Lola and Gallagher On Wheels

(c. 1979)

Today is the birthday of Las Vegas legend and entertainment "triple-threat" - Lola Falana.
See Lola and Gallagher?
They are skating to a surprise birthday party just for her.
Once they have made their arrival, Gallagher will smash a matching number of birthday cakes to the age she is turning. The crowd will love it. Lola and her show business cronies will be amazed.
s-i-g-h.
I wish the cake smashing /surprise birthday thing was true but it is not.
And still, his act would not be funny.
(Insert sad clown face)
Happy birthday, Lola! High showgirl kicks and toothy smiles for you!

Bottoms Up!

Get a taste of what Vegas was like in all of its seventies sleaze...before it got all family-cized and all....with a comedy sketch revue called Bottoms Up For Swingers, recorded live at the Flamingo Hotel.

Kay Martin

"If it were not for the Internet, the works of Kay Martin, a one-time centerfold / nightclub entertainer / "party album" recording artist, would have been forever lost to the vinyl bins of America. Her six albums (that I know of) consistently sell on eBay for remarkable prices - including her most popular album: the 1962 Christmas album "I Know What He Wants For Christmas (but I don't know how to wrap it!)". ...
... This album compiles several of the studio recordings made inbetween nightclub dates and features a little bit of everything: Kay the straight singer (she reworks both "Folsom Prison Blues" and "Halleujah I Love Her So"), Kay the naughty singer (her sly numbers must be heard to be believed), as well as The Bodyguards singing and cutting up. ..."
The 365 Days project over at WFMU's Beware of the Blog gives us Kay Martin - At Las Vegas.

Note: "I Know What He Wants For Christmas (but I don't know how to wrap it!)" should still be available over at The Groove Grotto. Also available is s/t album "Kay Martin and Her Bodyguards"

Showgirls

"No other icon epitomizes Las Vegas like the showgirl. While Las Vegas has become known primarily as a gambling resort, in fact its entertainment is as important to its tourist industry as gambling. Las Vegas has, in a sense, lived up to its self-promotion as the entertainment capital of the world. From a venue for New York nightclub shows in the first strip hotels—in which the entertainment director took precedence over the casino boss—Las Vegas has developed a unique and distinctive genre of adult entertainment perhaps most associated with the "Frenchified" showgirl of the Las Vegas shows Lido de Paris and Folies-Bergère, and their spin-offs of headliners, standup comics, and magicians.
The Las Vegas Showgirl, and the shows which exemplified them, have a history all their own. From the distinct theatrical traditions of burlesque, vaudeville, dance and music halls, the French cancan, comic opera and operetta, Broadway, speakeasies and nightclubs, and movies, came a cosmopolitan adult entertainment popular in New York, Hollywood, Paris, Miami Beach, Rio, and ultimately Las Vegas, where it seemed to become a permanent fixture of this town’s almost timeless firmament of entertainment. The Showgirl and The Las Vegas Show survive only in Las Vegas, that time-warp museum of popular culture. ..."
(quoted from the 'about' section of the exhibition)

"Frank Sinatra with the Copa Girls during rehearsal"
(Found in 'Jack Entratter and the Copa Girls')
Click image for much better view at source.

"Dancers in front of "Panache" sign"
(Found in 'Lido at the Stardust')
Click image for much better view at source.

Showgirls