Merle Emery ferry on the Colorado River

Transcribed Notes: Transcribed from back of photo: "Merle Emery Ferry"

View of the river and Hemenway Wash, with Ragtown (Williamsville) on the banks of the river.

Transcribed Notes: Transcribed from front of postcard: "Hemenway Wash and Colorado River from lookout point near Hoover Dam, Las Vegas, Nevada. Frashers Foto - Pomona, Calif." Transcribed from photo sleeve: "Ragtown/Williamsville at center."

Jillian Hrushowy arrived in Las Vegas in 1959 as part of a company hired to appear at the El Rancho Vegas Hotel in a production called La Nouvelle Eve. She has remained here (other than three short-term contracts in Reno, Nevada) until present day. She is now the production manager for Legends in Concert at the Imperial Palace Hotel. She was an only child, born in Rhodesia to English parents and raised in a home with servants and tutors. Her mother exposed her to the arts at an early age. Jillian took dancing lessons from the age of three years until she began dancing professionally. When she was fifteen years old, both parents agreed it was time for her to leave Rhodesia and finish her education in England. Living alone was difficult and lonely, but it afforded her a wealth of opportunities otherwise unavailable. She worked as a dancer in small, local productions while still in high school. When only eighteen, she got a job dancing in La Nouvelle Eve in Paris which eventually came to Las Vegas. This interview focuses on the years from Jillian’s arrival in 1959 until she retired from dancing in 1979. It follows her transitions from dancer, to principal dancer to production manager. [The first twenty minutes of the tape is warped and the text is garbled. The transcriber has lightly edited the transcript.]