It was actually 14 years ago that the Chairman of the Board checked out (yikes! how time flies), and his passing was one of the few occasions for which the Strip has stopped, at least for a moment, at least in parts. Here are the others.
The most recent such observance was a three-minute dimming on June 11, 2004, in memory of President Ronald Reagan. The gesture is usually reserved for ex-Strip headliners, and Reagan had topped the bill at the Last Frontier for two weeks in 1954.
On Sept. 14, 2001, three days after 9/11, non-essential lights were doused all night long at Caesars Palace, Bally's Las Vegas, Paris Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Hilton, and the Flamingo. Other casinos do not appear to have followed suit, although the Venetian, New Frontier, Bellagio, MGM Grand, Mirage, Treasure Island, New York-New York, and Golden Nugget all suspended casino play for an entire minute at midday.
In early January 1999, Excalibur turned down its lights for eight minutes, following the death of King Arthur’s Tournament creator Peter Jackson. It also marked the end of the show’s eight-year run, replaced by Tournament of Kings.
It was the year before when Strip lights dimmed "albeit briefly and haphazardly" on May 15, 1998 (according to a Mike Weatherford-penned article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal), in honor of Frank Sinatra. That ceremony was a bit prompter than the one for Dean Martin, on Dec. 28, 1995, which occurred three days after Dino’s demise. The Strip might have missed that one entirely, had it not been for some nudging by agent Mort Viner and photographer Don Pack, who prodded civic leaders into hitting the light switch.
Evidently, memories had dim fast -- the May 16, 1990 death of fellow-Rat Packer Sammy Davis Jr. had been followed by a light-dimming commemoration without fuss, apparently.
In the case of Robert Goulet (who died Oct. 30, 2007), "It was too early in the eve to ‘go dark,’ but as his funeral ended at 6 p.m. (if I remember right), many if not most casinos flashed a video tribute with graphics and his photo, etc.," Weatherford recalls. "By the year of his death, we were solidly in the age of casino signs as giant video screens that were more easily programmed."
Area historians can recall only two other such obsequies. One was for George Burns, following his March 9, 1996, death at the age of 100. (Burns was a staple of Danny Gans’ act.) The earliest was after the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy -- the only president besides Reagan accorded such a Strip commemoration.
World AIDS Day, which is always observed on Dec. 1, has seen several diminutions of the Strip’s neon blaze, but the only times we've gone dark for a 60 full minutes have been for Earth Hour, held on the last Saturday in March. An annual event staged to conserve energy and raise awareness of climate-change issues, Las Vegas has participated, albeit patchily, each year since 2009.
