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Justin M. Bowen
The Sahara hotel-casino in Las Vegas on Friday, March 11, 2011, the same day the property made the announcement it would be closing.
Published Friday, March 11, 2011 | 8:36 p.m.
Updated Friday, March 11, 2011 | 8:36 p.m.
KSNV coverage of Sahara closing
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diggKSNV coverage of the announcement that the Sahara hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip will close in May. From the noon newscast on Friday, March 11, 2011.
Boomtown: Part Six
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In the 1950s Las Vegas began to see a growing trend in resort casinos on the Strip. As the mob began to take over the casino business in town, high class performers billed at inexpensive rates made Las Vegas an entertainment Mecca. More history of Las Vegas »
Sun Coverage
Sun Archives
- Beautiful Sahara is Jewel out of fairyland (10-7-1952)
- Million Dollar Fire Belts Hotel Sahara (8-26-1964)
- Fire? So What, They Said (8-26-1964)
- Sahara to get some L.A. Glitz (4-8-2007)
- Sahara cites weak demand in closing hotel towers(12-15-2009)
Map of Sahara Hotel & Casino
Sahara Hotel & Casino
2535 Las Vegas Blvd. South, Las Vegas
It was once the home of Jerry Lewis, Buddy Hackett, Johnny Carson and countless other comedy legends. It is where Louis Prima and Keely Smith turned lounge entertainment into an art form, and where Sonny & Cher packed the showroom at the height of their TV fame.
It’s where legendary vocalist and sometimes diplomat Frank Sinatra brought Lewis and Dean Martin together during the 1976 Labor Day Telethon in one of that production’s most enduring moments.
And when The Beatles played two shows at the Las Vegas Convention Center in 1964, this is where they stayed. Photos of the Fab Four yanking the arm of a slot machine are displayed proudly around the hotel.
But today, the marquee attractions at the Sahara are a burrito so big, it can’t be consumed by any mortal in a single sitting and a roller-coaster ride that lasts all of 45 seconds.
The Sahara is closing, stripping Las Vegas of one of its most famous hotel-casinos even as today’s resort of that name only faintly recalls its regal past. The announcement by Sam Nazarian, CEO of SBE Entertainment Group, which owns and operates the Sahara, was leveled Friday.
SBE has owned the hotel for less than four years. The idea was to remake the Sahara in the model of such hip places as the Palms.
Now, the resort will be closed, with May 16 its final day of operations, though Nazarian has said he hopes to reopen the hotel with “a complete renovation and repositioning.”
But whatever the future holds, the Sahara era is ending in Las Vegas.
“For decades, it was thought of as a bookend to the Strip,” author Jack Sheehan says. “It was Sahara to the north and Hacienda to the south.”
Hacienda was reduced to rubble in 1996, making room for Mandalay Bay as the Strip continued its mega-resort explosion. But there is nothing to replace Sahara as the Strip contracts, its northernmost hotel falling dark after 59 years of operation.
It might seem unfathomable to the guests who tote giant coolers stuffed with three days’ worth of provisions to their $39-a-night room that the Sahara was once one of the Strip’s great hotels. But it was, no question, a place that shared haughty status with such groundbreaking properties as Desert Inn, Flamingo, Tropicana, the original MGM Grand (now Bally’s), Frontier, the Dunes and Caesars Palace.
Jerry Lewis, for one, remembers those days.
“My thought is, it’s very sad. I’m very sad for all those people who are losing their jobs. What are they going to do?” Lewis said Friday during a phone conversation. “We are losing what was considered by most of us Las Vegans as one of the trademarks of the city. You can’t discount the Sahara when you think of those Las Vegas trademarks.”
Lewis was one of the major early draws at the Sahara, teaming with Hackett for a highly energized twin bill of comedy at the hotel.
“Buddy and I did two shows a night for the longest time,” Lewis recalled, chuckling. “You couldn’t get a seat. I’d do the first show and be really sweet, and he’d do the second and be really dirty.”
Hackett’s son, Sandy, remembers practically growing up at the hotel.
“It was a cornerstone for my life,” said Hackett, whose “Sandy Hackett’s Rat Pack Show” now headlines at a hotel that has had its own financial struggles, the Riviera. “I can’t believe it will be gone.”
Hackett grew up in Las Vegas during the Sahara’s glory days, when his father helped pepper the entertainment roster with such stars as Carson, Lewis, Rowan & Martin, Flip Wilson, Jack Benny, George Burns, Shecky Greene and David Brenner.
“It was the hottest comedy lineup in the country,” Hackett remembers. “The place was alive every night.”
Hackett remembers Sonny & Cher headlining at the Sahara and jamming the showroom for each performance. He was studying hotel management at UNLV and worked for then-resort owner Del Webb, who also gave Buddy Hackett a largely ceremonial job as resort vice president.
“My dad said, ‘They gave me a big office and a buxom secretary,’ ” Hackett said. “ ‘How much work do you think they expect me to do here?’ ”
When he was about 20 years old, Hackett was told by his supervisor that Cher was swimming in the hotel pool without a bathing cap. At the time, any guest with long hair was required to wear a bathing cap while swimming in a resort pool, but Cher’s hair was to her derrière.
So Hackett gingerly approached Cher -- whom he called “Mrs. Bono” -- and told her she was in violation of state law.
“She told me to f- off,” Hackett said. “I didn’t know what to do.”
He skulked away and called his father on a house phone. Buddy Hackett listened to the story and asked, “How’s business in the showroom?”
“It’s packed,” the younger Hackett said.
“Well, then, you’d better f- off,” the elder Hackett said.
“This is how business was done at the Sahara,” the younger Hackett said, laughing.
But as Sheehan says, the hotel’s importance can be measured far beyond nostalgic anecdotes. In 1956, in a landmark decision, E. Parry Thomas of Valley Bank approved a then-unprecedented loan of $600,000 to Sahara’s original owner, Milton Prell, who had turned Club Bingo into the Moroccan-themed Sahara, as he called it, “The Jewel of the Desert.”
Prell dreamed of adding a 200-room tower to the property, a move akin to the opening of Bellagio decades later.
“The bank’s loan limit was $75,000, so this was unheard of,” said Sheehan, who recently released the book “Forgotten Man” about Circus Circus and (later) Sahara owner Bill Bennett, who decades later attempted to return the property to its haughty status among Strip hotels. “Parry met with Prell and told him that the prevailing interest rate was 4 percent, that he’d have to go outside the bank to finance this loan, and it was going to cost 6 percent.
“The story goes that Prell was sitting in a rocking chair, rocking back and forth, and asked Parry, ‘What do I get?’ ” Sheehan recalled. “And Parry said, ‘You get the loan.’ ”
Prell consented. He also paid back the loan, at 6 percent, and the biggest loan ever to a casino made everyone a winner.
As Sheehan also reminded, the hotel was considered quite refined a generation ago.
Comedian Cork Proctor in front of the pool at the Sahara on March 11, 2011, the same day the property announced that it would be closing.
“When I got here 35 years ago, the Sahara was still considered a very nice place,” he said. “They were a player in the game. It was an A-minus place for performers to play. The House of Lords (steakhouse) was always in the top five or six places in the city to eat. It doesn’t compare to the restaurants we have today, but back then it was one of the best.”
A man who enjoyed an inside-out view of the hotel in its infancy was Cork Proctor, who took a job as a lifeguard at the Sahara pool in 1955. It was Proctor’s first job after being discharged from the Navy. He would go on to perform as one of the city’s busiest stand-up comics, and he is still performing today at age 79.
Proctor actually performed at the Comedy Stop at Sahara a few months ago, just before the Bob Kephart-owned comedy franchise was forced to close. As the chronically acerbic Proctor joked from the stage, “I worked at this hotel, about 100 feet from here, as a lifeguard in 1955. How’s my career doing?”
On Friday, seated at a bar at the pool area, Proctor said the hotel was indeed one of the Strip’s jewels, especially in its early days.
“I would work, go home after my shift, sleep and come back in three or four hours and watch Louis Prima and Keely Smith, or the Mary Kaye Trio in the lounge,” Proctor said as he looked out over the sparsely populated pool area. “Louis and Keely were really exciting. I have never seen anyone with that kind of rapport. This was a great joint. Every night was New Year’s Eve.”
Walter Cronkite, Mae West, Victor Mature, Ray Bolger and Cary Grant were among the wide array of famous folks Proctor recalls running into in his time as a lifeguard.
As he pointed out one of the tattered cabanas -- which two summers ago went for $120 a day to rent -- Proctor shook his head.
“This place started going downhill when the bean counters came in,” he said. Musing about the hotel’s possible reopening next year, he said, “I don’t know if it’s fixable.”
Lewis was left to recall the hotel’s prime and that night when Sinatra brought Lewis and his partner together once again.
“When Dean walked onstage, it was a most historic moment,” he said. “I will never forget it. It was incredible, and it happened at the Sahara.”
- Join the conversation below via Twitter by adding the #sahara tag to your tweets.
Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow Kats With the Dish at twitter.com/KatsWithTheDish.
This is a wonderful recollection of the Sahara, where Louis Prima, Keely Smith and saxophonist Sam Butera staged "The Wildest Show in Vegas." Prima was a great example of a musician who brought the New Orleans sound to the rest of the world.
I recently posted on my Rockaeology blog at http://bit.ly/fmzD8n the story of how Prima and Butera created the "Just a Gigolo / I Ain't Got Nobody" medley. When rocker David Lee Roth scored a hit with a note-for-note copy in 1985, Butera never got a dime. Here's what happened when a clueless Roth approached Butera at the Sahara.
A wonderful, sad. what was and blast from the past report. Thanks John and Jerry.
What a shame. I allways make a point to do some gambling at Sahara during my trips to Las Vegas. I hope the owners are able to someday salvage the property. While tired looking the hotel is old Las Vegaas and i enjoy the history and memories. Good luck to the owners and the employees who will be looking for work.
Loved the Cher story!
the bean counters did their job well as they continue to destroy all that was good about vegas.
Kats...
A wonderful article.
This will create a GAPING HOLE between the north strip & downtown...
You think that neighborhood is sketchy NOW?
A few months after the Sahara closes, no one will willingly walk the gauntlet starting north of Wynn.
There's a potent lesson to be learned from the incident with Cher. What she said when told she was violating state law should be on the lips every one of us when state law gets in the way of making a living.
"In the general course of human nature, a power over a man's subsistence amounts to a power over his will." -- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Paper 79, 1787-88
Great article.
I hate to see a place steeped in such History close its doors. You go into these places and you can almost "feel" the past, the history of the place. Maybe someone will buy the property and bring it back to it's old glory. And that isn't such a bad thing. Old is new again. Vegas doesn't need another carbon copy of the Wynn or any other resort built in the last 10 years. The Sahara was original and it still is. Keep it that way.
I know some people would disagree with that, like Mr. Reza, who thinks Vegas should reinvent itself every day even though that brings another clone casino/resort, restaurant, fast food place etc., but sometimes, reinvention is not always good. Restoration, however, is. Vegas is short on history and little by little what history it has is going by the wayside.
I might have stayed or played there if they'd thrown a blackjack game with decent rules.
No man is an island, entire of itself
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main
if a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were
any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls
it tolls for thee.
-- John Donne
Bean counters have taken down every industry there is...history has shown, when he car makers lost market share, bean counters were in control. When market share came back, sales / marketing guys were in control. Same for resorts..its very sad that this hotel will sit vacant for many years to come, especially the way the economy is. No one will rebuild it. Everything around it is closing and the new hotel down the street that Icahn bought will sit as well..history making and history loosing.
Very sad, whats going to happen to the Stratosphere? The Riviera is the next one to go....its sad to see that end of the strip! Boyd should of never torn down the Stardust, thats was the beginning of the end. Also its sad that the Westward Ho is gone too. Sometimes bigger and better, is truly not better. Not all of us want to be at the Palms or the Wynn. How I long for the days of the Westward Ho and the Stardust!!
Sahara and the wonderful employees... You WILL be missed :(
In the 1950's each of the original resorts were, in their own ways, jewels of the desert.
There was nothing exactly like them anywhere ever, and there will never be anything like them again.
There was a feel of elegance and that was real, you could smell it, the luxurious ambiance and sounds of the casino, the hint of Coppertone tanning lotion by the pool.
Men in suits, women in furs. Craps and cocktails.
When the sun was setting each day, the Strip came alive with the neon lights of a one of a kind place. It was palatable and unmistakable, something special was about to happen that evening.
I'm glad I was able to be there as a boy and experience it first hand.
Well written article John. In the 1960's, after a big night at the Teenbeat Club, my partner Keith Austin and I would go to the Sahara coffee shop with our dates to gorge on banana splits, then sneak into the Sahara lounge to have Don Rickles expose us for being under age. The Sahara will surely be missed.
Here's an idea. Get the mob boys out here to run it like the old days. Let 'em show the bean counters at all the other palaces how it's done.
This is really sad. Saying good bye to the Sahara Hotel will be like saying good bye to an old friend. I still have pictures of my late father on top of the Sahara Hotel working as a sheet metal worker. He worked on most of the Sahara. The Sahara was the next tallest building to be built after the Fremont Hotel. That is my memory of it. When We first moved here the tallest building on the Las Vegas skyline was the Fremont Hotel in 1959. Then the Sahara Hotel was built on the Strip. It was home to movies and many stars like Frank Gorshin, Dean Martin and the Rat Pack when Ocean's Eleven was filmed there. I only wish the Sahara could remain intact. I guess the modern day moguls want to make profits over newer Hotels rather than keep what little history of the Las Vegas Strip is left. Thanks for the memories those of you who worked at the Sahara Hotel. Thanks to all of those loyal Sahara employees.
We can all thank Sam Navarian for destroying in 3 1/2 years what others had built over 55 years. Another historic Las Vegas hotel lost because ownership did nothing to maintain or improve it. Don't blame the economy on this one, I don't think Sam ever intended the hotel to survive.
WOW So sad! When we moved to Las Vegas 5 1/2 yrs ago ,the buffet @ the Sahara was the first meal we ate at together as a family! We will never forget it! It was our first day here is Las Vegas while we waited to sign our first lease we took a walk on the strip and had lunch at the buffet in the Sahara! So to hear it is closing the doors is sad for our family! Before the Sahara closes we will defiantly have to go one more time for lunch!
The Hotels on the Strip in order that will most likely close soon: (Last ones: Hardly Ever!)
1. Riveria
2. Circus Circus
3. Bill's
4. Casino Royale
5. Harrah's
6. Flamingo
7. Tropicana
8. Excalibur
9. Ballys
10.Rio
11.Palms
12.NY NY
13.Treasure Island
14.Planet Hollywood
15.MGM GRAND
16.Luxor
17.Paris
18.Mirage
19.Mandalay Bay
20.Caesars Palace
21.Bellagio
22.Venetian
23.City Center
24.Wynn
25.Encore
26.Cosmopolitan
27.Palazzo
We are headed to a hard time. Most likely we will see a new global currency SDR! Which probobly means that even Macau's economy will be even more glued to us.
Reactions?
By the way, if we really open the Fontainebleau, we might see the Riviera and the other low priced low star hotels close down.
I think Nazarian had every intention of reviving the property.
The only problem was the ideas and the purchase were hatched in the old economy.
I've been thinking and saying for months, how are they sustaining this?
300M or more is a lot of money, and it will be interesting to see how this unfolds over time. (At 66, I hope I live long enough)
Nazarian is a young guy, so maybe in his lifetime something will break open.
How to recoup that investment is a whole other story.
If the improvements are functionally obsolete, what is the acreage worth?
With it's proximity to the convention center, that's a plus.
I have no idea what the cost is for implosion and removal and scraping.
Cyrus, the only ones I can even imagine for closing are number's one and two.
Really, this place had the tightest games and worst buffet. Six deck games with 6/5 payoffs?? This place deserved to close just on that account. Complete lack of creativity.
Riviera is next!
I thought the Sahara had been used up and run down before Nazarian bought it? Who did he buy the place from?
Derno:
Same here... I would expect to see Circus Cirucs and Riviera close down most likely in the next two years.
I also have a huge feeling that the economy is really not to blame. So if the Echelon and Fontainebleau opened, they would have most likely closed.
I saw The Amazing Johnathan tell some drunks in the audience to STFU once.
Ahh, memories ...
I went to the Sahara 3 years ago-waited for valet for 15mins no response so I left never to return.
Wrote them about poor customer service no response so management didn't give a rat's ass.
Always give and treat the customers with great service and respect was the test-They failed time to close.
I can hear Cher saying that....even today!
Buddy was well known for being bleeped on the Johnny Carson Show (Tonight Show). Now I know who taught him that word!
I liked the GM Drive attraction they had a few years back. Got to drive new Corvettes, Cadillac V's and other cars most of us Malibu drivers otherwise didn't get to drive.
cyrus, at least you left out my favorite place, Imperial Palace. I don't see all of the low priced places closing like you do. After all, in many cities, Motel 6 and nice places like Doubletree both do fine in the same neighborhood, along with middle priced Hampton Inns, etc..
Not everyone is a high roller.
That's sad another masterpiece of Vegas' founders' history will be closing its doors. I always wanted to go there together with my ole buddy the "Banana_Joe", but I mean -what the heck- we might have to check in at Circus Circus to see the clowns...
http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi3...
Regards
Chuck
It's sad, true, but look at that big blue silo blocking its view of the strip!!
As for the investors, they made their money back when they sold the land across the street for twice what they paid for the whole deal. They are not losing anything but another tax deduction
Bakersfield:
Yeah.. I know I thought I had the IP
Sad. Really sad. I hate how the Strip is becoming "cookie cutter." They took the pirate theme out of the Treasure Island. They took/are taking the Egyptian theme out of the Luxor. Now, the Sahara is closing. You can already say goodbye to the Circus Circus and Riviera (I'm pretty sure those will be closing down in the next couple of years).
I am one of the 1,050 employees who will suffer a layoff from the Sahara on May 16. For the last three weeks prior to learning of the imminent hotel's closure, I had seen signs that management had somehow given up on the place.
I loved working there. It was kind of funky in a way because we never knew what was going to happen but most of us had some humor about it. As long as the doors were open, we knew that we had a job and a job to do. My fellow employees were some of the best with whom I had ever worked along side in gaming.
I tend to believe that SBE drove the property into the ditch. The owners had some sort of aversion to operating it the way it should have been operated.
One of the things they could have done to save themselves revenue was to get a gaming license which they never did. I had heard several reasons for that, but who knows where the truth lies? If they had acquired a gaming license then they wouldn't have had to hire Navegante to run the gaming end. The double headed management did not work. The gaming management went in one direction while the hotel management, SBE, went in another.
The loyal staff at the Sahara did the best that they could with the managements they had to work with.
I'd also like to thank everyone who has come in to bid all of us a fond farewell and tell us how much they enjoyed the place and the employees. I can tell you, we enjoyed you, too.
R.I.P. Sahara, you will be sorely missed.
Kats--Cannot you kiss it and make it better. After all, a few weeks ago you were downgrading the little old ladies with the grey hair who drive 55 mph on the Strip and wear orthopeadic shoes and compression hose.
So sad. In its heyday, Don the Beachcombers was a must visit on periodic visits, mostly in the '70s. As I recall, there was a very good lunchtime buffet for at least some period in the '80s.
Well, it is sad to see such a landmark disappear. However, older hotels such as The Sahara become unattractive to visitors when (as I experienced this past summer)the building is not even kept in a basic sanitary state.
After a weekend in a smelly room on a floor with sticky carpets at the Sahara last July, I can only say, "good riddance." We would have moved to another room, but the combined odors of urine and cigarette smoke were coming from the air conditioning system.
It resembled a flop-house more than a grand hotel. And there was no edible food to be found anywhere on the premises.
The classy days of Vegas are long gone..Even at the high end joints the crowds that they get are mainly tattood
sluts and know it all punks carrying bottles of beer all over the place..This is what it now is..Live with it or stay away..