Wednesday, Dec. 17, 1997 | 11:05 a.m.
Call it "The Casinos vs. Larry Flynt." And just like in the movies, the porn king goes home a winner -- even if Las Vegas' reputation may not.
The notorious Hustler magazine publisher, lionized last year as a First Amendment hero in the Oscar-nominated film "The People vs. Larry Flynt," strong arms the spotlight again as the featured high roller on a Las Vegas-themed "48 Hours."
The CBS news magazine, which airs at 10 p.m. Thursday on KLAS Channel 8, taps into the nation's insatiable yen for Sin City with a show titled "Vegas Stripped." Pulling back the lid on the rarely glimpsed world of high-stakes gamblers and the silk-glove treatment they receive from casinos, correspondent Harold Dow trailed Flynt around for 48 hours and watched him score $1 million playing blackjack.
On a more sobering subject -- one that undoubtedly will stoke the ire of elected officials and other protectors of the city's image -- "48 Hours" turns the klieg lights on an uglier aspect of Las Vegas: teen prostitution.
Dow de-scribed "Ve-gas Stripped" as "a snapshot of the bright lights and the not-so-bright areas of the city." On the bright-lights side, "48 Hours" wanted to chronicle two days in the life of a high roller -- or "whale," in gaming parlance. Of the country's 200 to 300 "whales" who regularly play Las Vegas, only Flynt took the bait and agreed to be filmed.
CBS camera crews followed Flynt to the Rio hotel-casino and watched him win $900,000 and $600,000 in separate sittings, only to lose it back. Flynt eventually hit the big money at the Las Vegas Hilton, where he played $15,000-a-hand blackjack -- three hands at a time -- and walked away after roughly 14 hours of work with $1 million.
The show reveals other mind-boggling privileges out of the grasp of the average quarter-slot player, including the 15,000-square-foot Hilton suite Flynt stayed in free of charge. Viewers may be caught between envy and revulsion watching Flynt's fiancee Liz Berrios receive a pair of $36,000 diamond earrings from the Hilton merely because he suggested as much. Not to be out-excessed, the Rio gave Berrios a $20,000 gift certificate to Neiman-Marcus to make up for her limousine showing up late.
As for the city's "not-so-bright" underbelly, "48 Hours" documents the travails of a 14-year-old prostitute arrested for having sex with a man in a casino hotel room while his wife was gambling downstairs. The show follows the young woman through a juvenile detention center and counseling sessions.
In anticipation that some viewers might regard CBS's preoccupation with a porn impresario and adolescent hookers as yet another contract on the city's reputation, Dow responded Tuesday from New York that the show is "not at all a hit piece."
"It's open-minded. You could take any city in America and see the dark side. There's not a place where it's all milk and honey. And when you attract all that money like Las Vegas does, you attract other parts of society as well."
But predictably, city officials are bracing for the worst. Mayor Jan Laverty Jones, still miffed about a "48 Hours" broadcast six years ago that she said suggested "all our high school kids hang out at casino corners," blasted the upcoming program as "second-rate tabloid journalism."
"It would be all right to look at some of these things if they had called my office and asked to be shown the other side: our neighborhoods, our schools, our school children ...," Jones said. "But they're going to follow Larry Flynt of Hustler magazine around and then showcase some of our teen prostitutes? Give me a break."
Jones added she would watch the program "only if I feel the need to aggravate myself."
For hotel officials, allowing a national news program into their inner sanctum was something of a public relations gambit. Yet Las Vegas Hilton spokesman Timothy Chanaud, while conceding "we would have preferred not to be included in the same mix as a story on teen prostitutes," said hotel executives remained "comfortable" with their decision to let CBS in.
That could change if for any reason "48 Hours" ignites the kind of response "Prime Time Live" touched off earlier this year with a segment on alleged wrongdoing within Nevada's gaming regulatory system. The show triggered months of finger pointing among numerous state officials including Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa and Gaming Control Board Chairman Bill Bible.
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