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The Sands grew to be more than a mere gambling hall: It was a place people looked to for philanthropic leadership—and photo opportunities.
As the world recovered from the dislocations that followed the Second World War and the continuing struggle against communism, thousands of children were left orphaned. While there were thousands of American parents eager to take into their homes children from Germany, Italy, Greece, Japan, and Korea, there was a shortage of case workers on the ground who could match children with parents.
Actress Jane Russell, who adopted three children herself, hoped to help facilitate adoptions by founding a charity called WAIF (Women’s Adoption International Fund). Unable to pay for the program on goodwill alone, Russell turned to the Sands. Publicity director Al Freeman did not fail.
On September 2, 1955 (a week before Frank Sinatra hopped off Irving at the Dunes premiere), the Sands auctioned off a Cadillac Eldorado. Two hundred tickets were sold at a cost of $100 each, netting $20,000 for the fledgling charity. Freeman turned to showgirls to sell the tickets, with Beverly Hills furrier William Baer offering a white stole to the woman who sold the most. Naturally, Russell herself drew the winning ticket, and naturally, it was a press event.
Reports of not just the WAIF raffle but a flood of cheesecake shots, happy vacationers, and surrealist tableaux streamed out of Freeman’s office, addressed to every wire service and news office in the land. It might be the now-famous shot of dice-shooters clustered around a craps table in the middle of the Sands pool, a diver caught mid-leap in the background. Or a grandmother enjoying the pool. Or Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland palling around backstage. Or Debbie Reynolds and Jack Benny sitting ringside in the Copa, watching Dean Martin croon.
Las Vegas was fun. The Sands was glamorous. The only way to avoid missing out was to spend the weekend at the Sands.
Staged photos, however, only went so far, which is why publicists up and down the Strip opened their doors to radio, television, and movie producers.
In early 1954, portions of the first episode of the short-lived series The Lone Wolf was shot at the Sands, which also provided free rooms for members of the crew. The following year, Edward R. Murrow’s newsmagazine show See It Now filmed an episode at the Sands. Freedman and Cohen were interviewed in their office, with Entratter captured in the Copa Room. Lena Horne’s performance that night was a high point of the show. The crew also filmed action in the casino for over an hour, interviews with a dealer and a pit boss, and reaction shots of the Copa audience.
There was a problem, though. While the publicity that a CBS news crew could deliver for the Sands was appreciated, some did not want to be seen on national television—at least while they were in Las Vegas.
“We’ve got to be discreet,” Cohen reminded Entratter. “We have people out there who don’t want anyone to know their full names, much less put their face on the news.”
Freeman negotiated a compromise with the CBS crew: A poster advising that cameras were filming for television would be prominently displayed, and before the cameras started rolling, a series of pages would be made over the public address system informing patrons that, if they didn’t want to be accidental stars of See It Now, they might want to step away from the tables for a while.
Radio, of course, didn’t have that problem, and the Sands happily hosted the Dorothy Kilgallen/Richard Kollmar morning radio show several times, despite Frank Sinatra’s visceral dislike for the syndicated gossip columnist, as well as other telecasts that brought the sounds and ambiance, if not the sights, of the Sands to households around the nation.
The Sands ended 1955 with a 12-minute segment of an episode of the NBC’s documentary series Wide Wide World focusing on the varieties of music across the Americas. The David Garroway-hosted show captured Frank Sinatra rehearsing and performing in the Copa Room, along with Freddy Bell and the Bell Boys in the Silver Queen lounge, and Antonio Morelli conducting his orchestra by the pool. Garroway also interviewed Sinatra about a tour he was putting together for Goodwill International, a charity that benefited underprivileged children worldwide.
If Freeman didn’t write Garroway’s narration, he owed a primo bottle of scotch to whoever did.
“The Sands is never closed,” Garroway intoned over shots of people pouring into the casino. “The Sands is the playground of the stars. You may not meet them face to face in Hollywood, but you will at the Sands.” Cut to a shot of Bell and his group performing in the Silver Queen. “Every day is Sunday here. So they relax—in the sun, in the lounge—and quite at home like mountain people at a playparty relaxed among their friends.”
But that wasn’t all.
“There’s a music you hear every 16 seconds around the clock. 52 million throws of dice since the Sands opened its door only three years ago. And they wore out 250,000 pairs of dice doing it.”
Garroway went on to tell viewers about the 62,000 jackpots that had been hit over the past three years, day and night. “Not that you care if it’s day or night,” he added. “No clocks, no windows in the casino to distract you from the tempo of living you prefer at the moment.” Then a transition to a shot of the Copa Girls, followed by a scrap of Nat “King” Cole performing in the Copa. Here even Freeman probably thought Garroway was going too far.
“Nat ‘King’ Cole can make you feel like the Sands is a luxury liner, a ship in the desert that floats on warm sand and cold martinis.... Everything is a surprise at the Sands. Continuous music, continuous presence of movie stars, continuous serving of food fit for them, and the girl from Chicago is not a bookkeeper today but the Cinderella of the Sands.
“Continuous gambling, continuous service around and around the pool and milady’s chamber, and if the house could possibly arrange it, they would also provide continuous sunshine 24 hours a day.” Fade back to Sinatra talking about his tour of Europe on behalf of distressed children. Fade into Sinatra performing again. End program.
The Wide Wide World producers had, of course, been guided by Al Freeman in their coverage. In addition to making the shooting locations and Frank Sinatra available, Freeman helped the documentarians with their research. Three weeks before the show aired, Freeman sent writer Joe Liss a list of 21 facts about the Sands, many of which made it into the show. Even those that didn’t provide an excellent snapshot of the Sands in the 1950s. The hotel was the top taxpayer among resort hotels, and had a daily operating expense of $24,000—$14,000 of which was payroll. The Sands had exactly 697 employees, 81 percent of whom were married. Each day, it served these employees 915 free meals. It cost $8,000 a week to keep six musical acts performing around the clock in the lounge. Over 7.7 million people had already visited the Sands, with an average of one person walking through its doors every three seconds. Nearly 1,200 cars were parked at the hotel on an average day. From its four main reservation centers in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Houston, the Sands receive 750 requests a day for rooms, and regularly mailed those who were not fortunate enough to get a room. About 28 percent of the people who gambled at the Sands had never done so before—perhaps eased into the practice by a share of the $12,000 in free drinks the casino poured its gamblers. And, in case a neophyte gambler got lucky, they didn’t have to worry about breaking the bank: The Sands kept $485,000 on hand in the casino cage to pay off lucky winners.
With coverage like that, the Sands did not need to buy advertising.
Yet television, while it was increasing its reach, did not have the cache of movies. So Entratter and Freeman, while they were pleased with their work on the small screen, redoubled their efforts to lure a motion picture production to the Sands.
In April 1955, Freeman and Entratter started negotiating with producer Joe Pasternak of MGM Studios. The filmmaker had a script from Isobel Lennart called Weekend at Las Vegas and was looking for a casino to serve as host for location shots and the fictional setting. Later that month, Entratter sent the studio a series of color photos of potential filming locations, including the casino, the Garden Room restaurant, the Copa Room, the pool, and the Presidential Suite.
A month later, Freeman received a nine-page script outline. The story begins with rancher Chuck Reynolds driving to Las Vegas in an open convertible, towing a trailer containing his beloved horse Emma. Reynolds loves Las Vegas, even though each of his trips thus far have ended with him selling his car and riding back to his ranch on Emma. But he is happy as he pulls up to the Sands.
“He loves the place—he always has fun—when you gamble, you have to lose, and anyway, this time he’s going to win!” Chuck is beloved at the Sands. His best friend, a Hungarian blackjack dealer named Bondy as well as casino manager Tom Carr, try to dissuade Chuck from gambling, knowing that he will lose.
By contrast, American-born but French-trained ballerina Maria Clair despises Las Vegas. Performing in a nightclub is below her, she thinks, although her manager, Pierre Duval, is quite happy with the money her Sands engagement will bring in. Clair is described as “a cold girl—remote, distant, aloof, unused to being with people and ill at ease with them.” She has never had a boyfriend.
Chuck and Maria meet when Chuck, seeking good luck, reaches out and grabs a random hand while playing roulette. The hand belongs to an outraged Maria. Chuck, however, is thrilled, as he wins a bet for the first time that day. Maria huffs off in disgust, but a few minutes later is bothered by a bellboy, who brings to her a tray full of silver dollars—her share of Chuck’s roulette winnings. When she returns the money to Chuck, he wins a slot machine jackpot while holding her hand. Despite her initial coolness, Maria agrees to accompany Chuck on a gambling expedition, to see if she really is a good luck charm. The pair go from club to club, drawing crowds and breaking the bank across town. Along the way, Maria for the first time in her life feels the stirrings of passion, and falls in love with Chuck. Jealous over Chuck’s attention being drawn by other women, she leaves him, returning to the Sands in a foul mood.
The next morning, she learns that casino manager Carr, livid at her conduct, wants to cancel her show. Then, he discovers that gamblers, lured by the legend of Maria and Chuck, are flocking to the Sands. Chuck, believing he’s hurt Maria, refuses Carr’s suggestion that he reunite with her. But after watching Maria rehearse, Chuck is smitten, and persuades Maria to ride out to his ranch, the Lucky Seven, with him. There, she meets Chuck’s friends and his mother—described as “a tart little old lady with an Italian-boy haircut.” As Chuck and Maria walk around the ranch, chickens start laying eggs, cows begin producing milk, and a partially constructed oil well spurts forth a geyser of crude. A down-home barbeque and square dance conclude the evening, and the happy couple returns to the Sands, very much in love.
But the following day, Chuck’s luck vanishes. They have a temporary gloom, but after watching Maria perform on her opening night, Chuck resolves to stay with her, bad luck or not. She agrees to spend six months a year performing and six months on his ranch. Chuck declares that he will never again gamble, as finding Maria used up all the luck he will ever need. End credits.
Not exactly The Maltese Falcon, this was a musical comedy intended as light entertainment. By June, plans had solidified enough that the studio sent several employees releases in which the employee indicated they understood that the film, though based in a real casino, was a work of fiction, and that they surrendered all claims that any characters depicted them, and gave MGM full, irrevocable permission to use such a character without fear of a libel action. Reservations manager Nick Kelly, Jack Entratter, Carl Cohen, and others signed. Along with these waivers, Sands management agreed to send three craps tables, four 21 tables, three roulette tables, and 64 slot machines to MGM’s Hollywood studios, to create a more authentic portrayal of the casino on film. Shooting the bulk of the casino sequences at the actual Sands was prohibitive, and rather than rely on stock Tinseltown props, which would likely be outdated, Entratter and Cohen agreed that a loan could be arranged, provided they did not run afoul of federal laws prohibiting the interstate shipment of gambling equipment. Transport was arranged, with a police escort.
Of course, not shooting inside the casino would also avoid complications with publicity-shy gamblers. Win-win.
Freeman was MGM’s strongest advocate at the Sands. He warned Entratter that Pasternak had delegated negotiations to unit director Sid Bowen, location manager Charles Coleman, and art director Urie McClary.
“Pasternak has ordered them not to argue or linger with any hotel that doesn’t seem cooperative,” he told Entratter. “I heard that the Flamingo and the El Rancho Vegas haven’t done themselves any favors. Right now we are in 65 percent of this film. If we bend over backwards for Pasternak, we can make it 85 percent.”
So Entratter and Cohen agreed to be very cooperative, even sending six dealers and a slot mechanic to staff the recreation of the Sands on an MGM soundstage for two weeks, and to accommodate an extended location shoot at the hotel itself. The studio asked the Sands for 15 single rooms to house 100 crew, actors, and executives for the duration, as well as rooms for 75 extras. Some of the technical experts were staying for a whole week, but most of the crewmembers, from Pasternak to the principal actors, were expected to be at the Sands for only four days. The Sands was forced to lease rooms for the crew at the Royal Palms and Bon Aire motels to accommodate the shoot without closing down the hotel entirely.
By the time principal photography in Los Angeles had wrapped, the film had a new title: Meet Me in Las Vegas, though it was occasionally referred to as Viva Las Vegas, its title in Spanish-language release.
On September 14, the film’s crew began shooting, with a 7:30 a.m. start in the Terrace Room. Pool attendants were instructed to follow the direction of MGM crew in placing the pool furniture that extras would be using. Five gallons of lemonade, with cherries, orange slices, and straws were also required, not for the crew, but to dress the tables. A 2 p.m. shooting moved to the Sands marquee and entrance. Over the next three days, cameras were recording several scenes outside the Sands and in the Dunes’ parking lot.
The film itself was a whimsical musical comedy starring dancer Cyd Charisse as Maria Corvier, Dan Dailey as Chuck Rodwell, Agnes Moorehead as Chuck’s mother, Lili Darvas as Maria’s assistant Sari Hatvany, Jim Backus as Sands manager Tom Culdane, Paul Henreid as Maria’s manager, and a host of friends of the Sands who made cameos, often uncredited. Even Jake Freedman was in the film for a second, shaking Chuck’s hand when he arrived at the hotel. The Sands itself—particularly the Copa Room—featured prominently, of course, and the plot, such as it was, essentially followed the summary that MGM sent to the Sands for approval in June, with a few characters’ names changed. With show business glamor, “authentic” Western living on Chuck’s ranch, high stakes gambling, and a bit of culture (the film included Charisse dancing a variety of styles plus musical performances by the Four Aces, Lena Horne, Frankie Laine, an offstage but credited Sammy Davis, Jr., and Japanese child performer Mitsuko Sawamura), Meet Me in Las Vegas, like a typical Vegas floorshow, had a bit of everything. When Horne sang “If You Can Dream,” dressed in an elegant sleeveless gown and jewels worth more than a high roller’s bankroll, it felt that anything was possible in the glamorous world of the Sands.
MGM was even more eager, if such a thing was possible, to turn Meet Me in Las Vegas into a marketing bonanza than was the Sands. In December, MGM publicist Howard Herty wrote to Freeman, brainstorming ideas. Maybe Las Vegas and its individual hotels could conduct a national advertising campaign on the film’s behalf. Or they could begin mailing Las Vegas postcards to movie editors and reviewers on MGM’s list. Perhaps they had some creative ideas for how to decorate MGM’s Broadway billboard (Freeman circled this one). Maybe the chamber of commerce could distribute a pamphlet to travel agents nationwide in connection with the picture.
Freeman responded with his own ideas for “Sands exploitation” (his words) of the movie, including advance mailings to the press, a six-month cross promotion with Pillsbury, the Sands funding the distribution of Pasternak’s new book, Easy the Hard Way, to press, “advertising tie-ups” with favored partners like TWA and the Union Pacific Railroad, and a Sands vacation prize for the theater manager who staged the best promotion. The key, though, was to hold a gala world premiere for the movie in Las Vegas. Insist that all press and spectators arrive in Western dress or spend a few minutes in a makeshift jail in the El Portal lobby. Make it a charity event, with proceeds benefiting the Variety School for Handicapped Children. Further, let the press play (for charity) at an oversized roulette table set up outside the theater; the public could also play, winning a kiss from Cyd Charisse or a dance with Dan Dailey. Naturally, after the movie, the press would return to the Sands for hospitality.
The premiere went off, with typical star power, on Tuesday, February 21. Freeman outdid himself, securing Milton Berle’s NBC variety show to broadcast nationwide directly from the Copa—the first color telecast to emanate from Las Vegas. Clips from the film were intercut with action from the Copa, including performances from Jimmy Durante, Eddie Cantor, Peggy Lee, Groucho Marx, the Four Aces, and the Copa Girls. Following the show, a host of stars, including Charisse, Dailey, Ann Miller, Peter Lorre, Fred MacMurray, John Barrymore, Doris Day, Esther Williams, Walter Pidgeon, and Cary Grant, were shuttled down to Fremont Street for the debut screening at the El Portal. The high point of the festivities came when Las Vegas Mayor C. D. Baker presented Pasternak with a commemorative plaque and director Roy Rowland with a 10-gallon hat. Following the movie, the press and stars returned to the Sands, where, in a comically exaggerated chef’s hat, Pasternak served “Hungarian” dishes.
Two weeks later, the film’s New York premiere at the Astor Theater became a charity event, with proceeds benefiting the United States Olympic Fund, which defrayed the training and travel expenses of American athletes competing in that year’s Summer Olympics, held in Melbourne, Australia. This event lacked a direct connection to Las Vegas, outside of the film, so it didn’t have the same “hard sell” as the Berle show. It did, however, keep the movie in the public eye, as did a block-long billboard on Broadway between 45th and 46th streets.
Reviewers generally liked the film. Philip K. Scheuer’s Los Angeles Times write-up praised Charisse’s performance and called out the celebrity cameos. A favorable Hedda Hopper write-up ran under the headline “Cyd’s What a Star Should Be.” May Tinee of the Chicago Tribune praised the sophistication of the film, predicting that it would be a box office smash. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times marveled at what a good job the film did at dropping the movie-goer into the fantastic world of Las Vegas. He was less taken with Horne and Laine’s contributions than Charisse’s dancing, but on the whole endorsed the movie. “An expensive and sparkling production, arranged by Joe Pasternak,” he concluded, “endows the whole thing with tourist luxuriance. Oh, boy—what an ad for the Sands!”
***
THE GOOD REVIEWS AND effusive hometown press for Meet Me in Las Vegas might have given the town a morale boost and spurred tourism, but they did not sell many movie tickets; the film ultimately lost money, mirroring a lingering pessimism about Las Vegas itself. Hotel owners and civic boosters put on brave faces, but more objective observers concluded that Las Vegas was in real trouble.
A few weeks after the premiere of Meet Me in Las Vegas, Gilbert Millstein penned an article for the New York Times that ran under the headline “Cloud on Las Vegas’ Silver Lining.” After recounting the doom and gloom of the Class of ’55, Millstein discussed a tete-a-tete with Jake Freedman in “the hushed privacy of a suite of offices upstairs.” After demonstrating the Sands’ state-of-the-art closed-circuit television system, which Cohen had installed the previous year, Freedman did something that Millstein assured his reader was utterly without precedent.
“Here,” said the Sands president, who Millstein described as “a small, seamed man,” before producing from his wallet a sworn statement revealing the Sands’ recent financial performance: total gross of $8,725,224 in 1953; $9,060,622 in 1954; and $10,347,567 in 1955. Gross gambling win for those years was $5,399,019; $5,256,638; and $6,937,000. If Las Vegas was having problems, the Sands certainly wasn’t.
The numbers Freedman showed Millstein, if genuine, show that the Sands was officially pulling in less than $15,000 per day from its casino in 1953 and 1954, and about $19,000 on average in 1955, which shows just how small-scale the gambling trade was. Today, a $15,000 bet on a single hand of blackjack might be business as usual at the higher end Strip resorts. Even assuming that the numbers undercounted gaming win by 15 percent (a probably reasonable estimate for the magnitude of the skim in those days), we get an average daily casino win of under $22,000 in 1955.
One of the common complaints in modern Las Vegas is that the city’s casinos have lost their personal touch. In the good old days, they say, everyone was treated like a king. Freedman’s numbers give us a good insight into why. If you had a few dozen—maybe 50 or 60 at most—serious gamblers, with only a few on property at a time, each of them would be given special attention. And, when a $400 bet would give pit bosses goosebumps, even players betting $20 a hand were taken seriously. All this made for a friendlier, more intimate reception for gamblers in Las Vegas—particularly at the Sands, where Freedman, Cohen, and other managers and dealers might have relationships with big players going back decades.
With such a narrow player base, the bosses took nothing for granted. The malaise of 1955 had made one thing clear to Las Vegas: For the city to continue to grow, everyone had to pull together, get on the same page.
This was nowhere clearer than in how the county sheriff and casino bosses came to an understanding about law and order.
The casino bosses negotiated, as early as the term of Sheriff Glen Jones, which started in 1943, an unwritten but binding gentlemen’s agreement over who was boss. This was an extension of the arrangements between mob money men and desert cowboys that made the Mojave such a hospitable place to run a casino. It was, as Jones explained, quite simple.
“No contract killings. No bullshit in my county,” Jones had insisted, as did his successor Glen Leypolt. Ralph Lamb, who served as sheriff from 1961 to 1979, raised the respectful symbiosis between the sheriff’s department and the casino bosses to an art form, which might explain why he was the subject of the 2012 CBS television series Vegas.
Keeping underworld violence far from tourist-friendly Las Vegas benefited the casino owners as well. But the sheriff exacted another promise from the bosses in exchange for giving them relatively free rein to police themselves: Don’t bring in anyone—as a dealer, as a dishwasher, as a shoe shine boy—who would embarrass the sheriff if it became known that he was working in his county.
The bosses were only too happy to oblige, though sometimes mistakes were made. When the sheriff learned of it, the reaction was swift.
Once, for example, the sheriff sent a deputy to the Sands in search of a particular craps dealer. He wore, like most deputies in that time, cowboy boots and a gun. It would have been funny—a real live cowboy, walking around in the ultra-modern Sands—if it wasn’t deadly serious.
“You’ve got a record,” he said plainly. “You’ve got to go.”
“Wait a second,” the dealer replied. “Let me see what Carl says.”
The deputy left. The dealer thought his bluff had worked.
But then he returned with four other deputies. They grabbed the offending dealer and the rest of his crew for good measure, leaving an empty table and an astonished pit boss. The pit boss and the deputies working for Sands security knew enough not to stop them. This was far above their pay grade.
Carl Cohen knew immediately what to do.
He went down to the sheriff’s office, hat in hand. Once he made it clear that the offending dealer would be leaving town by sundown, he secured the release of the rest of his crew. Cohen was an almighty force in the casino, not far below the Lord himself, but he knew who ran the county.
Even street-hardened wiseguys were slightly awed by the cowboys.
“You’re real tough with a knife or a gun,” one of them said to his friend who asked why they gave the cowboys such a wide berth, “but they’ll knock you cold fucking bare-handed.”
Once, reputed Chicago mob kingpin John Marshall, also known as Marshall Caifano, swung at one of the cowboys who didn’t show him the appropriate deference. Connected flush on the jaw. Didn’t make a dent. The cowboy smiled, maybe, picked him up by the throat, and carried him out of the Sands.
“How can he do that?” pit boss Ed Walters asked Cohen. “Pick up a guy that heavy, with just one hand?”
“Eddie,” Cohen replied, “go out to Lamb’s ranch sometime. You’ll see these guys throwing around cows. After that, a man’s nothing.”
For their part, the cowboys knew they couldn’t bring Frank Sinatra to town, put whole families to work, or make Las Vegas a national headline, and they respected that the casino bosses were, in their own way, tough men who, while they might not be able to rope a steer, were not pushovers. And, without them, there wouldn’t be much of a budget for the sheriff’s office or anything else in the county.
Secure in the knowledge that each group complemented the other, the cowboys and the casino guys were able to work together for the mutual benefit of everyone—tolerance and prosperity. Cowboys, mobsters, show business guys, all living in perfect harmony. Las Vegas was, when you came down to it, the most all-American town in the nation. It would solve its own problems.
***
AS LAS VEGAS RECOVERED from its crisis of confidence, the Sands continued to take the spotlight, hosting, for example, the world premiere of Paramount’s The Joker Is Wild. The 1957 film, a biography of comedian Joe E. Lewis, starred Frank Sinatra, so the Sands threw open the doors to over dozen reporters, many with their spouses, who could be counted upon to favorably mention the hotel in their reporting on the hard-hitting news of the movie opening. Freeman also reserved 16 rooms for Frank Sinatra and his closest friends, including lyricist Sammy Cahn, whose “All the Way” as sung by Sinatra would garner that year’s Academy Award for Best Original Song, and Dean Martin and Peter Lawford, who would soon become notorious playmates of Old Blue Eyes.
The premiere itself was more than a red carpet followed by champagne—Freeman turned it into a 24-hour bash, which he hailed as a worldwide first. Starting with a 6 p.m. cocktail party in the Sands’ Emerald Room, a second-floor conference center with a plush, deep-green carpet, guests were treated to dinner and a show in the Copa headlined by popular soprano Marguerite Piazza. The media were then ferried down to the El Portal. In front of the theater, the Strip’s hotels staged a mini parade of stars, many of whom came up on stage as the Variety Club presented awards to Lewis and Sinatra.
The actual movie began at 10:30. Following the film, guests were invited to a private party thrown for Sinatra and Lewis at the El Rancho Vegas, where Lewis had been a fixture for years. Upon staging back to the Sands early that morning, the press was free to enjoy as much food and drink as they could consume, on the house, with a car back to their chartered flight leaving at exactly 5 p.m.
Freeman and Entratter could afford to give rival Beldon Katleman’s El Rancho Vegas some of the spotlight because there the El Rancho Vegas was not really competition for them. Lewis was a beloved character, but he was no Frank Sinatra, and the Opera House was no Copa.
The Sands’ profile reached something close to the zenith of Meet Me in Las Vegas in late 1957, when CBS favorite I Love Lucy (technically, The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show, as the hour-long version was formally known) shot an episode set (although not filmed), in part, in the hotel. Called “Lucy Hunts Uranium,” the episode centered on Lucy’s attempts to claim a $10,000 bounty by discovering a uranium strike in the Mojave. The Ricardos found themselves in Las Vegas because Ricky was performing in the Copa Room. The episode lacked the immersive presentation of the Sands that distinguished Meet Me in Las Vegas—outside of two exterior shots of the building, focused on the famous marquee advertising Ricky’s performance, there was no footage of the actual Sands, although the hotel loaned the production some of its monogrammed bedsheets to dress a hotel room set.
But there are some interesting things in the episode, which garnered impressive ratings on its first airing on January 3, 1958. One is an establishing shot of a sign reading “Welcome to Las Vegas,” over a year before Betty Willis’ famous sign was installed at the south end of the burgeoning Strip. The second is the presentation of Las Vegas, which mixed Hollywood glamor (guest star Fred MacMurray and his wife, June Haver, just happen to be staying at the Sands) with the raw-boned Western surroundings: grizzled prospectors riding burros feature prominently in the story. The revelation that Fred MacMurray had lost $100 playing nickel slots got a big laugh from the studio audience. The plot features the usual elements of a misunderstanding leading the characters into progressively more madcap antics. Still, there is one fascinating tidbit—Ricky says that he is able to join the uranium hunt because “Jack Entratter canceled the show.” This suggests that the audience would be familiar enough with Entratter to catch the reference. “Lucy Hunts Uranium” might not have driven as many people to call Sands reservation centers as Meet Me in Las Vegas, but it is evidence that Entratter—and the Sands itself—had a secure place in the American consciousness.
***
IN EARLY 1958, IT LOOKED like Las Vegas had rebounded from the disasters of 1955 and the Sands had distanced itself from the Dunes fiasco. But good fortune only went so far. In late 1957, Jake Freedman began complaining of chest pain. “The Colonel,” as he was respectfully known, was no stranger to poor health: He had suffered from arthritis for years, and several decades of the late-night lifestyle of a gambling operator were hardly conducive to wellness.
Each December, the Sands threw its customary gala anniversary party. Hosted by inaugural headliner Danny Thomas, the evening consisted of a performance by Sammy Davis, Jr., dancing by the Copa Girls, and the cutting and consumption of a giant cake. The casino’s president was conspicuous by his absence.
Freedman managed to drag himself to the Sands’ New Year’s Eve celebration, where, as was his habit, he gave away $50,000 in silver dollars to casino-goers. But his health didn’t improve with the new year. A week later, he checked into Mt. Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. On January 19, while undergoing surgery for a ruptured artery in his chest, Freedman passed away. He was 64 years old, and left behind a widow, Sadie, a son, Nathan, and three grandchildren.
Three days later, more than two hundred friends paid their respects to Freedman, packing into the tiny chapel of the Groman Mortuary in downtown Los Angeles. Rabbi Max Nussbaum of Los Angeles delivered a eulogy emphasizing Freedman’s charitable work. Bernard Cohen, rabbi of the Las Vegas Jewish Community Center, also spoke. Fellow Las Vegas casino owners and managers, including Moe Dalitz, Wilbur Clark, Al Parvin, Abe Schiller, Beldon Katleman, and Louis Lederer, attended, with a large delegation from the Sands headed by Entratter and Cohen. A host of Hollywood admirers, including Frank Sinatra, Danny Thomas, Tony Martin, Loulla Parsons, and Joe Pasternak, paid their respects.
Freedman’s Review-Journal obituary recounted his twin successes in horse racing and oil, his generosity, and his triumph at the Sands. Though born in Russia, he was thoroughly a Westerner.
“Ironically, Freedman will be buried in a tuxedo,” the obituary claimed, “even though his lavish wardrobe included 67 Western outfits and 75 cowboy hats—a Freedman trademark.”
Freedman was laid to rest in his family mausoleum in Houston’s Beth-Israel cemetery. It was in Las Vegas, though, where his legacy lived on. That July, Sadie accepted an award from the counsel general of Israel in recognition of her late husband’s tireless work for the United Jewish Appeal. And, for years, he was fondly remembered throughout the town for his generosity and incredible gambling appetite.
The biggest tribute to Freedman, however, came at the Sands. On the afternoon of his funeral, from 2 to 3 p.m., all gambling ceased in the casino—the ultimate sign of respect. Then, the dice started rolling and the silver dollars started clattering again. Freedman would have approved.