Interview with Gil Cohen by Claytee White on August 5, 2015. In this interview, Cohen discusses growing up in Las Vegas and attending University of Nevada at Reno. He returned to Las Vegas to join the management training program at the Stardust. He talks about his friendships with Moe Dalitz and Carl Cohen, and his interest in golfing. He also discusses corporate ownership of casinos, unions, and his experiences working at different Strip hotels.
Gil Cohen came to Las Vegas in 1957, when was ten years old, when his father, Yale Cohen, was recruited by Moe Dalitz to work at the Stardust Hotel and Casino. Cohen graduated from University of Nevada Reno, and started working at the Stardust through the management-training program. In 1975, he was made hotel manager, his first of many leadership positions in Strip properties, which have included the Dunes, Aladdin, Hacienda and Monte Carlo, where he currently works as a casino host.
LaVerne Ligon discusses auditioning for the show Hallelujah Hollywood at the new MGM. She auditioned for Bob Mackie and Donn Arden, who wanted her to be topless in the show. She refused. Three weeks later, Donn Arden called her and said that she had changed his mind and he really wanted her in the show and she didn't have to go topless. In fact the entire line of Black dancers that he was putting together for the show did not have to go topless.
Las Vegas, Nevada producer, manager, and agent Matthias Gregory Gluchowski (a.k.a. Matt Gregory) was born November 21, 1921 in Araucaria, Parana, Brazil. He was the son of an aristocratic Polish diplomat serving as Ambassador to Brazil. Matthias was raised in southern Poland on a large estate that bordered Czechoslovakia. He was educated at the Marian Fathers Lyceum in Warsaw, Poland, and later came to New York during his father's tenure as diplomat to the United States.
Roger Drummond Foley (1917-1996) was Nevada’s 23rd Attorney General and was nominated to the federal United States District Court, District of Nevada by President John F. Kennedy in 1962. A few of Foley’s famous cases during his tenure included the radiation exposure of the “Baneberry” Nuclear Test and the protection of the Ash Meadows Desert Pupfish in United States v. Francis Leo Cappaert.