Thursday, July 6, 2006 | 7:26 a.m.
Carl Lindstrom's milky baritone voice warms the room as he breaks into "La Vie en Rose" on request. Wearing a tight-fitting shirt, jean shorts and brown sandals, he grabs the hand of his wife, Henriette, and they begin to dance.
Like the Edith Piaf song, Henriette is quintessentially French. She came to Las Vegas in 1959 to perform in "La Nouvelle Eve" at El Rancho and later in the Stardust's "Lido de Paris," which imported hand-picked Europeans to perform on elaborate stages.
"These were the halcyon days of Las Vegas - the days of French revues," Lindstrom says of the shows that turned the Parisian showgirl into a Las Vegas trademark. "They were a class unto themselves."
Still gorgeous and fit, the Lindstroms are digging through the special collections department at UNLV's Lied Library with a dozen other former dancers, singers and backstage workers - most now in their 60s - who worked Stardust shows. They're here to identify past cast members in the old "Lido de Paris" programs for an upcoming reunion at the soon-to-be-imploded Stardust.
"We'll all need to come with our eyelashes on. Otherwise we won't recognize one another," says Lou Anne Chessik, a former "Lido" and "Enter the Night" dancer, who is producing the Sept. 10 reunion of five decades of Las Vegas performers.
The event at the Stardust convention center will celebrate musical numbers from Stardust shows and feature old costumes that weren't burned as was required by contract when "Lido" closed in 1991.
"We were part of a special era," Lindstrom says. "You were proud to be 'Lido.' "
Lindstrom marvels at the Cirque du Soleil shows taking over the Strip, but says they just don't have the same panache as the French revues. Although chorus lines had been staged in Las Vegas, large production shows with topless dancers didn't arrive until "Minsky's Follies" opened in 1957 at the Dunes. "Lido de Paris" opened a year later and helped launch the flurry of Parisian topless shows that would follow.
Early "Lido" dancers, recruited by Donn Arden and Margaret Kelly, came from France along with the sets. Kelly was affectionately known as Miss Bluebell because she had created the famous Parisian chorus line known as the Bluebells.
For many dancers, Las Vegas was to be a temporary gig. Decades later, they call Las Vegas home and regale each other with stories of Las Vegas' European invasion when they get together.
Looking over old photos and magazine covers in the Special Collection, Jillian Hrushowy says, "We're going crazy wondering, 'Did we look like that?' " Hrushowy was part of the first wave of dancers from Europe. She began dancing as a child in what was then Rhodesia and was dancing professionally at age 16 in London theaters. She came to Las Vegas in 1959 for "La Nouvelle Eve." She eventually landed a role in "Lido" and married a singer from the show.
"We were very lucky to work in Las Vegas when it was fun," says Jill Rader, a former "Lido" dancer. Her husband Lenny, who was a stagehand in the show, refers to the era as "B.C." - for "before corporations," which pared down shows and changed theaters and theater etiquette.
Rader arrived in Las Vegas in 1959, but didn't want to be here. Miss Bluebell asked her to come to Las Vegas while she was on tour in Italy.
Rader says she scoffed at the idea of a dusty town with "six or seven hotels and a lot of dirt," but agreed to give it a chance for a couple of months.
"Forty-seven years later, here I am," Rader says. "It took me two years to get used to Las Vegas."
Heather Victorson wasn't looking for a trip to Las Vegas, either. She hoped to work for Miss Bluebell in Rome, but when she auditioned, they asked her if she had a passport. She did, and they told her, "You're going to Las Vegas."
"Within a week I got a call," she says. "We all came over together - scenery, actors and dancers."
Her "Lido" contract forbade her to marry, she says, and it required that she stay in Las Vegas for two years and work seven days a week.
Dressing rooms were packed with elegant and glamorous, yet topless costumes. Live animals, including elephants, marched the proscenium. Elaborate sets were built and dancers who fit Miss Bluebell's criteria of height and beauty moved to Arden's intimidating command.
From 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. backstage was a madhouse.
"No two shows are ever the same when people and animals are in elevators," says Nancy Belian, a dresser for 17 years who mastered the art of the quick change and last-minute stitches. "You've got scenery moving, people moving. Something always happens."
Dancers from the old days have visited the showroom over the years - even walking the proscenium in the dark, empty theater filled with memories of shows past.
"That's when it gets real eerie," says Terry Lovern, stage manager at Stardust Theater, who has been working with Chessik to find old names and numbers.
Eerie is a good way to describe the staid backstage atmosphere once ringing with feathers and chaos. First-floor dressing rooms are now offices. Main dressing rooms, once stuffed with elaborate costumes, are used by dancers for "Headlights and Tailpipes," a topless revue of women and cars that - by comparison with the French revues - has only a sliver of cast.
"I was so used to handling hundreds of people back here," says Lovern, a former ice skater and "Lido" dancer. "Now it's so strange because it's so quiet."
But the past remains embedded in the floor of the stairway where sequins from years past are still visible, still sparkling. Somehow they've managed to linger.
More information can be found at the Web site, www.castandcrewreunion.com or by calling 243-6329 .
archive
