Thursday, June 4, 1998 | 10:26 a.m.
Sam Salde was not afraid to meet difficult challenges head-on.
He founded a successful carpeting company in New York, but left it to start a floor refinishing business that did quite well in Beverly Hills, Calif. He left there to form a successful Hollywood and Las Vegas prop business, Sam Salde Design.
From there, Salde went into the night club business as owner of The Palladium behind the Mirage hotel-casino, which during this decade became a popular rock concert venue and later a bustling country-western dance hall.
When he was diagnosed with leukemia two years ago, Salde took on the deadly illness with the same gritty determination to survive that made him a success in the business world.
"My father learned all he could about leukemia and went to hospitals all over the country before choosing Johns Hopkins in Baltimore for a bone marrow transplant," Sam Salde Jr. said.
"He was afraid, but he would only think positively. He talked about coming home to see his family after the operation. He felt nothing was impossible."
Samuel R. Salde, who gained recognition for designing lavish private parties at the Playboy Mansion in Southern California and later at the Las Vegas Hilton hotel-casino, died last Friday at Johns Hopkins Hospital following a two-month battle with infections that set in after cancer surgery. He was 52.
Services for the Las Vegas resident of 12 years will be 6 p.m. Friday at Palm Mortuary-Cheyenne and 10 a.m. Saturday at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church. A graveside service will be held 11:30 a.m. Saturday at Memory Gardens. Visitation will be 1-6 p.m. Friday at Palm Mortuary-Cheyenne.
In the mid-1990s, Salde's night club brought to town performers whose careers would later skyrocket. In September 1995, he booked a young and rising Alanis Morissette, who sold out the 1,650-seat hall and went on to become a major recording star.
"My father was not afraid to take chances -- he had a gut feeling about how well some performers would do," Salde Jr., a metal department manager for a local exhibit firm, said. "While some places were too large and others too small for concerts, The Palladium was ideal and intimate for many shows."
Salde Jr., who was taught ironwork by his dad, built the durable all-steel bar counters that were the trademark of his father's establishment at 3665 S. Industrial Road.
Other acts to perform at The Palladium in the '90s included Randy Travis, Skid Row and porn star-turned actress/singer Traci Lords.
But Salde became disillusioned with rowdy rock crowds and remodeled his establishment with antique wagons and other expensive rural-themed props to create one of the more successful country-western line dance facilities in town.
Salde always dreamed of retiring at age 50 and, after being diagnosed with leukemia, did so. In 1996, he sold The Palladium -- by then called Area 51 Night Club -- to Mirage Resorts, which today operates Mirage Events, a prop factory, at the site.
"Many of the people who work there now are very familiar with my father's work in the prop industry -- it sort of serves as his legacy," Salde Jr. said.
He noted that his father's prop and design business dealt only in high-end effects for lavish parties that only the very wealthy could afford.
"He was a straight-forward guy who would tell you up front that he wouldn't even talk to you about doing your party unless you had really deep pockets," Salde Jr. said. "And he was not a suit-and-tie kind of guy. He'd get down and weld, roll carpet and get his hands dirty."
Born June 9, 1945, in Jamestown, N.Y., Salde served in the Marine Corps in Italy in the mid-1960s. In the 1970s, he opened Sunshine Carpet in Jamestown. In California, his floor finishing business and prop work attracted Hollywood celebrities.
Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner hired Salde to design his trendy parties in the 1980s. Salde's work, which included exotic lighting and electronically lit dance floors, can be seen in videos of Playboy Mansion parties.
Salde soon came to the attention of Hilton officials, who asked him to relocate here in 1986 to do their resort's private parties complete with spectacular waterfalls and glowing neon palm trees.
In addition to his son and daughter-in-law Kim Salde of Las Vegas, Salde is survived by his ex-wife and friend Maria Allen of Jacksonville, Fla.; two daughters, Bernadette Bridger and her husband Wray, and Pam Thomas and her husband Carl, all of Jacksonville; his father, Michael Salde of Las Vegas; two sisters, Verna Jackson and her husband Richard of Bemus Point, N.Y., and Carol Grisanti and her husband Anthony of Hidden Hills, Calif.; a brother, Charles Salde of Hinckley, Ohio; and nine grandchildren.
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