Cult Vegas: The Weirdest! The Wildest! The Swingin'est Town on Earth [Paperback]

Mike Weatherford (Author)

Book Description

Series: Travel Holiday Guides | Publication Date: February 2001

In Cult Vegas, author Mike Weatherford resurrects the mystique of Las Vegas Golden Age--the '60s-cool of history and legend-and introduces Sin City s hipster legacy to new generations of Vegasphiles. Meet '50s and '60s lounge greats the Treniers, the Mary Kaye Trio, and Louis Prima and Keely Smith; comedy legends Joe E. Lewis, Shecky Greene, and Don Rickles; and Vegas "babes" Vampira, Lili St. Cyr, Ann-Margret, and Tempest Storm. Weatherford also covers nearly every offbeat movie ever made about Las Vegas, as well as Elvis and Frank s impact on the town. This gorgeous entertainment retrospective is packed with showroom esoterica, descriptions of near-forgotten corners of Vegas cult musicology, odd trivia, and unsung heroes of a bygone era.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Mike Weatherford rolled into Las Vegas on October 29, 1987--the last night Frank, Sammy and Dean would stand on the same stage on the Strip. Beat down by a long drive, he didn't make it to that show. But he's seen plenty of others since then as an entertainment reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper.

A native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, Weatherford lives in Las Vegas with his wife and daughter.

Product Details

• Paperback: 247 pages
• Publisher: Huntington Press (February 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0929712714
• ISBN-13: 978-0929712710
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #440,652 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Joe Bob says check it out, May 14, 2001

By 

Joe Bob Briggs (forwarded with permission) (Dallas, Tx.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cult Vegas: The Weirdest! The Wildest! The Swingin'est Town on Earth (Paperback)

This informal history of Vegas entertainment is the best book on the subject, the product of a Vegas-phile's 14 years of reporting for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Weatherford chose to tell the whole story of the city through its entertainers, and as history it feels exactly right. He's got the precise date that the first bare breast was uncovered in the city, as well as the cost of Liberace's wardrobe on the night of his debut. Nothing here about gangsters or gambling or byzantine Nevada politics, but who would think you could write a chapter about Frank, Dean and Sammy and make it as fresh as though you were sitting at the Dunes in 1959? In fact, the opening chapter--telling Frank's story one more time--is as fine a history of the Las Vegas showroom as you're ever likely to read. He then follows up with expansive essays on the origins of the Vegas lounge. (Louis Prima gets the major credit, of course, but he also remembers that Prima was preceded by the Mary Kaye Trio, which started the midnight-to-dawn style of improvisational lounge entertainment that would become a Vegas trademark until it was watered down in the seventies to the level of Bill Murray's "Saturday Night Live" lounge lizard singing "Star Wars.") Before the era of comedy clubs, but after the age of burlesque, Vegas was pretty much the only place for top comics to work, and Weatherford dispenses that history through the lives of what he calls the big three: Buddy Hackett, Shecky Greene and Don Rickles. What, no Joe E. Lewis? Weatherford actually convinced me that Joe E. does not belong on the list, mainly because he was popular with the Vegas founders but never that big a star to the public. One very helpful aspect of this history is that Weatherford has gone deep into the morgue, poring over old microfiche and faded yellow clippings, to show the ups and downs of familiar careers. (For example, he reproduces a rare ad for Elvis' April 1956 debut at the New Frontier, where he's third-billed. Second billing is Shecky Greene. And the headliner? Freddy Martin and His Orchestra!) I could quibble with some of Weatherford's choices. Tom Jones is a sidebar in the Elvis chapter, but shouldn't that be Wayne Newton? His chapter on showgirls is fascinating--going into the lives of such forgotten beauties as Lili St. Cyr, Dyanne Thorne (better known as "Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS"), Charo, Juliet Prowse and Mamie Van Doren--but it doesn't give enough credit to the hundreds of girls who have passed through the Tropicana's Folies Bergere, the longest-running show of them all. Still, there are so many gems that you can't stop reading. His section on TV stars who have tried to do Vegas shows--a list that includes Irene "Granny" Ryan, Monty Hall, Suzanne Somers, Mary Hart and Tony Danza--is devastatingly funny without being mean-spirited. And you can sense his genuine affection for such Vegas institutions as Ann-Margret, classiest of all the dames ever to hit town, and the Chairman of the Board. He also remembers the truly tragic characters like Totie Fields, Redd Foxx and Sam Kinison, without getting maudlin or melodramatic.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great, fun-reading account of entertainers, December 8, 2001

By 

S. "mediaddict" (Jamaica Plain, Morocco) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cult Vegas: The Weirdest! The Wildest! The Swingin'est Town on Earth (Paperback)

This book does a great job of charting the strange, crooked route that the evolution of entertainment in Vegas has taken. I found the chapters dealing with the rise and fall of the lounge act, and the changing face of what "lounge entertainment" meant, to be absolutely fascinating. Of course, Elvis and the Rat Pack get their own parts of the book, but you've read about them already. It's the lounge acts, the comedians, the sexpot starlets turned show-singers, and the "parisian" revues that are given a funny and insightful view in this book. Easy reading, you'll burn through this book in a day or two, but it's a very entertaining read, and manages to be very informative at the same time.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cult Vegas IS the Vegas story!, April 6, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Cult Vegas: The Weirdest! The Wildest! The Swingin'est Town on Earth (Paperback)

You'll read how a city evolved into a phenomena, what was lost, and why. You'll hear the real stories behind the gossip, the personalities behind the public personas, and, best of all, you'll meet the intriguing cast of characters who were there when the spotlight dimmed.

There is an underlying tone of regret in Cult Vegas, a sense that some of the best of a city has been lost forever. For those of us who remember the excitement of the 50's and the 60's, the question is an affirmation of our memories of the dinner showrooms and the performers who played the venue.

But this book is not a lament. It's a blast! Mike Weatherford's style is as fast-paced and dynamic as the culture he chronicles. The fact that he is a long-addicted student of the Las Vegas Strip entertainment scene and a reporter who has recorded events for a decade gives this author a solid overview of how and why a desert oasis grew into a mega entertainment center.

Don't miss this one. You'll find history in Cult Vegas, none of it boring. Great photos. Fascinating sidebars. If you are a Sinatra fan, a trivia guru, or just love good writing, this is one book packed with page after page of good reading!