Question of the Day - 07 March 2024

The Silver Slipper opened in 1950, the same year as the Desert Inn. It was located right across the Strip from the DI, next to (just north of) the Last Frontier, and was right at the entrance of the adjacent Last Frontier Village, Las Vegas’ first theme park that featured what’s always reported as “nine hundred tons” of memorabilia from the around the western U.S. It was, in fact, a small townsite with such small artifacts as antique firearms, pioneer wagons, and barber chairs and poles, along with bigger attractions like a Chinese joss house, a full-scale mining train, a one-room schoolhouse, an entire drug store, and actual jails from Nevada’s smaller mining camps. Last Frontier Village also offered horseback and stagecoach rides and even pack trips into the desert.

Anyway, the Silver Slipper was marked by a glittery high-heel Cinderella-type slipper with a bow and presented a western melodrama and a burlesque show on its stage. It also had a fairly large casino and even some meeting space, one of Las Vegas’ first “convention centers.”  

But the Silver Slipper hit the big time—and not in a good way—in 1964, when it was closed by the Nevada Gaming Control Board for the cheating of patrons. Apparently, some of the games were rigged, including using flat (shaved) dice at the crap tables. The scandal actually hit the New York Times, which on April 3 ran the headline, “Las Vegas Casino Shut for Cheating,” following that with the lead, “Plainclothes agents raided the Silver Slipper Casino tonight and closed the gambling tables on a dice-cheating charge.”

The owner at the time was forced out and the new owners instituted a paycheck-cashing promo for locals and $1.57 all-day buffet. The slipper was moved from the top of the building to a pylon near the street, which is central to the story of why Howard Hughes wanted to buy the joint in 1968.

According to the common story, Hughes didn’t like the lights off the slipper shining into his window in the penthouse of the Desert Inn, but that’s been pretty well debunked, since all those windows were completely blacked out. Instead, the Silver Slipper was just another acquisition in the parade of casinos Hughes bought in those days and he paid $5.4 million for it. He also purchased the Frontier (the “Last” had been dropped by then) for $23 million.

The Silver Slipper purchase turned out to be a profitable move for the Hughes Corporation; 20 years later in 1988, Margaret Elardi, who already owned the Frontier, bought the property for $70 million. Whether it was a good move for the Elardis is questionable; they ultimately razed the Silver Slipper and, yes, put up a parking lot for the Frontier.

Today, all that remains of the Silver Slipper are memories from the old-timers and the slipper itself, which is on display on Las Vegas Blvd. N. just outside the Neon Museum’s Boneyard. You can see it in this Las Vegas Review-Journal photo.

You can also see several photos of the casino, parking lot, sign, and others at VintageLasVegas.