Jack Entratter’s name was always on old Las Vegas marquees (notably in The Godfather). Who was he and what was his Las Vegas contribution?
Jack Entratter is such a legendary name hereabouts that, as you say in the question, his name appears on a Sands marquee in The Godfather Part 1.
He was born in 1914 in New York and grew to be so big, six-four and 240 pounds, that he was a natural to become a bouncer at Manhattan's famed Stork Club barely out of his teens. He moved up steadily in the nightclub business. In 1940 at the age of 36, he was promoted to assistant manager at the Copacabana, later becoming the general manager, and by 1949, he was the majority owner.
When the Sands was being built in the early 1950s, one of the owners, Jakie Freedman, made Entratter an offer he couldn't refuse and the impresario became a general manager of the Sands in charge of entertainment. He designed and built the famed Copa Room specifically to lure Frank Sinatra away from the Desert Inn, where he'd performed for a couple of years since that casino opened. He also signed Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr., the core of what eventually became the Rat Pack.
Entratter was not only his own muscle, but he also had ferocious backing, Meyer Lansky and his ilk. However, he was widely beloved in entertainment circles as a gentle giant who was quintessentially polished and placidly persuasive in his approach to entertainers and nightclub patrons. By the time the live album Sinatra at the Sands was released in 1966, Entratter had become known as "Mr. Entertainment." But he was also a teetotaler who didn't drink, smoke, or gamble and he was a devoted family man who had two daughters by his first wife Dorothy (she died of a heart attack in 1961).
Entratter personally hired the stunning Copa Girls, so he could hand pick his second wife from among the showgirls; Corinne Cole was Playmate of the Month for the May 1958 issue of Playboy. They divorced a few years later.
In 1962, Entratter was named president of the Sands, a position he held until Howard Hughes bought the joint in 1967.
Jack Entratter passed away on March 11, 1971, at the age of 57. He'd been admitted to the hospital the night before for what was considered a minor stroke, but he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage the next day.
