That Old Black Magic: Louis Prima, Keely Smith, and the Golden Age of Las Vegas (23 page)

The review also referred, inaccurately, to Louis as a “ham-and-egger for two decades,” overlooking his success in the 1940s, and said that after his big band flopped in the ‘40s (another inaccuracy) he “hammered out garlicky dialogue records of little appeal.” Prima’s Sahara success was attributed to his being “that rare commodity, an entertainer whose bull bellow can be heard above the rattle and clank of the slot machines.”

Stung by the magazine’s contempt—though not enough to change the act’s winning, if vulgar, formula—the couple turned to the hometown press for relief. “Louis Prima and Keely Smith are hopping mad,” began Ken Hansen’s column in the
Las Vegas Review-Journal,
“over a highly uncomplimentary article which appeared in a national news magazine. Louis’ smile and Keely’s poker face turn to deep frowns when they think of
Time
writer Bill Johnson, who the couple says pulled ‘quite a twist’ on them and turned out to be a ‘liar.’ “ The piece went on to detail their feeling of betrayal because of Johnson’s raves to them after seeing their act. “According to Louis, ‘Either somebody wrote it for him, or something’s wrong with his mind.’ ”

Even before the
Time
review appeared, Louis and Keely had decided it was time to give up the lounge life. They could make more money and work less by playing a main showroom, and certainly by now they were popular enough that they could draw a big crowd. As the
Time
review indicated, with their contract with the Sahara set to expire, they were being courted by the Sands, the Desert Inn, the Flamingo, and the Sahara.

They conceivably didn’t need a base in Las Vegas at all. The act was on the road a lot, performing sold-out shows in the major cities. But Las Vegas anchored them—in addition to having become their home most of the year (when not at the Pretty Acres estate in Louisiana), both of their children had been born there.

Socially, though, it didn’t really matter. Keely continued to focus her time and energy on Toni and Luanne when not performing. Louis tended to business. “I don’t think he had any friends,” Keely once reflected. “He would have golf partners, but I can’t think of one real male friend.”

Las Vegas was their professional headquarters and a large part of their identity. Along with Sinatra and his group, Louis and Keely had become the public face of a city that rivaled Broadway and Hollywood as epicenters of popular culture in America in the late 1950s.

Prima agreed to a contract from Wilbur Clark to perform at his Desert Inn, in the main showroom. “The Wildest” would do a dinner show at 8:15 and a late show at 11:45, with a 2:15
A.M.
show on Fridays. Bill Miller had moved on from the Sahara, but still, it might seem that Louis chose the loot over loyalty. The Sahara, however, wanted Louis and Keely to remain in the lounge and offered that level of money, while Clark offered a five-year, three-million-dollar deal for them as headliners twelve weeks a year with the promise of a three-year extension. Such a deal meant they were set at least until 1967, and for the first five years of the contract they would make fifty thousand a week, with forty weeks a year available to them for shows elsewhere, movies, and recording sessions. Only a handful of performers were being offered not only that amount of money but that length of commitment.

The increased pay would come in handy. The couple’s house on Barbara Drive in Las Vegas was beginning to feel confining as Toni and Luanne grew, and Louis had his eye on a piece of land on a golf course.

Plus, Hansen reported, “Keely says she would like to have two more children, and the settling-down effect of more purchases here would fit in with the wish.”

With some sadness, Louis and the band bid good-bye to the Sahara after throwing a “jubilee,” reminiscent of early Famous Door days, in mid-September 1959. “The farewell show presented by Louis Prima and Keely Smith, which ended their five-year association with the Sahara, was indeed a gasser,” reported the
Review-Journal.
“The popular pair powered their final stand by performing from 2:30 until 5
A.M.
in a private party affair. They gave everyone champagne and lavished gifts among hotel employees as they said ta-ta in the place that carried them to stardom and placed the Casbar Theatre in bold letters among the entertainment world’s outstanding showcases.”

During the show they were joined onstage by Sammy Davis Jr., Dick Shawn, Jerry Colonna (who had helped found the Famous Door in 1935), and Dan Dailey. In the audience that night were Betty Grable, Keely’s brother Piggy, and other stars and friends who had become regulars in the lounge. Louis and Keely would be replaced in the Casbar Theatre by the emerging singer and composer Mel Tormé.

The Desert Inn was packed on December 29 when Louis and Keely and Sam and the Witnesses made their debut there. Clark had taken out ads promoting the “gala premiere” that also wished “a happy new year to all!” To all who watched “The Wildest,” it looked like it would indeed be one.

No one would have a better year in 1960 than John F. Kennedy. He made numerous quick getaways to Las Vegas to visit with Sinatra and the rest of the Rat Pack. When Kennedy came to town, the group sometimes referred to themselves as the Jack Pack. He enjoyed the showgirls who were only too ready to accommodate a good friend of Frank’s. Through Vegas connections, Kennedy began his affair with Judith Campbell, who was also a girlfriend of Sam Giancana’s. Sinatra had introduced her to both men.

Kennedy either wasn’t aware of how much of Las Vegas was in the mob’s pocket—and so too his new pal Sinatra—or refused to think any of it would rub off on him. J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, kept a huge file on Sinatra that would eventually become the largest on any entertainer in U.S. history.

Kennedy was in the audience on February 8 when the Rat Pack gave one of its shows at the Sands. During 1960, however, while Kennedy continued to enjoy the nightlife with his brother-in-law Lawford as a sort of chaperone, there was a very practical reason for his visits: cash. He wanted to wrest the Democratic nomination for president away from such contenders as Estes Kefauver and Lyndon Johnson and then campaign against the likely Republican nominee, Richard Nixon. Those efforts would require a lot of money.

Sinatra controlled the cash spigot in Las Vegas, and pretty much anywhere else he went too. He collected that cash as donations and from doing fundraising shows. When Kennedy or a representative was in Vegas, he would literally be handed valises and even shopping bags of cash. Most of the city pulled for Kennedy. A group that included Wilbur Clark raised fifteen million dollars for the Kennedy campaign.

In the days leading up to the election on November 8, 1960, millions of dollars in bets were placed on Kennedy and Nixon, even though it was illegal in Nevada to wager on elections. The night before, the odds were 3–2 in Kennedy’s favor. As it turned out, Nevada was the only state in the West that Kennedy won, by fewer than nineteen hundred votes.

The main showroom act at the Desert Inn was much more lavish than a small band crowding onto an especially small stage in the Casbar Lounge. Louis had conceived of a production titled “Ship’s Log” that included the Donn Arden Dancers and Carlton Hayes and His Orchestra. Keely strutted about in a shorter dress than before to show off her legs. Louis announced on opening night, “I’ll have to watch my lingo now—I’m in the big room.” Another change was that, because of more space, Louis and Keely often sang apart from each other on two separate microphones. Few knew how truly symbolic this was.

After “The Wildest” opened in December, Louis told Ken Hansen about being in the showroom that “it’s not as much of a ball—you don’t change as much as you do in the lounge. In the big room, everything you do is planned. In the lounge you might plan something, and some guy gets up and hollers for a scotch and soda during the act, and you have to change the plan for him.”

The roster of “The Wildest” underwent changes. Morgan Thomas came aboard on alto saxophone and other wind instruments. John Nagy had replaced Robert Carter on keyboards. Paul Ferrara went back to New Orleans, where he became a twenty-year fixture on drums in Al Hirt’s band—in 2009, he and Hirt (posthumously) would be inducted together into the New Orleans Music Hall of Fame—and was replaced by Bobby Morris. (Jimmy Vincent would return to Louis in 1962 for a twelve-year stint.) And on bass was Rolando “Rolly Dee” DiLorio, who would spend fifteen years with Prima and was the only sideman who the Chief treated as something like a friend, or at least more than just a coworker.

Louis and Keely’s absence at the Sahara offered an opportunity for Don Rickles, whom
Fabulous Las Vegas
reported was “currently starring in the Casbar Theatre of the Hotel Sahara … this time for only a two-week stint.” The reviewer urged “all those who have not had the opportunity to catch this comedy wizard’s novel act, do so before the master insulter vacates the premises on August 10.”

Like many other entertainers, Rickles wanted to be in the Rat Pack’s orbit when they were in town. “The Sands was swanky, the hottest spot in town,” he recalled. “In those days, the place had strolling violinists and hors d’oeuvres in the lounge.”

Another perk was that Sinatra was headlining there, so Rickles took a woman he was infatuated with to the Sands. “We sat in a corner and I ordered champagne. (You can bet it wasn’t Dom Perignon.) You could hear the clinking of glasses. You could see this was class.”

She was excited to see that Sinatra and his entourage were sitting in a roped-off section. Rickles realized if he could get just a hello from the Chairman of the Board, he would thoroughly impress the woman. He approached Sinatra’s table and whispered his request.

Fifteen minutes later, after draining another Jack Daniel’s, Sinatra sauntered over to the couple’s table. “Don,” he said. “How the hell are you?”

Loudly, Rickles responded, “Not now, Frank—can’t you see I’m with somebody!”

“The violins stopped. The clinking glasses stopped. Everyone stopped talking. Everyone stared at us. Time stopped. And then, God bless him, Frank fell down laughing.”

The Strip was now catering to all tastes, and there were more stages than ever. At the New Frontier the headliner was comedienne and singer Frances Faye. Her backup singing group was the Millionaires, which allowed future comedian Pete Barbutti to make his Las Vegas debut, though it wasn’t an auspicious one.

“Frances came in the first day for rehearsal and told us that we had to move to the back of the stage to make room for her grand piano,” he recalls. “We couldn’t turn up the mikes back there because they were feeding back. So when the show opens, the audience couldn’t see us and they could barely hear us. Right away I hated Las Vegas. Finally, I was so aggravated that I went to the front of the stage, grabbed the microphone, and told the audience that this was the stupidest hotel I’d ever been in and the stupidest act I’d ever worked with. It turned out that Bill Miller, who was the entertainment director of the New Frontier then, signed us and got rid of Frances.”

At the Riviera, Harry Belafonte reigned. The ageless Marlene Dietrich was at the Sahara. Danny Thomas held court at the Sands. The Silver Slipper had stripper Sally Rand and retired boxer-turned-comic “Slapsy Maxie” Rosenbloom. Pat Brady, the longtime sidekick of Roy Rogers, told jokes and tossed his rope at the Showboat. The 1940s Hollywood actress June Havoc trotted out a show at the Thunderbird. Making men drool at the Tropicana was Jayne Mansfield in a revue titled “French Dressing.”

At the Desert Inn were Jimmy Durante and Sonny King. Joe E. Lewis, despite increasing problems with alcohol and diabetes, still managed to perform at El Rancho Vegas. The Ritz Brothers were at the Flamingo. The racy “Minsky Follies” featuring Lou Costello was the main act at the Dunes. Betty Hutton replaced Dietrich at the Sahara, and Red Skelton came in after Belafonte at the Riviera. Prima’s hero Louis Armstrong did three weeks at the Sands.

The crowds still packed in to see “The Wildest,” but even Louis and Keely headed to the Sands for the Rat Pack performances. In the four weeks that Sinatra and his pals played the hotel during the filming of
Ocean’s Eleven,
they drew an audience of thirty-four thousand people.

In a typical scene, Dean Martin wheeled out a table with a full bar on it. He said, “Frank, do you know how to make a fruit cordial?”

“No, Dean. How do you make a fruit cordial?”

Martin paused and shrugged. “Well,” he said, “be nice to him.”

Another time Martin would flex his arms and ask Sinatra, “You know how I got these muscles?” “No. How, Dean?” “By carrying Jerry all those years.”

Sinatra was in the midst of a thirteen-year run as part owner of the hotel. He brought in the high rollers, and thus the mob-controlled consortium that owned the Sands was fine with him being vice-president of the corporation and being paid one hundred thousand dollars a week for performing (and he was given a token of three thousand a night to spend at the gaming tables). The owners had a three-bedroom suite constructed for him with a private swimming pool and health club with a sauna and steam bath. Italian delicacies from New York were flown in especially for him. His performer friends were treated like members of the king’s royal court, unless one accepted a gig at another casino. Then Frank beheaded him or her professionally. If Frank liked you, it was anything goes.

“By now, I’ve been playing the lounge a couple of years,” wrote Rickles. “I’ve built up a little reputation. For the first time, they’ve even slapped on a cover charge. It’s only five bucks, but it makes me feel good. I’m no longer free. You have to buy me. Things are going good.”

Until one night when two Nevada state troopers stepped onstage, grabbed the comedian, and walked him out of the Sahara. In a car with the siren blaring, he was driven down the Strip to the Sands, “where I’m taken to Sinatra’s table. Frank is sitting with Dean Martin and a trio of gorgeous gals. ‘Anything wrong, Don?’ asks Sinatra. ‘Not at all, Frank. Who needs a job at the Sahara anyway?’ Sinatra looks up and smiles. ‘I figured as much.’ ”