ML - Vegas Magazine

2012 - Issue 4 - Summer

Vegas Magazine - Niche Media - There is a place beyond the crowds, beyond the ropes, where dreams are realized and success is celebrated. You are invited.

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HOLIDAY Roman Kick off summer with bright swim fashions at the Garden of the Gods pool, as Forum Shops celebrates 20 years and Caesars Palace caps a two-year renaissance of exciting renovations. Exterior of Caesars Palace, 1966 fashion photography by BONNIE HOLLAND by MATT KELEMEN N ineteen sixty-six was a year of flowers-in-your-hair revolution across the country, with counterculture gurus like Timothy Leary and Andy Warhol challenging the status quo. Alongside Highway 91 in Las Vegas, however, a different kind of visionary was at work: Jay Sarno was fulfilling a dream by opening Caesars, a palace where every guest would be treated like royalty. Sarno thought big—VIPs were greeted opening day by stunning young ladies in costume with signs reading i am your slave—and lived large—a life of private jets and limousines, front-row seats for all the best shows, and din- ners with the biggest celebrities. He so lived and breathed the sexy lifestyle of the '60s, being fed grapes by demure hotel hostesses and catching late-night shows at the 980-seat Circus Maximus, that he practically lived at the hotel until the day he died. "This hotel opened the year I was born," says daughter Heidi Sarno Straus during a lunch interview at Spago in the Forum Shops at Caesars. "When my parents divorced, my father moved into the hotel. Weekends 110 vegasmagazine.com were spent here. My siblings even had their swimming lessons here." Indeed, in Sarno's world at Caesars Palace, there was really no reason to leave: Gladiator epics had been a mainstay in movie houses for years, and he realized that a Roman-themed resort where every man was made to feel like a king (hence the plural spelling of "Caesars") could be an irresistible enticement for visitors. Uniforms were designed to look like togas, and he named the fine-dining room the Bacchanal. Outside, in what was still a small desert town, Sarno built enormous fountains in front of the property to give the impression that guests were entering another world—the next year, those fountains would become one of the primary iconic images of Las Vegas, after daredevil Evel Knievel attempted to clear them in his infa- mously near-fatal 1967 motorcycle jump. Caesars' opening night, on August 5, 1966, made national news, with singer Andy Williams headlining. Caesars Palace soon became a mecca for musicians, including Vincent Falcone, who drove west from Syracuse in 1970 and went on to be the second pianist for Steve Lawrence and Eydie photography courtesy of lvcva

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