The Lost Days of Las Vegas Nights
Neon looks so beautiful in black and white.
This story was covered in Episode 5, Heaven or Las Vegas.
Everyone thinks Bugsy Siegel came up with Las Vegas. There’s a famous scene in the 1991 biopic Bugsy where he gets out of the car in the middle of the desert to pee and is suddenly struck by the idea. “It came to me like a vision”, he says, “like a religious epiphany.” He’s standing in the middle of nothing, picturing everything: the neon, the casinos, the tourists. Later, he’s seen talking to Meyer Lansky, feverishly trying to get this whole-cloth concept out of his head:
"I have found the answer to the dreams of America. What do people always fantasise about? Sex, money, romance, adventure. I’m building a monument to all of them… The Flamingo. I’m talking about a hotel. I’m talking about Las Vegas, Nevada. I’m talking about a place where gambling is allowed, where everything is allowed. The whole territory is wide open. I’m talking about a palace, an oasis, a city.”
This makes for great cinema. But it’s bullshit.
In the opening credits of 1941’s Las Vegas Nights, you see a street full of casinos with neon signs, crawling with tourists - a full four or five years before Bugsy had anything to do with it. The Flamingo didn’t even open until 1946.
Warren Beatty as Bugsy Siegel in ‘Bugsy’ (1991), seen here supposedly dreaming up the concept for Las Vegas by himself in the mid-1940s.
Las Vegas in 1941, as it already existed at least four years before Siegel became involved. Opening shot of ‘Las Vegas Nights’ (1941).
Where Bugsy is a great film that dramatises a popular myth, Las Vegas Nights is a bad film that documents a forgotten truth. To actually watch it today is both boring and fascinating at once. It comes from a time - a specific period of months - in which a confluence of factors existed that would not exist a year later, and in which the popular image of Vegas was different in ways that now seem completely alien. It took me a bunch of research to figure out what I was even looking at and how to make sense of the the world it existed in.
Oh, and it also has Frank Sinatra in his first ever role. Some bad films just have immortality thrust upon them. This one is so mediocre that it’s a miracle we’re still talking about it today. They just happened to run the cameras at the right time and in the right place, and they just happened to cast the right guy in a small role they probably barely thought about.
This doesn’t even make sense. “You do as you please” means the same thing as “anything goes” - or is that meant to be the joke?
Las Vegas Nights is often thought to be the first film made in Las Vegas. This isn’t quite true, but it may as well be. You could definitely call it the first “tourism ad for Vegas” film. It’s a familiar enough genre. We’ve all seen the Griswolds’ Vegas Vacation and so many others. The town itself at first glance also looks close enough to the place we all know: neon, gambling, etc.
But then then are surreal moments that don’t seem to make any sense at all. Like when Bill, new in town, attempts to go to a bank in the morning. He finds it has louvered, swinging doors, like a saloon. And these doors are not locked. Instead, a cowboy stands there:
[BEGIN EXCERPT] [IN CAMERA]
COWBOY: ”The bank ain’t open yet.”
BILL: ”Well, the doors are open.”
COWBOY: ”Shucks, we ain’t locked a door in Vegas in 20 years.”
BILL: ”Is that so? Mighty friendly little town you have here!”
COWBOY: ”Yeah.” (Pulls out a gun.) “And we aim to keep it that way.”
[END EXCERPT] [END IN CAMERA]
Banks don’t lock their doors? What kind of Vegas cliché is this? There was nothing like that in Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2. And what’s with the cowboys? In the very first scene, you see cowboys everywhere - riding their horses down the main street, past casinos and into a nightclub, tying them up in the corner of the bar then heading across the room to get a drink.
It turns out that this was a time in which the Nevada Chamber of Commerce were genuinely trying to convince 1940s audiences that Las Vegas was three almost contradictory things at once:
a time capsule of the cowboy era (hence “The Last Frontier of the Old West” in the opening titles);
a neon gambling oasis with a vivid nightlife, and;
a friendly small town where everyone knows your name.
And apparently, there was some truth to this juggling act of meaning. Vegas was still a small town at this point; the population in 1940 was 8,500. Those who lived there in this era really do remember that everyone would say hello to you on the street.
To figure this all out, I had to watch a 2022 documentary called The City of Las Vegas: The Forties.
The story told here does not feature a moment of divine revelation bestowed on a single gangster. Instead, Vegas in 1941 is revealed as the product of many different things that just happened to convene in one place at one time:
Gambling - fully legalised in Nevada since 1931, with California cracking down on it since 1938;
Alcohol - prohibition repealed in Nevada in 1933;
The Army - had just opened Nellis Air Force Base nearby in order to bomb the shit out of the desert, and the presence of a large number of soldiers in the area meant high demand for;
Sex workers - and;
Nightlife - see also “Alcohol.” Meanwhile;
Movie stars - begin to visit Las Vegas for vacations and photo ops, and also for;
Divorces - Nevada has liberal divorce laws, and the 1939 Ria Langham and Clark Gable split makes Las Vegas famous as “the divorce capital of the world.” Meanwhile;
Organised crime - begins infiltrating Vegas through the race wire, and all this is exacerbated by;
The end of the Depression.
And into all this comes Las Vegas Nights.
Further complicating things is the film’s release in specifically March 1941, which means that:
This was shot during World War II, but is not a wartime film - the war has begun in Europe but the attack on Pearl Harbour is nine months away, so America is not yet involved;
Las Vegas exists in a recognisable form, but the Strip does not - the film’s setting could be easily mistaken as a primitive Strip today, but it actually takes place on Fremont Street. The Strip began with the opening of the El Rancho resort just two weeks (!) after the release of Las Vegas Nights;
Frank Sinatra’s career has only just begun - while by this stage he’s had a few hits with the Tommy Dorsey band in 1940, he is not considered much more than their “boy singer.” And so his cameo here is not treated with much importance. This is also because we’re still in an era when;
Bandleaders, not singers, are considered to be the real stars - and this was a time when studios were trying to translate the dance bands into box office draws. Therefore, Tommy Dorsey is featured prominently in a speaking comedic role while Sinatra is not. (This bandleader-as-frontman era was largely ended by Sinatra’s star power changing the game for music generally, just years later.) Also;
The film does not take itself particularly seriously - because it is a musical comedy that has no idea it will turn out to have this kind of historical value, nor that that value will derive largely from the association with Sinatra; and meanwhile, in much the same way, Sinatra has no idea his life will become so intertwined with Las Vegas; and also, nobody has any real idea what Las Vegas will become.
A poker machine in the form of a ceramic statue named ‘Fickle Fanny’, her name spelt out in neon, is one of the most aesthetically pleasing things in the film.
All these different social and circumstantial factors collide in one historic scene, as Sinatra makes his only appearance to sing “I’ll Never Smile Again.”
He’s not “The Voice” at this stage. He’s buried under Jo Stafford and the Pied Pipers, just one of many singers with Dorsey. On top of that, two characters talk over most of the song.
Future Sinatra films would feature characters talking over him for either comic or dramatic effect. None would genuinely talk over his singing, genuinely not considering it important - ever again. Also, check out what they actually say.
[BEGIN EXCERPT] [IN CAMERA]
SINATRA: (singing) My heart would realise that our romance is through… (music fades out)
NORMA: Isn’t that lovely?
BILL: I’ve heard Tommy play that number a thousand times and I never get tired of it.
NORMA: Why? Do you come here that often?
BILL: No, I’ve got three radios at my ranch. One in the bedroom, one in the living room and one in the barn.
NORMA: You’re not serious, are you?
BILL: About the radios?
NORMA: No, about being a rancher.
BILL: Well, is there anything wrong in that?
NORMA: No, I think it’s marvellous, only - well, don’t tell me you were raised on a ranch.
BILL: Oh, no. As a matter of fact, I came here to see Boulder Dam. That was two years ago. I haven’t got around to it yet.
NORMA: I can’t imagine anyone staying two years in the same place.
BILL: Well, that’s because you’ve never lived in Nevada.
NORMA: Nevada, with its miles and miles of colourful sand and purple sage. Vivid sunsets and brilliant, moonlit nights.
BILL: No income tax, no inheritance tax, no sales tax. In other words, no taxes.
NORMA: You sound like a Chamber of Commerce pamphlet.
BILL: That’s where I read it. But kidding aside, you know what they call this place?
NORMA: No, what?
BILL: The friendliest little city in the world. And it really is. Why, even I know everyone in town by their first name. That is, uh… almost everyone.
NORMA: My name’s Norma. Norma Jennings.
BILL: My name’s Bill Stevens, William for short. Hiya, Norm.
NORMA: Howdy, Will.
SINATRA: (singing, music fades back in) Within my heart…
[END EXCERPT] [END IN CAMERA]
Sinatra is the third singer from the left.
The friendliest little city in the world. You’d never hear anyone say that about Vegas today. That wasn’t in The Hangover.
In the above YouTube upload of this scene, the dialogue is dismissed as “trivial.” I think it’s the most interesting part of the scene. They’re openly admitting that they’re reading out of a Nevada Chamber of Commerce pamphlet, all but directly pitching the state to the audience. Come here and you won’t pay tax. Hang out in seedy nightclubs where everybody knows your name. Listen to Sinatra. Even a year later, all this would have felt incredibly dated.
Promotional material for the El Rancho, first resort on the Strip, which opened two weeks after Las Vegas Nights was released in 1941. Source: UNLV Special Collections
Las Vegas Nights was one of the first things we watched for this show, and it turned out to have set the tone for everything that’s come since. It’s most interesting because of its context, what it reveals about its time and place. And Sinatra just happens to be involved in that context, like he was for so many other, so many wildly different interesting things.
We’re in a new kind of format that allows us to cover ground that Sinatra biographies don’t touch, didn’t have room to think about or don’t consider interesting enough. We’re also Australian, transgender and politically radical. It’s a pretty interesting premise, frankly. We go on some serious tangents, constantly break new ground. But through everything, there he is.
The 20th century is our highway. Sinatra is the hitchhiker from Twilight Zone.
“Going my way?”
The Sinatra: Vegas box set includes a concert from 1987, recorded at the Golden Nugget. By this time, Sinatra has performed in the city hundreds of times. The Rat Pack era has come and gone. Sinatra and Vegas are long-established as intertwined brands with intertwined destinies.
“How many more nights we got here?”, he says during a monologue, clearly exhausted and meaning it. “It’s like doing time in this place.”
Forty-six years after Las Vegas Nights, the nights just won’t stop.
But there’s one more moment from Las Vegas Nights I keep thinking about. It’s right before the “we don’t lock our doors” scene, as Bill is approaching the bank. The camera lingers on Fremont Street in the morning, when there’s too much sun out for lights. And we see two Native American men, picketing a store that sells Native American goods. They’re walking back and forth, holding simple signs. Passers by aren’t paying attention. They are chanting, almost to themselves:
”Unfair to the Indians. Unfair to the Indians…”
This is such a stark moment, so completely out of step with everything else that you wonder what it’s even meant to be doing. It feels real, too, like the cameras just came across it.
I found a review from 1941 that identified this as one of the film’s few funny moments.
Well, it doesn’t seem funny to me. In fact, it grounds me in the core reason why Las Vegas is so darkly fascinating to me: colonialism. I’m a white Australian, looking in a mirror and seeing neon.
It also throws the whole film and everything we’ve discussed above into much needed big-picture context: It’s fucked up that Las Vegas happened at all. And it grounds me in what we should always be grounded in, at all times, in every colonised nation the world over: Give the land back.
In Episode 5, “Heaven or Las Vegas”, we explore all of this further and differently. There is a detailed breakdown of the film and an exploration of the music, including some historic performances featuring Tommy Dorsey Band with Buddy Rich on drums.
