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AUTOMOTIVE SECTION A-12 TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1957 RESORTS BUSIER THAN EVER Las Vegas Fascinating By DICK BLOOMER Automotive Editor Jce and limpid meter of JAGUAR 3.4 SPORT*ey do have a certain ?╟??╟?,._Jlt. "Roses are red,/ SEDAN DRAWS STARW/- sang Greenspun. ?╟? ?√ß. , ,n4. vaPS wrong with Las Compact yet racL ^ yo* ?╟? lines of Jaguar's nefate inspiration for jigh-hewn effort was a 3.4 litre sports sedd of r^^ a good deal drew lots of stares dui *"*?* ^nd with or - It, that Las Vegas was ing Las Vegas motorldit, which is gamblers' trip. Boasting210horsb?· ?Σ≤?? ^J- TTffl^u.i??MM^M??iiJlfr |Performers' argot for Mmr*"* ^ pd a deluge of expla- power and automatfhem plausible and a ted up by statistics. the caering: monsters knOWn Everytime we visit the glittering resort and gambling city of Las Vegas, we! find something new has been added and the booming town still shows no sign of a letup. Far from it, as several of the hotels are busily adding more rooms to better accommodate their guests. Ground has just been broken on the new convention hall recently approved by the voters, so by next year, Vegas will be in the convention business in a bigger way than ever. ''~-^~m For the 285-mile drive to *i ?╟÷ & - Las Vegas, we obtained a' new Jaguar 3.4 litre sports sedan from Charles H. Horn- burg, jr., Inc., Jaguar and Facel Vega distributor in this area. A super-sports production car from the word go, this little five-passenger four-door beauty comfes with the famed XK 210-horse- power engine and a Borg- Warner automatic transmission. Not only was this Jaguar powerplant exceptionally high in performance, but it was so quiet in operation the only sound heard was the clicking of the electric fuel pump. This is obviously Jaguar's answer to the growing demand for a family sedan with sports car acceleration and handling. With the Sands Hotel our destination, we headed the 3.4 out San Bernardino Freeway to Sierra avenue in b South Fontana, then turned left up Sierra to emerge on D Cajon Pass at Devore. This not only bypasses busy San Bernardino but saves some seven miles in the distance department as well. Once over the Pass, we rolled through Victorville to -'* Barstow. Just beyond on US 91 lies Calico, former silver mining town recently rebuilt transmission, performed beautifully fctel-casinos had shut r la experienced searing all speeds, gave excelled and a fifth, exu- ?╟≤i Uj. ia ?╜;n+Tivipd as Nevada's only mileage. Car is PicturCUshment cloged ^ in parking lot of Sanl of days after Green- J verse. Hotel on the Las Vegf Strip. by Walter Knott of Knott's [Berry fame. This is the halfway point and an interesting place to stop for luncheon and a brief visit. Continuing on past Baker and across the Nevada border, we found the new divided highway with center islands between the airport and downtown Las Vegas nearly completed. You'd hardly know the Strip today, lined as it is with a dozen hotels and countless luxury motels and shops. Features of the Sands Hotel include the Paradise Pool, one of Las Vegas' biggest] swimming pools and a popular place these warm fall days. Always heated to a comfortable temperature, the water-is inviting even in winter. Sunrise Terrace looks out on the bathing area and is favored by swimmers. Then there's the Garden Room, Silver Queen lounge with continuous entertainment and the Chuck Wagon which serves midnight snacks, or should we say full-course meals. Topping all these of course is the Copa Room where Jack Entratter pre sents some of the top names in show business including the current Sammy Davis jr. jwith the Will Mastin Trio. Reservations are needed (Cont. on 3rd Auto Page) jbeen perceptible, but le town is still hazed -lights and tremulous ~pf gambling. To the (edible 2^.-mile see- jhway 91, known as size lighting systems 5 Vegas' gambling ielike spectrum of [he sky. Southward Jrport, the Sahara less; the El Rancho >lue-and-yellow mill mderbird proclaims sed fowl. (Ornithol- |erbird is the Aus- which is probably lers had in mind; Indians, it is said r and lightning.) pf the Riviera rises desert. The Desert of The limes Maga- Isit to Las Vegas helped "small Cloud on Las Vegas Silver Liningr A few bright lights have dimmed, but statistics on the Nevada paradise are more glittering than Iv<&r By GILBERT MILLSTEIN Las Vegas. THE posture adopted by Las Vegans toward their demesne, a resolutely Byzantine fantasy in the Nevada desert, is very likely matched in its fierce parochialism only by that of the thirteenthtcentury Chinese encountered by Marco Polo, a Venetian expatriate, "There's Paradise above, 'tis true," a local phrasemaker had set down, p<^3sibly in jade, "but ^hersJbejow.^we've Hang and Su," by [ant the cities of Hang- pow. Not long ago, Hank I New York expatriate a edits The Las Vegas gularly and boyishly in- [suits of one kind or anil a couple of similarly ets in his daily column, P." While they lack the A tense moment around the gaming tables of The Rands' casino in Las Vegas?╟÷"Despite the searing financial troubles of some of its sprawling hostelries, it is Las Vegas' considered opinion- that the future of Las Vegas is unlimited." Inn, the New Frontier and The Sands exhibit their peculiar d6cor in STi/HSnT*' of candlepower, and the Flamingo, the last hotel open Defore the airport, shows its huge tower, which is ap- pliquSd with white, overlapping, bubblelike circles of neon. (Las Vegans refer to it as "The Silo.") The scene in all the casinos in the Strip hotels is much the same: jazz trios, quartets - and quintets racket forth the current laments of loving and lorning; the slot machines, urged on by money, cough, groan, click and sometimes spit; the roulette wheels spin noiselessly and the ivory balls drop with a hollow click; the dice tables ofter the customary Greek chorus, in which the players alternately jump up and down, shouting, or sway in silence, while the stick man cries "Eight, easy eight," or "Ten, hard ten." D* rEFT, handsome cocktail waitresses circulate among the players, offering them everything on the house but money. The crowds are large and impressive and the noise they make registers somewhere between a susurrus and a roar. Nobody knows what time it is, since establishments along The Strip have left clocks out of their appointments; it never does to remind a lotus- eater or a plunger that he may be in a hurry, particularly in a city that re- "?nains open twenty-four hours a day. A kind of exception is the Desert Inn, which has placed a small timepiece high abdve its swimming pool. It..cannot be read in the dark and a man craning his neck upward to scan it during the day is apt to be blinded by the sun. JLwiCE a night, visitors are privileged to take in, in any of the hotels, a nightclub show, exceeding both in cost and variety, anything that might be found anywhere else in the world and ranging from, say, Betty Grable and Harry James at the El Rancho, to Peter land Hayes and Mary Healy at The Sands. The most expensive dinner On the standard menus is priced at $6.50. However, last summer, the hotels, with the exception of the Thunderbird, instituted a $2 minimum charge at their midnight shows with the excuse that (a) it was a revenue producer and (b) that it. kept out egregious nonspenders who ordered a cup of coffee and tipped waiters not at all. People get married at 2 o'clock in the morning and other people get divorced at noon. Nevertheless, when the smoking chauvinism of the indigenes (an indigene is anyone who has lived around here upwards of a year and can walk through a casino three times, gambling only once) has been wet down, it is apparent to the unclouded eye that something happened in Las Vegas, even if it was nothing more than what has been described valiantly as "a shakeout," "a small recession," or "letting a little air out of the balloon." According to one indignant Las Vegas official, a day or so after a respected financial journal printed a gloomy intelligence on the town, money began to tighten up?╟÷not on the gambling tables ?╟÷but in banks and other lending institutions. JLhe [E pioneers had, in a manner of speaking, overextended themselves, if only temporarily. Four of the sprawling hotel-casinos opened within thirty- four days last April and May (two on succeeding days), amid Babylonian splendors and a surfeit of optimism. .These were the Royal Nevada, the nine- story Riviera and The Dunes, located on the Strip, just south of the city proper; and the interracial experiment, the Moulin Rouge, on the west side of town. The Moulin Rouge shut down on Oct. 10, trailing debts of about $1,352,000. The Royal Nevada closed spectac- (Continued on Page 63> 17