las Vegas. (Fernando Lamas himself headlined in Las Vegas with Margot Brander and Louis Basil and His Orchestra at the Sahara in December 1958, the year of Lorenzo's birth.)

Dahl's actor son, Lorenzo ("Falcon Crest"), has recently branched out to cabaret with his highly praised singing voice and style. Dahl has two other children: Carole Holmes McCarthy, born in 1961, and Stephen Schaum, born in 1970.

In 2009, Dahl celebrated her 25th wedding anniversary to Marc Rosen, a former vice-president of Elizabeth Arden Inc.

Known primarily as a glamorous movie star, Dahl was intrigued by the possibility of performing in Las Vegas when she was approached to do it in September 1961.

Her lawyer Louis Blau put Dahl in touch with Gordon and Sheila McRae. They said: "Well, you've got to get somebody who knows about lighting," Dahl continued. " 'You've got to get an orchestrator. You've got to do this, and you've got to do that.' And they were very helpful in helping put the act together. As was Lou, who got me in touch with the producers in New York, Lyn Duddy, who wrote music and lyrics, and Jerry Bressler, who was an orchestra leader and arranger. They flew in from New York, and we turned my garage in the Pacific Palisades into a rehearsal room with mirrors and a ballet bar. My piano was already there, so we started rehearsals."

"I had three weeks of rehearsals before I opened," she said. "I worked every day including the weekends with three boys. I was the fourth boy. And we got a well-known choreographer as well. I opened cold. I didn't even play it once, except for a group of neighbors in the garage."

Bob Mackie and Ray Aghayan designed her stunning costumes for her Las Vegas debut.

Dahl's reviews for her Las Vegas act were sensational. "The most delightful show surprise of the year ... an eyeful and earful of song and dance charm," wrote Hollywood-Citizen News reporter Abe Greenburg.

"Arlene sang, danced and looked ravishingly gorgeous," wrote Los Angeles Herald-Examiner reviewer Dean Gautschy. And on April 1, 1962, Joan Winchell of the Los Angeles Times continued with the praise: "The ravishing redhead continues to sing, dance, twist and clown her way through the show with all her motion picture know-how. Opening night saw tears flow freely from her pretty eyes as she got a standing ovation, which thanked her for switching her film talents to a successful nightclub show."

It took 26 technically skilled personnel to put the opening together at a then staggering cost of $60,000. There was one spot in the show as she sang "Picture Us" that Dahl would walk through the audience and randomly sit on a man's lap, just as a photographer snapped their picture.

The act also included a sexy motorcycle number, "Let's All Be Female Again," in which Dahl stripped out of leather-gear down to a black lace leotard.

"I was the headliner, which I couldn't get over," Dahl recalled. "But Dick Shawn opened the show for me. He was famous for doing 'Me and My Shadow,' and he played Las Vegas all the time. And I couldn't imagine that he would not be a headliner with me. But he opened the show, and I asked him to come back after my act was over and we both did "Me and My Shadow" together."

One particular incident from her Las Vegas tenure stands out in Dahl's memory. "I was married to Chris Holmes at the time," she said. "And I remember he was a famous gambler. And I was really on edge because he promised me he wouldn't gamble, because that would mean my huge salary was going to pay for his gambling debts instead of what we needed it for. And unfortunately, the last Saturday night that I was closing, he gambled, not at the Flamingo. He went to other clubs, and he practically gambled away my entire salary for those four weeks, which was horrendous."

During her run at the Flamingo, Dahl continued to write her three-times-a-week beauty column. "I had over 100 papers," she told me. "And I wrote that column (translated in five languages) for 20 years, from 1950 to 1970."

When she concluded her month in Las Vegas at the Flamingo, Dahl took her act to New York and successfully opened at Lou Walters' The Latin Quarter in June 1962.

For years, Dahl toured the country performing in musicals, dramas and comedies in summer stock. Throughout her lengthy acting career, Dahl has appeared on numerous TV shows; during the 1980s she had a continuing role on "One Life to Live." She continues to appear in feature films.

Creating her own company in New York, Dahlmark Productions (Arlene Dahl Enterprises), she also has authored 16 best-selling beauty and astrology books, designed a successful line of lingerie (including the "Dahl" cap, written about in Life magazine, as well as popularizing the "baby doll" pajama craze in the 1950s), a cosmetic line, and she was appointed the health and beauty editor for Sears Roebuck & Co. Dahl currently is designing a line of jewelry.

A member of numerous charitable organizations, including serving on the board of directors of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Dahl also has been the recipient of several major industry and fashion awards, and she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

But Dahl's time in Las Vegas is special to her. "I was treated like a queen at the Flamingo." About her career in film and on the stage, Dahl recently said: "I considered the years in Hollywood nothing but an interim. What I always wanted to be was a musical comedy star." In Las Vegas, she proved that she could be just that.

Jackie Gaughan: Last King of Downtown Las Vegas

For Halloween Happenings around the Las Vegas Valley, click here.

Jackie Gaughan turned 88 earlier this week.  Our buddy John L. Smith has plenty to say about one of the men who helped shape Fremont Street in the 1960s and 1970s:

The last king of downtown moves slowly these days. He can still be found most mornings puttering around the El Cortez amid the clatter of slot machines and din of gamblers' voices.

The king spends hours at a table in the poker room, smoothing the green felt and playing the cards he's dealt. He's in for small stakes, but the chip count doesn't matter. At 89, he's comforted by the rhythm of the game he's played longer than he can now remember.

Outside, the Las Vegas he knew and helped create has grown and changed, gone corporate and strange.

In here, the world still makes pretty good sense to Mr. John D. Gaughan.

His many friends call him Jackie, but to me he'll always be the ebullient, baggy-pants king of downtown.

And he's the last king left in the old Vegas deck. Benny Binion died in 1989, Sam Boyd in 1993, and Mel Exber in 2002. That leaves Jackie.

Legend has it Jackie goes so far back in the gambling racket he watched Palamedes put dots on the first dice, but I trace his wagering roots to the storefront bookmaking shops of Omaha, Neb., in the sunny days before World War II. Those who think Omaha was a sleepy crossroads don't know it once was considered the gambling capital of the Midwest. Those who perceive Jackie as a simple old-schooler should know the World War II veteran earned a degree from Creighton University.

At one time or another, Jackie has owned or had a hand in operating most of the buildings of Fremont Street. An incomplete list: Jackie Gaughan's Plaza, and a partnership with Exber in the Las Vegas Club, the Pioneer and Sundance; he was a major stockholder and board member of the Golden Nugget, and he owned the Gold Spike and Western Bingo, and the Bingo Club and Boulder Club.

Jackie also owned several points in the Showboat and the Flamingo, but as son Michael Gaughan says, "Dad was a downtown guy. He never understood why people would build neighborhood casinos. He liked downtown. And my dad always did well with the local citizens. Even the El Cortez does well today. He's probably had more gaming licenses than anybody else."

And the thing is, Jackie knew his places intimately, visited them daily wearing his plaid sport coats and a sunny disposition. Jackie was never too big to pick up an empty glass or clean an ashtray.

Talk about a hands-on operator. He was a one-man welcoming committee. Years after he could afford to delegate the grind work to a gaggle of assistants, Jackie insisted on making the rounds and distributing his kitschy but profitable "fun books" filled with food discounts and gambling specials.

Big or small, for many years his casinos made money. The coins rolled, the cash flowed, and the net profits made Jackie the envy of some corporate casino titans who strained under elephantine overheads.

"When he was healthy he would walk his places every day," Michael Gaughan recalls. "He always knew the names of all his employees. He cared about his customers and he cared about his employees."

That familiarity, impossible at a mega-resort, endeared him with his workers. That, and a generous pension plan that enabled porters and waitresses to retire in dignity.

Jackie sold his downtown casino interests a few years ago, and today his beloved El Cortez is owned by a group of family friends that includes Kenny Epstein, Mike Nolan, Lawrence Epstein, and Joe Woody. The son of gambler Ike Epstein, Kenny first met happy, hard-working Jackie in Lake Tahoe in the 1950s.

Although Jackie sold the El Cortez, he still lives there as he has for decades. He still eats his meals with Kenny and Co. Epstein wouldn't have it any other way.

"I've met a lot of people in my life, but I've never met anybody like him," he says. "Jackie treats everyone alike, from a porter to the chairman of the board of one of these big corporations. He's just a regular guy. There's nobody like him. He's just a Midwesterner."

Casino impresario Steve Wynn knows Gaughan as a mentor who played an integral role in his career when he took over the Golden Nugget in 1973.

"What I remember and am most grateful for is, as green as I was in that position, Jackie treated me with great respect," Wynn recalls. "He treated me as a young guy that should be helped. He did nothing but help me. If I called him six times a day, he'd be nothing but warm and supportive."

Wynn has met his share of characters, but few match Gaughan. Mention those sport coats, and you can't help but smile.

"He's one of the most colorful, delightful, warm, and sincere men I've ever known," Wynn says. "And he was a real category breaker. No one dressed like him except him."

But unpretentious doesn't mean simple.

When Wynn made the acquaintance of billionaire Warren Buffett, who was the first person the financial wizard of Berkshire Hathaway inquired about?

His old friend Jackie Gaughan.

Gaughan was a gifted businessman, but he could also be a soft touch. He kept the Western open long after it was no longer profitable. He didn't have the heart to tell the employees they would have to look for a new job.

Michael Gaughan laughs at the memory of a late-night phone call a few years ago from his father. Jackie was worried about the homely little Western.

"I said, 'It loses money. Not making money causes problems,'" Michael says. "He took the loss. Until we sold it two or three years later, he took the loss. You don't have people like this any more.

"He sincerely cared about his people. There are some people who talk about it. My dad always cared about his employees, and he had a fabulous pension plan."

I asked the son about his father's generation of royal casino characters who managed to trade notoriety for secular salvation in the land where gambling was legal.

"Everyone else is gone," Michael Gaughan says, wistfully. "Even people you don't know about. He's the last one."

Here's to the town that had such kings in it.