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The Pratts bet $100 million on a very specific market: Latin America. Even before it closed on the Sands sale, Inns of the Americas had 47 sales agents in Mexico City alone, with offices open in Panama and Venezuela and plans to operate as many as 40 hotels in Central and South America by 1985.
Jack Pratt was particularly bullish on Mexico.
“We think,” he told the Review-Journal in late 1980, “that Mexico will become the Saudi Arabia of the Western Hemisphere, but with 70 million people and a high industrial base that Saudi Arabia does not have.”
Further, Pratt wanted to do more than lure outrageously wealthy high rollers, as most casinos did when looking at Saudi Arabia. Instead, he would also target the upper middle class and middle class. With Inns’ base of hotels and Neil Smyth’s long history in the region, giving the Sands a Latin focus seemed like a can’t-miss proposition.
But as the January relaunch approached, it was becoming clear that luck was not on the side of the Pratts. They had bought a casino during one of the worst years Las Vegas had yet seen. Concerns about organized crime connections led Nevada regulators to close the Aladdin for nearly three months. There was turmoil in the ranks of gaming regulators, though Gaming Commission chair Harry Reid was cleared of impropriety after allegations that he was “Mr. Cleanface,” a regulator whom mobsters claimed they controlled in conversations caught on tape by federal investigators. But the Argent investigation (the inspiration for Martin Scorsese’s film Casino) was deepening, grand juries across the country were conducting inquiries, and regulators were catching casinos in cahoots with alleged mobsters: The Dunes housed 14 reputed Colombo crime family members, and Tony Spilotro was seen having dinner at locals’ favorite Sam’s Town.
When they weren’t dogged by allegations of mob influence, casinos struggled with cash flow. Downtown’s Holiday International casino closed; it was losing $500,000 a month when the doors were shuttered. The Nevada Palace and Jolley Trolley, smaller casinos, also closed (though both reopened), and the Shenandoah Hotel was losing money and, due to licensing issues, unable to open its casino (it eventually evolved into the Bourbon Street hotel casino). The year’s biggest calamity, however, was the November 21 MGM Grand fire, which claimed 87 lives and closed the newest resort in Las Vegas for seven months. A few weeks after the Sands’ relaunch, a less deadly but no less publicized fire at the Las Vegas Hilton raised concerns about safety up and down the Strip.
Feeling the financial pressure, the Sands’ new management made tough decisions. Adnan Khashoggi, at the time of the changeover, was still the Sands’ biggest gambler. The high-powered dealmaker was at the height of his powers in the early 1980s. Dropping millions on each of his stays at the Sands, Khashoggi, a legendarily bad roulette player, had an understanding with Harry Goodheart that he would get a 30 percent discount on his losses—in other words, when he lost $1 million playing on credit in the casino, he would actually pay only $700,000 to satisfy his debt. Even with this generous allowance, Khashoggi could swing the casino from the red to the black. In 1979, he’d gone a long way toward making the Sands profitable enough that it paid its executives bonuses. Those financials went a long way toward convincing the Pratts to pay $85 million for the resort.
But with money tight, the Sands’ new management thought that a 30 percent discount was a luxury they could not afford. So they informed Khashoggi that he would now receive a 10 percent discount. Khashoggi paid his marker, but he suddenly stopped returning hosts’ phone calls, and was spotted at Caesars Palace not long after.
The loss of one gambler shouldn’t be enough to doom a casino, but losing the nearly guaranteed income that came from putting up with Khashoggi’s antics was a huge blow for a casino that didn’t have much to fall back on.
***
THE STORIED COPA STARTED the 1980s about where it had been for the past decade. Wayne Newton, Alan King, Shecky Greene, Tony Bennett, Joan Rivers, Anthony Newley, Bobby Vinton, David Brenner, Debbie Reynolds, Doc Severinsen, and Neil Sedaka were the mainstays of the rotation that headlined the stage. Yet it was becoming more difficult to stage shows in the Copa. Following the MGM fire, regulators insisted that the Sands make seating reductions for safety reasons. In February 1981, public relations director Al Guzman announced that the Sands would be doing away with its dinner show. Switching to drinks-only allowed the Copa to increase its seating from 518 to 580, but the Copa was still the smallest showroom in the city with headline entertainers.
The casino business has never been a sentimental one. When the Pratts looked at how to best bring the Sands back into the black, the Copa—in its current form, at least—was expendable. Too small to compete with the massive showrooms at the Hilton or MGM Grand, too big to feature lower-priced lounge acts, the Copa was a relic.
So, in the early hours of June 25, 1981, the Copa’s curtain came down for the last time. Glenn Campbell and Lonnie Schorr headlined the final show, which ended well after 2 a.m. The show started with host Gus Giuffre announcing, “Welcome to a wake.” Comedian Norm Crosby gave a eulogy for the Copa filled with malapropisms.
“Even though this room is closing,” he concluded, “the spirits of those acts who died on this stage will linger here forever.”
Nevada governor Robert List read a proclamation declaring June 24 “Copa Room Day” across the Silver State and read telegrams from two former Copa stars.
“I have a lot of fond memories of the Copa Room and warmest wishes for everyone,” Danny Thomas said.
“I wish you all the best,” Frank Sinatra wired. “Save a piece of the floor for me.”
This wasn’t an unreasonable request. The floor of the Copa stage was being sawn into 4- by 6-inch pieces and given as souvenirs to select high rollers and a few preferred employees.
After being joined by Tanya Tucker for a few numbers, Campbell sang a special version of Nat King Cole’s signature “Unforgettable” as a slideshow of famous Copa performers appeared on a screen: Danny Thomas, Red Skelton, Jimmy Durante, Judy Garland, Cole, Dean Martin, Joey Bishop, Sammy Davis, and Peter Lawford, along with later standouts like Wayne Newton, Sergio Franchi, Nipsey Russell, and Robert Goulet.
After the last guests departed, Copa staff retired to the lounge, where Jerry Tiffe sang classics made famous by Sinatra, Cole, and Louis Prima.
A few names associated with the Copa in the more recent past shared their sentiments on the showroom’s closure.
“A lot of Las Vegas history was made on these boards,” Wayne Newton said. “The Copa Room is the last cabaret left in Las Vegas and I for one will miss it.”
Noting that he and Campbell had shared the stage for the final performance at the Desert Inn’s showroom, Newton had a request.
“Hey, Glen, stay away from the Aladdin.” Newton had just become a part-owner and performer at the resort.
Walter Kane, who had first brought Newton to the Copa and was still in charge of entertainment for Summa, reminisced about how he and Howard Hughes had been in attendance when Danny Thomas opened the room on December 15, 1952.
Teardown started almost as soon as Campbell walked offstage. The plan was to cut the Copa’s total seating to 400. As part of the renovation, the Regency Lounge was demolished to make way for more casino space. This, along with space carved from the Copa, let the Sands enlarge its casino without much increasing the building’s footprint.
The Copa would become a combined lounge/showroom that would feature lounge performers during the day and, twice nightly, a revue show. No more stars. A production revue, which eschewed high-priced headliners for a roster of easily replaceable and lower-priced performers, would be less costly than the “star” policy of the previous 29 years. It helped that the international visitors the Pratts banked on hosting would be more attuned to a flashy production show, with little dialogue but plenty of attractive dancers and special effects, than they would, say, the comic stylings of Shecky Greene. Revues were beginning to supplant headliners in Las Vegas venues; though production shows had been a part of Las Vegas from the 1950s, in the early 1980s they became increasingly prominent. The Desert Inn, which had long dueled with the Sands for bragging rights as the Strip’s premier showplace, dropped out of the headliner game in 1980, running Broadway shows most of the year, with stars reserved for major holidays. Then the Frontier replaced Walter Kane’s roster of stars with “Beyond Belief,” a revue starring rising magicians Siegfried and Roy. The MGM Grand offered both the Jubilee revue in its Ziegfeld Room and headliners in the Celebrity Room; the Tropicana had a similar dual-showroom policy.
On December 29, 1981, the new Copa launched with a revue called “Top Secret.” It would run at 9 p.m. and midnight, with lounge entertainment from the early afternoon up until 8 p.m. Originally, the Sands planned to add a late-night (or early-morning) showing, but audiences did not take to Top Secret.
“Critics said,” entertainment writer Norm Clarke later quipped, “that this Sands’ effort of the early ’80s should have remained a secret.”
The Sands was not alone in launching a revue: A week after “Top Secret” opened, the Sahara debuted “The West Was Never Wilder,” a musical comedy featuring the Sahara Girls. Perhaps the market was oversaturated. Perhaps the show was just plain bad. Whatever the reason, Top Secret closed before reaching the two-month mark, failing hard enough that Sands president Neil Smyth announced that the Sands would be returning to its “big name” star policy.
To return the Copa Room to glory, the Sands turned to the man who had launched it back in 1952, Danny Thomas.
“I guess I’m one of the biggest cornballs in show business. I have a sentimental attachment to the idea of resurrecting the old days,” the 70-year-old entertainer declared.
Sentiment aside, Thomas was a curious choice to debut the “new” Copa. In a January Los Angeles Times article, freelancer Bill O’Hallaren opined that Las Vegas was graying. He described watching tour bus passengers with an average age of 75 shuffling out with canes and walkers.
“Even Caesars, MGM, and the Hilton, the swankiest trio, seemed to have been taken over by the veterans of World War II and especially their auxiliaries. Almost everyone in town remembered Pearl Harbor,” he wrote.
O’Hallaren was having some fun at the expense of Las Vegas, but the question cut deeply enough to prompt a Review-Journal editorial asking if the writer had a point. The Royal Americana had just closed, the third casino closure in three months. The editorial specifically called out the signing of Thomas, who, though “a fine man and a fine entertainer,” probably didn’t resonate with the younger, vibrant crowd that Las Vegas needed to court.
“Recent events,” the editorial concluded, “inspire a nagging feeling that the vigor that gave Las Vegas its name and glitter is slipping away.”
For his part, Thomas leaned into his age. His generation, he argued, could carry the Sands and Las Vegas back to prominence.
“Except for those who are already under contract to other hotels,” he declared, “I intend to ask everyone who is still alive who ever played here to consider and then reconsider coming back to the Sands.... In addition to all the nostalgia, we intend to entertain—I’m not going to come out here and say, ‘Good evening, I’m an old man, be kind to me.’”
Inns of the Americas entertainment director Phyllis Kaufman announced that the Sands would be reviving the Copa Girls. Jack Entratter’s famed chorus line had been retired years earlier.
Sands PR director Burt Peretsky was charged with managing both the relaunch publicity campaign and the reopening’s star attraction. Thomas had apparently developed a reputation as a bit of a curmudgeon. Peretsky made sure, before the big star’s arrival, to have the casino filled with placards reading “WELCOME BACK DANNY!”
When Thomas’s limousine arrived, Peretsky greeted the comedian and his wife personally.
“I want to go to my room,” Thomas said gruffly, hardly a promising introduction.
Peretsky guided the couple to their room, being sure to steer them past the signs. The more Thomas saw, the brighter his smile got. For his entire stint at the Sands, he was, in Peretsky’s words, “a puppy dog,” despite his prickly reputation.
Opening March 17, Thomas was supported by singer Bunny Parker and the Copa Girls, who performed three numbers throughout the show. The return of “name” entertainers was sufficiently successful that it continued. The casino signed Steve Allen, Joel Gray, Anthony Newley, Sammy Shore, Marilyn McCoo, Sergio Franchi, Jim Bailey, and Rita Moreno.
At $14.95 per person, with two cocktails included, the Sands was offering an affordable night of entertainment. It might not have quite been Frank, Dean, and Sammy, but the Copa was again featuring name performers—a sign that, perhaps, the Sands wasn’t so wrong to look to its past in trying to build its future.
***
THE COPA’S RELAUNCH did not, in the end, improve the Sands’ finances. The hotel had courted a small group of Mexican bettors who, among them, gambled about as much as Khashoggi had on his own. Then Mexico’s economic problems became severe enough that the government devalued the peso twice. The $20 million in markers that Mexican high rollers owed the Sands was whittled down by nearly a half.
The Sands did enjoy some triumphs. In July 1982, the Nevada Gaming Commission approved the company’s stake in Puerto Rico’s Condado Holiday Inn. Having sent Gaming Control Board agents to investigate the popular vacation spot first-hand, the Commission concluded that Puerto Rico’s controls were satisfactory and that Inns’ involvement there posed no threat to Nevada gaming.
This approval marked the first time Nevada regulators had licensed a company that also owned casinos outside of the United States. Over the next several years Nevada operators pursued projects in Europe, Africa, and South America. And, in the 21st century, Las Vegas-based companies moved into Macau, which soon displaced the Mojave city as the world’s gaming capital. Nevada’s investment in international gaming might have evolved differently without the precedent the Sands set.
That same month, Jack Pratt announced that Inns of the Americas was changing its name to the Pratt Hotel Corporation, reflecting the company’s commitment to managing major hotel and casino properties rather than mere inns.
The Sands hosted its biggest dignitary in years when, on October 28, 1982, President Ronald Reagan spent a night in suite 720 in the Aqueduct building. “Spent the night at the Sands in what was built to be the owner’s apartment,” Reagan noted in his diary. Perhaps he knew, but did not write down, that the suite had a lead-lined, bombproof room. Whether Jack Entratter had added this precaution due to fears of an atomic test gone wrong or a mob hit no one remembered.
Reagan arrived in Las Vegas at 4:30 and spoke at a campaign rally for Governor Bob List, Senator Chic Hecht, and the rest of that fall’s Republican slate. Two Copa alums had prominent roles in the event: Robert Goulet sang the National Anthem and Wayne Newton, a longtime Reagan supporter, acted as emcee. Then, it was off to the Sands, where Reagan spent the rest of the evening. The resort rolled out the red carpet for the Gipper, including a lavish dinner catered in his suite, served on the casino’s finest china, the service used in the Regency Room, emblazoned with the restaurant’s logo, a mirrored pair of Rs.
Evidently, someone in the presidential entourage, or the commander-in-chief-himself, was under the impression that the plates were a monogrammed gift custom-made for the president’s visit, a reasonable supposition as Reagan was constantly showered with tokens of appreciation. They were cleaned and taken when Reagan decamped.
The president liked the Sands enough that he returned on February 6, 1984—his 73rd birthday. Reagan started the day flying from Washington to Dixon, Illinois, where he had lunch and a birthday cake in his childhood home on Hennipen Avenue. From there, Reagan spoke at a pair of Illinois rallies before departing for Las Vegas, where he was greeted to a chorus of “Happy Birthday” upon disembarking from Air Force One. That evening, Reagan was again feted by the Sands. Pastry chef Benny Finale baked him a 700-pound birthday cake in the shape of the White House, complete with flag.
Perhaps because of the long day, or because of the emotional hangover of seeing, for the first time in years, his boyhood home, “another cake at the hotel,” was all Reagan told his diary. The casino, however, took extraordinary security precautions, digging a six-foot trench behind the Aqueduct to foil would-be truck bombs (the previous October, 265 Marines had been killed by a truck bomb assault in Beirut), with dump trucks filled with dirt blocking ingress at key points.
Sands guests were more excited by the novelty of sharing a hotel with the president than they were bothered by the extra security. It helped that they each got cake. Reagan’s team liked the Sands enough that it became their go-to hotel in Las Vegas, hosting First Lady Nancy Reagan on a 1984 solo trip.
Even while it was hosting the leader of the free world, the Sands was struggling to remain solvent. As it later came out, its owners did not make any significant payments to the Summa Corporation after July 1982. It was just a run of bad luck, Neil Smyth insisted, compounded by a jealous Mexican government.
“Mexico looks askance at the number of Las Vegas visitors from its own cities,” he told Variety magazine shortly after Reagan’s visit. “The state will not encourage visitors, will not help Las Vegas by taking money out of Mexico, when capital is needed to funnel back into Mexico.”
Summa agreed to offer “financial relief” for the purchase payments. The deal with Summa would, Smyth hoped, buy him and the Pratts some time.
“Who knows?” he said. “We may get lucky in six months.”
The odds, however, did not seem to be in Smyth’s favor. The casino’s continuing woes sparked a round of layoffs, with 250 employees let go in September. In December, the Sands got dragged into a dispute about the Nevada Rally, an off-road performance rally, which was in its fourth year. The Sands, which had been slated to sponsor the 1981 race, dropped out at the last minute. Race promoter John Angus blamed the cancellation on the casino’s financial woes.
“They went broke,” he told the Review-Journal. “Their doors are open now, but they’re barely open.”
Smyth answered a bit testily.
“You’re still reaching the Sands and we’re still answering the phones, aren’t we?” he responded to a request for comment. The Sands backed out, he insisted, not because of financial problems, but because of a sanctioning squabble between Angus and the Sports Car Club of America.
The Sands barely made it into 1983 before Summa ratcheted up the pressure. In early January, the company’s Frontier, Castaways, and Silver Slipper casinos announced that they would no longer cash Sands paychecks. Allowing local employees to cash their paychecks was a “convenience” that many Strip resorts customarily extended and refusing to honor a rival’s checks was an unprecedented vote of no confidence. Summa spokesman Fred Lewis, however, insisted otherwise.
“We are in constructive negotiations with the Pratts,” he said, “and this does not cast aspersions on the Pratts’ ability to cash the checks. It’s simply better if we don’t have paper floating between the two hotels at this point in time. If the checks had gotten to the bank, the checks probably would have been good, but we considered it more prudent for our casinos not to cash the checks.”
Of course, saying that the checks “probably” would have been cashed cast major aspersions on the ability of the Sands to pay them. And the Sands’ management did not take this lying down.
“As former members of the Summa family,” Smyth said in a statement, “our employees have always enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship with all the Summa hotels, and particularly with our neighbor, the Castaways. It is unfortunate that they have been inconvenienced at a time when the Sands is working to the best of its ability to solve financial problems for our benefit and that of Summa Corp, our employees, and the community.”
Lewis sniffed at Smyth’s statement.
“Certainly, we don’t intend to dignify it with any further comment,” he said.
On April 5, Summa announced that, pending the requisite regulatory approvals, the company would be resuming control of the Sands, with no cash changing hands.
Summa senior vice president Phil Hannifin cast the takeover as an errand of mercy. “We feel the most important thing here is to keep people working,” he told the press. Summa spokesman Fred Lewis amplified the humanitarian nature of the re-acquisition of the Sands.
“The corporation’s feelings on it are more human than a corporation usually is,” he said. “The feeling is they have troubles over there and it would do no one any good to go through foreclosure.”
It’s possible, though, that Summa was not acting only in the public good. Investigative reporter Ned Day revealed that his sources told him that Summa chairman Will Lummis was more than willing to turn his back on the Sands, letting the Pratts find a buyer in bankruptcy court. But, as Summa received reports that the hotel’s upkeep was starting to slip, he decided to take it back, shutting it down while looking for a buyer.
Governor Richard Bryan was not about to see over a thousand Nevadans turned out of work and a major Strip resort closed on his watch. So, sources told Day, Bryan used “a combination of persuasion and arm-twisting” to convince Summa not to close the Sands. As one of the state’s major employers, certainly the company had a social responsibility to the community; but should it neglect that responsibility, it might find state gaming regulators being “much less accommodating” in the future.
And so the Pratt era of the Sands ended. The two years that the Pratts, along with their partners Richard and Burton Koffman, owned the resort were a bold gamble doomed to fail by an unforeseen economic collapse. Focusing on wealthy international visitors in general was a wise strategy; three decades later, it would see major Strip operators through the worst of the Great Recession. But, like any gambler knows, sometimes the dice just run against you.
***
SUMMA WASN’T TOO BADLY hurt by its failed sale of the Sands. In early 1981, when the nation’s economic woes were at their worst, the company was relieved of its obligations toward the Sands and received a $25 million down payment. For more than a year, Summa collected monthly payments of approximately $1 million. Then, just as the economy was primed to improve, the company got the resort back.
There were a few minor delays due to paperwork, but the takeover of the Sands by Hughes Properties, Inc., flew through administrative approvals—no surprise, given the behind-the-scenes arm-twisting that had led to Summa taking the property back. Pratt would be liable for $2 million owed to vendors, all payroll expenses through the end of April, and $600,000 in taxes still due the state.
With little fanfare, Summa resumed control of the Sands on May 1, 1983. Neil Smyth stepped down as president, though he remained on site until August 1 helping to wrap up the Pratts’ connections with the casino. Later that month, Smyth was back at Caesars World as executive vice president for Latin American Operations.
Summa named as the Sands’ new president Phil Griffith, who retained his presidency of Reno’s Harold’s Club casino. Griffith planned to split his time between the two resorts, with Pat Cruzen, former vice president of hotel operations at Caesars Palace, overseeing the daily management of the resort.
Griffith built around him a team of top executives, including Terry Oliver as vice president of casino operations, Max Page as vice president of human resources, and Paul Manske as vice president of marketing. They repositioned the Sands for the mass-market Las Vegas of the mid-1980s, as coupon books migrated from Downtown grind joints to the Strip. Circus Circus led the way, offering breakfast, lunch, and dinner at its buffet (with 76 items to choose from) for a combined $7.97. Most rooms sold for under $30, and outside of Caesars Palace, the predominant price point for casino shows was $10 to $15. In the summer of 1983, the Sands offered a bargain for Angelenos. For $99, visitors from Los Angeles received round-trip airfare and transport to the hotel, a prime rib dinner, and $25 of “free” casino chips—$50 during the week. For all guests, the all-new Garden Buffet offered weekday lunch and weekend brunch for $2.99 and dinner seven nights a week for $3.99. If visitors to Las Vegas now wanted value, the Sands would give them value.
For New Year’s 1983, the Sands brought back a voice from the past, as Robert Goulet took center stage in the Copa room. That signaled a look back to the past, but with Las Vegas evolving, headline entertainment at the Sands became too costly to maintain indefinitely.
Griffith’s tenure at the Sands was short. In October 1984 he, along with three of his top executives, resigned from the Sands to take leadership and equity positions with Reno’s Fitzgerald’s Hotel and Casino. The departures were amicable. Summa elevated Pat Cruzen to the Sands’ presidency to replace Griffith. Cruzen then put together his own team, with Pat Dibble coming over from Caesars Palace to run casino operations and Bob Vanucci, who had been at the Sands since 1982, taking charge of marketing.
The Sands forged ahead in the mid-1980s, suffering, along with others, a taxing 75-day strike by the Culinary Union in early 1984. At the Sands, much of that year and the following one was disrupted by safety retrofit work made necessary after the 1980 MGM Grand fire. With some buildings dating to 1952, the Sands needed an inordinate amount of work done, including adding sprinklers and voice announcement systems to all hotel rooms. With more work needed than all the other Summa properties, the Sands was the last to finish the work, which cost $7 million. The retrofitting was completed, perhaps, just in time. In February 1986, Thomas Edward Littleowl was arrested at the Sands on suspicion of arson, following a series of suspicious fires at the Sands, Dunes, and Flamingo Hilton. He was ultimately convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison. The new safety features may have stemmed tragedy, as none of the fires were deadly and their damage was restricted.
The Desert Inn remained Summa’s elite property, with the Frontier as a reliable workhorse, but the Sands had a place as well. Maybe because of the reputation the hotel had earned in its earlier days, in 1984 Summa agreed to license the Sands name and logo to be used on an assortment of products, including clothing, luggage, and games. This move came as rival Caesars Palace was creating a global brand for itself, with everything from logoed bathrobes to a pair of signature fragrances, Caesars Man and Caesars Woman. Though the Sands never reached Caesars’ level of brand saturation, the licensing agreement does show that Summa executives still saw value in the Sands name.
Like other casinos, the Sands added a sports book in 1985, and by the end of the year was touting its first Bowl Game Contest, in which the lucky bettor who came closest to picking the winners of all 15 major bowl games would receive a $10,000 prize. In the Copa, a new revue named “Outrageous” alternated with star performers like Chaka Khan. The revue staged three shows a night, taking its place along shows like the Tropicana’s “Folies Bergere,” MGM Grand’s “Jubilee,” the Stardust’s “Lido de Paris,” and more recent shows with staying power, like “Boylesque” at the Silver Slipper, “Legends in Concert” at the Imperial Palace, “An Evening at La Cage” at the Riviera, “City Lites” at the Flamingo Hilton, and “Playboy’s Girls of Rock and Roll” at the Maxim.
By the end of 1986, Las Vegas had fully recovered from the recession and looked ahead. Steve Wynn had bought the Castaways and adjoining land across the Strip from the Sands and was planning to build a major new resort. Two casinos, the Dunes and the Landmark, were about to emerge from bankruptcy (the Dunes did but struggled; the Landmark never made it). And Manhattan developer Donald Trump, who had just bought 10 percent of casino operator Bally, was rumored to be interested in Las Vegas, either by consummating his purchase of Bally or by building something new. It was a city full of optimism.
Former MGM Grand owner Kirk Kerkorian, who had sold his Las Vegas and Reno casinos to Bally in 1986, was poised to re-enter the game. Under the terms of the sale, he had been barred from re-entering Nevada gaming, but in 1987, Bally waived the restriction in exchange for the uncontested right to use the “Grand” name on Steve Wynn’s former Golden Nugget in Atlantic City, which was renamed Bally’s Grand. In August of that year, Kerkorian made a play for the Dunes in bankruptcy court, but lost to Japanese billionaire Masao Nangaku, who bid nearly $158 million for the casino and its 163 acres of surrounding land. Nangaku bested both Kerkorian and Sheldon Adelson, whose Comdex trade show was a Las Vegas fixture.
Summa, seeking to focus on its real estate holdings, had made no secret of its desire to exit the gaming industry. Within days, Kerkorian had reached an agreement with Summa: For $167 million, he would acquire the Desert Inn, the Sands, and the 250 acres surrounding them. It was an astronomically better deal than the one he was trying to strike for the Dunes.
Kerkorian added the casinos to a portfolio that included film and television producer MGM/United Artists and MGM Grand Air, a newly formed airline geared toward business travelers. Fred Benninger, president of Kerkorian’s MGM Grand Inc., said that both hotels would keep their names and that no plans for renovations or expansion had been decided on. Kerkorian brought in Phil Hannifin, currently the general manager of Fitzgerald’s and the Nevada Club in Reno, to oversee the two properties; Hannifin was no stranger to them, having been in charge of Summa’s casino division before leaving to work for Harrah’s in 1984.
With the sale still pending, the Sands celebrated its 35th anniversary with a month of festivities, starting on November 13 with fireworks, 1950s music, a hula hoop contest, and food and drink sold for retro 1950s prices. The Checkmates and Freddie Bell headlined a dance in the Copa, which was decorated with photographs and memorabilia from the hotel’s history. Bob Hope emceed a private party in the Grand Ballroom for special guests. But it was a look backwards.
In January 1988, Kerkorian breezed through the Nevada Gaming Commission’s licensing, having not spoken a word at his Gaming Control Board hearing and not even being present before the Commission. MGM Grand Inc. formally took ownership of the two hotels on February 1. With 20,000 new rooms in various stages of construction in Las Vegas, most assumed that Kerkorian, who had twice built the world’s largest hotel, would be making big moves. But Benninger merely said that, for now, no changes were planned.
Less than two weeks later, Kerkorian officially affixed his corporate name to the Sands, renaming the hotel the MGM Sands, combining the old sunburst logo with the MGM lion. But the MGM-Sands marriage was not a long one. In early March, it was rumored that Kerkorian was ready to part with his new hotel, scarcely a month after getting the keys. Indeed, on April 25, Kerkorian had announced that the MGM-Sands was no more. The Interface Group, helmed by Sheldon Adelson, had bought the Sands Hotel and Casino—and 60 acres of surrounding land—for $110 million.
The final chapter in the Sands’ history was about to begin.