EDITOR’S NOTE: “Vegas Myths Busted” now publishes new entries every Monday, with a bonus Flashback Fri edition. Today’s accounting entry inward our on-going serial originally ran on Oct. 14, 2022.
One important thing to know about existent showgirls is that they are elite athletes trained in classic trip the light fantastic who perform nightly in Las Vegas Strip musical comedy productions.
Another important thing to know nearly existent showgirls is that they no longer exist. They haven’t since 2016. That’s when the finally Vegas showgirl show, “Jubilee!” at Bally’s, shut after 35 years.
All the showgirls you currently reckon along the sidewalks of the Las Vegas Strip are either paid models or street performers posing for photos inward change for tips.
The whimsy that in that location is relieve full-time employ for women who high-hoof inward glamourous outfits and heavily headdresses is a myth. It’s a myth whose persistence is understandable. Last August, when the City of Las Vegas saw tantrum to replace the ii 25-foot showgirl signs that welcomed visitors downtown, what did it replace them with? Two 50-foot showgirl signs.
How the Showgirl Went Extinct
From the ’50s through the ’80s, nearly every major casino had a showgirl show. The Tropicana had “Folies Bergere.” Bally’s had “Jubilee!” The Stardust had “Lido de Paris.” The Desert Inn had “Pzazz!” The Dunes had “Casino de Paris.” The MGM Grand had “Hallelujah Hollywood.” Most of these featured a topless element, but that was ne'er the briny attraction.
Their brainchild was from the Parisian floor show shows,” Diane Palm, a former “Jubilee!” dancer, trip the light fantastic captain, and accompany manager told Casino.org. “The showgirl shows were artistically beautiful and imparted a gustation of opulence, imagination, and spectacle. Like the openhanded MGM Hollywood musicals, they were big, splashy extravaganzas with lots and lots of performers singing and dancing. In increase to showgirls, they had female person and virile dancers, singers, take performers, specialty acts, and unrecorded orchestras or bands.”
Some internet experts blame the demise of the showgirl on woke culture and its opposite of tyrannous female stereotypes. Others say it’s because the era of the large Hollywood musicals went the way of life of the Raphus cucullatus (to quote a once-popular musical phrase that’s gone that same way).
While in that respect is some truth to both ideas, what rendered the showgirl extinct was the corporatization of the Las Vegas Strip. Once the powerfulness shifted from from time to time mafia-backed millionaire gambling casino owners to shareholder-beholden collective executives, the countdown to the net mantle began.
The hotels financed showgirl shows, and they were not cheap. They be upward to $10 jillion per exhibit to design and, with their brotherhood casts of hundreds, $1 1000000 or to a greater extent per yr to stage. And this was endorse in the ’70s!
“We had a casting of 128 performers when we opened ‘Jubilee!’” Palm recalled. “Pete Menefee intentional 20 dresses just for our Titanic sequence, and those 20 dresses cost $250K. We had jewellery that was imported from Europe that was designed and made in Paris, and by master jewelers. We had feathers sourced from all over the world. Money was no object,” she said.
When Money Became an Object
Until the betimes ’80s, hotel owners never required showgirl shows to recoup their outlay on them. They were considered loss leaders, their confessedly intent existence to make gamblers into casinos and dungeon them there. Back then, play stock-still accounted for nigh 75% of an average out casino’s revenue. That’s wherefore so many members of every showgirl demo audience were comped – as they were for drinks, meals, and hotel rooms.
Today, that revenue stream has flipped, with nongambling sources method of accounting for 75%. Instead of paying to stage their shows, incorporated owners inwards the ’80s decided to wee main(a) producers pay them to lease their showrooms.
Once many Vegas shows became “four-walled” – forced to compensate exclusively for themselves with their have box-office sales – non a bingle producer volunteered to arrange a showgirl show. Instead, they brought in essentially what Vegas remains known for today: superstar euphony residencies, traveling companies from Broadway-proven productions, and the unknown marvel of Cirque du Soleil.
Last Showgirl Bastions?
It tin be argued that showgirls are ease healthily terpsichore on the Strip inwards “Vegas The Show” at the 423-seat comte de Saxe Theatre inwards the Miracle Mile shopping mall. But that production merely uses a smattering of showgirls in a smattering of its songs to march showgirls in their historical Vegas context, often similar museums of natural account doh with other extinct animals.
It tin also live argued that the showgirl lives on inwards the effort to update her mental image via the sexy-dance production numbers of younger headliners Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, and Gwen Stefani, whose last residence featured computer backup dancers dressed as Daniel Chester French showgirls.
According to Palm, though, those are weak arguments.
“You tin clothe upwardly as showgirls, but that’s not the same as performing in the production shows that were such a rich voice of Las Vegas’ ethnic history.
“That tradition is over,” she said.
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