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Title: Cult Vegas: The Weirdest! The Wildest! The Swingin'est Town on Earth by Mike Weatherford ISBN: 0-929712-71-4 Publisher: Huntington Press Pub. Date: February, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.27 (11 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A Unique City requires a Unique History
Comment: "Cult 'Vegas" is not a history of Las Vegas per se, rather a history of casino entertainment from the rise of the Strip and Fremont Street in the 1950s up to the "family destination" of the early 21st Century. From the earliest days of legalized gambling, entertainment of one sort or another was key to get gamblers in the establishment. Later, the Rat Pack stimulated the aura of a "cool swingin'" Las Vegas. As Mr. Weatherford points out this was probably a reputation that the city held on to way too long. The rise and decline of the Lounge Singer, showgirls, Elvis and the Rat Pack are described with a clearly nostalgic eye. But the author doesn't hesitate to show the faded polyester leisure suit image of Las Vegas during the locust years of the mid 70's. He points out that holding on to the schlocky comics, and warmed over crooners moved the entertainment of Las Vegas away from the tourists with the most disposable income: singles and couples. Films about Las Vegas are also part of the "Cult" and those with the city as subject or backdrop are listed and critiqued. The book itself is quirky, with lots of sidebars and anecdotes but this fits the overall tone of the prose. This is a great anecdotal history of postwar casino entertainment, that would make a great souvenir or as another reviewer wisely suggested, cool reference material for your next trip (whether you're a local or a tourist). If you're at all interested in Las Vegas-get this.
Rating: 4
Summary: Joe Bob says check it out
Comment: This informal history of Vegas entertainment is the best book on the subject, the product of a Vegas-phile's 14 years of reporting for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Weatherford chose to tell the whole story of the city through its entertainers, and as history it feels exactly right. He's got the precise date that the first bare breast was uncovered in the city, as well as the cost of Liberace's wardrobe on the night of his debut. Nothing here about gangsters or gambling or byzantine Nevada politics, but who would think you could write a chapter about Frank, Dean and Sammy and make it as fresh as though you were sitting at the Dunes in 1959? In fact, the opening chapter--telling Frank's story one more time--is as fine a history of the Las Vegas showroom as you're ever likely to read. He then follows up with expansive essays on the origins of the Vegas lounge. (Louis Prima gets the major credit, of course, but he also remembers that Prima was preceded by the Mary Kaye Trio, which started the midnight-to-dawn style of improvisational lounge entertainment that would become a Vegas trademark until it was watered down in the seventies to the level of Bill Murray's "Saturday Night Live" lounge lizard singing "Star Wars.") Before the era of comedy clubs, but after the age of burlesque, Vegas was pretty much the only place for top comics to work, and Weatherford dispenses that history through the lives of what he calls the big three: Buddy Hackett, Shecky Greene and Don Rickles. What, no Joe E. Lewis? Weatherford actually convinced me that Joe E. does not belong on the list, mainly because he was popular with the Vegas founders but never that big a star to the public. One very helpful aspect of this history is that Weatherford has gone deep into the morgue, poring over old microfiche and faded yellow clippings, to show the ups and downs of familiar careers. (For example, he reproduces a rare ad for Elvis' April 1956 debut at the New Frontier, where he's third-billed. Second billing is Shecky Greene. And the headliner? Freddy Martin and His Orchestra!) I could quibble with some of Weatherford's choices. Tom Jones is a sidebar in the Elvis chapter, but shouldn't that be Wayne Newton? His chapter on showgirls is fascinating--going into the lives of such forgotten beauties as Lili St. Cyr, Dyanne Thorne (better known as "Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS"), Charo, Juliet Prowse and Mamie Van Doren--but it doesn't give enough credit to the hundreds of girls who have passed through the Tropicana's Folies Bergere, the longest-running show of them all. Still, there are so many gems that you can't stop reading. His section on TV stars who have tried to do Vegas shows--a list that includes Irene "Granny" Ryan, Monty Hall, Suzanne Somers, Mary Hart and Tony Danza--is devastatingly funny without being mean-spirited. And you can sense his genuine affection for such Vegas institutions as Ann-Margret, classiest of all the dames ever to hit town, and the Chairman of the Board. He also remembers the truly tragic characters like Totie Fields, Redd Foxx and Sam Kinison, without getting maudlin or melodramatic.
Rating: 4
Summary: The Rat Pack is Back & More!
Comment: As a professional tour director I'm always on the lookout for good reference material that I can share with my vacationers. For a 4 day tour titled, Hidden Las Vegas, I brought along this book to add some color to my commentaries.
Here's a fun book that looks at Las Vegas from an entertainment point-of-view. It is packed with stories about Sinatra and the big name acts, Louie Prima and the lounge acts, the comedians such as Don Rickles (who's show I appeared in!), Buddy Hackett, Shecky Greene, Totie Fields, and Red Foxx, Elvis, Liberace, Diamonds Are Forever and other movies shot in Las Vegas.
I think that the strongest part of the book is about the Rat Pack Era (Joey Bishop, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Peter Lawford) and its fans (JFK, Marilyn Monroe, Angie Dickinson, Sam Gianciana). There's a great new show in Vegas called "The Rat Pack is Back" and this book's stories help make the show more real.
Is this a great book? Probably, not.
But it's got some interesting stuff in it and it's well laid out.
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Title: Las Vegas Then & Now (Then and Now Series) by Su Kim Chung ISBN: 1571458530 Publisher: Thunder Bay Press Pub. Date: January, 2003 List Price(USD): $17.98 |
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Title: Las Vegas : A Photographic Tour by Ted Landphair, Carol Highsmith ISBN: 0517220555 Publisher: Crescent Books Pub. Date: 04 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.99 |
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Title:The Real Las Vegas - The Complete Story ASIN: B00005MKOF Publisher: A & E Entertainment Pub. Date: 28 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $13.46 |
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Title: A Short History of Las Vegas by Barbara Land, Myrick Land, Guy Louis Rocha ISBN: 0874173264 Publisher: Univ of Nevada Pr Pub. Date: June, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.35 |
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Title: The Unofficial Guide to Las Vegas 2004 by Bob Sehlinger, Deke Castleman, Muriel Stevens, Chris Mohney ISBN: 0764519832 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 04 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $17.99 |
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