The Playmate
Mansfield wasn’t just a 1950s sex symbol but an accomplished musician and stage actress too. Plus, she was known for her incredible drive and razor-sharp pursuit of fame. Unwavering, some might add. Hollywood has seen a long line of Marilyn Monroe look-alikes. Mansfield was among the more successful heirs to that unenviable and frankly unattainable legacy!
Her nude pictorial in Playboy took the industry by storm. She also had an excellent Broadway run in “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?” What’s more, this Vegas entertainer played the violin and the piano. She even appeared on a British TV show in 1957 where she recited a line or two from “Hamlet.”
Elvis's Vegas Debut
Elvis Presley's first-ever Vegas concert took place in 1956 at the New Frontier Hotel. By then, his first hit “Heartbreak Hotel” and his first album were topping the charts. He’d also signed a film contract with Paramount Pictures. Everywhere he went, he attracted thousands of fans, most of them adoring teenage girls. Although dubbed the “atomic-powered singer” by newspapers, the Presley mania lost steam in Las Vegas.
The audience here wasn’t just different, it was indifferent. Polite but highly skeptical. His two-week Las Vegas debut was a rocky but critical moment in his career. Some say it was a deliberate move by his manager, Colonel Tom Parker. He needed Presley to gain experience and serious credibility beyond the wild teenage audiences the musician had been used to so far.
Arlene Dahl and Fernando Lamas
It’s not an overstatement to say that Arlene Dahl was one of the most immaculate Hollywood stars of the 1950s. She never had a single strand of hair out of place and was always fashionably dressed. Her ex-husband, Argentinian star, Fernando Lamas would share after their divorce that it was like being married to Elizabeth Arden.
He had never seen her without makeup throughout their marriage. Dahl’s obsession with appearances limited the nature and number of roles Hollywood could offer her. But it served her well elsewhere. The fixation on beauty helped establish her wildly successful cosmetics and lingerie after the actor retired from movies.
The Stardust Resort
Another iconic Las Vegas resort was the Stardust Resort and Casino that opened in the year 1958. The resort had the largest casino and swimming pool in the whole state of Nevada. But it was most famous for its large neon sign with “Stardust” written in what looked like an actual shower of stars.
You couldn’t miss the sign – all 188 ft of it towering in the distance for miles. Although it was originally an outer space-themed hotel, that concept quickly changed. Many flocked to the casino to see the topless showgirls. Rumor has it that it also attracted a fair amount of underground activity. The Stardust officially shut its doors in 2006 after having been in business for 48 years.
Eddie Fisher
American singer and actor Eddie Fisher was massively famous in the 1950s. He sold millions of records and had his own TV show. Fisher was even married to Debbie Reynolds and then Elizabeth Taylor. His marriage to Taylor, as most of us know, created an international scandal - sometimes overshadowing his legacy as a performer.
The image above is from one of his greatest Vegas performances ever in 1958. Fisher was a singer at nightclubs before bursting onto the pop music scene. He delivered hit after hit between 1950 and 1956 until rock n’ roll suddenly became a phenomenon. Fisher’s pop music appeal subsequently began waning.