As far as we know, all the episode story lines in the CBS series, the future of which still hangs in the balance, pending its success -- or otherwise -- in the new Friday-night time slot, are essentially made-up and not based on any history of Las Vegas nor biography of the man himself. Just like the fictional Savoy Casino, of which we've written previously in this column, or Sheriff Ralph Lamb's dramatic nemesis Vincent Savino, played by Michael Chiklis, the series is a wholly-fictional composite, although based on the types of characters and situations Lamb encountered in real life.
We confess we still haven't had a chance to catch up with the series yet, but Lamb is credited with forming Las Vegas' first SWAT team, and with establishing a modern crime lab (the progenitor of what spawned "CSI".) Hence, if either of these has been or is featured in a show, both have basis in fact, as do encounters with the Beatles, Frank Sinatra, and John F. Kennedy, should any of them happen to pop up.
Ralph Lamb, now aged 85, is a technical adviser to the series, which started out over lunch with Nick Pileggi (who wrote Casino and Goodfellas), who asked questions and took notes about the former "Cowboy Sheriff," as he was known, and his legendary career. Pileggi based his pitch to the network on those notes, so we can assume there was more than a grain of reality in both his depiction of Lamb (who loves the choice of Dennis Quaid to play him) and on the gist of the history, if not all the specific names, places, and events.
Asked if Quaid, with whom, coincidentally, he happens to share both boot size and birthday, would have cut it as a member of his team, Lamb gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up in an interview with Parade: "Oh, in a second! He's just not a big shot. He works like a dog and he’s a man’s man. [While shooting the pilot] I saw him racing down the airport [tarmac] on a horse and jumping off and whupping a couple of guys. He's the real thing, believe me."
On the subject of horses and authenticity, this is one of the areas where we've seen Lamb contradict the TV version of events. "I never did figure where [the show's creators] thought I was riding a horse up and down Fremont Street. I had plenty of horses and rode them everyday, sometimes in parades, sometimes to cases in outlying counties. But I didn't ride one down to the courthouse because they wouldn't let me tie one up there!"
He also takes to task another scene in the pilot episode, where his character shoots out the tires of a speeding car, carries a shotgun into a hotel, and confronts a gang of bikers. Still, while some poetic license may have been taken, there's evidently more than a grain of truth to the general scenario:
"The shotgun in the casino, that’s a far-fetched thing," observes Lamb. "I don’t know how it got in there. But we shot out a lot of tires." As to the biker gang, however, that sounds like an invention, with Lamb commenting that when the scene was filmed, "it looked like the end of the world."
However, some of what's been portrayed to date is actually based on fact, he has revealed. For example, in one episode he punches out a Chicago hood, cuffs him, and marches him out of a casino. Lamb confirmed in an interview with the New York Post that the incident happened for real. "Yes it did. His name was Johnny Roselli," who was an underling of Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana. "We never meant to get him hurt," says Lamb. "I just give him a whoopin’ right there in front of everybody." (Roselli is one of the characters upon whom the character played by Michael Chiklis is based.)
We understand that, in order to try to boost ratings, particularly with a younger demographic, the writers are now making more of the Hollywood-entertainment tie-in to Las Vegas and the headliners (and B-listers) who helped glamorize the early days of Sin City, so we're guessing the scripts are likely to become even farther removed from Ralph Lamb's actual true-life experiences down the line, if the show makes it to another series.
