The Russ Freeman Television Music Manuscripts contains music manuscripts and production materials from Russ Freeman's work on various television specials, dating from 1969 to 1977. The collection includes music scores for television soundtracks including Feliciano! Very Special which aired on the television network NBC and Shirley MacLaine Show which aired on CBS. Russ Freeman is featured in this collection as composer and arranger for many of the soundtracks and was featured as a pianist on soundtracks for The Clifton Davis Special, Flip Wilson Specials, and The Don Rickles Show. Freeman's compositions and arrangements for the television shows were recorded in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The Lee Plotkin papers document Plotkin's political work and associations as an LGBT activist and spokesman for the Las Vegas gay community, and include correspondence, press releases, copies of his columns, institutional and legislative documents, brochures, fliers and other ephemera from 1955 to 2006.
The Las Vegas Archive Memorabilia and Promotional Materials (approximately 1960-2019) contains reproductions of photographs taken of historic landmarks around Las Vegas, Nevada and entertainers like Elvis Presley, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Liberace performing in Las Vegas. The collection also contains digital photographs from 2008 of an airship displaying an advertisement for the M Resort Spa and Casino. There is also memorabilia from the MGM Grand Hotel including a gaming guide, decks of playing cards, and a commemorative drinking glass. The collection also includes several historic postcards depicting Las Vegas, political campaign buttons for local Nevada elections, and greeting cards from U.S. Representative Jim Santini.
The preface and script for a sitcom television show conceived of by Hank Henry and Bill Willard "to evoke the spirit of fun and laughs springing out of conflict and understanding between the old comedy school and the new school."
On February 18, 1951, Fred Wilson interviewed Mary Ellen Osborn Lake (born 1870 in Mercer County, Missouri) and her son, Thomas Lake (born 1889 in Missouri). Wilson first asked Mary Ellen questions about when she first arrived in Las Vegas, Nevada in 1904. Much of the relatively brief interview involved questions related to the first Methodist churches in Las Vegas and the Lakes’ involvement and recollections of the locations and members of the church community.
Interview with Bess Rosenberg by Jerry Masini on November 12, 1975. In this interview, Rosenberg describes coming to Las Vegas in 1942, and the desert landscape. She gives an in-depth recollection of the first atomic test, and talks about different weather and the seasons in Las Vegas. Rosenberg describes several clubs and hotels around downtown and the recreation at Lake Mead and Mount Charleston.
Sandra Peña’s story begins in East Los Angeles, where she spent her first fifteen years with her parents (both from Michoacán, Mexico), and her younger sister. The father's managerial position at Master Products allowed the family to live rent-free in a company-owned house behind the main factory, because he collected the rents for the company's two other dwellings. In this interview, Peña recalls the family move to Porterville, in California's Central Valley, her return to Los Angeles at nineteen, and her work with Parson’s Dillingham, a contractor for the Metrolink rail system. She draws the link between the Los Angeles and Las Vegas construction communities by describing her husband's move to Las Vegas to find work; a chance Las Vegas encounter with a friend from Chino, California; her ability to gain employment in Las Vegas at Parson’s, a company that had joint ventured with Parson’s Dillingham, and her move from there to Richardson Construction, a local minority-owned company. As Peña says, "It's kind of all intermingled. Even if you go here and you go there, it's like everybody knows everybody." Throughout, Peña weaves her family story into the narrative as she describes her youth, the birth of her son, the illness and death of her father, and her family's participation in her current employment with Richardson. As she remembers the people, places, and events of her life, Peña speaks to the ways one woman of color built on her interstate construction connections and rose in a male-dominated industry.