WHAT HAPPENED IN VEGAS: THE SHORT-LIVED HOTEL THAT CHANGED LAS VEGAS

By Howard T. Brody

It was a dirty little secret. Like the vast majority of the country in the early 1950s, Las Vegas was no different when it came to racial equality or lack thereof. One would think that in a city that turned a blind eye to many vices, racial inequality wouldn’t exist here, but it did.

Back in those days the vast majority of the city’s African American residents occupied a 3.5-square mile area of Las Vegas known as the Westside. And unlike the Strip, which was just three miles away, the Westside wasn’t exactly brimming with glitz and glamour. With Jim Crow laws solidly in place to keep the local population in check, dirt roads that were lined with small shacks, ramshackle and dilapidated homes, tents and outhouses were a common thing to see.

Despite the number of progressive people who converged on Sin City in those early days, it was still a relatively small town. The population stood steady at 24,000 – about 1/24th the size it is today – and with it came not only that old, white, southern mentality, but the mobsters who controlled the hotels didn’t much care for their white patrons mingling with the “moolinyans.”

While the local people of color could work at hotels and casinos on the Strip or in Benny Binion’s “Glitter Gulch,” they could only be employed for “back of the house” jobs like janitors, porters, maids and cooks. These were the types of jobs that kept both their profiles and wages as low as possible.

Although black entertainers of the day were better paid, they were no more welcomed in the front of the house as the local workers. For example, Louis Armstrong, Pearl Bailey and Ella Fitzgerald, who were all headliners on the Strip, had to use the kitchen or stage door to enter or exit the buildings where they performed – and because they were not allowed to stay at the whites-only hotels, they were forced to rent rooms at boarding houses on the Westside.

How bad was it?

The city’s practice of segregation, which began in the 1930s, had earned Las Vegas the moniker “The Mississippi of the West.”

Whether you were famous or not made no difference, both the legendary Nat King Cole and Sammy Davis Jr. were the recipients of blatant, in-your-face racism.

For Davis, when he decided to go for a swim in a whites-only swimming pool at the New Frontier after he got out the water, the manager immediately ordered the pool closed and drained it so the pool could be scrubbed and sanitized.

For Cole, the message wasn’t so subtle. It was his first trip to Vegas, and when he and a white companion tried to enter the hotel at the front entrance, the doorman prevented him from going inside.

As the story goes, when his white companion told the doorman, “That’s Nat King Cole,” the doorman responded with, “I don’t care if he’s Jesus Christ. He’s a nigger, and he stays out.” While as shocking and disgusting it is for us to hear these words today, unfortunately, 60-plus years ago they were all too commonplace here in Las Vegas.

While Lena Horne was the lone exception to the “no blacks” rule, mostly because she was a personal favorite of Bugsy Siegel, the gorgeous torch singer’s stay at the Flamingo underscored just how rampant racism really was. While she was allowed to stay at the hotel, it came with specific provisions: she could not eat in any of the restaurants, and she could not go into the casino or any other public area. When she checked out of the hotel, not only was her room cleaned with disinfectant, as if to get rid of some disease, but her bedsheets and towels were burned.

Then entered Will Max Schwartz in the 1950s, who saw the business potential of an integrated hotel and casino in Las Vegas. The time seemed right. In 1948 U.S. President Harry Truman had abolished segregation in the U.S. military, and in 1954 The U.S. Supreme Court handed down their ruling in Brown v. Board of Education which desegregated public schools. Schwartz, who had a background in real estate, put together a group of investors that included California real estate baron Alexander Bisno, New York City restaurateur Louis Rubin, and former heavyweight boxing champion “The Brown Bomber” himself, Joe Louis. Together they would create and open the Moulin Rouge.

Named after the famed Parisian cabaret, the Moulin Rouge Hotel Casino opened on May 24, 1955, built at the cost of $3.5 million (nearly $33.8 million in 2020 dollars) and billed as “America’s First Interracial Hotel.” The lavish hotel consisted of two “Googie-Populuxe” Modernist style stucco buildings that housed the hotel, the casino and a theater, a type of futurist architecture influenced by car culture, jets, the Space Age and the Atomic Age. The hotel had 110 rooms, a swimming pool, a 60-foot high neon Eiffel Tower and a large, cursive neon sign designed by famed Yesco sign designer Betty Willis, who had also designed the famous “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign that is still in use today. The exterior façade featured beautiful lines, concrete “star” blocks, and mosaic-tiled columns and flagstone, a common design characteristic of the 1950s. The interior consisted of polished mahogany walls and vibrant colors. Those who visited the Moulin Rouge claim it was nothing short of classy.

Even though Joe Louis served as the Moulin Rouge’s official greeter, the most popular attraction at the new hotel and casino was its marquee number, a colorful African-themed late-night show called “The Tropi Can Can,” which featured the city’s only all-black chorus line, who were featured on the cover of the June 1955 issue of Life magazine.

Not only did the Moulin Rouge attract black and white patrons alike, but celebrities such as Louis Armstrong, Pearl Bailey, Count Basie, Harry Belafonte, Milton Berle, George Burns, Marlene Dietrich, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Bob Hope, Lena Horne, Dorothy Lamour, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra all made their way to the hotel because it was the only place in town where black and white performers could socialize with one another. Sadly, hotels on the Strip attempted to ban its headliners from visiting the Moulin Rouge, and such white performers as Tallulah Bankhead were issued ultimatums, but most refused to follow the directive. Black entertainers of the era who graced the Moulin Rouge’s showroom included Lionel Hampton, Dinah Washington, a 9-year-old Gregory Hines, and the Platters. Unlike the hotels on the Strip or at “Glitter Gulch,” the Moulin Rouge offered better employment opportunities for those who lived on the Westside as black residents were employed as bartenders, cocktail waitresses, security guards, dealers and even managers.

Before its opening, black tourism in Las Vegas was non-existent. But when the Moulin Rouge opened, that changed.

By the end of October, however, financial mismanagement forced the hotel and casino to shut its doors, and by December, the Moulin Rouge filed for bankruptcy protection; they were spending more money than they took in and Schwartz never made provisions for additional funding.

Although it was only open for a short time, the great experiment that was the Moulin Rouge offered its guests a brief glimpse of what a racially-integrated Las Vegas resort could be and had a lasting impact. In the aftermath of the Moulin Rouge closing, black Las Vegas residents had been insisting that officials pass a Civil Rights ordinance to allow them to dine, gamble and stay at the city’s hotels, according to an Intermountain Histories.com report by Alan Mattay of the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

Civil rights activists scheduled a march for March 26, 1960, to protest racial discrimination at Las Vegas resorts. Fearing a public relations nightmare, hotel owners, city and state officials, and then Nevada governor Grant Sawyer quickly set up a meeting with NAACP president, Dr. James McMillan, and other ethnic leaders at the Moulin Rouge. Because most of the hotel owners agreed to integrate their establishments, the planned march was canceled, and as they say, the rest is history.

The facility changed hands a few times over the years and opened several times, each with failed results. Most believe the location, the neighborhood, and the growth of the Strip have kept the Moulin Rouge from being resurrected as a successful establishment.  For a while, the hotel was owned in the 1980s by Sarann Knight-Preddy, the first African-American woman to hold a Nevada Gaming License.

In 1992 the Moulin Rouge was listed as a historic building in the National Register of Historic Places, and in 1995 the building was used for the filming of “Casino.”

On May 29, 2003, a fire destroyed all but the façade. The iconic neon sign designed by Betty Willis was rescued and is now a permanent fixture of the Neon Museum boneyard, which houses other iconic Vegas hotel and casino signs.

Every few years someone comes along and tries to resurrect the Moulin Rouge. The last such attempt was during the summer of 2019 when a company called Las Vegas Moulin Rouge LLC put forth a $1.6 billion three-phase proposal to bring a hotel, casino, restaurant and buffet, poolside nightclub, lounges, showroom, retail, spa, jazz center, and sports betting to the site. By October, the deal fell apart.

Will what happened in Vegas, happen again? Will the Moulin Rouge ever find life again in Las Vegas as it rises from the ashes of what once was? Only time will tell.