Welcome to 'Mississippi of the West'

Betty Bunch at home during the 1960s. Bunch, who was dancing at the Sahara at the time, recalls enjoying good times with friends at the Moulin Rouge casino. Special to View.

I know very well what blind, unreasoning prejudice is because I am (was) a chorus girl, a Las Vegas chorus girl, at that!

Chorus girls are assumed to be gold diggers of little talent and loose morals, an opinion usually held by folks not actually acquainted with a top-level chorus dancer. So, that's not true of me, and certainly not typical of my mates, and I can see the blind unreasoning judgement on your male face fellows, as you say, "yeah, sure," wink, nudge. A reaction that's mostly a result of fantasy and wistful thinking on your part.

In 1963, when I was young and gorgeous, a movie star, John Carroll, came to the Riviera and approached me in the casino bar. We flirted and he bought me a drink. (Actually, his drink and mine were comped anyway). He was a terrific actor, tall and handsome. He starred in "Flying Tigers" with John Wayne, and I was so impressed. He asked me for a date then and there. "We'll go for dinner, then anywhere you want to go," he said.

"I said, "Sorry, I have a date tonight. How about tomorrow?"

He said, "Whadaya mean you have a date? Break it. I'm a big movie star."

"Sorry," I said, and I left for my date with the Flamingo showroom star, Jack Carter.

Oh, if you could have seen the look on his face! I hated assumptions then and now.

Sahara Hotel, 1956

I was working the Teresa Brewer Show as a Moro-Landis dancer. One night, the line captain announced that one of the casino bosses wanted to speak to the dancers and would be in the dressing room any minute. She had no idea why. This was totally unheard of; no one from the hotel/casino ever came backstage.

We had just finished the 8 p.m. show and quickly hung up our costumes and got our robes on. The suit arrived forthwith and said imperiously, "Girls, pull up your chairs in a circle, I have something important to tell you."

"All right, listen carefully," he said. "We have hired a new act for the lounge. They are a troupe of six black men, The Treniers, who are good entertainers and attract crowds, we're told, but who also have the reputation of liking white women. So, we want you girls to stay far, far away from them. We are having trailers brought in for the north parking lot. That means they will enter the casino through the north side door, so you girls are to stay completely away from that area. Do you understand me? We are not going to have an incident in the Sahara. If we see one of you even talking to one of them, you'll be fired on the spot. Is that clear? We mean it."

And so I became a witness to the mechanisms of the "Mississippi of the West," as Las Vegas was called in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Hotel owners on the Strip in 1956 were not only prejudiced, they were angry and scared about all their graveyard business leaving the Strip and going to the Moulin Rouge on Bonanza Road, the integrated black hotel on the west side of Union Station, where the township of Las Vegas started.

Business was going there in droves in 1956, because that's where the fun was. It was where the great stars, both black and white, were going after 2 a.m. to party together -- Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Louie Armstrong, Louis Bellson (drummer/husband of Pearl Bailey) could all be found there, along with many Strip musicians -- drinking, performing informally, relaxing among friends, gambling or, in Dean's case, dealing blackjack.

The best jazz in the world played live, for kicks, with vocal comments right off the casino floor.

I actually got to see all that. One night, a couple of the other Sahara dancers were going and I met them over there. We didn't talk about it, knowing our bosses wouldn't like us going to another hotel, but went we did. It was so crowded you could hardly walk around. I mean shoulder to shoulder. One of the things I love most about being an entertainer is that we are nonjudgmental -- don't care about your color, religion, gender, just about your talent.

Bob Bailey was one of my interviewees when I did an oral history project for my American studies professor at UNLV in the '70s. Dr. (honorary) Bailey was the emcee for the show at the Moulin Rouge in 1956, and he was also chairman of the Civil Rights Commission in Nevada in 1964, the year the Las Vegas Strip finally integrated, at least officially.

He told me nobody knows exactly why that hotel/casino closed after only five months. Certainly, it wasn't for lack of business. According to Bob, "probably" the banks who financed the venture simply called in the mortgage notes and the hotel had to close.

Claude Trenier told me they were once playing the lounge at the Last Frontier in the '50s, when a friend of theirs, a beautiful young girl who wanted to be a singer, and was almost white, came to see their show at their invitation. They thought she could "pass" and planned to have her get up and sing. But during their set, two burly security guards came in and removed her from the front row.

The Treniers were so heartsick and embarrassed, they couldn't (not wouldn't) continue performing and just wandered into the wings not knowing what to do. Their hands were shaking, their lips were trembling.

A casino host immediately appeared backstage, a bottle of champagne and paper cups in his hands, and said, "Awe, come on fellows, please don't stop playing. We love you guys, you're the best! Here, let's drink to friendship and a toast to good times!"

He poured champagne all around and led them back onto the bandstand to lead them in a toast. They finished the set and the evening as scheduled.

The next morning, they were fired for drinking on stage.

The Treniers played the Moulin Rouge in Hollywood in 1959, I think it was, when I was dancing there. They invited the entire cast and our husbands and dates over for a barbecue at their parents' big old mansion in Santa Monica, Calif., where several of them still lived when they weren't on the road. It was one of the nicest, most fun showbiz parties I can remember. They knew how to entertain, all right.

Betty Bunch is a former dancer. Today, she works with the national Elderhostel Association. Contact her at betbun7@embarqmail.com.