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(o Tel. WOrth 2*3797 AMERICAN P^^^ipping Service 1^^&,- Inc. 119^Nassau Street Lffi~7 1953 From il TIMES Tsft.w torrk, N. Y. I VEGAS ASCENDANT-?╟÷This Nevada cit By GLADWIN HILL LAS VEGAS. THE traveler approaching: this surprising oasis in the mountain- ridged Nevada desert is confronted at dusk by a strange mirage that could pass for Broadway. Amid a palpitating sea of electric illumination, a procession of roadside bulletin boards spell out some of the brightest names in show business: Jimmy Durante . . . Bert Lahr . . . Georgia Gibbs . . . Ray Bolger . . . Lena Horne . . . Ezio Pinza . . . Jeanette MacDon- ald . . . and dozens more. The wayfarer arriving in Las Vegas during any given week has a wider choice of top- banana talent than the average New Yorker. Tne reason is simple. The 35,000 natives of this erstwhile gas-and-water stop 300 miles northeast of Los Angeles are multiplied many times over these days by an ever-swelling stream of tourists that has turned Las Vegas into one of the nation's leading playgrounds, patronized by around 7,000,- 000 visitors a year. A unique boom town in a country that has seen many of them, Las Vegas is poised at the moment for the summer season which, despite the desert heat, brings an even bigger flood of tourists than winter. Las Vegas' symbolic greeter is a grinning, two-dimensional straw-chew- GLADWIN HILL, Times correspondent in Los Angeles, makes the Southwest his beat. m f 3S'??00 * "~MW Paradise ^^"v - MHedS^?Σ≤ ?? V oeaicated to samblmg around the clock: ing cowboy dubbed Slim. But dude ranches and Western atmosphere do not explain Las Vegas' phenomenal popularity. Nor do such imposing adjuncts as nearby Hoover Dam and the Atomic Jpneigy Commission's wasteland to j$te north. Nor is it simply because La Vegas is the first city in the nation's only state where gambling is legal. W, JLhe secret of Las Vegas' success is a combination of circumstances?╟÷sunshine plus gambling plus shrewd merchandising I phis fate, topped by a curious grass-roots appeal. The visitor - to Las Vegas 4||ds himself whisked as if by rocketfl^i^rom the world of reality into a sun-baked neo-Klondike, as the Klondike might be depicted in a Hollywood musical with palm trees substituted for snow. The place roars with frontier atmosphere to a round- the-clock clink of silver dollars and rattle of dice in a setting of bright lights, liquor, music and dancing girls. If the visitor can bring himself back to earth, he can discern that Fremont Street, for example, is a fairly humdrum small-town main-drag, although spiced with a half-dozen gaudy gambling halls and ubiquitous slot machines which housewives yank with one hand as they clutch their groceries in the other. | yf^bS But along the "Strip," on the edge of town, the traveler plunges into a never-never land of exotic architecture, the time, as it happens, is S A. M. extravagant vegetation, flamboyant signery and frenetic diversion. Scattered along a two-mile expanse of U. S. Highway 91, and linked by an evergrowing congeries of motels, are seven large, elaborate and ever-teeming casino-hotels that are the heart of this unspiritual Mecca. Ranging from sumptuously rustic ranch types to starkly modern plate-glass and chromium. h?╜avii*M*?╜*?╜??*-ye<i vpith big-leafed |edif ices have been 1st Frontier, El 'Thunderbird, the dngo, the Sahara- sthef they contain .., but they draw K) additional rooms twenty-six commer- ~JI?? throughout the 2,000,000 tourists Las Vegas yearly ig overnight. kLL seven pleasure domes have a conventionalized layout?╟÷an imposing lobby; beyond it a spacious lounge-bar; beyond that the casino proper; and, significantly, beyond that the lavish restaurant-night clubs which are the showcases for the parade of big-name entertainers. Outdoors there are swimming pools, golf courses and tennis courts. But interest focuses on the casinos. They are elaborately furnished salons bathed in eerie artificial light, and populated around the clock by restless flocks of hopeful humanity. Inside the eye is struck by a vista of backs arched over the gaming tables. No introductions are necessary. You are free to wander in either to play or just to kibitz. Craps, roulette, blackjack and chuckaluck layouts, presided over by white-shirted, green-aproned "stick- men" and dealers (some of them, in the Western mode, females), are spaced just far enough apart to permit circulation of patrons, cowgirl-clad cocktail waitresses and Sphinx-like flooi managers, eyes ever peeled for subtle Skulduggeries. JaJlGHTS, mirrors and the restrained rhythmic movements of gamblers am attendants merge in a. sort of slow motion ballet, punctuated by the m thodical operations of white-coated ba^ tenders on the sidelines. Thick carp and acoustic paneling muffle welter of sounds into a low-key cho ?╟÷murmurs of elation, sighs of des* the clanking thud of slot machines, unending drone of the stickmen. '". good shooter coming out. . . . eight. . . Any more for craps el, . .. Seven and away .... Now's 'thr for a field bet. . . It's ari easy six Grizzled frontier characters?╟÷i t|?║l|| bona fide "desert rats" or holif Hollywood Western players?╟÷hui the tables beside glamor girls in less gowns, sport-shirted vacate and rumpled trippers. While it is (Continued on Pagd] THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGA2