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ent000778-005

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ent000778-005
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    University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Libraries

    Page 5* The sound system, by the way, is aided and abetted by another innovation conceived and built by White. This is.a giant echo chamber in which sound is picked up by a battery of microphones after reverberating through the enclosure. The Lido was- also the first production in show business history to use a closed circuit television system for onstage monitoring purposes. Employing transistorized vidicon TV cameras, the action onstage is telecast, via coaxial cable, to TV monitors located in the orchestra pit, stage manager's office and in the dressing rooms. This enables all personnel associated with the show to have a complete and up-to-the-minute awareness of.what's going on. The dividends to be reaped by this system are obvious. It helps explain the titanic scope achieved by the show and the super-smooth operation and the perfectly timed stage vehicle it has been. The Lido's ingenious mechanical contrivances, which have helped create the most astonishing stage effects ever devised in theatrics, had their genesis in Paris shortly after Sennes consummated his pact with the owners of the Lido Club. With an eye toward captivating even the most blase night club goer, the famed showman sketched some preliminary architectural designs for the new Stardust Hotel stage and the unusual and spectacular settings that were to be unveiled on that stage. Returning to the U.S., Sennes turned the sketches over to Harvey Warren, without peer as a scenic designer, for development. Then Warren and Sennes enlisted the aid of hydraulic engineers for the building of the dazzling array of stage effects facilities that have stunned and