American Experience: Las Vegas An Unconventional History

[moira finnie]

This is intended as a shout out to Lynn, our favorite Archivist, & others who might be interested and/or contributors to this PBS program, which airs tonight, 6/2 at 9pm EDT.

Do you have any thoughts on this documentary about the ingenuity, tough-mindedness & star-spangled if often lurid imagination behind the city described in Las Vegas: An Unconventional History? You can read more about the show here. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and observations.

[mrsl]

I'm going to set my timer to be sure to see that show tonight, although I may not actually watch it until tomorrow, but whatever it says, let me say this: Las Vegas has been called a lot of names and a lot of rough comments have been made about it, but when I lived there and people asked if what they said was true, I used to say "Las Vegas is a small town where people work and play, go to church, school, and live their lives just like anywhere else. The only difference is that Las Vegas is a small town that happens to have casinos up and down it's main street. Most people who live there only get to the Strip when they have friends and family visit, and take them there for entertainment. If you live in L.V., you work for your living, you don't try to win it."

I'm looking forward to seeing it.

Anne

[moira finnie]

Thanks Anne. I'm hoping that the "small town feel" that you and Lynn have described in the past in Las Vegas gets its due in the PBS documentary. I believe it may be shown on the 9th of June in some communities too.

[Lzcutter]

Moira,

I have lots to say about the docu but am interested in others input before responding!

So, please if you watch the documentary, post your thoughts as I would love to hear them and have lots to say!

[moira finnie]

I was not able to watch the entire documentary, but did watch up until Nicolas Pileggi once more described the money skimmed from the casinos in the '50s, (the only interesting semi-documentary part of Martin Scorsese's Casino). I had some other activities going on at home simultaneously which prevented me from watching closely after that, though I did see the cocktail waitress turned real estate agent describe her journey from itinerant show biz fringer to solvency and a family. I also caught the part about the girl transforming herself from nice looking to fantasy showgirl sort, which has seemed like familiar territory from other programs about LV. The real estate gal was quite a bit more interesting.

Overall, the parts that were very well worth seeing were the early segments with historical photos and footage showing the city's unlikely development. These were fascinating, especially when they outlined the connection between Las Vegas' growth and the Hoover Dam/Boulder Dam construction during the Depression, FDR's visit, and the influx of tourists wanting to see this new wonder of the world, (the dam, not the city). Most histories imply that Bugsy Siegel was the sole reason for Las Vegas. As this film showed, it was more complex than that.

[Lzcutter]

Hey guys,

Sorry to be chiming in a tad late but mom's back surgery and recovery has kept me on my toes.

About the PBS docu on Las Vegas;

I haven't seen it since it's premeire in Nov. 2005 but here is what I remember about it:

I was not the only one who was very unhappy that the first 25 years of Las Vegas history (1905 -1930) was thrown on the cutting room floor. The men and women who were there for the land auction that basically created Las Vegas deserved better. These were the true heroes of Las Vegas history, the group that carved a town and a community out of the barren desert.

Las Vegas had water (that's why the railroad decided to have a major stop there complete with depot, machine shops, round house etc) but these folks were the ones who endured the heat without air conditioning, no paved roads, electricity that didn't always work, water pipes that broke, etc.

There were places where the water literally bubbled up out of the earth but because the town in those early years was mainly owned by the railroad, people had to get permission from the Union Pacific in Nebraska before they could go ahead with ideas.

Many just said poppycock! and dug their own wells.

There was a big railroad strike in the early 1920s and the workers in Las Vegas joined the strike. In retailation, the Union Pacific pulled all the machine shops and the round house out of Las Vegas and relocated to central Nevada where unions weren't as welcome.

Those were dire times in Las Vegas as those who had invested in the community struggled to hang on until the Dam project came.

I also have a big problem with the whole Bugsy angle. Bugsy Siegel didn't build the Flamingo from scratch. That ideat put forth by Warren Beatty is pure myth. Billy Wilkerson was building the Flamingo when Bugsy had his fever dream and realized that legalized gaming could be big for the mob.

Again, the whole angle on the Mob running Vegas is not 100% accurate. The mob was there but they never ran the town the way the docu or Hollywood film makers like to think they did.

The Mob of the 1950s and 1960s was a very different animal from the Mob of the 1970s and early 1980s. The Spilotro-Rosenthal era, portrayed by Nick Pileggi in Casino, is fairly accurate but not 100%.

The Culinary Worker (housekeeper) who was talking about her half million dollar home like it was that easy for everyone was fictionalized even then.

Las Vegas is the largest city built in the 20th century and many of its second generation pioneers are still alive and more of them should have been utilized to tell the story.

But that's just my opinion for what it's worth.

For a more historic centric look at the history of Las Vegas, I recommend my own documentary "The Story of Classic Las Vegas".

Which probably makes me a tad biased.

But, I'm also a home town gal.