American Experience (1988) s18e04 Episode Script

1
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NARRATOR:
At mid-century,
Las Vegas was by far
the strangest city in America.
A city built in
the middle of the desert,
where the main commercial
district was comprised
not of offices or banks,
but hotels.
Where businesses operated
24 hours a day,
raking in enormous profits
from gambling
An activity outlawed
everywhere else in the nation
And where many of
the leading citizens
were neither politicians
nor priests,
but convicted criminals
and professional racketeers,
men with long-standing ties
to the mob.
Founded as a railroad town
back in 1905,
Las Vegas had made its mark
as a place of illicit desire,
a refuge from the laws
and values that held sway
in the rest of the country.
But now, as social revolution
swept the old rules aside,
the forbidden allure of Sin City
would begin to fade,
and Las Vegas would
lose its way.
Amazingly, when it rose again,
the city would no longer be at
the fringes of American life,
but at its very heart.
COOPER:
Each period in our history
has some city
that embodies
the spirit of America,
whether it was Boston at the
time of the American Revolution,
or New York City at the times
of the great immigration
to America.
And now in our culture
that is marinated
in electronic entertainment,
where there is this kind of
immediate appeal to the senses,
to immediate satisfaction,
to immediate experience,
to sensation over thought,
to the present over the past
or the future,
well, Las Vegas is the city
of the Eternal Now.
There is no place
that better captures
the spirit
of the American culture
For better and for worse
Than Las Vegas.
SMITH:
You can explore many of
the deadly sins here,
but none more so than greed.
In America, the ultimate
expression of capitalism
is that greed is good.
Las Vegas shows you
that greed is at least fun.
COOPER:
Las Vegas is based on
the commercialization
of all your desires.
No desire is taboo.
It's only a question of,
"How much does it cost?"
WOMAN:
It's the feeling
that you're so far removed
from people that
want to tell you what to do,
that it just feels free.
THOMSON:
It is the licensing of fantasy.
There is that opportunity, or
the illusion of the opportunity,
that you can change everything.
PILEGGI:
Secrets mean nothing.
This is not Wall Street
that operates on
an imbalance of information.
Here's a place where
if you've got a good idea,
you got to shout it out.
HICKEY:
It's the whole kind of
oasis effect.
It is this thing in the desert;
it has no rational
reason to exist.
The wastefulness of it
is very sexy.
MAN:
Okay, 60 seconds
to cue.
Okay, David, let's roll them!
Roll the trucks.
Okay, that's good,
keep going, keep going.
You're doing fine.
So, we're here to build the
world's largest birthday cake:
130,000 pounds
of cake and frosting.
Happy birthday, Las Vegas
At midnight,
we officially turn 100.
( cheering)
Good morning, everybody.
We turn 100 years old officially
in ten minutes.
MAN:
Okay, my name is Brian Averna,
I'm one of the corporate
executive chefs of Sara Lee.
We provided the cake
and the frosting tonight.
Are you ready?!
( cheering)
AVERNA:
It's going to come to you
frozen, but it might not.
We'll have 60 tables with
two volunteers per table
doing nothing but frosting.
They're just going to stand
there as if they're making
peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches.
And that'll happen
for the next 12 hours.
This is a big community event,
but it's also a pretty serious
undertaking.
Look at these people.
I mean, it's 1:00
in the morning.
You know, it's Vegas,
so 1:00 doesn't mean anything,
but there's kids here,
there's families that are here.
What a great way to be involved
in the centennial.
It's just nice
to see the community
pulling together and doing this.
This is awesome.
It's been a long time
since we've all
pulled together like this.
He's fourth generation
Las Vegas.
AVERNA:
There's 130,000 eggs
in the cake batter alone.
There's 24,000 pounds of flour,
36,000 cups of sugar.
I know that if you added
all the calories together,
we'd be around 23 million
calories for the whole cake.
We're close.
We've got seven hours,
and we'll probably do it
in six hours and 59 minutes.
Can you do a quick fix on this
before it collapses on us?
We have to get it done by
2:00, isn't the time?
We have a deadline.
Kick it up a notch, people!
Let's go!
45 minutes, can we do it?!
MAN:
Let's finish that cake!
MAN 2:
People have been asking me,
"Why such a big birthday cake?"
Well, you're only 100 once,
100 years old,
and to have anything less than
that would be very un-Las Vegas.
This has to be the biggest,
the best,
the greatest,
the most exciting
And that's what Vegas is.
This is symbolic of us.
( cheering)
CROWD:
Happy birthday to you ♪
Happy birthday to you ♪
Happy birthday, Las Vegas ♪
Happy birthday to you. ♪
( people cheering;
fireworks exploding)
But we think we went over
by several thousand pounds.
Because we went a little heavy
on the frosting.
Oh, my God
It's a very big piece.
That's way too much!
Now we have this terrific
birthday cake,
and the biggest party,
the greatest party
for the greatest city
in the history of the world.
ANNOUNCER:
Ladies and gentlemen,
we are now closed.
NARRATOR:
In 1960, Las Vegas enjoyed
a national reputation
as America's unofficial
mobster metropolis.
No other place in America
boasted such a rogue's gallery
of city fathers.
And perhaps none had more clout
than Moe Dalitz,
a man sometimes known as
"Mr. Las Vegas."
The onetime kingpin
of Cleveland's bootleg
whiskey racket,
former operator
of illegal gambling dens
in Ohio and Kentucky,
and a reputed player in
the national crime organization
known as the "Syndicate,"
Dalitz possessed a pedigree
tailor-made
for a place like Las Vegas.
At a time when no legitimate
enterprise in America
would have invested a dime
in a casino,
Dalitz had sunk
some of his dirty money
into a controlling stake
in the Desert Inn,
one of the very first
mob-operated resorts to be built
out on Highway 91,
the road that ran southwest
to Los Angeles.
Other mobsters followed,
and together they transformed
the desolate desert highway
into the famed Las Vegas Strip
The self-proclaimed
"Entertainment Capital
of the World,"
the premier gambling center
of the Western Hemisphere,
and the undisputed hub of
the place known to Americans
as "Sin City."
( applause and cheering)
"It's as though you walk through
a veil," said one local.
"You become a nonconformist.
"You enter an adult fairyland
where a dollar is not a dollar
and five dollars is a chip."
Thanks to Dalitz
and his associates,
what once had been
a remote western outpost
now drew some eight million
visitors a year.
GREENSPUN:
Remember, Las Vegas
would not be here today
but for these guys.
Without Moe and those guys,
there would have been no money,
there would have been
no expertise.
You know, you could have
all the money in the world,
but if you don't know how
to run the place, you get taken.
And, you know, they knew
how to look for the guys
who were going to take them.
They knew how to deal
with the guys
who were going to take them.
And they dealt
a little differently
than the people today
who are worried
about constitutional rights
and all that other
kind of stuff.
They dealt in their own way.
NARRATOR:
Over the years, Dalitz had also
proved a committed city builder,
spearheading countless
civic projects
and contributing thousands
to local charities.
As a journalist
would later put it:
"In Cleveland,
Moe Dalitz was a bootlegger,
but in Las Vegas, he stands
as an elder statesman."
SMITH:
If Las Vegas has a forefather,
in my opinion,
the key player is Dalitz.
He was a sharp operator and
a tremendous guy with a pencil.
I mean, he was
a great accountant.
He had diversified business.
He understood at an early age
that it couldn't always be
about bootlegging and gambling;
you have to diversify.
Dalitz was spreading out,
was buying real estate,
was getting into
other businesses.
Now, were all the businesses
legitimate?
No, I don't think so.
But the bottom line was
that Dalitz was
well ahead of the curve.
NARRATOR:
Now, in the fall of 1960,
Dalitz was looking to capitalize
on what promised to be
the city's biggest boom yet.
That September,
United Airlines had introduced
nonstop jetliner service
to Las Vegas,
slashing travel time
from the East Coast in half
and instantly making
Sin City accessible
to millions of Americans
who otherwise would
never have made the trip.
Suddenly, Dalitz needed
more hotel rooms
and for that he needed cash.
PILEGGI:
Las Vegas gets so popular,
gets so big, that the original
people who put it together
could no longer put it together.
They didn't have the money
to make it expand
the way it wanted to expand.
The men from Cleveland,
the men from New York,
they don't have
that kind of money.
MAN:
Mobsters built hotels
with what I call
"shoebox money."
They went to each other
and they said,
"I'm building a hotel
in Las Vegas.
Do you want to buy a share?
It's 50,000 bucks."
And the other guy pulls
the shoebox from under the bed,
opens it up and
counts him out $50,000 in cash.
It got to the point that hotels
were too expensive to do that.
You simply couldn't get
enough guys with $50,000
to build a $12 million hotel.
So they needed another
source of capital.
NARRATOR:
Dalitz knew just the person
to tap:
his longtime associate,
Jimmy Hoffa,
president of the notoriously
corrupt Teamsters Union.
The previous year,
Dalitz had convinced Hoffa
to invest
the union's pension funds
in a new hospital for Las Vegas.
Now, he urged the union leader
to make similar investments
on the Strip.
"If Moe told the Teamsters
to make the loan,"
said one observer,
"they made the loan."
Over the next several years,
Hoffa would draw on
the pooled retirement savings
of nearly 200,000 Union truckers
and longshoremen
to finance a spate of
hotel expansion projects,
including a nine-story addition
at the Desert Inn.
Teamsters' money would also
underwrite construction
of a Greco-Roman-themed resort
called "Caesars Palace"
Purposely spelled
without an apostrophe
to signal that the place
belonged not to a single Caesar,
but to anyone who wanted
to spend a weekend
living like a Roman emperor.
More hotel rooms, more guests,
more money dropped
at the tables and slots.
All of it would
eventually add up
to a dramatic spike
in the "skim,"
the undeclared and untaxed
earnings
that were collected
in the counting rooms
and then distributed among
the scores of "connected" owners
who held hidden interests
in Las Vegas.
PILEGGI:
Every city had its own guys
and that's the way they did it.
You could see where
the money came
for each of those casinos.
The Dunes was Saint Louis.
The Desert Inn was Cleveland.
Stardust was Chicago.
It was a town that had
the front-end guys,
the smiling guys
with the wild sport coats,
and then it had the other folks
who came to town.
And, of course, anyone in
the lobby on a Friday night
might notice that a crew
of New York mob guys came in
and got all the penthouse suites
and they were treated
very, very well.
Now, were they just gambling?
Of course not, they were
watching their store.
NARRATOR:
With Teamsters money
at their disposal,
it looked as though Dalitz
and his underworld cronies
had found a way to stay on top.
And with hundreds
of millions of dollars
in gambling revenues at stake,
Nevada authorities
left them there.
"We have no gangsters here,"
a state assemblyman insisted.
"We have qualified businessmen
who are in a recognized
industry: gaming."
Then, in early 1961,
President John F. Kennedy
appointed his brother Bobby
to the post of
U.S. Attorney General.
"A shudder went through Nevada,"
one reporter remembered,
at the prospect
that "the new administration
might crack down on hoodlums."
Las Vegans had good reason
to fear Robert F. Kennedy.
Just a few years earlier,
Kennedy had served
as chief counsel
to a highly publicized
Senate investigation
into the alleged links
between crime syndicates
and American labor unions.
And he had watched in disgust
as all but a handful
of the nation's most
audacious racketeers got away.
His loathing for Jimmy Hoffa
in particular
had since become legendary.
PILEGGI:
Kennedy felt that unions
had to be protecting people,
not exploiting them.
So I think he emotionally
responded to that.
The Teamsters Union was
very strongly influenced
by wise guys
from different cities.
Influence that the mob guys
had over that pension fund
was enormous, and I think
that outraged Kennedy.
NARRATOR:
Now, as Attorney General,
he vowed to collar
those who had so far eluded
the government's grasp.
Organized crime syndicates,
he told his staff, had become
"an insidious rot, infesting
the nation's innermost core."
And the putrid source was
the casinos of Las Vegas
Or, as one Justice Department
aide called them,
the Syndicate's
"Federal Reserve."
PILEGGI:
The FBI and the IRS
could never accept the fact
that a man like Moe Dalitz,
who was illegal in Cleveland,
could get on a plane
in Cleveland,
come to Las Vegas and be legal.
The FBI and the
The federal government,
the U.S. Attorney's Office,
they felt there was
something wrong with that.
You can't have one state
where being illegal is legal.
It just drove them nuts.
NARRATOR:
Over the next two years,
Kennedy's Justice Department,
together
with the FBI and the IRS,
waged an all-out war
on Las Vegas,
plotting raids,
planting illegal wiretaps
and scrutinizing the financial
records of every casino in town.
By 1963, they had succeeded
where every other
federal investigation
of Sin City had failed
and had managed to publicly
expose the skim.
SMITH:
A lot of facts came out that
linked the casino ownership
to the five families
of New York, to Chicago,
to Cleveland, Kansas City
and other places.
And the proof of history
has shown
that they indeed were taking
money out of the casinos.
NARRATOR:
For Las Vegas, it was
a public relations disaster.
All across the country,
newspapers ran story after story
about the pilfering
of casino profits,
estimated to be at least
ten million annually.
A book-length exposé called
The Green Felt Jungle
blasted the nation's pleasure
capital for its corruption
and became a runaway
best-seller overnight.
Meanwhile,
the Justice Department
handed out indictments
like penny candy,
hauling in some 600 organized
crime figures in 1963 alone.
Eventually, Jimmy Hoffa
would find himself
headed for the penitentiary
with a jury tampering conviction
on his head,
and Moe Dalitz would be battling
charges of tax evasion.
To some longtime residents
of Las Vegas,
"the Boys," as Dalitz
and his friends were known,
may well have seemed
beneficent city fathers.
But in the face of relentless
government scrutiny,
the city's alliance
with mobsters
was also fast becoming
a liability.
YOUNG MAN:
I'm watching TV
for about a year,
all I'm seeing is
Vegas, Vegas, Vegas.
Just wanted to come out here,
become a black jack dealer.
I was waiting tables back home,
got tired of it,
so I decided to come out here,
be a dealer.
Make a bunch of money.
Double down for less?
Good. Where do you
want this money at?
Good.
YOUNG MAN:
Image in my head was just
that everyone was getting rich
real quick.
I came out here, I thought
I was going to be a millionaire
within my first ten minutes
of me coming into Vegas.
They hype it up so much on TV
that, you know, you can't help
but come out here.
It's a challenge.
I don't know anybody out here;
back home I knew
a lot of people,
I could get a job real easily.
Out here, I had to actually use
my resources,
my skills to get a job.
I got a job at O'Shea's,
which is a break-in house
for new dealers
coming straight out of school.
My shift is 8:00 at night
till 4:00 in the morning.
I don't mind,
because I'm making money.
I mean, it's not even really
considered a job.
I mean, it is, but I don't break
a sweat, I don't do anything.
Sit there and make sure
everyone's playing all right,
keep track of the money
that's right there,
and that's pretty much it.
Vegas is unique.
It's different
than every other city.
It's like its own
little country.
Laws here are so slack.
It's not like anywhere else
in the United States.
You come out here, you could be
a totally different person.
You don't have to be
who you were back home.
It's a transit town,
so you meet someone,
you see them for two days,
if that, and they're gone.
You don't ever see them again.
That's why I kind of like it.
I'm trying to move back home
sometime, next couple years,
start a business.
I don't want to be out in Vegas
all my life.
I mean, I like the town,
but you can easily get trapped
inside Vegas,
do all the things
that you're not supposed to do.
You stay focused and then leave.
Just taking Vegas
like Vegas takes everyone else.
NARRATOR:
In the early hours of
Thanksgiving morning 1966,
a private train rattled
into a desolate crossing
in north Las Vegas.
From the trailing car emerged
one of the wealthiest men
in the world
The legendary
billionaire recluse,
Howard Robard Hughes.
In his youth, Hughes had been a
full-fledged American celebrity:
the dashing movie producer
whose exploits had provided
endless fodder
for gossip columns,
the record-breaking aviator
who had been honored with
a hero's ticker-tape parade.
But though only a few people
knew it, that man was long gone.
Plagued by chronic back pain
and hopelessly addicted
to narcotics,
Hughes had spent
much of the last three years
in near-total seclusion,
his mind careening
between rationality
and full-blown dementia.
Now he had come to Las Vegas,
his old stomping ground,
seeking tax shelter
for his riches
and refuge from the hounding
attention of the press.
Accompanied by a phalanx
of beefy Mormon caretakers,
he took up residence
at Moe Dalitz's place,
the famed Desert Inn,
where an old acquaintance,
Las Vegas Sun publisher
Hank Greenspun,
had reserved the entire
eighth and ninth floors
for his personal use.
One week passed then two.
But to Dalitz's dismay,
Hughes and his entourage
showed no signs of moving on.
GREENSPUN:
Never gambled
and his aides were all Mormon,
so they didn't gamble
and they didn't drink
and they didn't tip,
because they
you know, they didn't
need any of the services.
So it was a
it was a bust for the hotel.
So around Christmastime,
Moe called my dad and says,
"You got to get this no-good bum
out of here
"because my high rollers
are coming in.
I need those suites."
And in the middle of that
negotiation back and forth,
over a period of a few days,
either my dad or someone said,
"Well, why don't you
just buy the hotel?"
NARRATOR:
Hughes's bid for the Desert Inn
could not have come
at a better time.
Although the Cold War defense
boom had boosted employment
at nearby Nellis Air Force Base
and the sprawling atomic test
site to the north of town
and Las Vegas's annual tourist
tally was holding steady,
the furor over the mob had begun
to slow the city's roll.
Hughes was precisely
what Las Vegas needed
A well-respected entrepreneur
with one of the biggest
bankrolls on the planet
and an image that could
instantly redeem the city
from the stigma
of organized crime.
Seizing the opportunity,
Governor Paul Laxalt urged
the Gaming Control Board
to approve Hughes's
license application,
in spite of the fact that he
had failed to appear in person,
had declined to submit
to a financial background check
and had refused to be
photographed or fingerprinted
as required by Nevada law.
SMITH:
It's not too bold
a statement to say
that if he did not own
the governor's office
during the Laxalt
administration,
he certainly leased it.
He got favors
that no one else got.
And he was a guy with a past
that probably should
have been scrutinized;
but his presence
was so important
that it superseded
a background check.
NARRATOR:
On April Fools Day, 1967,
official title to the Desert Inn
passed from Moe Dalitz and
his partners to Howard Hughes.
"I have decided this once
and for all," Hughes declared
in a memo to his aides.
"I want to acquire even more
hotels and make Las Vegas
as trustworthy and respectable
as the New York Stock Exchange."
Cloistered round-the-clock
in his makeshift headquarters,
the eccentric billionaire
now began to collect
Strip hotels and casinos as if
they were snow globes or stamps:
the Frontier and the Sands
and the Castaways,
the Silver Slipper
A small casino
across from the Desert Inn,
whose revolving marquee-topper
reportedly disturbed his sleep
And the massive Landmark Hotel,
which officially opened
in July 1969.
Despite Hughes's reputation
for shelling out
without stepping out,
many of his guests are
still hoping for even a glimpse
of their elusive host.
But they won't find
that billion-dollar baby
in this five-and-ten-cent store.
( coins rattling)
He was the Wizard of OZ.
You never saw the man,
you never heard the man.
You you saw his minions,
and you weren't even sure
if they saw the man.
And it was a very weird,
weird deal.
What you felt was his money.
The guys who created Las Vegas,
the originals
They were powerful and rich,
but they could never cash out.
They could not walk away
from that profit.
They were now
in their 60s and 70s,
they wanted to leave some money
to their grandkids
and their families.
Howard Hughes comes in
with his accountants,
and they could
finally get rid of it
They could cash out.
Hughes has, by buying out
certain hotels,
retired some
of our more dubious characters,
for which we're very grateful.
NARRATOR:
To the outside world,
it looked as though
all of the mobsters were gone,
but that was just another bit
of Las Vegas's
dazzling sleight of hand.
Since no one
in Hughes's organization
had any idea how
to run a gambling operation,
they had kept most of
the mobbed-up managers in place.
Under their direction, the skim
had continued just as before,
only now Hughes was being
defrauded along with the IRS.
In casino parlance, it was known
as "cleaning out the sucker."
By the time the extent of the
plunder was finally made clear,
Hughes's buying spree
had hit a snag.
Barred from further purchases
by a pending antitrust suit
and rapidly descending
into madness,
Hughes had his aides spirit him
away from Las Vegas
on Thanksgiving, 1970,
exactly four years to the day
after his arrival.
Mr. Hughes
is on a delayed vacation
He's been delayed for 14 months.
And he decided he was entitled
to this vacation
after four years in the ninth
floor of the Desert Inn.
We had personal confirmation
from Mr. Hughes,
personal confirmation he's going
to return to Nevada,
because he's become a very
valued and respected citizen
of this state.
NARRATOR:
Although many of his properties
in town would remain
in his company's possession
for years to come,
Hughes never did return.
But his brief, bizarre sojourn
had nevertheless
changed Las Vegas forever.
We needed a man like Mr. Hughes.
We had some very bad,
unfavorable national publicity.
Since coming here,
our national publicity
has been far more favorable.
He has given us
what we deem to be
almost instant respectability.
SMITH:
I think Howard Hughes
played an enormous role
in the evolution of Las Vegas.
His man, Bob Maheu, says
that Howard Hughes didn't make
the new Las Vegas,
but he got it ready.
By bringing a brand name
that was not "Murder, Inc."
into Las Vegas,
Howard Hughes helped separate
the community from its past.
WOMAN:
Vegas used to be
mobsters, money and movie stars.
It's not like it used to be.
( sighs)
Now it's corporate.
It's a kiddie land.
Everyone comes with
their hundred-dollar bills,
with their shorts and gym shoes
and T shirts.
And they bring their children
and they go on roller coasters
on top of the casinos.
I came to Vegas in 1975 the
disco days, the wonderful days
And, you know, I wish I could
turn back the hands of time,
I really do.
When I first got here,
I was a cocktail waitress.
And, um, now I deal
a lot of the games
Not all of them,
but most of them.
But it's not a very good job
anymore like it used to be.
A friend of mine works in
the VIP Room at the Striptease.
And they needed another house
mom, so I said, "I'm willing."
I'm the den mother.
A lot of the girls are
detached from their families.
Some girls' families don't even
know that they work there
or that they're dancers.
A lot of them say that they're
cocktail waitresses somewhere.
You know, I cook for them
That's one
of the biggest things.
They come in and when they
see me, their faces light up.
They go, "Ooh, food!"
This is good, Cookie.
COOKIE:
Thank you.
( phone ringing)
House mom.
COOKIE:
They're not there
to be touched and fondled.
Most of the girls,
they're dancers.
They're not prostitutes,
they're not
There are some that do
their own little thing,
but on the whole,
there's a lot of good girls.
I'm hungry.
COOKIE:
There are codes
in the Striptease
and in all the strip places.
You cannot do grinding.
You cannot let touching
of any body parts.
Vice comes in to check
periodically.
If they see something,
the girl gets ticketed,
the manager gets ticketed.
They actually have to go
to court, it's like a ticket.
Now I can climb
the pole even barefoot,
no problem.
Oh, yeah, I can,
too, definitely.
It took me, like, a year
to be able to do that.
I tell everybody
it takes a year
to learn how to dance
I mean, just to even know
how to move your hips
and how to be sexy,
how to look sexy,
how to walk in these shoes sexy.
They had to tell me,
"You got to put one foot
right in front of the other one"
they told me.
And that's how you learn
how to walk.
I didn't know any of that.
And now I'm addicted, I love it.
It's bad
it's a drug.
It is, stripping is like a drug,
it's addicting.
Every time I try
to find another job,
I always come back, always.
Oh, yeah, them $8-an-hour jobs.
You get your paycheck
and you're like
"I made this in one night.
"I made more than this
in one night.
Work my butt off
for two weeks and
that's all I get?"
COOKIE:
I have seen girls fall
into the drugs,
into the alcoholism.
Um, they're more
interested in that;
a lot of their money
goes towards that.
And you know what?
Your heart goes out to them,
almost.
( heavy beat playing)
You know,
you want to know sometimes
what makes them go
in that direction
What happens that they
can't follow a straight line.
I worry about most of them
I really do.
( music continues)
GOLDBERGER:
You know, for me,
the insane, brazen
wildness of the whole thing
is always very exhilarating
when I first get there.
And then, because it is
sort of superficial
and it is without
real substance behind it,
it wears thin very quickly.
It's kind of as if you were
force-fed chocolate mousse.
First taste is really good,
but then there comes a time
when you actually want
some nutrition.
NARRATOR:
By the late 1960s,
the primly conservative values
of postwar America
were folding faster than a poker
player with a busted hand.
Over the previous decade,
the nation had been assailed
by protests
and assassinations
and government lies,
and millions of Americans
were now turning their backs
on the status quo.
In Sin City, the turmoil
barely registered.
GOLDBERGER:
The '60s were about
serious things
and Las Vegas was about
escaping from serious things.
And Las Vegas was much less
on the map in the '60s.
I don't think it's that
Las Vegas was too busy
to pay attention to the '60s,
I think it was that the '60s
were too busy
to pay attention to Las Vegas.
And so it kind of just
went chugging along.
NARRATOR:
Of course, the times were
changing in Las Vegas, too,
but they were headed
in the opposite direction.
In the rest of America,
the goal was to get rid
of the establishment.
In Las Vegas, the establishment
had only just arrived,
in the form of corporations,
like Ramada and Hilton,
who had finally decided
to take Howard Hughes's lead
and cash in on
the lucrative casino business.
COOPER:
The cultural revolution kicked
the doors open inadvertently
for the mainstreaming
of gambling
in a culture where
Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor
replace, uh,
Bob Hope and George Burns.
Then you have
a cultural opening,
and people who make money
off of culture say,
"Hmm, maybe gambling
and floor shows
"and even stuff that has kind
of sexual connotation to it,
"maybe we could put that
on our commercial agenda.
"Maybe we can invest in that
"and people aren't going
to go running away
with their hands
over their eyes."
ELAINE WYNN:
The positive for Las Vegas
was we finally were getting
access to capital.
It had been not the case here
until the age of Howard Hughes
and slightly thereafter.
So there was very again,
another liberating move
to be in Nevada at that time,
because all of a sudden
doors were opening.
NARRATOR:
Now that Wall Street had come
to Sodom and Gomorrah,
there was no longer any reason
to put up with the mob
or their questionable
business practices.
The Justice Department
today announced
the indictment of 15 men
Some said to be members
of organized crime
For skimming
more than two million dollars
from casinos in Las Vegas
over nine years.
NARRATOR:
Over the next several years,
Nevada authorities
would investigate
a half-dozen Las Vegas casinos
and, working in concert
with the U.S. Justice Department
and the IRS,
forcibly sever their ties
to organized crime.
By the mid-'80s,
the last of the mobsters
would be gone from the scene
and the keys to Sin City
would have passed
into the hands
of corporate America.
CUNNINGHAM:
You'll find many people
who will tell you
when they look back
they liked Las Vegas better
when the mob ran the city.
People felt like agreements
were always kept,
a man's word was sacred.
You knew where you stood.
If you didn't cross them,
they didn't cross you.
SMITH:
And Las Vegas, we have to
remember, was a smaller place.
It was a place where you could
walk into a casino
and people really
could know your name.
When people say,
"Was Las Vegas better
when the mob ran it?"
You know, it was smaller,
I mean, it was a small town,
and now Las Vegas
is a big is a big place
and that's the place
where corporations work.
CHORUS:
I'm on the top of the world
lookin' down on creation ♪
And the only explanation
I can find ♪
Is the love that I've found
ever since you've been around ♪
Your love's put me
on the top of the world. ♪
♪
NARRATOR:
For more than two decades,
Sin City had made
the visitor number one.
Now, that exalted position
belonged to the stockholders,
and Las Vegas's corporate
managers were hell-bent
on maximizing their returns.
ELAINE WYNN:
During the '70s,
we entered into an era
of corporate Las Vegas
Anathema to Las Vegas.
Now the bean counters
are running the places.
They are making it
dry and dreary
and they have no imagination,
and what happened to all
of the inspirational people?
Because now all they care about
is the bottom line.
NARRATOR:
The nearly 30,000 members
of the local Culinary Union
The bellhops and maids,
dishwashers, waiters and cooks
Were the first to feel
the squeeze.
In the face of layoffs
and steadily eroding benefits,
the Culinary struggled mightily
to hold its ground.
( people yelling)
MAN ( over loudspeaker):
I command you to disperse
from this area.
NARRATOR:
1976 saw the first
major citywide strike
in the union local's history.
And if it lasts a few days,
a lot of heads
are going to get hurt
'cause people are broke.
NARRATOR:
After 16 days, management
grudgingly agreed
to a wage increase
and a no-lockout clause.
But in retaliation
for the heavy financial losses
incurred during the strike,
hundreds of union members
lost their jobs.
TITUS:
People don't want to come
where they have to cross
a picket line,
or they don't
want to be reminded of reality
when they're in a place like Las
Vegas that's based on fantasy.
And people who are picketing,
that's about as real life
as you can get.
NARRATOR:
Returning visitors immediately
discerned a difference
in the newly corporate
Las Vegas.
The once world-class service
was now notably sub-par.
Worse still, the buzzing energy
of the old Sin City
seemed strangely muted.
Glitzy had given way to bland.
And the one-time pinnacle
of nightclub cool
had somehow become
the last plateau
on the downward slope
to cultural obscurity;
a place where the most
cutting-edge entertainment
was Elvis Presley's
astonishing comeback
at the International Hotel.
SMITH:
We're talking about a community
that had become out of step with
what people thought was hip.
Las Vegas, Las Vegas ♪
The sweet taste of life
when you're there ♪
Las Vegas, Las Vegas, you can
feel the magic in the air. ♪
SMITH:
When things got punk,
Las Vegas pulled up
its polyester leisure suit
and went, "Gee whiz, fellas,
you want to hit
the blackjack table?"
Las Vegas ♪
No one does it better! ♪
( music ends)
NARRATOR:
However dowdy or sleazy or tame
Las Vegas
may have seemed to visitors,
it was still the only big city
in America, outside of Reno,
where a person could legally
sit down at a blackjack table
and throw his life savings away.
But now, even
that distinction disappeared.
CRONKITE:
The monopoly Nevada
has enjoyed since 1931
as the only state to have
legalized casino gambling
ended at 10:00 a.m. today,
when the wheels spun, the cards
dropped and the dice rolled
in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
NARRATOR:
With some 37 million people
living less than
a gas tank away,
Atlantic City easily won out
against the 4½-hour
airplane ride
into the heart of the Mojave.
Before long, the New Jersey
resort's 11 casinos
would be drawing
more than twice as many
annual visitors as Las Vegas.
Competition, combined
with a national recession
that slowed tourism everywhere,
sapped Las Vegas's
drawing power.
By 1980, visitation was down
and Sin City was in the throes
of a full-fledged
identity crisis.
( siren blaring)
The losing streak
only continued.
In November,
the seven-year-old MGM Grand
The 26-story
Hollywood-themed resort
that had once
drawn rapt attention
as the largest hotel
in the free world
Made headlines yet again,
this time as the site
of a disastrous blaze
in which 85 people died
and some 700 others
were injured.
Three months later,
the Las Vegas Hilton
also went up in flames,
cutting short the lives
of eight hotel guests.
SMITH:
The fires were
an international news story
that had a tremendous
negative impact on Las Vegas.
It gave people a reason to doubt
whether we had our game
together,
whether we could be
a modern city
or whether we weren't just some
kind of island or backwater.
NARRATOR:
Finally, in 1983, TWA
canceled its nonstop service
between Las Vegas and New York.
With a total metropolitan
population now
of more than 450,000 people
and an annual tourist tally
that still topped ten million,
Las Vegas was in no danger
of disappearing.
But it was tempting to conclude
that its spectacular rise
had reached a natural limit.
Like an aging showgirl,
Sin City seemed an unlikely
candidate for a second act.
Those who were inclined
to count the city out, however,
didn't know a thing
about Las Vegas.
Whether it's gambling,
you know
On the tables
or in the slot machines
Or whether it is this
opportunity to start over
To better yourself, different
from where you came from
Everybody's looking for
that next chance in life.
And I think Las Vegas offers it.
A chance
to do something different,
a chance to do something better,
a chance, period.
Hey, you just want
to grab the suitcase?
WOMAN:
I was with my baby's dad,
and then one month
he decided to fall apart,
which left us with an eviction.
So I thought I'd come out here.
My son's godfather
lived out here.
So, why not give it a try?
Our lives fell apart
in California.
I was living from friend
to friend, week after week.
When this hardship took place
and we came out here,
we lived with
my son's godfather.
There was 14 people
in a three-bedroom apartment
upstairs.
It was okay for the first
couple of days, um
but after a while it started
to play on everybody's nerves.
That's why I reached out
for, um, shelters,
places that I could get help.
OLDER WOMAN:
Come on in.
The two primary goals
that we focus on
have to do with your desire
to find full-time work
and permanent housing.
Okay, you have
already applied for TANF?
Mm-hmm.
How about food stamps?
Someone's supposed to call me
back tomorrow morning.
So they have
given you your card,
your food card?
Yes, the Nevada
Quest card.
Okay.
Why, out here in Vegas,
do you need all these cards
to have a job?
A health card
You know
Many jobs in town
are connected with the casinos,
and people handle money
and alcohol
and things like that.
And so, in order to do that
they need to do
background checks on people.
Because even to
work at McDonald's,
you need some kind of card.
Yeah, it's not
a user-friendly town
when it comes to
you know, people being able
to just come to town
and get a job.
WOMAN:
The most important thing for us
is that you're
not on the streets.
And if
if you continue
to find people
that would take you in,
that doesn't last very long.
We get about 200 calls a month.
( people conversing)
WOMAN:
I came out here
thinking a job was just
going to fall into my lap.
You see on TV,
everybody's smiling,
everybody's got a job,
everybody
Seems like it works out.
You come from California,
come up here
thinking you're going to find
a better life, a better way,
it's not exactly
what it's cut out to be.
I guess I was naive.
STEVE WYNN:
Las Vegas is probably the
greatest example on the planet
Including New York City
Of 24-hour, seven-day-a-week,
violent hand-to-hand
commercial combat.
Here in this city,
the players are lined up
along the Rialto out there,
teeth bared, lips curled back,
fists clenched
saying, "Stay in my place;
don't go in that one.
"Look at what I've got for you.
Isn't this great?"
Carnival midway
"Step right up!
"See the girl
turn into a gorilla.
"See the chicken dance.
Come in here."
NARRATOR:
In 1988, after a 15-year
construction slump,
a highly anticipated new resort
called the Mirage
began to rise up on the Strip.
Not since
Bugsy Siegel's Flamingo
nearly half a century before
had a Las Vegas hotel-casino
generated quite so much buzz.
Local curiosity
had been mounting
ever since the man
behind the project
Longtime Las Vegas resident
and casino owner Steve Wynn
Had gone public with
his somewhat mysterious plans.
"They don't need
another casino in Las Vegas,"
Wynn had told one writer,
"but they sure as hell could
use a major attraction."
The Mirage, he promised,
would be the Sin City
equivalent of Disneyland.
The business
that had built Las Vegas
and fueled its growth
for more than half a century
was about to be turned
on its head.
COOPER:
Historically, within
the internal organization
of a resort,
the casino was king,
and the showrooms, the rooms,
the bars, they existed
merely as appendages
of the casino
It didn't matter
if they made a profit or not.
They were the lure
to get people into the casino.
Well, Steve Wynn
changed all that,
much to the detriment
of the tourists' pocketbook.
What that meant
was that while it would cost
the tourists a lot more
because the day of
the $20-a-night room was gone
and the free meals
were being phased out.
He upgraded the level of luxury
to a point where
a middle-class person
could come to Las Vegas
and feel like he really
was a millionaire.
REPORTER:
"Pounding the pavement"
took on a new meaning today,
especially at the Mirage Hotel,
where thousands of feet
jockeyed for space
to see the new playland.
NARRATOR:
100,000 people
had been expected to show up
for the resort's grand opening
in November 1989.
200,000 actually came.
Inside of a few weeks,
the Mirage surpassed Hoover Dam
as the leading tourist
attraction in Nevada.
( people cheering and shouting)
With three separate wings,
29 stories
and a total
of three million square feet,
the Mirage
was the largest resort casino
on the face of the earth
a complex so sprawling
that it resembled
not a resort but a city.
So many service workers
were needed to run the place
Some 4,000 in all
That Wynn had had to cut
a historic deal
with the Culinary Union
just to open his doors.
But it wasn't the size
of the Mirage
that really captured attention.
It was the resort's
exuberant celebration
of sheer stupefying spectacle:
a 20,000-gallon marine tank
stocked with pygmy sharks,
stingrays and trigger fish;
an ecologically authentic
tropical rain forest;
and a 54-foot man-made volcano
that periodically spewed steam
and flames into the night sky.
HICKEY:
He understood that how it looked
is important.
I would say,
the most admirable thing
about all of Steve's projects
is they really do detail,
you know, they really do detail.
The volcano in front
of the Mirage is there
because
when they were setting it up,
they were doing
time-motion studies
on how long did it take you
to get your car on
the busiest night of the year?
So, 20 minutes
to get your car, right?
But if the volcano's
going off every 15 minutes,
you're not waiting
for your car
You're hoping your car won't get
here until the volcano goes off.
See, this is very refined
service-economy thinking.
NARRATOR:
Even the entertainment
broke the mold.
There was no run-of-the-mill
headline act here,
no second-rate celebrity
backed by a row
of scantily clad dancers.
Instead,
the Mirage showroom featured
a pair of flamboyant
German illusionists
named Siegfried and Roy,
their hand-raised pride
of white tigers
and a twice-nightly,
jaw-dropping magic show
that would play to sold-out
houses for years to come.
GREENSPUN:
Steve came and he realized
that if you build it
and you build it better
and you create a little demand
where maybe
there wasn't demand
Make it a little harder
to get into
Everyone will want
to get into it
and everyone want
will pay more to enjoy it.
And he built these fantasy lands
for adults,
you know, with these volcanoes
and the Siegfried and Roy show
and, you know, porpoises
and everything that people
would just love to be part of.
Did they pay more for it?
Sure, they were willing
to pay more for it
He understood that.
Give them something they
can't get anywhere else.
NARRATOR:
The Mirage had miraculously
made Las Vegas new again,
and it had done so just in time.
Hi, everybody, I'm
NARRATOR:
By the 1990s,
any residual stigma
that still clung to gambling
in America had dropped away.
As early as 1994, there
were lotteries in 37 states,
legal casinos in 23,
and nearly the same percentage
of the gross national product
was spent on gambling
as on groceries.
At decade's end, the most
profitable casinos in the world
would be located
not on the Strip,
but on Indian reservations
all around the country.
The implications of the trend
were not lost
on Las Vegas's resort owners,
entrepreneurs like Bill Bennett
and Kirk Kerkorian,
who had spent years building
bigger and better casinos.
To survive as
a tourist destination now,
Sin City would have
to up the ante.
MAN:
The mirage opened
a lot of financial doors
for Las Vegas casinos.
What it did also was
spark a kind of "Grapes
of Wrath" attraction
about Las Vegas,
that there were these people
who needed the work,
were starting to come out here,
not only from south of the
border, not only from California
but from all over.
And they were coming here not
simply because of the Mirage,
but because Las Vegas
was growing again.
WOMAN:
Kevin, who's finishing
to bus his table.
He's sorting his china.
Okay, and Myra's setting up.
She's covering everything
so that the food stays hot.
Here we have our main kitchen.
This is where you'll be
putting in orders.
The Culinary Training Academy's
original design was
to fill a labor need
in the market.
We train people, entry-level,
job-specific, for this industry.
Uh-uh, uh-uh.
That's going to go
in the dirty dishes.
TRAINER:
In Las Vegas, you can embark
upon a career as a food server
which, anywhere else
in the country,
is not considered a good job.
You can provide very well for
your family in these positions
that, in other places,
are not considered good jobs.
Pull the tray back
behind his head.
There we go
"May I? May I?"
WAITRESS:
May I take
your plate?
There we go clockwise.
Okay, clockwise, clockwise.
Clockwise.
There we go, excellent.
TRAINER:
We train people in the technical
skills: how to carry a tray,
how to say "May I take
your plate"
as opposed to "Are ya done,"
you know?
How to correctly pour
a cup of coffee
so that it comes within
a quarter-inch of the top.
You got to announce,
"Coffee?"
"Coffee" and pour, okay?
Would you like more coffee?
TRAINER:
Our industry demands
a level of customer service,
of guest service that is so high
that a large part of what we do,
in addition
to the technical skills,
is train people on focused
eye contact, how to relax,
how to smile, how to communicate
with the guests.
Do we put the butter
on the French toast?
STUDENTS:
No.
Do we put syrup
on the French toast?
STUDENTS:
No.
Do we put powdered sugar
on the French toast?
SEVERAL STUDENTS:
No.
Yes, a sprinkle
of powdered sugar
on the French toast.
TRAINER:
My goal, when I send people out
into the industry
is that they communicate
to the guest
that each and every guest
is important not just to me,
but that they're important
to my hotel,
to my restaurant, to my city.
We are driven by tourism
and if the guest stops coming
back, we stop having employment.
The only difference between a
plain omelet and scrambled eggs
is shape.
The guest service
that should be communicated
is that each and every guest
is valuable,
that you're valuable,
that you're appreciated,
that you're a wanted part
of our day.
You are the reason
that we're here.
Las Vegas is well-known
for reinventing itself.
We're very good at adapting.
I mean, how else could
we have survived out here
in the middle of this desert
with nothing else around?
Who would ever imagine it would
become what it is today?
So we reinvent ourselves
to accommodate
whatever comes along.
In just about 15 hours,
this building, the once-grand
Dunes Hotel and Casino
will be demolished
in what's billed
as America's most spectacular
architectural implosion ever.
Your decision
to blow up the Dunes,
is it part of a larger effort
to do away with
the old Las Vegas
and reshape Vegas
as something else?
It's part of Las Vegas
doing what everybody else
in the entertainment business
is doing in the world today,
and that is keeping up
with the changing tastes
of the public.
Everybody has become more
and more highly expectant
and things that would've gotten
a "wow" or a jazz ten years ago
draw a yawn today.
And if Las Vegas doesn't move
along like the movie industry
Las Vegas is not going to be
the exciting place
that it has been in the past.
And it is as you can see,
it's moving along.
TONY BENNETT:
Oh, the good life ♪
Full of fun ♪
Seems to be the ideal ♪
Mm, the good life
lets you hide ♪
All the sadness you feel ♪
NARRATOR:
Between 1989 and 2005,
many of the city's most iconic
landmarks
The Dunes and Sands,
the Hacienda
and even the Desert Inn
Would be leveled,
making way for
what would come to be known
as "the New Las Vegas."
It's the good life ♪
To be free
and explore the unknown ♪
THOMSON:
I think there's an impulse
in the construction
and reconstruction of the city
that is very much something
that comes from Hollywood
sound studios
whereby you build a set,
and Friday you finish with it,
Monday you want a new set.
And the European sense
of construction
and the Eastern American
sense of construction
is that you build
for the centuries.
And in the West,
but particularly in Las Vegas
and Hollywood, I think,
there is this notion that you
build for what you want now.
GOLDBERGER:
Las Vegas is a place built
on the idea of escape
and if you believe
you're about escape,
then you can't be hemmed in
by anything,
including your own past,
so I think Las Vegas
treats its past
the way it wants its visitors
to treat their pasts in effect:
to forget them
and to just have a good time.
Well, I mean, Vegas
has done for architecture
what, you know, what Renaissance
painting did for painting;
it rendered it mobile
and ephemeral.
I mean, you know, if it doesn't
work here, it goes away.
You know, if you build it and
it doesn't work, it goes away.
Buildings nothing is presumed
to be permanent.
NARRATOR:
They seemed to materialize
almost overnight,
like the outsize LEGO creations
of an unnaturally large child:
the 4,000-room, Knights of the
Roundtable-inspired Excalibur,
outfitted with cartoonish
turrets, towers and spires
and the pyramid-shaped Luxor,
home to the world's largest
atrium
and a 40-billion-candlepower
spotlight
that astronauts reported as
clearly visible from space
the pirate-themed
Treasure Island,
where a rousing maritime
extravaganza was performed
six times nightly on
a 65-foot-deep man-made lagoon
fronting the hotel
and the new MGM Grand,
a massive hotel-casino-
entertainment complex
that drew as many
as 10,000 visitors a day.
These would soon be followed
by dazzlingly elaborate replicas
of New York City and Paris,
Lake Como and Venice.
In the end, there would be
more hotel rooms
on the corner of Flamingo Road
and the Strip
than in the entire city
of San Francisco.
HICKEY:
Everything here
is here to be seen;
there's nothing here
to be looked at.
The architecture
is not self-conscious
about being architecture.
This doesn't suffer
from Edifice Rex.
Uh, you know, when I first
came here, you know,
I had some friend
from New York was here
and they said,
looking at the Luxor
and he said,
"Well, this is just a joke."
And I just had to say,
"Well, you get it, don't you?
"you think everybody else
thinks it's a real pyramid?
Of course it's
a ( no audio) fake pyramid."
ROTHMAN:
What Las Vegas does
is make you feel special
by not threatening you,
by affirming who you are.
If you walk into the Paris, and
you say "bonjour" to somebody
and they say "bonjour," and
you say, "Comment allez-vous,"
and they say, "I'm Eric
from Orange County,
and that's all the French
I speak."
The difference between Venice
and the Venetian
is it's cleaner,
it's a little bit less noisy
and it has all the amenities.
So it takes the world
the way it is
and makes it the way you would
have it if you were in charge.
SMITH:
I think Las Vegas has done
a great job of selling itself
as acceptable
mainstream experiences.
You know, it's interesting
A generation ago
people defined Las Vegas
in very moralistic terms.
I mean, there were those
who liked it
because it was kind of cool
and exciting,
and then there were
a whole lot of folks
who cast aspersions on it.
THOMSON:
I think everybody
in the world feels
they ought to try to get here
just to see what it's like.
And a lot of people,
if you were to say to them,
"What's your definition
of the great life?"
would say without irony,
without hesitation,
"Well, a great weekend
in Las Vegas.
"That's got the lot.
That's the package."
NARRATOR:
By 1999,
Las Vegas was drawing some
37 million tourists annually,
from all over the world,
eclipsing even
the holy city of Mecca
as the most visited place
on the planet.
GOLDBERGER:
At a time when cities are forced
by certain economic
and cultural pressures
to look more and more alike,
when it's getting harder
and harder to figure out
what differentiates Dallas
from Atlanta, say,
Las Vegas is one American city
that still feels distinct.
But reality will force it
in another direction
because as cities grow,
they inevitably change.
It is in fact becoming
a more traditional city,
more like other places.
But it can't admit that
to the world
or it won't be Las Vegas.
( woman speaking Spanish)
WOMAN:
For years, if I'm on an airplane
and they ask me what I do
in Las Vegas
and I tell them "a principal,"
they say, "Oh, there's not
schools in Las Vegas."
"Well, we are the fifth largest
school district
in the United States."
We are not able to open schools
fast enough
to handle the amount of children
that are coming into our city.
GIRL:
Ready, set go!
WOMAN:
Last year, they opened,
I believe, 12.
I think this year, it's anywhere
between ten and 11,
and I know that they've said
next year there might have to be
up to 18 new schools open.
But there's also
a lot of turnover,
and that makes stability
for children
and instructional programs
more difficult, I think.
WOMAN:
I started this school year
with 27 students
and probably 18 of them
were here from day one
and are still here today.
The rest of them are all new
and several have moved on.
Sometimes, children
we'll get new students
who've been in four schools
already in one year,
so that's difficult
as a teacher.
You feel for those children,
that there's not more stability
for them.
So, you know what new school
you're going to?
Yeah, it's across from my house
but they my dad,
he didn't tell me
what the name is but I saw it.
Do you know what the
you saw it?
Yeah, it's kind of
I don't like that.
I just like this school.
Oh.
Okay, today for journal we're
writing about what you would do
if everyone in your family
forgot your birthday everyone.
TEACHER:
I think a huge impact
that the 24-hour city has on the
children is, in a lot of cases,
they go home after school
and no one's there,
because that's when their
parents are working.
That impacts what I try to do
with them,
primarily with homework.
They they go home
and they have a lot
of other responsibilities,
they're watching
younger siblings,
and so homework doesn't always
take a priority.
Jobs that are available
here in Vegas
are often decent-paying jobs
that one can acquire without
very much education at all,
education in the valley
is not really high-priority.
( kids shouting)
And especially children,
when they get to high school,
they know that they
can go get a job
valeting cars like Uncle Bill
and make a decent living
without finishing high school.
I try to do what I can
and I promote education
with them.
I often ask them, you know,
who thinks they want to go
to college,
and many hands are raised.
So if we can
just keep instilling
that importance of education
as they go through schooling,
we'll reach a few of them.
NARRATOR:
By the dawn of the 21st century,
the phenomenal success
of the new Las Vegas
had transformed what was once a
remote and exotic desert outpost
into the fastest-growing city
in the United States
A place where tens of thousands
of jobs were created each year
and 60 new streets named
each month,
and an average of more than
a thousand prospective residents
moved into town each week.
Improbably, the city
that had long been a refuge
from mainstream America
had become, all at once,
the last best place
in the country to find it.
COOPER:
I think, in many ways, Las Vegas
is the most American of cities,
and it's a real irony.
People used to come to Las Vegas
to get away from America.
And all those jobs
and all those careers
that people thought were safe
and secure in the heartland
and the rust belts, et cetera,
have disappeared.
So history has had a good laugh
because Las Vegas turns out
to be one of the best places
to come to work
and to get a career
and to get a union job
and to get a living wage.
So you actually come
to Las Vegas
the way you used to come
to Detroit.
TITUS:
You know, we've had the fastest
growing senior population,
school age population, Hispanic
population, Asian population,
fastest growing city,
fastest growing small town
and fastest growing
rural community.
That's a lot of fastest.
Growth is good for many reasons.
It brings lots of jobs,
it brings diversity,
it brings excitement,
it brings money,
but there are also downsides
to that, of course.
You know, the tail begins
to wag the dog,
and the number of people
outweigh the infrastructure
that serves them,
and so you get more traffic,
you get more crime,
you get bad air.
CUNNINGHAM:
The mindset is
to get it quick, get it now,
at any cost,
with absolutely no regard
for consequences.
There's an awful lot of waste.
And when you hear
about the issues with water
and homelessness and the lack of
parent involvement in schools,
it makes you stop and ask,
where are the priorities?
SMITH:
There isn't a lot of sympathy
in Las Vegas.
We can talk about how many
philanthropists we have here
on the strip and downtown
in the casino business,
but the fact is
this is a very tough community.
We don't give more
than most communities do.
It's it's kind of the old
libertarian ethic of the west.
I mean, you are pretty much
on your own.
If you're looking for
a well-knitted social net,
you're not going
to find it here.
GREENSPUN:
There is a reckoning coming.
I'm not smart enough
to know the answer;
I certainly know the question.
But we're going to have
to come up with an answer,
a balance, if you will, between
how much we are going to pay
or be willing to pay
to make this
a grand and glorious place
to live for people,
so that we can continue to make
it a grand and glorious place
for people to come visit.
We've never had
that problem before
It is coming to a head.
COOPER:
What Las Vegas needs
or doesn't need as a city
depends on whether
you live here or not.
If you don't live here,
then you don't need much more
than the Las Vegas strip,
do you?
You could literally pare away
the rest of Las Vegas
and 95% of the tourists wouldn't
care and wouldn't notice.
Now, the other million
and a half people who live here,
that's a different story.
( confetti guns pop
and crowd cheers)
MAN:
Happy birthday, everybody.
( siren blaring)
WOMAN:
Happy birthday, Las Vegas!
( marching band
plays parade music)
Happy birthday, everybody.
( music reaches climax)
( drummers continue rhythm)
CUNNINGHAM:
I think Las Vegas always finds
a way to succeed
because I think people
are eternal optimists.
I think people need to believe
that there has to be a pot of
gold at the end of the rainbow;
you just haven't found it yet.
And Las Vegas encourages you
to come here
and see if you can find it.
HICKEY:
It's just promise, you know,
and it has to do with the idea
that you don't bet on the past,
( chuckling):
you know, you bet on the future.
There is a kind
of structural optimism
built into gambling cultures.
I mean, it's not, like,
stupid optimism,
like everything's
going to be all right,
but it's sort of
practical optimism
( lowers voice):
like whatever happens,
I can handicap it.
And that's just part
of the culture.
I mean, you you can't
have gambling without optimism.
SMITH:
I think there will
always be a part
of the American psyche and soul
that is very much Las Vegas.
Our country is headed
more toward Las Vegas
than away from it.
But I think the people
who run the town
will always make sure
that we're out ahead,
banging the right drums and
shaking the right tambourines
to make this a wilder place
than the nation as a whole.
Captioned by
access.wgbh.org
TONY BENNETT:
Oh the good life ♪
Full of fun ♪
Seems to be the ideal ♪
Mmm, the good life ♪
Lets you hide all the sadness
you feel ♪
You won't really
fall in love ♪
For you can't
take the chance ♪
So, please, be honest ♪
With yourself ♪
Don't try to fake romance ♪
It's the good life ♪
To be free and explore
the unknown ♪
Like the heartaches ♪
When you learn
you must face them alone ♪
Please remember ♪
I still want you ♪
And in case you wonder why ♪
Well, just wake up ♪
Kiss the good life good-bye. ♪
( music ends with gentle finale)
There's more about Las Vegas
at American Experience Online.
Relive the atomic age in Nevada,
explore the growth of Las Vegas
through an interactive map,
and send postcards to a friend.
All this and more at pbs.org.
American Experience
is made possible
by the Alfred P. Sloan
Foundation,
to enhance public understanding
of the role of technology.
The foundation also seeks
to portray the lives
of the men and women engaged
in scientific
and technological pursuit.
At Liberty Mutual Insurance,
we do everything we can
to help prevent accidents
and make America a safer place.
At the Scotts Company, we help
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If there's a better business
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please let us know.
Funding for this program
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