Mario Lanza, the internationally renowned opera singer and movie star, was booked as the opening headliner, but he suffered a meltdown before the show-an attack of stage fright compounded by drinking-and never set foot onstage. The hotel’s grand reopening in April 1955 was something of a disaster. Inside, the old Western-themed showroom was transformed into the spiffy new thousand-seat Venus Room, with five tiered rows of booths and an expansive stage, “ with sides running to such length that the whole thing looks like a gigantic cinemascope screen,” in the words of one awed reporter. Instead, visitors were greeted by a sleek new brick-and-glass façade, with a long canopy in front and a 126-foot-high steel-frame tower that bathed the hotel in colored lights at night. Gone were the stuffed animal heads and wagon-wheel chandeliers. There was even an ersatz Western village next door, filled with frontier artifacts and populated by life-size papier-mâché characters like Rabbit Sam and Sheriff Bill McGee.īut as ever more modern and luxurious hotels opened along the Strip, the Last Frontier decided it was time for an update, and in early 1955 the hotel closed down, gave itself a makeover, and reopened as the New Frontier. Rifles and stuffed animal heads decorated the hotel lobby wagon-wheel chandeliers hung on chains from the timber ceilings cow horns were mounted above the beds in the guest rooms. Like its predecessor, El Rancho Vegas, the Last Frontier was a luxury resort in old Western garb-“The Early West in Modern Splendor,” as its promotional slogan put it. It was originally built in 1942 and called the Last Frontier, the second resort to open on what would become known as the Las Vegas Strip. In a town addicted to building things, blowing them up, and then building them all over again, the New Frontier Hotel in 1956 was a fine example of Las Vegas progress. He opened the door to a new generation of pop/rock artists and brought a new audience to Vegas-not the traditional well-heeled older gamblers, but a mass audience from Middle America that Vegas depends on for its success to this day.Īt once “a fascinating history of Vegas as gambling capital, celebrity playground, mob hangout, entertainment Valhalla” ( Rolling Stone) and the incredible “tale of how the King got his groove back” (Associated Press), Elvis in Vegas is a classic feel-good story for the ages. He set a new bar for Vegas performers, with the biggest salary, the biggest musical production, and the biggest promotion campaign the city had ever seen. Elvis created a new kind of Vegas show: an over-the-top, rock-concert extravaganza. By the end of the ‘60s, Vegas’ golden age-when the Rat Pack led a glittering array of stars who made it the nation’s premier live-entertainment center-was losing its luster. Over the next seven years, he performed more than 600 shows there, and sold out every one. His performance got rave reviews “Suspicious Minds,” the song he introduced there, gave him his first number-one hit in seven years and Elvis became Vegas’s biggest star. But in Vegas he played the biggest showroom in the biggest hotel in the city, drawing more people for his four-week engagement than any other show in Vegas history. His career had gone sour-bad movies, mediocre pop songs that no longer made the charts-and he’d been dismissed by most critics as over-the-hill. The “smart and zippy account” ( The Wall Street Journal) of how Las Vegas saved Elvis and Elvis saved Las Vegas in the greatest musical comeback of all time.Įlvis’s 1969 opening night in Vegas was his first time back on a live stage in more than eight years.
“Outstanding pop-culture history.” - Newsday