E-481: Thank You

Random Vegas

Sammy Davis Jr was supposed to be in 3 major movies about Vegas. We all know he was in the original Ocean’s 11 but did you know he was supposed to be cast as Elvis’ sidekick in the movie Viva Las Vegas? But producers thought that much star power would distract from the story so he didn’t get the part. The third was Diamonds are Forever, a movie he actually played himself in but it got cut. It can now be seen as a part of the movie’s deleted scenes.

TwitPic of the week

What’s special about this picture, shared by@travis758, is what its missing…Treasure Island. Right down in front, still a huge parking lot on the strip. The next glaring omission is the strip as we know it south of Caesars today. Here we still see the Dunes and their massive golf course taking up real estate all the way down to where NYNY is today. It’s 1990 so we see Excalibur sitting down there with Hacienda, Tropicana and Marina all alone because it doesn’t yet have the company of the MGM Grand as we know it today. The Marina won’t transform into the MGM Grand for another 3 years away from being built. Speaking of Caesars, it looks quite diminutive next to the Mirage and the Flamingo expansion across the street. It would be another 8 years before they added the Palace Tower to better keep up with the mega resorts, a project that would inspire the retheming of the property to an architectural style more Greco roman. Lastly, you can see the Sands and Holiday Casino across the street from Mirage, showing just what smaller properties were competing against.

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