Hostess (princess)

1970-1975

The doorman was a knight in armor; the maître d’, a prince; the dining room hostess, a princess … Each and every one of the 900 or so employees at Kings Castle, even the phone operators, wore a costume while at work.

Kings Castle, the brainchild of Nathan “Nate” S. Jacobson, debuted in Incline Village on Lake Tahoe in Nevada in 1970. The work uniforms were just another extension of the English royalty motif that permeated the resort.

Eye-Catching Fashion

The costumes boasted vibrant colors — deep orange, Gainsborough blue, gold and silver — and , according to their famous designer Michel Fresnay, a “mod-medieval” style  (Reno Evening Gazette, July 7, 1970).

Fabrics primarily were crêpes and an imported French silk cotton used on both its shiny and matte sides. Embellishments included pearls, brass, horsehair, gold braided headdresses for the men, tiaras for the women, faux chain mail and leather.

Maître d’ (prince)

Tommy Papagna recalled wearing a court jester costume, a long-sleeved lavender top with a large collar and cuffs shaped like crowns, both yellow. He was a roulette, 21 and baccarat dealer in Kings Castle’s casino during 1973 and 1974.

“I liked wearing the costumes because they were comfortable,” he said (March 2018).

Not Just Any Designer

Jacobson chose and commissioned Fresnay to create the costume series. Fresnay, age 39 at the time and a graduate of the Beaux Arts Academy in Paris, France, had become renowned after designing Marlene Dietrich’s gowns for her appearance at the Olympia Theatre in 1962. 

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Clockwise: Vegas Vic, Bucky Buckaroo, Last Chance Joe, Wendover Will

1940s-Today

They’re one of a kind. Dazzling. Captivating. Iconic. Pure Nevada.

They’re the mascots of the state’s gambling industry. They graced the facades of casinos in the gambling meccas, and some still do. Rather than merely signs, they’re like citizens, but atypical ones — larger, brighter and cartoony.

Here’s a look at four of them:

1) Vegas Vic (Las Vegas)

The 40-foot-tall cowboy resulted from an advertising campaign the Walter J. Thompson firm launched in 1946 that boasted “fun in the sun” and a smiling cowboy whose thumb directed toward Las Vegas. The ads appeared in Esquire, the Saturday Evening Post and other national magazines. A year later, a different agency personified in print the Western figure with the name, Vegas Vic, and a voice saying, “Howdy, pardner.”

In 1951, artist Pat Denner designed the Vegas Vic who’s become the icon, and the Young Electric Sign Company manufactured a neon version of him for the Pioneer Club. The cost was $90,000 (about $835,000 today). For the more than half-century since, Vic has remained at 25 E. Fremont Street, greeting passersby with “Howdy pardner, welcome to downtown Las Vegas.” He even gave an interview to the Las Vegas Sun in 2000.

2) Wendover Will (Wendover)

After Vegas Vic, in 1952, the team of Denner and the Young Company, created Wendover Will, another cowboy but much taller at 63 feet, for the State Line Casino in Wendover. Named after the border locale and the casino’s founder, William Smith, the neon mascot’s job was to lure travelers off of U.S. Highways 40 and 50 (today, Interstate 80) and into the gambling club/hotel/café/bar.

In 2001, when the casino’s ownership changed to the Wendover Nugget, 9-ton Wendover Will was donated to the city. He was restored and relocated to Wendover Boulevard in the heart of town, now West Wendover, where he stands today.

3) Bucky Buckaroo (Reno)

In the 1940s, caricaturist and commercial artist, Lewis “Lew” Hymers, designed Bucky, aka Nevada Bob, yet another cowboy but this one in the shape of Nevada.

Three or four versions were built, which hung on the marquee in the front and back of the Nevada Club at 224 N. Virginia Street. One of the Buckys, owned now by Will Durham, founder of the Nevada Neon Project, is 9 feet high and 7 feet long.

Unlike many of the neon signs manufactured in Nevada at the time, Bucky Buckaroo was made out of porcelain enamel rather than being painted, which helps it “look pristine,” Durham said. It’s impressive for 70 year old.

4) Last Chance Joe (Sparks)

Last Chance Joe is 35 feet high, 8 feet thick and 5,000-plus pounds! Roscoe “Duke” Reading designed the statue, and R.H. Grosh Scenic Studios in Los Angeles built it.

To construct him, workers first used structural angle iron to create his frame then covered it with chicken wire. Next, they applied many, many, many layers of papier mâché followed by two coats of celastic. Lastly, they painted and sprayed Last Chance Joe with plastic.

Once completed, they shipped him in three parts on a Southern Pacific flatcar to Sparks, where he was installed outside of Dick Graves’ Nugget for the 1958 grand opening.

Today, Last Chance Joe can be seen outside of the Sparks Heritage Museum at 814 Victorian Avenue.

Ever-Lasting Symbols

Whether in an original or new location, these vibrant, fun characters, along with many of their peers, endure as symbols — of a U.S. industry once unique to Nevada, gambling, and in turn, of the state’s historic identity. As well, today these icons boast the well-deserved label, Americana.

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Photo of Bucky Buckaroo by Brian Ball, I Shoot Reno

Sandra Giles

1956

The Fremont in Las Vegas commissioned a large oil painting that depicted a “lady of chance” to grace a wall in its casino.

The hotel’s press agent, Shelly Davis, asked aspiring actress Sandra Giles to pose for the piece for renowned artist, Philip Paval.

During the hotel’s grand opening, the piece of art was unveiled. It showed the voluptuous Giles nude, lying provocatively on her back with gambling chips scattered on and around her body.

“I don’t want to be a Marilyn Monroe! I want to be an actress. I didn’t pose that way! I wore a bathing suit,” the blonde 22-year-old yelled.

Giles slapped Paval then Davis. The painting’s debut had unexpectedly evolved into a jackpot for the roughly 100 news people there covering it.

Paval explained that, yes, Giles’ intimate body parts had been covered during the sitting, so he’d used his imagination and artistic license to render her naked.

An irate Giles sued the Fremont and Paval for $250,000, claiming she’d suffered “mental anguish” and “humiliation” when the picture was revealed.  She later claimed the attention she’d garnered from it led to her breakup with boyfriend, Harold Lloyd, Jr., a famous actor and singer.

The story was reported nationwide and even made the front page of the Los Angeles Times.

About three weeks later, the Fremont’s president, Ed Levinson, paid Giles $15,000 in silver dollars during a news conference as settlement. (Paval had received $2,500 for creating the piece.)

This outlandish sequence of events, though, had been a stunt that Davis dreamed up and staged and Giles, Paval and Levinson had been in on. This scoop came out years later in the brief biography, “From Hooker to Hollywood,” by Michael Piller.

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1931

The Big Baccarat Table in Nice (France) was sketched by cartoonist, Pierre de Régnier, aka Tigre (1898-1943), and ran in newspapers with this description:

“From left to right: Mme. Ephrussi, the French multimillionaire widow who lives at the gaming tables; Andre Citroen, the rich automobile manufacturer, whose fortune represents motor cars; Yves Mirande, the famous playwright whose wealth comes from the plays he writes, such as The Man in Evening Clothes, Ta Bouche, One Kiss. Next to Mirande is the Aga Khan, ‘spiritual leader’ of the Indian Mohammedans, whose fortune is represented by elephants and jewels; then a prosperous Paris man-dressmaker, with his different gowns.

Behind are Erskine Gwynne, Henri Letellier, with his Paris Journal, and Jefferson Davis Cohn, with some of his Pullman cars. On the middle of the table a banco is ready. There is a champagne bottle, a Citroen car, the Chasseur de Chez Maxime, an elephant belonging to Aga Khan and the manikins.”

The heyday of the Monte Carlo casino resort in Monaco was The Roaring Twenties, but that was due in large part to the solid foundation laid by François Blanc decades earlier, who stepped in after its seven initial, turbulent years.

The casino actually began in 1856 as two different gambling houses that later were merged into one. Various owners and cash flow problems plagued the enterprise until Blanc, in 1863, acquired the exclusive right to offer games of chance in Monaco for the next half-century. He’d successfully run a casino in Bad Homburg, Germany for more than 20 years.

Blanc’s successful vision for Monte Carlo was to offer an array of sought-after amenities, to be enjoyed all in one facility. 

“The Monte Carlo casino-resort had emerged as the world’s gambling playground of choice — the only place for hundreds of miles to play legally at cards, dice and wheels. After people lost enough money, they came for glamour and luxury, gambling was secondary,” wrote Mark Braude in Making Monte Carlo: A History of Speculation and Spectacle.

When Blanc died in 1877, his secretary, Count Antoine Nicolas Bertora, ran the gambling for the next 17 years.  Subsequently, Blanc’s daughter, Camille Blanc, assumed control until she fell ill.

By 1922, however, the casino desperately needed another visionary. It was failing in the wake of World War I due to inflation, austerity measures, restricted travel and an influenza pandemic.

Enter Rene Leon. Similar to Blanc, Leon reinvented Monte Carlo by offering amenities and events that catered to the whims and desires of the period’s trendsetters, such as F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Thus, according to Braude, the casino experienced “its Jazz Age heyday as the infamous playground of the rich.”

For a glimpse inside this legendary Monaco gambling house, here are 3 artistic portrayals, presented in order of creation:

The Casino at Monte Carlo / Rien ne va plus! (Nothing goes wrong!), 1890 (oil on canvas)

French painter, Jean-Georges Béraud, created this oeuvre at age 45. He’s renowned for his numerous paintings depicting life in Paris and the nightlife of high society during the Belle Époque.

At the Roulette Table in Monte Carlo, 1892 (oil on canvas)

Norwegian artist, Edvard Munch, painted this piece at age 29 after having spent much time playing and becoming obsessed with roulette in Monte Carlo. “Once you’ve penetrated the enchanted castle of Monte Carlo you’re already bewitched — and you’ll return — you have to,” he noted in his journal (Making Monte Carlo, April 2016).

Gamblers in the Casino at Monte-Carlo, 1910 (color lithograph)

French artist, Georges Goursat, known as Sem, also famous during the Belle Époque, is known for his caricatures, many of prominent French socialites. He crafted this piece at age 47.

Popular Subject

Over the years, the Monte Carlo, inside and out, inspired various types of art. Here are the links to 4 more portrayals:

1) Sketch of Gambling at the Monte Carlo Casino, 1920s, by Wynn

2) Dream of Monte Carlo, 1930, by Max Beckmann

3) Gambling in Monte Carlo, On the French, 1934, by Everett

4) Casino at Monte Carlo, 1969, by LeRoy Neiman

Sources

Photos from Wikimedia Commons

Interior of the Bonanza Club in Reno, Nevada

1944

The debut of the Bonanza Club* on October 3, 1944 in Reno, Nevada, was doubly significant. Formerly the Barn Club, the new casino was regarded as one of, if not, the finest in the state; about $300,000 (roughly $4.2 million today) were spent on redecorating and equipping the place. It also was one of the first gambling houses in The Biggest Little City to have been funded and run by ex-Nevada mobsters.

Underworld Involvement

Financing to redo the property was provided allegedly by Moe Dalitz, Detroit mobster, and Frank “The Prime Minister” Costello, boss of New York’s Luciano (later Genovese) crime family. Their straw man, Wilbur Clark, who’d purchased and fronted the El Rancho Vegas in Las Vegas (1941) for Costello and mobster Meyer Lansky, bought the Bonanza Club in 1944 and ran it for only months. He would move on to open the Monte Carlo club in Las Vegas (1945), the Desert Inn, also in Vegas (1950), and the Tropicana casino and the International Casino, both in the 1950s in Havana, Cuba.

Mobster Louis “Lou” Wertheimer** officially took Clark’s place at the Bonanza Club the same year it opened. A former member of the Chesterfield Syndicate in Detroit, Michigan, he had numerous past arrests and gambling experience running casinos in home town Cheboygan and Detroit, Michigan; Cleveland, Ohio; and West Hollywood and Palm Springs, California. Wertheimer would sell his ownership in the Bonanza in advance and move to operating the Mapes casino when it debuted in December 1947.

A Look Inside

The elaborate Bonanza Club boasted a gaming section with two roulette, two craps, three 21 and one Big Six games along with 24 slot machines. It also contained a 58-foot bar with a full length mirror. In the 100-person dining room, lunch and dinner were served, and entertainment featured a two-piano ensemble or a violin-piano duo.

October 10, 1944 newspaper ad

Tom Douglas of California — designer of Ciro’s and LaRue’s, well-known Hollywood nightclubs — followed an 1890s theme to embellish the Bonanza Club’s interior and exterior. Inside, the walls and carpet boasted a “bonanza red” color, contrasted by the white ceiling frescoes. Lace curtains, gilded lamp fixtures from San Francisco’s Barbary Coast and plate-glass mirrors in heavy gilded frames further adorned the space.

“The most striking attribute of the Gay-Nineties motif club were the wall fixtures, eight-foot tall nude ladies who appeared to be holding the ceiling in place,” wrote Al W. Moe, in his Nevada Casino History blog. These busty figurines were custom made by a Beverly Hills firm, “which employed live girls to model and from whom were cast the delightful likenesses, completely charming as well as stunning, wrote Raymond Sawyer in Reno, Where the Gamblers Go!

The Architect

The club was built by Thomas E. Hull, the mobster-affiliated owner of Hull Hotels, which operated hotels it constructed, including the El Rancho in Las Vegas (until Clark and Detroit mobsters took over) and numerous non-gaming ones in California.

Initially, Hull, his sister Eunice Lewis and Larry Tripp co-owned the Bonanza Club. Tripp previously had helped open the El Rancho and, also in Southern Nevada, the Last Frontier Hotel (1942).

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* The Bonanza Club was located at 207 N. Center Street, Reno. The property today is part of Harrah’s Reno Hotel and Casino.

** Lou’s eldest brother, Myrton “Mert”  Wertheimer, ran the gambling at the Riverside Hotel starting in 1949 and bought, with a co-investor, the entire property from George Wingfield in 1955.

Photo from the University of Nevada, Reno’s Digital Collections

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