Friday, October 7, 2005

No Longer Playing

For some reason, I'm fascinated by ads for old Vegas showrooms, especially from back in the days when you could pay what now seems like next-to-nothing and see not only a headliner but two acts you'd heard of. This postcard from the Frontier Hotel would be from the seventies. The casino stopped featuring headliners in its showroom in 1981 when Siegfried and Roy began appearing there in a show called "Beyond Belief." Most showrooms stopped featuring headliners during the eighties and the ones that kept them either got rid of opening acts or booked cheap (and presumably low-paid) performers for that slot. These days, you usually get one guy and if he's a comedian, there's not even an orchestra on the premises.

Some of the ticket prices strike me as rather high and inconsistent. George Carlin gets $54.50 a seat (does he still have Dennis Blair opening for him?). Elton John is $100-$250. Jerry Seinfeld charges $75-$150. Tom Jones is $70 and Dennis Miller is $79. Howie Mandel is $60. Ray Romano tickets are $90. Don Rickles, Steve & Eydie, David Spade, Damon Wayans, Hall & Oates and Dana Carvey all want $70 a seat. And Tony Bennett is about to play a limited engagement at the Golden Nugget where tickets will start at $200 each. Of all these, the best entertainer is probably Carlin.

I don't know what it cost to see Robert Goulet with Nipsey Russell opening for him but it was a lot cheaper than most of these, even adjusting for inflation. I wish I'd been going to Vegas in those days. Even in the eighties when I began regular visits, I caught some pretty wonderful shows for pretty reasonable prices.

But those days are gone. The hotel from which the above postcard came is now the oldest one on The Strip. It opened in 1942 as The Last Frontier, built on the site of one of the first Vegas casinos, a place called The Pair O' Dice. It eventually became just The Frontier and is now The New Frontier — a shabby, unkempt establishment that no one's betting will be there this time next year. (Howard Hughes owned it for a time and legend has it that Hughes never set foot in the place, even though he was living across the street in The Desert Inn. Smart guy, that Howard Hughes.) I won't be sorry to see the building go but there's something sad about losing Old Vegas.

• Posted at 12:22 PM · LINK