Word: stripping
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...center of town, "Glitter Gulch," the greatest concentration of inert gas in the world, now casts a neon glow for 30 miles into the desert. Along Highway 91, on which the Californians stampede into Vegas in their Cadillacs at the rate of 20,000 each weekend, lies the Strip, a celebrated three-mile stretch of real estate bounded by seven enormous, luxury hotels. The Strip represents a capital investment of $40 million, and is incorporated (in order to escape municipal taxes) as two townships. Their names: Paradise A and Paradise...
...penny slots to big-time poker games in the back rooms. In Paradise (A or B), the atmosphere is more subtle: air conditioning, deckle-edged swimming pools (with extravagant poolside displays of bathing beauties), fine food at fair prices, top entertainment, well-irrigated golf courses. But all are mere Strip teasers. In Paradise (A or B) as in the Gulch, gambling is the main dish...
Behind the flashy facades of the big hotels along the Strip is a lugubrious lot of wealthy owners. Some are thoroughly respectable, but some are not. The Desert Inn is run by amiable Wilbur Clark, a hotelman with a large following, in partnership with a syndicate of erstwhile Cleveland racketeers. The luxurious Sands, scene of the recent Hayworth-Haymes extravaganza (TIME, Oct. 5), is owned by tiny, wizened Jake Friedman, who made his stake operating gambling casinos in Texas. The sprawling Flamingo was built by the late Bugsy Siegel before Bugsy met his untimely, slug-ridden end in Hollywood...
Dancing Goats. In the past three years Las Vegas has become such a glittering entertainment center that Variety now finds it necessary to keep a full-time correspondent in residence. On any night, the Strip offers the tourist such big names as Danny Kaye, Lauritz Melchior, Betty Hutton, Ezio Pinza, Milton Berle and the Jose Greco Dancers. The stars, of course, are just an added attraction, gold-horned Judas goats who lure the herds of tourists to the gaming tables. "We're just the highest-paid shills in history," says Tallulah Bankhead. "Why do we do it? Dahling...
Paint Every Two Years. For all its fiscal stability, Portugal is still a poor country where initiative withers in the gloom of resignation. The people who grow Portugal's olives, make its port, strip its cork, net and pack its sardines, mine its rich wolfram ore deposits, live in limpidly beautiful villages with white-painted cottages (a 1949 Salazar decree requires a new paint job every two years) amidst some of the world's grandest scenery. But Dictator Salazar has never balanced his people's household budgets. Poverty and disease are widespread. Illiteracy...