Howard Hughes, 1973

1968

Howard Hughes, billionaire industrialist, received the Nevada Gaming Commission’s blessing to buy the Stardust hotel-casino in Las Vegas for $30.5 million and moved forward with the acquisition.

He already owned five such properties on the Strip — the Castaways, Silver Slipper, Frontier, Sands and Desert Inn. (Adding the Stardust would’ve given him control of about 14 percent of Nevada’s gambling volume.) 

A few days before the deal’s closing, however, the U.S. Department of Justice asked Hughes to delay it by 90 days so it could investigate whether the Stardust purchase would violate the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

Instead, he abandoned the transaction altogether.

August 5, 1943 Help Wanted ad

1937-1970

Card dealing was a male-dominated profession in Nevada’s casinos until 1937, when Harolds Club, in Reno, put the first woman at a 21 table to deal.

Co-owner Harold Smith previously had been hiring women, mostly family members, for other jobs on the gambling club floor — chip stacking and roulette wheel spinning, for instance — but never dealing.

Smith’s concern had been that women would be too-easy targets for cheaters and, consequently, the casino would get fleeced. (A total of up to 10,000 silver dollars sat on the various tables during a typical night.)

Smith, though, soon realized women could hold their own, and both genders enjoyed gambling with a “pretty, smiling dealer” (Lima News, Aug. 4, 1943).

With World War II and the resulting shortage of men to employ, women filled the gap at Harolds Club. By that time, 90 percent of the employees there were female. Smith launched a school to train women to become professional dealers. They learned how to deal cards, spin wheels, rake in chips, compute payoffs and watch for cheaters’ tricks, among other skills.

Smith advertised in local newspapers’ Help Wanted sections for recruits in ads indicating, “Men Please Do Not Apply” (Nevada State Journal, Aug. 4, 1943). The pay was $25 per week while attending his school, then up to $60 per week when hired. Students ran the gamut, and included housewives, divorcées (women living in Nevada the requisite six weeks to get an expedited divorce), telephone operators, school teachers, sales clerks, stenographers and newspaper reporters.

By 1943, casinos throughout Northern Nevada were hiring graduates of Smith’s school.

Slow To Change

It was the opposite in Las Vegas. Although women worked as dealers in nearby towns such as Henderson and North Las Vegas, none did on the Strip or in downtown Sin City until 1970, nearly three decades later.

That year, the Silver Slipper, a Howard Hughes-owned casino, hired the first — 47-year-old Jean Brady, who had years of experience from dealing at other Silver State gambling houses.

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1950s Las Vegas Showgirl

1958-1961

The debut of topless showgirls in Las Vegas roused disapproval — not surprising given it occurred early in the “Leave it to Beaver” era.

The Stardust was the first to abandon bras and tops, doing so when it unveiled a show featuring the Bluebell Girls for the hotel-casino’s 1958 grand opening on The Strip. Other casinos soon followed suit, leading to an outcry from a Nevada-based Catholic Bishop, Robert J. Dwyer.

Dwyer condemned such shows as “filth,” a “flouting of morality” and a threat to “the public decency of our commonwealth.” Via letter, he clarified to all Nevada priests that no Catholic, resident or tourist, “is permitted to be a spectator of such entertainment” as doing so constituted a sin and “there is no vacation from the Ten Commandments” (Reno Evening Gazette, July 6, 1961).

In response to this flak, some properties, like the Dunes, vowed to continue their risqué shows because the public enjoyed them whereas others, such as the El Rancho Vegas, instructed their performers to cover up.

Later that year, two Nevada senators introduced what became known as “the bare bosom bill,” which would ban casino acts involving nudity. The state legislature killed it.

Migration North

This quelled the issue until about three years later, when two Reno hotel-casinos boarded the bandwagon, putting on shows featuring partially clothed women — the Riverside’s “Le Crazy Horse Revue” and the Golden Hotel’s “Playmates of Paris.”

Dwyer reiterated his views.

“If nothing is done to correct the situation, the state may well find itself in the position of a moral leper, and leprosy demands drastic treatment,” he said (Reno Evening Gazette, July 6, 1961).

The newly formed Nevada Gaming Commission, in its first meeting, in 1961, raised the controversial subject. The members doubted gambling regulation extended to showgirls’ exposed breasts so they referred the matter to Nevada Attorney General Roger Foley.

Foley volleyed back with an opinion the commissioners likely didn’t want to hear, that the agency holds the power to ban casino shows involving nudity. Governor Grant Sawyer approved of Foley’s determination. For whatever reasons, though, decades of commissioners since have let bare bosoms be.

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