Photo Archive

The Sands floating crap game, roulette, and blackjack for summer fun. Freidman, owner of the Sands is standing out of the pool pointing, July, 1953.

Gamblers play craps in the pool at the Sands in Las Vegas in this 1953 Don English photograph. Seldom can a Las Vegas fun seekers tan and cool off all at the same time. Thanks to innovative publicist Al Freeman it was possible at the Sands during the summer of 1953. In one of the best remembered publicity hype, the hotel showed it would go to any depth to keep its players comfortable by putting a casino annex in the swimming pool.

In this 1953 photo, actor Tony Curtis, right, takes a picture of Janet Leigh, left, and Jack Entratter by the Sands Hotel pool in Las Vegas.

Lena Horne performs in 1955

The Sands Hotel celebrates its 4th birthday on December 15, 1956. Left to right: Lucille Ball, Loretta Young, Danny Thomas, Marlena Dietrick, Jack Entratter, Mitzie Gaynor, Ester Williams.

On May 24th, 1957 the Las Vegas News Bureau released the last and most famous "Miss Atomic Bomb" photo of all to conicide with Operation Plumbbob at the Nevada Test Site. Donald English took the famous photo of Copa showgirl Lee Merlin at the Sands Hotel.

Peter Lawford, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Joey Bishop, 20th January 1960

"Nat 'King' Cole — At The Sands" was the only official live recording this great crooner made in his 47 years. He still looked young and confident when photographed at that hotel in 1962, three years before his death. Cole is remembered not only for talent but for participating in successful efforts to end segregation in Las Vegas resorts.

The LaRue Restaurant was established in December 1950 by Billy Wilkerson. The following year, oil tycoon Jake Freedman of Houston, Texas bought LaRue for $15,000. Freedman's idea was to build the best hotel and casino in Las Vegas to specifically cater to the glamorous Hollywood film stars and executives in a $600,000 project.

Construction began on Sands Hotel in early 1952, built to a design by Wayne McAllister. Freedman had initially intended naming the hotel "Holiday Inn" after the film of the same name starring Bing Crosby, but after noticing that his socks became so full of sand decided to name it Sands. The tag line would be "A Place in the Sun", named after a recently released film starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, and quite suitable to the hot desert location of Las Vegas. The hotel was opened on December 15, 1952 as a casino with 200 rooms, and was established less than three months after the opening of another prominent landmark, Sahara Hotel and Casino. The opening was widely publicized, and the hotel was visited by some 12,000 people within a few hours. At the inauguration were 146 journalists and special guests such as Arlene Dahl, Fernando Lamas, Esther Williams, and Terry Moore. Every guest was given a Chamois bag with silver dollars, and Sands ended up losing $200,000 within the first eight hours. Danny Thomas, Jimmy McHugh and the Copa Girls, labelled "the most beautiful girls in the world", performed in the Copa Room on opening night, and Ray Sinatra and his Orchestra were the initial house band. Thomas was hired to perform for the first two weeks, but strained his voice on the second night and developed laryngitis, and was replaced with performers such as Jimmy Durante, Frankie Laine, Jane Powell, the Ritz Brothers, and Ray Anthony.

Jack Entratter, who was formerly in charge of the New York nightclub, the Copacabana, became the hotel's manager. Entratter made many show business friends during his time at the nightclub; he was able to use these connections to sign performers for the Sands Copa Room. Entratter was also able to offer entertainers an additional incentive to perform at the Sands. Headlining stars received "points", or a percentage of ownership in the hotel and casino. Entratter's personally selected "Copa Girls" wore $12,000 worth of costumes on the hotel's opening night; this surpassed the salary of the Copa Room's star, Danny Thomas.

In the early years, Freedman and his wife Carolyn were one of its attractions, wearing "matching white, leather outfits, replete with identical cowboy boots and hats". Freedman offered Carolyn's father Nathan a 5% stake in Sands but he declined the offer.

Lansky and Costello brought the Sands to Frank Sinatra's attention, and he began staying at the hotel and gambling there during breaks from Hollywood, though some sources state that he was not a hardcore gambler. Sinatra earned a notoriety for "keeping his winnings and ignoring his gambling losses", but the mobsters running the hotel were not too concerned because Sinatra was great for business. He made his debut performing at the hotel on October 4, 1953, after an invitation by the manager Jack Entratter. Sinatra typically played at Sands three times a year, sometimes a two-week stint, which "brought in the big rollers, a lot of oil money from Texas". The big rollers left Vegas when Sinatra did, and other performers were reluctant to perform after him, feeling intimidated.

Entratter replaced Freedman as the president of the Sands Hotel following his death from heart surgery on January 20, 1958. Freedman's last wife Sadie subsequently lived in a suite in the Belmont Park wing into the mid 1960s until her death. Sinatra, who had attempted to buy a share in the hotel soon after first visiting in 1953, but was denied by the Nevada Tax Commission, was now granted permission to buy a share in the hotel, due to his phenomenal impact upon business in Las Vegas. His share, variously described as from 2 to 9%, aided Freedman's wife in paying off her husband's gambling debts.

In 1955, limited integration came to heavily segregated Las Vegas when the Sands first allowed Nat King Cole to stay at the hotel and perform. Sinatra noticed that he never saw Cole in the dining room, always eating his meals in solitude in his dressing room. When he asked his valet George to find out why, he learned that "Coloreds aren't allowed in the dining room at the Sands". Sinatra subsequently saw to it that if blacks were not permitted to eat their meals in the dining room with everybody else he would see to it that all of the waiters and waitresses were fired, and invited Cole to dine with him the following evening. Cole was allowed permission into the casino, as was another black performer, Harry Belafonte, who took a more aggressive approach by walking into the casino on his own accord and sitting at a blackjack table, which was not challenged by the bosses. Belafonte became the "first black man to play cards on the Las Vegas Strip".

Sammy Davis, Jr. was instrumental in bringing about a general change in policy. When the Will Mastin Trio began performing at Sands in 1958, Davis informed Entratter that his father and uncle must be allowed permission to stay at Sands while he was performing there. Entratter granted them permission but continued his objection to admitting other black guests. In 1961, an African-American couple entered the lobby of the hotel and were blocked by the security guard, witnessed by Sinatra and Davis. Sinatra told the guards that they were his guests and let them into the hotel. Sinatra subsequently swore profusely down the phone to Sands executive Carl Cohen at how ridiculous the situation was, and the following day, Davis approached Entratter and demanded that Sands begin employing blacks. Shortly afterwards the hotel changed its policy and it began hiring black waiters and busboys, and began permitting blacks entry into the casino.

In the late 1950s, Senator John F. Kennedy was occasionally a guest of Sinatra at the Sands. Arguably the hotel's biggest claim to fame was a three-week period in 1960 during the filming of Ocean's 11, after which it attained iconic status. During that time, the movie's stars Sinatra, Dean Martin, Davis, Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford performed on stage together in the Copa Room. The performances were called the "Summit at the Sands" and this is considered to be the birth of the Rat Pack.

Wayne McAllister designed the original $5.5 million Sands Hotel, an exotic-looking terracotta red-painted modern hotel with a prominent porte cochere at the front, surrounded by a zig-zag wall ornamented with tiled planters. The hotel is arguably most associated with its 56 feet (17 m) high sign, made iconic with photographs of the Rat Pack standing underneath it. The name "Sands", written in elegant italics, featured a 36 feet (11 m) high letter "S", and the name was sprawled across an egg crate grill, cantilevered from a pillar. The sign was receptive to the light and shadow of the desert, and during night time it was lit up, glowing neon red. It was the tallest sign on the strip for a number of years. Beneath "Sands" was the tagline "A Place in the Sun", written in smaller capital letters. Below that was the billing of the names of the performers appearing at Sands, very often photographed displaying names such as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Red Skelton in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Author Alan Hess wrote that the "sleek Modernism of the Sands leaped past the Flamingo to set a higher standard of sophistication for Las Vegas. For the first time, the sign was an integral part of the architectural design".

The porte-cochère of the hotel featured three great sharp-edged pillars jutting out in front of the glass-fronted building, angling down into the ground, which resembled fins. The two-story glass walled entry was bordered by a wall of imported Italian marble, and above the entrance area was a horizontal plane with copper lights suspended from the beams. Rather than being polished, the marble was unusual in that it was rough and grained. Natural and stained cork was used throughout the building. A.J. Leibling of The New Yorker described the hotel in 1953: "The main building of the Sands is a great rectangular hall, with the reception desk in one corner, slot machines along one long wall and a bar and cocktail lounge, complete with Latin trio, along the opposite wall. In the middle is a jumble of roulette and craps tables and 21 layouts." The casino, of substantial size, was accessed by three sets of terrazzo stairs, and was lit by low-hanging chandeliers. The bar featured bas-reliefs with a Western theme, including cowboys, racing wagons and Joshua trees, designed by Allan Stewart of Claremont College, California. The Garden Room restaurant overlooked the hotel's pool and landscaped grounds.

The 200 guest rooms of the original hotel were divided into four two-story motel wings, each with fifty rooms, and named after famous race tracks. They were set out in a hacienda style, and surrounded by a half-moon shaped pool. The suites were luxuriously designed. Plush blue carpets and ivory colored chairs with white ceilings were the norm in the early days. An electric tram service, often attended by pretty showgirls, took the guests to their rooms.

The steam room of the hotel was a place of relaxation and good jest. It became a great place for socializing between the stars after 5 pm, including the Rat Pack, and Jerry Lewis, Steve Lawrence and Don Rickles. On one occasion they were having problems with the TV in the massage room, which was blurry and out of focus. Sinatra yelled "Move back, move back", and the television was thrown into the pool. Manager Entratter permitted such activities, knowing that if he scolded Sinatra and asked him to pay damages he would not perform at Sands again.

The Copa Room was the showroom of Sands, named after the famed Copacabana Club in New York City. It contained 385 seats, designed in a Brazilian carnival style. Some of the more famed singers like Sinatra, Martin and Davis, Jr. had to sign contracts to ensure that they headline for a given number of weeks a year. Performers were extremely well paid for the period. It was common for some of them to be paid $25,000 per week, playing two shows a night, six days a week, and once on a Sunday for two to three weeks.

The greatest names in the entertainment industry graced the stage of the Copa Room. Notable performers included Judy Garland, Lena Horne (one of the first black performers at the hotel, billed as "The Satin Doll"), Jimmy Durante, Dean Martin, Pat Cooper, Shirley MacLaine, Marlene Dietrich, Tallulah Bankhead, Shecky Greene, Martin and Lewis, Danny Thomas, Bobby Darin, Ethel Merman, Rich Little, Louis Armstrong, Jerry Lee Lewis, Nat King Cole, Robert Merrill, Wayne Newton, Red Skelton, and "The Copa Girls". Hollywood celebrities such as Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Elizabeth Taylor, Yul Brynner, Kirk Douglas, Lucille Ball and Rosalind Russell were often photographed enjoying the headline acts.