![]() The first, which disputed the land's title, was thrown out of court in 1946, as was the second. ![]() Originally slated to be finished in six months, the hotel, which would have been across from McCarran Airport, was dogged by a trio of lawsuits. Sinatra, according to the plan, would broadcast from the studio himself as well as persuading other radio stars to do the same. Designed by Los Angeles architect Paul Williams (who would later design other Las Vegas landmarks including the La Concha motel, whose lobby building is now part of the Neon Museum), the hotel would feature a radio studio which would be linked via wire to stations around the country. Work on the resort was started under the name “Nevada Desert Inn,” but in April 1946 Sinatra's attorney Albert Tearlson announced that Sinatra was buying into the project, which was now known as the New Horizon. ![]() Sinatra returned to Las Vegas five years later as an investor in an “ultramodern” hotel being built on the Los Angeles Highway (today, the Las Vegas Strip). 3 Sinatra was paid $15 a day for his services during the shooting. After the singer, standing in the middle of a vocal group, crooned a few bars of the verse, the film cuts away to a riveting conversation between the romantic leads about the benefits of moving to the low-tax, always-friendly state of Nevada, although the focus shifts back to the stage for the song's conclusion. It was Sinatra's motion picture debut, and it was not an auspicious one. In 1941, as a 25-year-old singer with Tommy Dorsey's orchestra, he appeared briefly in the Paramount film Las Vegas Nights, performing “I'll Never Smile Again” with the band. ![]() 2 The conflict-and Sinatra's ultimate retreat from Nevada gaming-demonstrates the lengths to which gaming regulators were willing to go to forestall external pressure that could upset the delicate balance between the sometimes-unsavory elements on which the industry relied for capital and expertise, and the state's need for respectability.įrank Sinatra's first association with Las Vegas came early in his career. The confrontation between Nevada gaming and Sinatra culminated in the singer surrendering his license rather than defend himself against a complaint alleging that he had permitted numerous gaming violations at the Cal-Neva, and that he had “maligned and vilified” members of the Gaming Control Board (GCB) and Gaming Commission. Tensions between Sinatra and the state's gaming authorities boiled over in the summer of 1963, as regulators, fearful of federal pressure, could not countenance Sinatra's open embrace of alleged organized crime figures, the most notorious of whom was Chicago's Sam Giancana. 1 Looking back, one can't imagine a more ideal pairing than Frank Sinatra and Nevada gaming.īut in reality, Sinatra had a fraught relationship with the Nevada gaming establishment and even his Sands co-owners. In 1961, he became the majority owner of Lake Tahoe's Cal-Neva Lodge. Sinatra was more than a singer for hire at the Sands by 1963, he was (on paper at least) a nine percent owner of the resort. The zenith of Rat Pack Vegas might have been getting comped into the late show at the Copa where Frank, and maybe Dean and Sammy, would be onstage. This was a time, it is imagined, when the personal touch dominated, when guest satisfaction and table drop mattered more than corporate profits. Indeed, the pre-corporate period (1940s to 1966) is often referred to as the “Rat Pack era,” in reference to the cohort of performers who coalesced around Sinatra at the Sands in 1960. Today, there are few personalities more intimately connected with the classic era of Las Vegas casinos than Frank Sinatra.
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