Thursday, Dec. 23, 2004 | 8:18 a.m.
Photographer Don English was at home when he got the call. Lightning had caused a power outage at the Sands hotel. Comedian Red Skelton was performing by the glow of tabletop candles placed onstage by audience members.
English figured he'd go to the Sands to shoot the scene. If the electricity was back on he'd just have them re-create the moment, candles and all.
As a photographer for the Las Vegas News Bureau in its early years, English had that liberty - to pose, to arrange to manipulate and spin a scene with full compliance from the hotel and the celebrity.
This is how it happened back then. There was no "C.S.I.," no "Vega$," no Travel Channel featuring half-hour shows on Las Vegas swimming pools, restaurants and shopping malls. There was no television in every living room promoting celebrities and exposing dirty gossip.
Las Vegas, that tiny speck of a gambling town in the middle of nowhere, needed the world to know about it - as much as those pre-paparazzi celebrities did. The photographers sold the city as the kind of getaway where entertainers lounged poolside, comics frolicked with showgirls and actors posed western style under marquees.
"This is how the world saw Las Vegas," English said. "It was a totally different environment. This was before television. Las Vegas now has TV shows everywhere. Now it's self generating. It's such a news image."
Back then bureau photographers could have their fun, whether it was asking young Elvis and Liberace to switch outfits (and instruments) backstage for a publicity shot to having starlets model a bathing suit while next to a pool in what were known as "cheesecake photos."
"The difference from the old days is that they would come out and pose for you to promote Las Vegas," said Darrin Bush, lead photographer for the Las Vegas News Bureau, who has been with the bureau 16 years. "Frank Sinatra was so publicity conscious he was selling tickets for his own movie. Now it's three shots at a concert. They're in and out of Vegas in one night.
"The photographers had a good time. The celebrities had a good time. It was just a fun job."
To celebrate these photos and Las Vegas' upcoming centennial, the bureau arranged an exhibit at the Summerlin Library, "Las Vegas ... Always Entertaining," which features entertainers in Las Vegas, from Shelley Winters at the Flamingo in 1952 to Carole King at the Caesars Palace Colosseum in 2004.
The 70 photos on display through Feb. 6 offer insight to the history of stardom in Las Vegas.
There's young Lena Horne posing on a stage at the Sands in 1955, Tommy Tune in "EFX" at the MGM Grand in 1999 and Mickey Rooney pulling a rickshaw full of girls at the Riviera in the summer of 1955.
There are the four Beatles stepping single-file off a plane at McCarran Field (now named McCarran International Airport) in 1964 for their one (and only) Las Vegas appearance. There is Johnny Carson posing outside the Sahara in 1967 and Gene Simmons, in full Kiss dress, playing guitar onstage at the MGM Grand in 1999.
"It definitely is a time capsule," said Michelle Richter, a graphic designer at the Golden Nugget, who was at the exhibit's opening-night reception last week.
"Most of these people I know of. It's great to see them so young. It's great to see Vegas so young."
That's entertainment
Born in 1949 as the Desert Sea News Bureau, the bureau was designed to sell Las Vegas as a blossoming vacation spot. It opened as part of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce and in 1992 became a part of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
Today it supplies photos and film and video footage to various media throughout the world, has seven international offices and more than 1 million images in its archives.
"We have images of just about every major entertainer that you can think of, through the decades," said Ericka Yowell, spokeswoman for the LVCVA, which will hold an exhibit this summer at the Hollywood Entertainment Museum in Los Angeles.
Yowell said that even current images are in demand, especially current video footage, which is requested by outlets at least twice daily.
The most common archival requests are photos of Elvis, the Beatles and the Rat Pack, said Bush, who grew up in Las Vegas and attended Bishop Gorman High School, then worked 20 years in the casino industry before his neighbor John Litty, a bureau photographer, helped him get in the door.
"It means a lot to me personally," Bush said, referring to the job. "My photos are going down in history."
Glenn Pinkerton, an eight-year news bureau photographer and lifelong Las Vegan, said the job was one that he wanted so bad that he "literally waited for somebody to die and then jumped in."
His first assignment was working a party at the house of Phil Maloof, where Stella Stephens, Tippi Hedren and Angie Dickinson were kicking back. He's shot Barry Manilow, Jimmy Buffett and Bette Midler, a 1999 photo of her dancing onstage that was published in Rolling Stone.
Plenty of cheese
English, during his tenure, which began in 1949 and ended in 1992, was there during the days of all access.
He shot Jayne Mansfield, who "was like a dream" when posing. He's photographed Judy Garland and Elizabeth Taylor. He shot Ronald Reagan performing a lounge act and Marlene Dietrich, who insisted on flash cameras and not the "unflattering" natural light.
He photographed showgirls for all seasons.
"Cheesecake was supply and demand in the early days," English said. "The newspapers couldn't get enough of it. Any occasion -- time change, Valentine's Day."
Even during a Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson presidential election, a publicist at the Frontier used the campaign to promote his hotel. He had a showgirl pose on a diving board holding a poster of each candidate.
"The photo was titled something like 'Bea Sharon Vote,' " English said. "We did some bad stuff in those days. The cornier it was, the better it went."
Having attended the Fred Archer School of Photography in Los Angeles on the G.I. Bill, English worked freelance (Life, Look and American Magazine) before moving to Las Vegas.
He's known mostly for the famous photograph of Miss Atomic Blast (a woman dressed in a mushroom cloud bathing suit), taken in 1957, and the photo of the floating craps table taken at the Sands swimming pool in 1953. But English also shot 16 mm of the Rat Pack and was filming Elvis and Liberace during their notorious costume switch.
During the early days, "We did the publicity for the movie magazines," he said. "Nancy and Ronald Reagan would get up on the old wagon, pretend like they were riding it. It was great publicity for us and the stars liked it.
"We really figured we were in on everything. We thought we were in on the loop, even though we didn't know if there was a loop then."
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