Page
IT'S
THE CHINA HAIL, WEDNESDAY, JUNE
CONTINUING THE WORLD TRAVELS OF..
1980
LOGAN
GOURLAY
reporting from Las Vegas... the talent-loaded town where the dice roll incessantly and bandits are mostly one-armed
Las Vegas.
a small town of
some 60,000 resident souls entirely surround- ed by a dry sea of Nevada's desert sand. It is still, I'm afraid-look- ing at it again after five years the most bizarre, unbelievable town in this bizarre world.
It is also, I report with
a mixture of awe, horror, and fascination, follows:-
25
IT IS gambling, of course. Perpetual, often panic-stricken, gambling. Roulette wheels
spinning In
continuous, futile
circles. Dice clicking inces- santly every minute of the hour,
every minute of the 24.
Fruft machines, endless roWS
of them, countless battalions of one-armed
bandits
showing
DUKE ELLINGTON
...some customers
even alt and listen
FRANK SINATRA
... impromptu turna
with that other Clan
Put 25 cents in the slot by a slight excess of sentimen. tality. and live again."
their blackbar teeth in cynical jeers and waiting for their thing. inevitable plunder.
IT IS the machine which greets you at the airport looking like a weighing machine but announcing: "New pick-up. Breathe pure oxygen for quick lift Fases distress of nervous- ness, over-indulgence in any
IT IS Red Skelton appearing IT IS cafes advertising in in cabaret at one of the hotels garish signs: "Breakfast served for 25.000 dollars a week (or all day and night."
IT IS marriage and divorce nearly HK$100,000) and provid- ing a brilliant 90 mmules
the easy, time-saving way under convenient laws, comedy and mime marred only Nevada's
of
Since so much guff has been written about the troubled teens by
די
people who are just not on the same wavelength, here is some sound
sense at last: PARENTS
PLEASE NOTE!
SOMEWHERE around the 11-plus mark you lose the girl who was your daughter. She enters the solitary no-man's-land called adolescence. She enters it probably timidly, self-consciously, probably tempestuously, with a spurt of brash bravado. But whichever way she reacts she certainly enters her new life alone.
Can you help her? It is a problem which has worried parents since (PROBLEMS Noah, and now a new book on the subject comes out.
OF ADOLESCENT GIRLS, by James Hemming, Heinemann, 18s.).
I think it is the simplest, the pops and he wants to get ostracism and isolation during early adolescence leave one most sympathetic guide yet to down to the evening paper. the terrifying terrain which Admittedly it is even more a permanent feeling of social every child has to pass through. difficult for Mum when the inadequacy."
I would like to see it in the bathroom is festooned with
bands of every parent in the Land.
ITS SOURCE: Some 3,583 "Agony Colin" letters written mostly by girls in the age group 11 to 15.
daughter's discarded clothing.
ISOLATION
It takes a lot of the milk of human kindness to put up with ITS DEDUCTIONS: That the the noisy, ill-mannered stranger problems of adolescence are who, overnight, has taken the numerous, intense, and above place of the neat little, sweet
In short, if you do not manage to make friends happily
in your teens you probably never will.
Yet what is one of the bigges* bones of contention between children and parents? It is the choice of friends.
Dr Hemming quotes a typical
all universal (whether your little girl, whose goodnight kiss letter received from an 11-year-
child is jiving around the le replaced with the cry Elephant and Castle or indulg- "Why
you leave
can'
ing in a little Greek dancing alone."
of
old:
me
!
"Whenever I make Arrange- ments to go out with friends, it But life is not all honey for doesn't matter who they are, an the green lawn of Chelten- ham College, she will have the the adolescent either. The child my mother always says, I don't same basic worries and the of 14 is undergoing more con want you to go same inherent fears).
fusions and problems that at
out with that girl, she is not a nice child,'
my friends
LISTEN...
IT'S CONCLUSIONS: That any other time in her life, the My mother ways this about all parental opposition to the often girl of 17 is experiencing the infuriating ways of teenagers, greatest feeling of isolation, as distinct from guidance and, and as early as 11 the child is suggestion, lead to puzzled dis- unbearably sensitive to ridicule. But of all her problems, trust, if not outspoken revolt,
however, the major one, which
I am afraid that too many .affects
child, during every BONE-HEADED adolescence is the heart-rend- Mums take too many exceptions
ing fear of being friendless and to too many friends.
alone in her strange
EARTHA KITT
they even took her sun-tam lamp
which, according to a jolly justice of the peace I met, "allow you to get hitched the minute you get off the plane and divorced after only six weeks' residence on practically any grounds."
TRAPS
IT IS a collection of about 10 hotels on each side of what's known as The Strip, about two miles of reinforced concrete and asphalt disiguring the desert.
IT IS Pearl Bailey, spreading dukedom of jari, playing with her warm, brown, plump and his band on a stand built irresistible personally over the behind the bar at the Riviers
audience of gam· · cabaret room of the Flamingo Hotel to an Hotel on The Strip, and saying blers who need pay only 50 to me in her humorously hugu- cents (the price of a cake) for
CHALLENGE
brious way: "I like the climate the privilege of listening. when the goddamn wind isn't blowing, and I like the salary, but this town is too much for an old gal like me, mister, Just too much. Still, I might be here a year in the show, so F4 better get used to it.
"I met a gal yesterday who tells um she's been married 11 Limes.
She lives bere per- manent. I guess she has Sorts suits her business."
*04
IT IS blue-rinsed American matrons, militant Daughters of the Revolution sitting at rou lette tables at 12 noon and dis- covering that, although they have made spiritun and financial slaves of the American males, the Las Vegas gun-chewing croupiers are exceptions.
ALL IN
IT 18 millionaires like the amiably bkiff Jack Entratter, who built the Sands Hotel eight years ago and who has watched business grow each year since.
He told me: "I guess about two hundred thousand visitors come into Vegas each week. We tice about HK$100,000,000 a
but Feat
We spend shows. HK$320,000,000 on the I'm planning # new wing which will have nothing but suites. All with their own private swimming pools."
But not. I was disappointed to hear, private casinos.
Each hotel calin itself the tops, Each looks cs though it had been designed by ล lunar architect with a lunatic genius for creating modernistic, out-of- in this-world ugliness.
Each has a large cabaret room with decor designed by the architect's aesthetic brother, offering the world's finest enter tainers, and paying thein more than even they are worth.
his
and
said:
Between sessions he 11's crazy man, but this is now the show business and jazz capital of America. It's the gam blers who make it that way by bringing in the dough,
"Sure I've played to more at- tentive audiences. More respect- ful too. But I like the challenge here. It's the achievement if you get them to leave the tables and alt down. Some of them even listen."
IT IS a taxi-driver called Mac who said: "I've been here 17 years, but even I got a surprise yesterday when this couple
GOURLAY...for once only too glad to leave the bright lights and sleepless nights
she never throws
3
comes into the cab. Nice lookin': IT IS the scene of the show- nouncing couple, though the guy's a bit business summit meeting when money away at the fibles, and loaded for that time in the Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, discovering that her Hollywood
wants Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis home has been robbed. afternoon. He says he
She said: "They took evdry- Western Union downtown end fun, leading members of Holly- then the justice of the peace. So, wood's celebrated clan which thing. Two esmeras, a television I say, 'Congratulations, I sup- should not be confused with the set, four gold cigarette boxes, pose you're getting married 1 Ku Klux Klan, came on location two Venetian candlesticks
to film "Oceans silver brush sel, over a a thoa. reckon be's pickin' up a cabled, recently
Eleven," a story about a con- sand dollars money order first
spiracy to rob five Les Vegas jewellery. casinos.
I wanted to ask her what she The clan also appeared in an impromptu cabaret nightly at did with a mun-tan lamp but it impolite "But the gal kinda snorts the Sands Hotel. Leader Sinatra would have been an
We and Martin are part-owners. and prejudiced question. and says: 'Married, nuts.
THE CLAN
did that seven days ago. Today I start the divorce proceedings, He hasn't been sober since he said, I do"
jen.p."
En bah, all my Even s
THE WORST
The M.O. Introduced them by saying: "They're nice Italian boys who'll tell you about some of the good work the Madis is IT IS a congregation of small
Boing."
IT IS a black market in churches like the wee Kirk o'
IT IS air conditioning which
The MC. also said
bables sold for adoption by the Heather nestling coquet-
mothers which State tishly among the big hotels, is turned off immediately the Sinatra: "Be yourself. Frankle, unwed
officials, with remarkable parTO- looking as though they had shows are over in cabaret rooms it somebody."
TT IS elderly couples in sum- chial pride, are denouncing ag a been designed by Walt Disney to drive the customers back to
mery straw hats sitting all day "blight on the fair name most the tables.
IT 18 an advertisement saying in gambling halls downtown Nevada."
IT 18, Bnaly, the place I am that Diana Dars will soon be where the neon lights generate appearing here in cabaret and a as much heat as the noon sum leaving just as soon as I have local producer who made this playing a numbers game called cabled this coltann. So I say intriguing but of course mis- Keno which sometimes
pays farewell to sleepless Las Vegas. informed statement: "I hear 25,000 dollars for one dollar. I will return some day, perhaps this guy Dors is the best female Sometimes means twice a year. Indeed, I will be irresistibly IT IS Eartha Kitt singing her pulled back If the worst ever Impersonator you've got."
IT IS free cigarettes, cigars, tongs in her murky monotone happens. and I find myself and drinks served at the tables at the El Rancho Hotel taking married to a dominant, drunken while you gamble and even put a licence to marry a nice daughter of a Daughter of the lutch or dinner or oxygen it you and presentable young Ameri- Revolution. the gamble long enough.
coyest saccharine mood, all offering, in heon of course, weddings at any time of the day and night Twenty dollars pays for every thing, including the corsage."
But you have to bring your own bride or bridegroom.
at
Each has a foyer, which is a IT IS never-close beauty spacious casino with roulette, parlours with haggard ladies blackjack, and crap tables, skiing under hair-driers which traps the gullible guests three in, the incrning. before they get to the bedrooms IT 18 Duke Ellington, who
reigns supreme in or even the reception deska,
I
still
can, William MacDonald, an-
+
~~{London Express Bervice),
of Girl
The Kind
I really am
by
SUZY PARKER
THE FACE and the shape of SUZY PARKER are familiar að ● clothes peg for fashions—and an extraordinarily slagant Americaá one at that. The top model of her time and á rising film stat, she has just arrivad, in Britain to make her first British picture, "Destruction Test.“ Here she talks without reserve to JOHN CRUESEMANN, explaining the mystery of her character,
man can.
B
It's the kiss of death to be English," This may be becausé KNOW I'm terrible, emotionally from her works as a and Scots stock, and we have
I and by the photographed and recognised if I shop on my oWN lived for generations in I must work. I must
South. My family is very like a too much, and although some baying tweed suits
Williams I never listen, which makes Tennessee
family girls remain a long while in the
Movies are real to me be independent: I'm a
It harder, because that way I violent, tender, complicated, fuil business highly successful modelling never could be?” smart Alec.
I of Boulheta decadence. don't learn much in. life.
A model's career ually lasts two love movies. If I didn't don't trust formulas, I'm hard- Tennessee Williams play
of wears:
For the paradox is that couldn't become a good actreál, Í value patience in a woman headed. Of course I'm usually movie only reminds me that I a model's strength lies in her I think. I can never have above all else. It seems a wrong, so I him into catastrophe. can't go home again,
being an invisible woman. enough glamour. The stars who Naturally the adolescent will woman is always having to wait
I'm not even on my own side. -
I can do it better and for create that sure I idolise the make some undesirable acquain for something to grow up, to
Jonder because I have a most Vivien Leigh, Arletty An And the most important tances. unreasonable be proposed to, to have a baby
chabelon like faculty for Magian. These women have them might Agure in any young girl's life is attitude towards
500-word eury My Pare Tdelse modelswhose une changing in various selfiner the power to give, and how not you, dear doting Dad, not drive them away -- but dough- Today's teenagers
have developed alty Assets Liabilities." an inflife is to look like For Richard Avedon 1 look one envy that I don't want to be fender-hearted Mother, for will go too. darlings of the commercial you, world. It's no use expecting to but the contemporary young So what do you do? There the habit of constant move After 2,000 words I'd still not models. As a matter of fact I way, in a fridge advertisement a star, but an actress in movies.
ment and takkkar (I'm full of got round tabels. answers, | misinformation). bulldoze isto submission a girl thing she calls her, Best Friend, are plenty of
plenty of glib ones.
The "Do-s-I-say-because-I utterly say-so" school of upbringing new world. -hag always seemed to me par
ticularly bone-headed, and even more so in 1960.
the are
easy
a
I'll never forget how, in one of my school exams, they set a
Clothes peg
Now I lack this patience.
Instead. I
bringing home a hely weekly SO IMPORTANT But my reason for writing time
1. leaves her parents stand-
ing
to see this book in every home
I change my mind wall the I never have the same opinion two days running, / Pez feminine (I hope).
Quick money
Her friend is often the only the land is because Dr Very in conalstent,, And ITS VERT Wat I- should··
Yet, in spite of all their material advantages, Dr Hem person she ming maintains that today's grumble with Adolescents are more in need Her
can gossip with Hemming simply does not give and confide, in the answers. He makes no at treba ktiows; abbill tempt to preachify, no attempt to gloss things over. His plea
Wrong
of understanding that even the crushes, about clothes. Her that the lines bi communiceWomen who lake decisi kept in their places children of friend's powers of conversation the Victorian age, who had a are probably no belier than her, Bab between parents and chil executives women,
monetary tren should, remain open fire, feminines" Aubumbr rigid and definile pattern of own vide standards and behaviour to live Dr Hemming found that means listening not lots of career
during adolescence, friendship Just laying down the law
"It
Admittedly it is pretty hard with contemporaries. Besumes
for Dead to be understanding Las greater importance then at Jill Butterfield
when the, dulling-romen li; bluest any other time ut life, DEPLI
ing Is Beling" with the top of he
men
Cut a man ta differen4 cha have his word
My father was determined
be ord special, And I Been born late in my paren The. I was at acerbolt As my sister Dorian who had
me
always hated modelling. But it another way.
was the way the quick have a, comedienne's touch, way of making an incredible amount of briety
I was 10When I owned & house in the {boutitiny" andų" dive: automobiles. Perhaps this makes me sound lice a monster
am usually blow all the money and then, of heaven. Bellia Because I have to pay taxes,
Act
Phoneyness
I'd love to act with Marlon Brando, whom I know alightly because he is capable of project- Ing the quality I admite most in men decision, determination I have always been attache to Hemingway heroes, Hichard Lovelace'a, Lines,
"I could not love thee dear
ab much Loved 1 not honour more."
Really, of course, being photo- genie is largely a matter of bones, and that, in luck.
Sex doesn't come into model- Ting at all Fashion is a sterile business: I've resented fsim up my kieal of a man. phoneyness
1-belleve we are what which means for mislihat I'm not terribly interested in a long way to go yet, clothes
I'm well amblica at makea ma dressed because Coco Chanel I'm not metaltik, kly, but takes the trouble, otherwise, must son moving, having
French Erlend ways of theit mit is do, khá
itions. I lopk1⁄2loper and
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