Another former owner married frequent Riviera performer and Golden Globe winner Pia Zadora.
Rat Pack member Dean Martin was a part-owner for a short time. Its star wattage started with bejeweled piano man Liberace, the property’s first headliner, and its marquee eventually included Frank Sinatra, Engelbert Humperdinck, Tony Orlando and Dolly Parton. Like the others, mob money made sure the lights were always on at the Riviera. Long before the buns of bronze were loaded onto the back of a pickup truck’s trailer Monday, the Riviera was among the first casinos to make this stretch of desert glitter. The 60-year-old casino-hotel’s luster had faded, becoming the place to go for cheap drinks, cheap blackjack and a free photo-op in front with the ladies of topless revue Crazy Girls, posteriors immortalized with a bronze statue of their behinds. “The amazing thing about Las Vegas is how soon it forgets itself because it keeps reinventing itself,” said Jeff Kutash, the dancer, choreographer and producer who brought the aquatic stage spectacle “Splash” to a Riviera stage for 21 years. The Tropicana, which opened in 1957, is close behind.
The Riviera’s only remaining elder was the often-renovated Flamingo that Bugsy Siegel debuted in 1947. It’s an age reached by few properties along the four-mile stretch of hulking casino resorts mimicking other worldly landmarks or beckoning passers-by with all their wants in one place that have replaced Sin City’s recent past. LAS VEGAS (AP) _ If the ghosts of Frank Sinatra and Liberace were still hanging around the Riviera Hotel and Casino on Monday morning, they wouldn’t have found a seat at the bar.Ĭrowds squeezed onto barstools and milled about the casino floor saying goodbye to “The Riv,” a classic that spent 60 years on the Las Vegas Strip and closed at noon.
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