Stuff That I have Noticed #40 – Las Vegas Tales

Every now and then I find myself relating a funny or embarrassing (usually both) story to someone and realize that they didn’t make it into my memoir. Here are two from my seven month run in South Pacific at the Las Vegas Thunderbird Hotel in 1962–63 inadvertently omitted from Three Stages.

Thunderbird Hotel in 1963

This was a very unusual gig for a duplet of reasons. In the full length version of the show the first act is about ninety-five minutes. Our entire Vegas South Pacific ran around ninety minutes. (More or less song cue to song cue.) And we did two shows a night, seven nights a week. That’s not a typo; there were no days off.

I can’t speak for the actors playing principal roles but for we Sailors and Seabees it soon became somewhat somnambulistic. We thoroughly enjoyed singing “Bloody Mary is the Girl I Love” and “There is Nothing Like a Dame” but the rest of our brief stints on stage we sorta phoned in.

Unlike most theatre performers I almost never experienced stage-fright or even nervousness. I don’t say this with pride since most real, committed pros admit to both. Even such an exalted star as Olivier has confessed to near paralyzing nerves even after dozens of performances of Hamlet. I guess I was passed over on delivery of that gene. I’m telling you this to set up this tale. There is such a thing as too much on stage relaxation.

After we’d been running for three or so months (between a hundred eighty or ninety performances) we were all pretty laid back on stage but I was the champ of laid back-ism. One night as Bloody Mary was singing “Bali Hai” – with each performance her tempo became slower and slower – and we were sprawled on stage gazing at the distant, paradisiac island, I became all too carried away in that I fell sound asleep. What normally happened at the end of the song was that we all drifted off stage while Luther Billis and Lieutenant Cable had a conversation about the island and the women who “danced with just skirts on”.

I became aware of the fact that I was in the wrong place when I heard the dialogue between Billis and Cable. Never one to panic, before moving I listened and realized that there was less than a minute left in the scene. I had to get off stage. So I slowly sat up, stretched, got to my feet and ambled off stage left.

Here’s the kicker: Not one person noticed, not even the stage manager (who was probably half asleep himself).

This next event occurred off stage where I was a lot less sophisticated.

We had three hours between shows and I usually had some supper, went back to my nearby apartment and read or napped. Occasionally I’d wander through the casino, maybe wager on a few turns of the roulette wheel or catch a lounge act, which is what I did on this particular night.

While sitting at a bar, nursing a beer a strikingly beautiful young woman sat down next to me and delivered a friendly smile. It didn’t take long for the conversation to start rolling along. She was a dancer at the Stardust and this was her night off. I mentioned that she was lucky since I didn’t get a night off. I bought her another drink and we did smalltalk until I announced that I had to get to the dressing room for my second show. She knew the head waiter in our show room and said she’d watch the performance and we’d meet afterward.

I walked backstage on air with a slight bulge in my Levis and announced my good luck to my fellow SeaBees. I was a happy, excited actor! Fortunately Bobby Carl, a much more experienced and sophisticated member of our troupe, had also been in the same bar and observed my interaction with this vision of sexiness and beauty. He suggested that should I take this lady back to my pad I would be in for a major shock when I got her undressed. “She” did indeed work at the Stardust but wore pants rather than a skirt on stage.

I had made a date with a well known – and highly convincing – female impersonator.

Needless to say, after the show I went out the side door.

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