ent001673-025

This item has not been digitized in its entirety. The original item is available for research and handling at the UNLV University Libraries. Additional digitization is available upon request. Please contact Special Collections to request additional digitization or with any questions regarding access at special.collections@unlv.edu. can?╟╓t explain it Jmta gieat nu/Jmtpwfettzionaljob, and much \ Jan with it. coni believe became d?╟╓ddo fiee. love it wood Boulevard, long gone now, where she appeared with the likes of Jimmy Durante, Sophie Tucker and Max-ie ?╟úSlapsie?╟Ñ Rosenbloom. Her first job in Vegas was at the Frontier Hotel, then called the Last Frontier, where she sang with the Chuck Gould Orchestra. ?╟úWhen I came to Las Vegas there were only two hotels on the Strip, the Last Frontier and the El Rancho Vegas. It was all very Western then; everyone dressed in Western clothes in the day. That was when the buffets were called chuck wagons, and they were free, to keep the gamblers going.?╟Ñ She?╟╓s been working in Vegas continually for 32 years now. She?╟╓s been Jubilee!'s company manager since the show?╟╓s inception 18 years ago. She remembers when it was a weekend town, when Frank, Dean and Sammy ruled the fee hours in concert with ?╟úthe boys,?╟╓! who saw to it that propriety was maintained and that the desert air was suffused with elegance. ?╟úPeople used toffafup all night,?╟Ñ she sayslifow the casinos are all dead after 4 o?╟╓clock.?╟Ñ To illustrate her point she glances around the 1,200-seat theater and mentions that it was recently remodeled to remove some of the banquettes. ?╟úPeople don?╟╓t drink. People don?╟╓t stay up late like they used to. The conventions have changed all that.?½ Then abruptly she excuses herself, citing the lateness of the hour. She promises to elaborate in greater detail at another time. ?╟úOnly don?╟╓t call before noori,?╟Ñ/she says. 'Tm a bear before iM had my coffee.?╟Ñ Jubilee!'* Carey Hem and Sabina Zenglein (above) find a quiet moment before making their grand entrance (above right). Candace Hagar (opposite) transforms herself for Folies Bergere. v W y mom was a showgirl here. It has changed a great deal,?╟Ñ says Jami Tomell, a 32-year-old, olive-skinned beauty, one of Les Mannequins with Folies Bergere. ?╟úBack in the ?╟╓60s, things were different,?╟Ñ she says. ?╟úThe whole ambiance back then was about going out. Women were glamourous, men wore suits. There was fanfare. Showgirls would get chocolate, flowers, they were admired. Showgirls were viewed as beauty, and management required them to act the part, mingle with the customers. ?╟Ñ The chorus lines were smaller then; there were fewer shows with more time in between, usually a couple of hours, during which the girls were given two drink tickets and sent out to the bars and lounges in full makeup and evening dress to sit, look pretty and lure in the gamblers. The practice was known as ?╟úmixing.?╟Ñ It was pure Vegas. Ruby Michler has been a wardrobe assistant with the Folies for 22;years, going back to the days when Joe Agosto, the Mob?╟╓s man at the Trop, was running the show as producer. Ruby remembers the showgirls of that era as ?╟úmore worldly.?╟Ñ ?╟úThey were party girls,?╟Ñ she says. ?╟úNow they?╟╓re college girls. Some are married;; some are buying homes. They have different goals. They have a401Kplan.?╟Ñ In Jubilee}, for example, the dancers now enter and leave by a back door. They are required to show their badges when they reJoWto work, they have to clock in and clock out, they can?╟╓t go to the bars and drink, they cannot gamble, they dine in the employee cafeteria, thewhave to park in the employee parking lot. In the family-friendly Vegas of today, mixing, with its connotations of shilling and prostitution, is, according to Fluff, ?╟úabsolutely forbidden.?╟Ñ The belief among many showgirls, however, is that such segregation has not only erased then visibility, but in an age in which television has supplanted the popularity of live theater, it has contributed to diminishing the status they once enjoyed as the toasts of the town, the sizzle in the neon. Consequently, they say, they have lost the respect and admiration of the public, not to mention their audiences, who now come to the shows in tank tops and T-shirts and often leave before the finale. Fokes choreographer Jerry Jackson, who has been with the show since 1975 and is a veteran of Broadway, films and television, disagrees. He. sees the revues as an evolving form, not one headed toward extinction. ?╟úOh, it's totally appreciated in a different way,5 he not the new happening thing. It?╟╓s what made Vegas famous in the first place. It?╟╓s practically nostalgia.?½ I^Igt Mu, however, that is scant comfort. ||ow, a showgirl is more like;# stripper,?╟Ñ she complains. ?╟úI mean, I?╟╓m not judging them or what they do. But 6 2 A P R Bi 1 9 9 8