Friday, Dec. 13, 2002 | 4:02 a.m.
WEEKEND EDITION: Dec. 14, 2002
Newcomers to Las Vegas who hear the refrain of longtime residents about how much Fremont Street and the Strip have changed often have trouble picturing it.
The curious can now see what the old-timers are talking about in a new photo exhibit.
Photos of the single-story Strip hotels and the neon signs that lit up the night skies over Las Vegas in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s are featured in an exhibit that opened in the West Charleston Library art gallery last week.
"A Glimpse of Old Las Vegas" fills the gallery walls with black and white photographs taken by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority's Las Vegas News Bureau photographers through the decades.
Each photo has a short caption that packs a historical punch.
There are gems from the past that surprised even some old-timers.
The Last Frontier Hotel opened its doors on Oct. 30, 1942, with 105 rooms. Built by theater magnate R.E. Griffith, the hotel rose on the former site of the "Pair O' Dice" nightclub and later became the New Frontier and the Frontier Hotel.
For Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority executive Jim Gans, the area near the Last Frontier offered the first drive-in theater in town during the 1950s.
"The theater was in the back of the hotel and the swimming pool was near the front," he said.
The Motor-Vu theater, at the intersection of what is now Industrial and Stardust roads, was renamed the Stardust Drive-in after that hotel was built in front of it.
Gans came to Las Vegas in 1950, when he was 5 years old. He spent much of his adult life operating the Clark County Sanitation District until moving to the Convention Authority in the 1990s.
The Last Frontier also offered an old Western town with carnival rides, Gans remembered, a place where city kids could play cowboy.
In the 1940s and 1950s Fremont Street was the major thoroughfare in Las Vegas, with the Strip, along what was then the Los Angeles Highway, developing multimillion dollar hotels at the rate of a tortoise meandering in the desert. Owners were in constant fear that nobody would come.
But come they did.
The Fremont Street Experience is a relative newcomer compared with the firsts the downtown area can boast.
Fremont was the first Las Vegas street paved, in 1925; held the casino with the first gaming license, issued to the Northern Club in 1931; installed the first elevator in the Apache Hotel (now the Horseshoe), in 1932; and had the first carpeting, in the Horseshoe Club.
A photo of the Sal Sagev Hotel from 1949 shows a one-story world downtown.
Sal Sagev, "Las Vegas" spelled backward, was the Hotel Nevada until its name changed in 1931. In 1975 the hotel was renamed the Golden Gate, known today for its cheap shrimp cocktails.
There's a photo of "Vegas Vic" from 1954, the 40-foot cowboy who greeted visitors with "Howdy Pardner," until actors Lee Marvin and Woody Strode complained about his mechanical chatter while they were staying at the Mint hotel.
Vegas Vic fell silent as Marvin and Strode filmed "The Professionals" at the Valley of Fire State Park. As the legend goes, Strode, whose character in the movie shot arrows with sticks of dynamite attached, used Vegas Vic as target practice, firing across Fremont from the Mint.
The Strip, meanwhile, attracted such entertainers as Frank Sinatra with the rest of the Rat Pack -- Dean Martin, Joey Bishop, Sammy Davis, Jr., and sometimes Shirley McLaine or Ava Gardner -- to the Sands, the Thunderbird, the Stardust, the Desert Inn and the Tropicana hotels.
The Thunderbird opened in 1948 with 76 rooms at a cost of $3 million.
Renamed the Silverbird in 1977 and again in 1982 as the El Rancho Hotel, the Thunderbird closed on July 5, 1992, after drawing entertainers such as Rosemary Clooney, Henny Youngman, Mel Torme and Donald O'Connor.
The Royal Nevada with its distinct red and gold crown opened on April 14, 1955, with 1,065 rooms.
The Stardust bought the hotel in 1959 and it is now the Stardust Convention Center.
The Stardust had one of the first showrooms to produce a topless extravaganza, the "Lido de Paris." University Regent Thalia Dondero remembers the showroom with a smile.
"It is so interesting to see all these photographs," Dondero said, recalling the first time she and her late husband, Harvey, sat in the audience watching the topless showgirls with their oversized headdresses. Harvey Dondero was an administrator with the Clark County School District for decades.
As the showgirls lined the stage, Dondero said, her husband stared and said, "Oh, look, they have live birds in their headdresses."
Laughing, Thalia Dondero said, "I thought he was going to say he noticed something else."
For Gina Cunningham, a News Bureau editor, putting the glamour into Las Vegas history has become a passion that she hopes others will share.
"It's the people's collection," Cunningham said as 200 guests gazed at the photos. "No one else has ever put pictures to it. That's why we're doing it."
While the West Charleston Library exhibit runs through Jan. 26, Cunningham has plans for future displays.
And she thinks big.
To date, one photo from the News Bureau graces the Smithsonian, a shot of "Miss Atomic Bomb," a showgirl costumed as a mushroom cloud.
If Cunningham has her way, however, the photos hanging in the library's gallery and others will end up in the Smithsonian some day.
"For those who cannot come to Las Vegas, we are going to bring it to you," she said.
The photo of Miss Atomic Bomb was snapped by Don English, whose career with the News Bureau ran from 1949 until his retirement in 1992.
English said he preferred to take pictures of celebrities, including Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, Jimmy Durante, Liberace, The Beatles and others as he promoted Las Vegas.
Those attending the exhibit's opening shattered the traditional silence of a library, but even the staff enjoyed it.
"People can't believe libraries can be exciting places," said Patricia Marvel, director of marketing and community relations for the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District.
Marvel believes the mixture of book lovers and art lovers is perfect.
"We think it is a wonderful marriage as people wander into the gallery and look at the photos," she said.com
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