The bona fide Las Vegas showgirl, whose bejewelled and befeathered image once encapsulated the spirit of this city as much as the Rat Pack, Elvis, or Liberace, should indeed be placed on the endangered species list, at least when it comes to performing. In one of those ironic twists, even though showgirls are on the way out in the entertainment mainstream, much like neon, these Las Vegas cliches have such enduring power that the almost-extinct showgirl is still sought out by the likes of our flamboyant ex-mayor, and by conventions and other special events, as the classic representative of Sin City.
For us, recent news that Fluff LeCoque (legendary and much-feared company manager of Jubilee!, who'd been a dancer back in the days of the Lido de Paris, the city's first topless revue, which debuted at the Stardust in 1958) was finally retiring at the age of 89, seemed to signal the end of an era, even though the show she's helmed for decades is still going strong after more than 30 years (it's currently the longest-running production on the Strip).
Actually, for many years Jubilee! at Bally's and Les Folies Bergère at the Tropicana, had been the only two classic showgirl productions left in town, when the latter closed pretty suddenly in March, 2009 after 49 years at the historic Strip property. The cast of the show had been employees of the hotel, and the production was cut as a cost-saving measure, replaced by shows that rent the space and pay their own cast and crew.
After Folies closed, Jubilee! held center-stage showgirl-wise until the summer of 2010, when Vegas! The Show, an original production from veteran Vegas producer David Saxe, opened in the former Steve Wyrick Theater, now Saxe Theater, in the Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood. The show, which is a tribute to the entertainers who made Vegas great, includes odes to Louis Prima, Elvis, the Rat Pack, Lena Horne, Wayne Newton, and Tom Jones, among others. It features a live 11-piece band, historical film footage, and a cast of classic Vegas showgirls strutting their stuff in an intimate theater setting. Anthony Curtis was impressed when he saw it, calling the show "an entertaining and educational hour and a half." (Click the link for discounted tickets.)
What the future holds for the Las Vegas showgirl is hard to say, but here's an interview with Fluff, that we ran as a QoD back in 2005, where she shares her thoughts and experiences. (You can read more about Fluff in the QoD for 11/08/10, too.):
My first experience of Las Vegas was in 1947, when there were only two hotels on the Strip, namely the El Rancho Las Vegas and the Last Frontier hotel, neither of which exists anymore. They were both very "Western" in the daytime, then very elegant at night. There was dinner-dancing and a floorshow in each hotel, and the floorshow usually included a line of eight to ten girls, sometimes with a male singer. The girls would do an opening number, then there would be a warm-up act, then the girls did a second number, and finally the "star" came on and closed the show. My first job was as a singer in a band at the Last Frontier, and then two years later I came back as a dancer at the Thunderbird, which was one of the first venues in town to have an actual stage. I was working seven days a week, doing 15 shows a week, for $32 -- and that was good money at the time!
As time went by, more and more and bigger and bigger properties were built, and with them came bigger stages. The old nightclub or floorshow format (so-called because the show took place on the dancefloor) evolved into more complicated entertainment, with grander shows, more elaborate routines, and the first, true "showgirls." In Europe, where the concept originated, they were called "mannequins" and were topless, but they never moved! They just stood there like a painting. But in the United States in the 1950s, nudity on stage was a gray area, so at first they just had the girls walk around elegantly in those beautiful costumes. But then in 1958 the Lido de Paris, the first big, topless production show, opened at the Stardust, and when the Nevada State legislature tried to ban naked breasts on stage with the so-called "bare bosom bill," they failed. The following year the world-famous "Folies Bergère," another Parisian import, opened at the new Tropicana resort, and from that point on the feathered, bejewelled showgirl has been a classic Las Vegas image, and those big production shows have been synonymous with the city ever since -- Les Folies Bergère and Jubilee! have been running here now for 46 and 24 years respectively.
But then in the late '80s things started to change again. Las Vegas began to gear towards family-oriented entertainment, with theme parks and properties like Circus Circus and Excalibur, and shows that catered to families with kids. But families don't spend that much money. Kids don't gamble! So once again there was a shift, this time back to more sophisticated, adult-oriented shows. In 1993 Cirque du Soleil came into town with Mystère and changed the face of entertainment here forever, but the Cirque shows all focus not on beautiful women, but on those extraordinary "acts" -- the acrobats and contortionists and so on. As far as female-oriented entertainment is concerned, the focus now is on the gentlemen's clubs because let's face it, people love to go and see wonderful entertainment like the Cirque shows, but Las Vegas has always been known for its beautiful, scantily-clad women. So if you're not seeing them on stage anymore, you're going to go to a strip club! Or to one of the after-hours joints that have the sexy dancing girls.
So how has this whole evolutionary process affected the status of showgirls in Las Vegas? Well, when I was working at the Desert Inn in the '50s and '60s, you never came to work in slacks, or shorts, or tank tops, or sandals. You came to work "dressed." And you didn't go in through the back door. You didn't have to go through the kitchen and the garbage cans to get to work, like you do now! And you didn't have to park in the employees' lot and walk six blocks to get to the entrance, and another four blocks to get to the stage door. All that doesn't help your image at all! And not only that. You're not supposed to fraternize with the guests anymore. In the old days, when the showgirls were on the arms of the stars, that was because of the old format. The stars were in the show, and the showgirls used to have to spend time in between shows, or after the show, out in the casino. Their job was to attract people, particularly men, to the gaming tables. So that was the reason for dressing up every night -- part of your job was enticement. Nowadays that's not happening here in the casinos, but it is happening in the gentlemen's clubs. The girls are the bait!
The money is still a good wage, but it's not what people expect. I know kids who can live very comfortably on the money they make, and others who work three jobs! Why is that? Well, it's either that they've already got themselves into so much debt that they have to pay it off, or else their eyes are bigger than their wallets and they get caught up in this business of "I have to have a $200k house, I need to have all this stuff because everyone else is getting it." So they have to work three jobs and kill themselves -- it's crazy!
As far as the future of showgirls is concerned, it's hard to say. You won't see another show like Jubilee! because it's too expensive to reproduce. And it seems to me that there is less interest in being a showgirl, or even a dancer in a show these days, because the girls don't see a future in it. There's not that much out there for them ten years from now. But what they like about working here, not just in "Jubilee!," but in Las Vegas in general, is that the shows run a long time. They get benefits from the hotels. And they are able to pursue other careers on the side. Bottom line, there will always be people who want to dance, and there will always be an audience for beautiful women. Showgirls have been synonymous with Las Vegas for so long, and people expect and want to see that kind of entertainment here, so I don't see shows like Jubilee! or Les Folies disappearing from the map anytime soon.
Of course, no one back then predicted the economic meltdown we've been experiencing subsequently, but it's a credit to Ms LeCoque that her show stood the test of time and is still performing, while the competition down the street is long gone.
