Set for its biggest boom, Las Vegas starts to worry

GAMBLING TOWN PUSHES ITS LUCK

At Las Vegas last week the temperature was up to a torrid 110 degrees and the townsfolk who operate the only large gambling center in the country welcomed the seasonable weather. With it they expected the usual bountiful summer crop of tourists trying out their luck and leaving their money behind. The signs of good times seemed everywhere. An announcement on a vacant lot offered a hotel site at a flamboyant price. Out on the burning desert could be seen a cool, dinner-coated Britisher, Noel Coward, who had come half way around the world to pick up $40,000 a week entertaining in a Las Vegas nightclub.

But with all this a shadow of doubt fell across Las Vegas, a worry that the boom it was set for had started to wilt.

The preparation for the boom had been stupendous. Three hotels, costing a total of $15 million, had already opened in the spring. All of them had air-conditioned rooms, oddly shaped swimming pools, enxellent cuisines, fabulous nightclub entertainment---and, of course, gambling rooms for which all these other attractions were simply come-ons, bringing in customers from all over the country to play the games which bring in rich profits for Las Vegas.

Then, to top this, in the past month two new hotels opened. One was the $5 million Dunes which lugged in 120 slot machines, the "one-armed bandits," in anticipation of the rush. the other was the Moulin Rouge, the first interracial hotel in Las Vegas which welcomed both whites and Negroes to its accomodations and gambling tables. It had Joe Louis as part owner and host, and a lively, lovely chorus (see cover) in its floor show.

Like a gambler on a prolonged winning streak, Las Vegas had the feeling its run of luck couldn't end. For more than a decade it had parlayed one prosperous year into a more prosperous next year and went into the expansion more in the spirit of hunch than of calculated economics. Business kept up briskly around the roulette wheels, crap tables and blackjack boards of the town's older places. The opening of the new hotels and of what Las Vegas hoped would be its new era of money-making was opulent and promising as the color pictures on the next four pages show. But when the excitement of the opening died down, the town looked at its new places where customers were scarce and the betting light and wondered: Had Las Vegas pushed its luck too far?

NOTE: "An announcement on a vacant lot offered a hotel site at a flamboyant price." There's a picture of a sign that says:
"HOTEL SITE
FOR SALE
$3,000,000.00
Inquire at
El RANCHO VEGAS"