Tuesday, Oct. 26, 1999 | 9:52 a.m.
Back when the valley's population was less than half the number of hotel rooms on the Strip, local photographer David Lee Waite captured Las Vegas glitz -- as well as its tragedies -- through his camera lens.
"It was simpler then, you could get (into) anywhere," Waite says.
Formerly a photographer for the Las Vegas Sun (1967 to 1984) and currently a freelance photographer for People, GQ and Woman's World, among other national magazines, Waite was in the thick of the burgeoning entertainment scene in Las Vegas. He is now working on opening a gallery show in New York or Los Angeles and is selling a limited-edition lithograph of Frank Sinatra he photographed in the '80s to be sold on the Internet at a later date.
Black and white photos, subtle, simple, yet compelling, cover the walls of Waite's studio from floor to ceiling: Wayne Newton greets then-President Ronald Reagan; Senators John Glenn and Harry Reid laugh at a local press conference; former mayor Jan Laverty Jones exits a men's bathroom at a downtown hotel; and Frank Sinatra's blue eyes implore Waite to put the camera down at a formal dinner party. Missing from the photo album walls are the tragedies Waite witnessed, such as the fire at the MGM Grand hotel-casino (now Bally's), the plane crashes, car accidents and murders over his more than 30 years photographing what he says is one of the most interesting cities in the world,
Waite came through Las Vegas in 1962 at the age of 19, and has yet to leave.
"I grew up in Southern Michigan. I was on my way to California and looking for places without snow on the ground," Waite says. "I loved Las Vegas, immediately."
In 1967, after working in the hotel and advertising industries, Waite answered an ad in the Las Vegas Sun for a photographer.
"If it wasn't for the Las Vegas Sun, I probably wouldn't be a photographer," the longtime photo enthusiast says. "I figured I could do it and they gave me a chance. You could do that back then."
Still in its infancy, Las Vegas of yesteryear took chances, he says, and when they paid off, it was big. Waite had the opportunity to cover one of the biggest alleged mob cases in the late 1970s, in which Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, then a young, bushy-haired criminal lawyer, defended accused mobster Tony Spilotro.
"Oscar used to be great. He and Tony (Spilotro) would walk to the courthouse and I would walk backwards almost to his office and then they would stop somewhere (so that) I could get my picture," Waite says. "I liked Tony Spilotro. I mean, I wouldn't drive with him at night anywhere but, you know."
Waite was also on the job for one of the worst hotel fires of the century that killed more than 80 people on Nov. 21, 1980, at what was then the MGM Grand hotel-casino.
"That was probably the worst day I ever spent," Waite says. "You are there to do your job but you are helpless when you see people in a high-rise hanging out the windows. You can't do anything for them except snap their pictures, which is the last thing they need."
The smoke cleared, Waite recalls, leaving a black gaping hole at the entrance where the fireball, caused by a kitchen fire, exited the casino. And after the smoldering debris littering the sidewalk was swept up, counselors were brought in to help emergency units deal with the tragedy.
"They bring out the dead bodies and do all this and then they brought in the psychiatrists to deal with the firefighters but not the media, so you have to deal with it on your own," Waite says. "I was in the hotel the next day (to) shoot (photos) and it was terrible to see where all these people died."
That may have been horrific, but at least not life-threatening or physically painful, both of which Waite became familiar with over the years, given that a photographer's line of work can place them in precarious situations. He remembers an incident in May of 1977 when he feared he had backed himself into a dangerous corner with no way out.
"I was photographing the rodeo ... and I turned right when I should have turned left and (a horse) ran into me," he says. The bucking horse broke all the ribs on Waite's left side. "That was the time I didn't think I was going to make it out of the arena."
He sat out riots in his car, dodged bullets from angry civilians, has been beaten by security guards and has shot the occasional murder, no pun intended. In those days, standing over a body snapping pictures for the morning edition was not unusual.
"The police took me into a house, past the grieving family into (a) bedroom where a guy had been murdered by his wife and I'm having to stand on their dresser in order to get the shot," he says.
It may have been surreal, but it was his job to be in the middle of a bad situation and get the best photo for the newspaper. Today, he says, photographers are held back becasue too many camera hounds crowd a crime scene. "You can't do that anymore, which is probably good," he says. "Before, there were a handful of photographers doing it. Now 500 people show up (to a crime scene)."
But it's not all fire and mayhem. Las Vegas being the entertainment mecca that it is, the majority of Waite's job was spent back stage among the feather boas, thongs and celebrities of the entertainment world.
"Show business is my life -- I've spent a lot of time back stage," Waite says.
Back then, he says, a mega-star still answered his own phone or a rap on the back stage door. "You could knock on Frank Sinatra's dressing room door and actually have him answer," Waite says. "Now, everything is corporate. You can't get to a celebrity now."
He likes to photograph celebrities as they bask in their element.
"I do a lot of on-stage things becuase that's where singers live, on stage," Waite says. "It doesn't matter what they do off-stage, it's that on-stage persona, that's where they make us happy."
His professional pet peeve? "People who are full of themselves. Major entertainers usually are not, but it's the guy in the middle, somebody on the rise," Waite says. "Most people are gracious, they do what you want to do."
Although one diva pulled an attitude on Waite's watch in 1968.
"I walked out on Diana Ross one time," he says. "It wasn't that she was nasty to me, she was being nasty to everyone around her and I couldn't get her to pay attention. Finally, I started packing up my gear and she said, 'What are you doing?' and I said 'I'm leaving' and I left. She was the only one I've ever done that with."
To his shock, Waite's request for a private interview with Gerald Ford, a fellow Michigan native, was granted when the former president rolled through Las Vegas in the mid-'70s.
"I found myself alone in this little room with the president," Waite says. "We talked about home, that relaxed both of us. That came pretty close to me being in awe of somebody."
Although he ran around town snapping the mugs of the famous and infamous, as well as the tragedies of the growing city, Waite says that part of the fun was racing back to the office, developing the film, printing it and getting it approved before deadline.
"We used to print wet negatives, run back from the scene, be on deadline all the time," Waite says. "It was fun."
But sometimes all that work amounted to a big rejection. "You went through all of that and you'd turn the photo in to the city editor and he'd say, 'I don't like that,' " Waite says. "But it was all fun."
While the future of actual film is uncertain as digital cameras make photography faster and more convenient, Waite says that film is an art that will never truly go out of style.
"You can't beat film, the (high) resolution, and if you do it in color the quality of the film (is better than digital)," he says.
Digital cameras can manipulate images to include or exclude exactly what a photographer needs, and to Waite, that takes away from the true art of photography.
"You are not really creating a photograph (with digital)," Waite says. "Photographers and painters work (with) a simple mathematical formula. A painter will start with a blank canvas and put what he wants on it. A photographer has to start with a scene and subtract what he doesn't want and that's the challenge. It takes the fun out of it."
Waite says that he prefers the emotion black and white can evoke. "When you remove the color, you are left with just the content."
Subtle and simple.
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