Columnist Joe Delaney: Bidding adieu to the 50-year-old Desert Inn

Joe Delaney

Friday, Aug. 25, 2000 | 8:46 a.m.

Joe Delaney's column appears on Thursdays and Fridays. Reach him at 259-4066 or joe@lasvegassun.com

The Desert Inn Crystal Room, one of LV's finest showrooms, will close Sunday with the final performance of the Golden Boys -- Frankie Avalon, Fabian and Bobby Rydell ... The late Wilbur Clark's dream resort was $100,000 short of completion when Moe Dalitz and a Cleveland group came to the rescue ... The Desert Inn opened its doors April 24, 1950.

Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy opened the showroom, then called the Painted Desert Showroom, that night ... Frank Sinatra made his Las Vegas debut there the following year ... We were present, as we were in subsequent years for performances by Jimmy Durante, Danny Kaye's Las Vegas debut and the exclusive fortnight's stand by England's Noel Coward.

Sinatra's show and a steak dinner cost less than $10 in 1951 ... During our 33 years-plus with the Las Vegas Sun, we've covered most of the major DI openings, including the Donn Arden spectaculars.

A valuable lesson

Legendary agent Joe Glaser, Louis Armstrong's personal manager from the mid-1920s until Glaser's death in 1970, flew to London in the late 1950s to set up Coward's fortnight in Las Vegas ... We discussed the matter and he asked my opinion ... I suggested he get the best deal possible in the largest room available at that time.

Glaser wisely disagreed, stating that he would put Coward in the Desert Inn showroom which sat approximately 400 ... "Coward will probably average 500 per show, 100 will not get in. It will become like New Year's Eve, a must-see" ... As usual, Glaser was right.

Had he put Coward in a 1,000-seat showroom, the same 500 people would have had no trouble getting in ... Coward would have been playing to half a house, a failure ... There would have been no cover on Time magazine; no live Columbia album recorded in the showroom.

Memorable moments

Kirk Kerkorian owned the Desert Inn for a period in the 1980s ... We were there when Sinatra, Paul Anka, Shirley MacLaine and Steve Lawrence & Eydie Gorme appeared on stage together, announcing they would rotate appearances in the Crystal Room ... Dean Martin was a no-show and never did play the DI or anywhere else after that.

Willie Nelson filled in a couple of weeks ... It was a wonderful period ... Later Garth Brooks made his LV showroom debut at the DI, and the brass declined to pick up his option ... There were some stiffs: "Alcazar de Paris" and "Two of a Kind," an impressionist show.

Don Rickles was most at home at the DI, and Buddy Hackett's sold-out Monday night sessions were classics ... Jerry Lewis and the late Mel Torme, after the show, sang a duet on a Torme arrangement combining "Adios" with "Gone with the Wind," just for the three of us.

Final thoughts

Wilbur Clark's Desert Inn was kept as the name of the hotel for a few years after Howard Hughes purchased the DI in 1967 for $13.25 million ... Steve Wynn's announced purchase price for the entire property was $275 million ... The hotel was built originally for $3.5 million ... Clark's name still appears as the name of the Desert Inn Road transverse under the Strip.

The Glaser-Coward story is taught to my UNLV hotel entertainment students each semester ... I'm grateful to the Desert Inn and all the fine people associated with the hotel through the years for so many memorable moments and look forward to its future ... See you next Thursday.