Arts maven: Longtime Las Vegan credited with bringing culture to valley

Kimberley McGee

Tuesday, June 19, 2001 | 9:02 a.m.

It's not often that a city can attribute its cultural base to one particular person.

But Las Vegas can.

"I'm one of the last ones left who remember this town when it wasn't much," Eugenia "Jeannie" Roberts said during a recent interview at Concord Retirement & Assisted Living. "I brought culture to this town."

Roberts, 88, is not shy in describing her accomplishments and the absence of culture in the relatively young city when she first drove into the dusty town in 1942 at age 30.

Roberts established the first dance studio in Las Vegas, turned an old USO building into a legendary Las Vegas hangout for teenagers and financed the Las Vegas Civic ballet, the first Las Vegas ballet company.

Roberts has been an advisor to the city and county for half a century and challenged both to cultivate culture in Las Vegas. She is remembered and revered by her students many of whom went on to become senators, artists, actors and homemakers. All give her credit for providing them with an appreciation for the arts as well as inspiring them to be their best.

Roberts opened her self-titled dance studio in 1944 on the corner of Ogden Avenue and Ninth Street. Her intention was for young girls and boys to learn dance and expand their minds, as well as their sense of self-worth.

"I taught them to feel important," Roberts said.

Among her dance students were Tony Basil, a choreographer best known for her 1982 pop hit, "Mickey," and Lily Mariye, an actress who most recently appeared on the NBC series "ER."

From 1950-58 Roberts was the director of the first community recreation center, named the Wildcat Lair after the Las Vegas High School mascot.

Roberts ruled the Lair with a soft-but-firm hand. Teens paid a quarter to enter most events at the Lair and were given a test for honesty, integrity and sobriety at the entrance.

"No one was going to come in that was going to cause trouble," Roberts said. "I made sure of that."

Each entering guest had to blow in the bouncer's face at the door to check for alcohol and promise to be on their best behavior while under Roberts' watch.

"Oh, all the kids came to the Lair," she said. "It kept them off the streets. Everybody knew they were safe with me."

A plaque honoring Roberts was placed at the site of the Wildcat Lair, which is now a parking lot next to the post office.

Roberts was also a member of the Screen Actors Guild for more than 30 years and a member of the Actor's Equity for nearly 50 years. She has overseen every step of the city's cultural growth as a member of the City of Las Vegas Parks and Recreation board for more than 50 years.

She started the Soroptomists Club in 1961 to create a network of women to support each other, and have some fun, in the growing city.

"I felt something should be done so I went ahead and did it," Roberts said. "It's not hard."

It has not been cheap, either.

In 1981 Roberts put up more than $40,000 of her own money to develop the Las Vegas Civic Ballet.

"There had to be something for the children to do," Roberts said. "Otherwise, what's the future?"

Local legend

"She was dedicated to children and Las Vegas," said Kenny Gragson, a longtime Las Vegan, real estate broker and developer and son of former Las Vegas Mayor Oran Gragson.

"She could bring the best out of anyone," Kenny Gragson said of Roberts.

As a teenager Gragson worked on the Wildcat Lair's board with Roberts. They planned parties, balls and sock hops as well as charity events.

"She was the heart of that place," Gragson said. "Jeannie was a mover and shaker in the early culture of Las Vegas."

The center had the usual recreational fare such as a ping-pong table, soda fountain and a stage.

But Roberts enhanced the entertainment with a phone call to the musicians' union.

Her friends offered their services to perform on weekends at the Lair. They also brought some friends of their own.

"We had celebrities, big acts all the time," Roberts said.

Liberace entertained teens at the Lair on a regular basis, as did Louis Prima, Rosemary Clooney, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr.

"I'd make a phone call and the (hotel) would arrange it," Roberts said. "They always came to me for publicity. The kids loved it."

Las Vegas teens of that time flocked to the Wildcat Lair for the entertainment and the atmosphere, said former Sen. Richard Bryan, a 1953 graduate of Las Vegas High School. This was due mainly to Roberts' role as confidante and cheerleader to the teens who crowded the center, he said. She organized dances, fashion shows and bake sales, but also listened to troubled teens discuss the woes of growing up.

"She made it a place we all wanted to be," Bryan said. "Jeannie was the one who created this environment where we all wanted to go."

Changes and chances

Roberts began performing in vaudeville in San Francisco at age 9 in the campy children's act "California Sunshine Kiddies."

Over the years Roberts continued to perform, and as a teenager joined the ballet in San Francisco.

Roberts worked around the Bay Area at shows and her mother hired a bodyguard to ensure her daughter's safety. Roberts fell in love with the charming Italian man who protected her, Nello Charles Gentili. They were wed in 1931. Roberts was 19.

"He looked like Cary Grant," Roberts recalled. "I could cook Italian (food) and he liked that. So we married."

They had two daughters and lived happily, if uneventfully, in Northern California. But Roberts' husband banned her from performing.

"He didn't like me to do that," Roberts said. "He wanted me home and under his thumb."

That didn't sit well with Roberts, who yearned for bright lights and applause.

In 1941 she packed up her daughters and moved to Honolulu to live with her mother and ponder her options.

There she would encounter her strength.

On Dec. 7, 1941, Roberts and her family survived the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese.

"We were this far from the U.S.S. Arizona when it blew up," Roberts said as she pointed to a wall a few feet away from her.

Her mother suffered minor shrapnel wounds, but the family was otherwise intact and unscathed.

They were one of the first families to be sent to San Francisco to relocate after the devastating attack. The day that President Franklin Roosevelt said would live in infamy changed Roberts' resolve. She saw a chance to live her dream.

Roberts had always wanted to be an actress.

In early 1942 she moved to Las Vegas to get a quickie divorce from her controlling husband, as well as sing at the local clubs that were gaining national recognition.

Camille Ortiz, Roberts' oldest daughter, remembers the change in her mother.

"She was divorcing herself from that (married) life," Ortiz said. "She'd been through quite a bit."

In Las Vegas Roberts worked at lounges at El Rancho and the Last Frontier. But the gigs were not giving her enough money to bring her daughters from San Francisco, where they stayed with their grandmother.

Roberts began work at the titanium plant in Henderson, where she met a piano player, Bill Roberts, whom she married. The union gave her the chance to be reunited with her daughters, who moved to Las Vegas in 1943.

But Roberts soon found herself trapped by the needs of another controlling man. The couple divorced a few years later.

"She wanted to be independent," said Ortiz (Roberts soon plans to move back to the Bay Area to live with her daughter).

As Roberts toiled at the plant and occasionally sang at lounges, she realized there was no cultural outlet for the children of the growing local population.

So she pioneered the Roberts School of Dance on a summer day in 1944.

"There was nothing to do, no culture to speak of," Roberts said. "So I opened my dance studio and the kids came."

Roberts held charity dances to make ends meet for the studio.

But she gave most of the cash from the fashion shows and recitals to others in need.

"We could have used that money," Ortiz said. "She didn't need to do that. But she felt you should give back."

Roberts insisted that her daughters attend any music, dance or theater act that came through Las Vegas.

As children the outings could be boring, said Ortiz, who has changed her tune as an adult.

"I've told her the greatest gift she gave me was appreciation of music, dance and culture," Ortiz said. "She did that for a lot of people in Las Vegas."

Earlier this year Ortiz found letters from her mother's students, dating back decades. There were notes from women on their wedding day thanking Roberts for insisting they always speak their mind; long letters from men and women in appreciation of Roberts' positive influence and its outcome as they grew into adulthood.

"I knew she had been a mentor to her students," Ortiz said, "but not to that extent."

Recently Roberts confessed to her daughter that she still thought of her unrealized dream of acting.

"I told her that she did more for acting with what she did in Las Vegas than she ever could (have) as an actress," Ortiz said.

Roberts still has a firm grip and strong voice. She no longer lives in the modest home near East Charleston Boulevard and Maryland Parkway, where she raised two daughters and pondered ways to build a cultural community.

"I have a room full of pictures of all that we've done," Roberts said.

By "we" she means the children, teenagers and artists she has mentored since she came to Las Vegas.

Lining the walls of her spacious room at the assisted-living facility are mementos of Roberts' effect on the people she has encountered.

There is a drawing by a student of little girls in black tutus, all smiling, waiting to begin their routines. Beside that is another drawing of a dancer from a student thanking Roberts for all that she had done for her.

Above her small dining table is a blue plaque from the city of Las Vegas, which honored Roberts in February of last year for her tremendous contribution to an ever-expanding city.

"I guess they wanted me to know they thought of me," Roberts said. "But I earned it."

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