Word: townes
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Vegas, it's the Landmark," boasted TV spots for Howard Hughes' 476-room Landmark Hotel, whose qualifications for uniqueness include "the world's longest swimming pool" (240 ft., shaped like a hot-water bottle) and the only high-altitude casino (on the 29th floor) in town. The usual spate of show-biz celebrities turned up to collect souvenir plastic orange blossoms at the opening -but Billionaire Hughes was nowhere to be seen...
...Vegas is sick, of course, but in a curiously moralistic way that perhaps reflects its Mormon background. Pawnshops such as Stoney's (motto: "Hock It to Me, Baby"), the oldest in town, cheerfully advance money on wedding rings and spare automobile tires. They do draw the line at false teeth, eye glasses and hearing aids. Although prostitution is technically illegal in Las Vegas, an estimated 1,000 whores ply their profession on The Strip...
There are, in fact, two Las Vegases -real and illusory. The real one is a sprawling, dusty desert town in which sex education is banned in the public schools, 50-odd people committed suicide last year, and the crime rate is higher than Chicago's. A Methodist Church survey shows that 27% of Las Vegas residents are divorced. The illusory Vegas is the one that will be seen by 14 million visitors this year. Like giant mirages created by the heat vapors of the get-rich-quick furnace, the neon-lit, freon-cooled sand castles of The Strip rise...
Hell on Earth. Penderecki based The Devils of Loudun on both Aldous Huxley's historical essay and John Whiting's play The Devils. The libretto sketches the facts surrounding the torture and execution of a Jesuit priest in a 17th century French provincial town. Sister Jeanne of the Angels, prioress of St. Ursula's Convent, asks Father Urbain Grandier (sung by Baritone Andre Hiolski) to become the cloister's confessor. When the worldly, sensual priest declines the offer, Sister Jeanne has a series of hysterical sexual hallucinations that soon infect other nuns in the convent. Eventually...
International Clientele. At nearby Nelson Point, the mining group dredged a deep-water channel, which can now accommodate 68,000-ton ships and is being enlarged to handle two 100,000-ton vessels at a time. The 3,500 workers who built the town, the mine, the railroad and 220-acre shipping facilities earned wages that were high by Australian standards because of the hardships and isolation-$80 a week for a shoveler, $100 for more skilled workers. Today the company employs...