WHEN THE LAS VEGAS STRIP WAS A TWO LANE HIGHWAY

HOTEL LAST FRONTIER ~ GAY NINETIES BAR ~ WESTERN STYLE ~ 1942

EL RANCHO VEGAS ~ FIRST HOTEL ON THE LAS VEGAS STRIP ~ 1941

THE FLAMINGO HOTEL OPENED ON NEW YEAR'S EVE 1946

FREMONT STREET WAS AND STILL IS THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN LAS VEGAS

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You can see that the showgirls and dancers wore clothes back in those days!

I was in the chorus with The Merriel Abbott Dancers at The Last Frontier Hotel during the Fall of 1953. We opened and closed the show. Xavier Cugat and Abbe Lane were headliners. What a great place it was. We stayed at The Desert Spa, which was an off-shoot of The Desert Inn, right across the street from The Frontier.

Seven hotels on The Strip. Facing North: El Rancho and Last Frontier on the left, and The Sahara, Flamingo, Desert Inn, Sands, Thunderbird on the right. The strip was a two lane highway! You know, today, it's a ten lane highway! Chuck Wagon cost a dollar for "all you can eat," and an entire show could be seen for the price of a drink. Big name stars were everywhere. It was a blast. The Mary Kaye Trio played in the lounge, but most of us weren't allowed in there or in the casino because we were underage. Our youngest was only 15! We went horse back riding during the day out on ranches. There were bramble bushes blowing and rolling down the highway late at night, and sounds of rattlers very close by in the empty land between hotels. I loved the desert and the feeling of wide open spaces.

I never noticed any rough characters when I was there, just a lot of Hollywood stars, like Jimmy Durante, Shelley Winters, Janet Leigh, Sinatra, the Ritz Brothers, Hank Henry from The Silver Slipper next door... like that... everyone was family back then. We all hung out together and did silly stupid fun things... to be so young and experience that... nothing like it.

I went back to Las Vegas in 1978 which was my 25th Anniversary of having first worked there, and I got a job as a Keno Runner at The Tropicana just for fun. I can tell you there were definitely mob people running things then, they seemed to be everywhere. I loved the outfits the men wore, those black silk shirts with the white satin ties. And those low, graveley voices that sounded like they had eaten cement.

The comedian on our show was Bobby Sargent, and when I went back in 1978, his picture was on the elevator wall at the Hilton. Really surprised me! He was still around.

When we had to leave on the train to go back, I didn't want to go. I cried and cried, wanting so much to stay. But I was under age, and had not much say in my life. By the time we were back in Chicago, I seemed to forget all about it, as other issues took over.



Jiva

IT'S ABOUT THE HATS...

The thing was, someone designed hats to go with these costumes. Inevitably, the hats
would be either huge, or have feathers, or something that stuck out in all directions.
Nice to look at maybe, but for dancers performing acrobatics, those were unfriendly hats.
The Merriel Abbott Dancers usually had cartwheels, walkovers, or some such feat in
the dance numbers, and that tropical number featured in the photo had a few.

If you look at the hats, you can see that they are placed precariously
on one's head. There is a lot more hat off the head than is on the head, making it
unsteady, uncertain, and fraught with probabilities. You'd think that a designer,
with years of experience, would know this. But no, those hats kept coming at us.
Every dance number, every costume, had a hat, and the hats were usually cumbersome.

In this particular dance number, the boys had to jump over the girls. Well, you can imagine!
Not a performance went by, that a hat didn't go flying. Once off the head, they were in
danger of being confiscated by the audience, as we danced on the same level as our guests.
They ate and DRANK at their tables, then watched the show on a level dance floor. They
were not beyond a little mild frivolity. We tried not to encourage it.


You could stumble over a hat lying innocently on the floor, when you were tripping the
light fantastic. You could toss an errant hat on the bandstand. You could try to pin it
back where it had been originally, without missing a step. You could! Really.

Heard in the dressing room after a show:
"Has anyone seen my hat?"

Like our current government, it befuddles the mind with the irrationality of it all.

Jiva (who is 18, bottom right)

(Copyright 2009)

THE GLAMOROUS MARY MEADE

It was March of 1953, and I was performing for the first time at The Empire Room of The Palmer House Hotel in Chicago, dancing with The Merriel Abbott Dancers. A dancer had not shown up for work, and they asked me to take her place, as I already knew the dance numbers. I was sixteen years old, a tall girl with long blond hair, quite attractive, a nice Catholic schoolgirl basically, suddenly thrust into the spotlight in more ways than one. The other girls had to show me how to put on stage make-up, fix my eyelashes with black wax to make them look thick and long, and put my headpiece on so it wouldn't fall off while I was dancing. That was the easy part. What happened next was something sudden. They asked me to walk out around the tables to the other side of the dance floor where we performed our shows, and wait for Miss Mary Meade who was the headliner.

They said, now just stand at the other side of the stage, and when she comes out, she'll hand you her black fox fur. You take it to the dressing room the same way you came out. This meant walking all the way around the tables and back again. They put me in a maid's outfit, with a little apron, black stockings and high heels. I looked like a pin up girl. Mary Meade was not that well known in Chicago, or anywhere else except Europe in the 1950's. She had been an actress in some "B" movies in Hollywood in the 40's, but for the most part, she was basically an unfamiliar face. She was quite beautiful, and she also had long blonde hair, just as I did at that time. We were both tall and blonde, and both pretty. So.......

The orchestra starts playing. I start walking around the back of the tables. The Master of Ceremonies introduces the star of stage and screen, the lovely Miss Mary Meade! And here she comes out of the same dressing room I came out of, only I reached the stage well before she did.
Just as they announced her, I stepped forward on the stage waiting dutifully for her to arrive with her black fox fur. The audience couldn't see her because she was on her way from the dressing room, making her way through the side tables. They took one look at me, and thought I looked similar to the picture on their table card, so they started applauding, loud and passionately, as good Chicago audiences were known to do. I smiled and grinned at the crowd which was staring at me, and then a somewhat irate Ms.Meade came strolling across the stage and handed me her fur with a cutting look I will never forget.

The musicians unfortunately started chuckling in the background, and the drummer made one of those stick on cymbal sounds they make at the punch line of a joke. I still had to walk all the way around the back tables. Ms. Meade started singing, but the audience continued smiling at me, as I walked fast to the dressing room. It was a story that went around town a bit, as the new girl who upstaged Mary Meade. She was quite unhappy about it, until they told her it was my very first night in show business, and I guess she decided to forgive me, as apparently it had been her idea to have a maid pick up her fur, and for some reason, somebody decided to have me do it. I'll never forget that night, as I didn't know whether to be elated at my sudden celebrity, or humiliated at my bold stance while I waited for her to appear. A charming memory now, but then, all the girls said, "nice going."


Jiva

(Copyright 2009)

IT'S TONIGHT !! .........THE TONY AWARDS CBS 8 PM

Tony Night Schedule
6:00 p.m. ET – Red Carpet

The excitement of Tony night begins at at 6:00 p.m. ET with live coverage of the celebrities’ arrivals on the Red Carpet, in partnership with NY1 News.

http://www.tonyawards.com/en_US/index.html

Or if you check your TV schedules, there may be TV shows of the Red Carpet arrivals also. Check it out.

7:10 p.m. ET – Exclusive Webcast: The First Hour of the Tony Ceremony

Then, at approximately 7:10 p.m., you can log in for a TonyAwards.com exclusive. Their site is the only place to view a live webcast of the Creative Arts Tony Awards, sponsored by Hilton Hotels, along with the other awards handed out before the telecast begins. These include the Regional Theatre Tony Award, presented by Visa. Past winners Michael Cerveris and Julie White will host. You can see the presentations, acceptance speeches, and everything else that happens on stage—as if you were sitting in the Radio City auditorium.

8:00 p.m. ET – The Tony Telecast on CBS

And then comes the main event – the live CBS telecast from the stage at Radio City. The show begins at 8:00 p.m. eastern/7:00 p.m. central. On the West Coast, the show will be shown on tape delay beginning at 8:00 p.m. PT

TonyAwards.com Coverage

TonyAwards.com is your insider’s pass to this year’s awards. Here is some of what you can expect to find here during and after the telecast:

Thank-you Cam - Live video camera in the wings at Radio City will record the winners' immediate responses as they exit the stage after winning their Tony Awards. The backstage camera will capture intimate and exciting moments from the winners as they give thanks to the people that helped them along the way.

Posting Winners - The site will be updated throughout Tony night with the names of winners

Winners Circle Interviews – Valerie Smaldone will chat with the winners in the Press Room.

Press Room Blog – Bloging from the backstage press room, in partnership with MyBroadway.com.

Acceptance Speeches – See who thanked whom!

Photo Galleries – Pictures from the Red Carpet, the awards ceremony, the post-show gala, and more.


For West Coast Viewers
A note for friends on the West Coast: The Tony telecast will be broadcast on tape delay at 8:00 p.m. Pacific Time on CBS. However, for the benefit of those fans across the globe who do not have access to the broadcast, website coverage of the Tony Awards is live. The winners' names will be posted as they are announced, beginning at 8:00 p.m. ET/5:00 p.m. PT. So if you prefer to remain in suspense until you watch the telecast, we suggest that you log on to live Red Carpet and exclusive Creative Arts Awards coverage beginning at 6:00 p.m. ET/3:00 p.m. PT. Then close your browser and come back after the telecast is over, at which point you can watch video clips of backstage interviews with the winners and presenters.


See you at the Tonys!

Best Wishes, Jiva

THE TONY AWARDS !! SUNDAY JUNE 15

From the minute the Oscars are over, I'm waiting for the Tony's. Broadway's best comes on stage LIVE on CBS Sunday evening at 8 o'clock, EDT (Delayed on the West Coast). Whoopi Goldberg will be hosting. There are pre-show items on both The Tony Awards web site:

http://www.tonyawards.com/en_US/index.html

and also ET television will have the RED CARPET arrivals from 6 PM to 7 PM, and then at 7 PM ET will have a webcast of the FIRST HOUR of the Tony Awards, showing all the awards that are not shown during the main show on CBS.

Here for your pleasure is the list of nominees for Sunday Night's Broadcast:

http://www.tonyawards.com/en_US/nominees/index.html

And HERE is the link to all the Tony web site's Memories, Flashbacks, AND actual
CLIPS FROM EACH SHOW which should help you in judging the winners yourself:

http://www.tonyawards.com/en_US/interactive/video/show.html#a

I hope you enjoy the show as much as I will. No parties at my house, just me, my television, and my list of winners! Cocktails following!

Jiva