How The Rat Pack Saved Sin City
The ’60s were a boom period for the Las Vegas casinos. It had taken a while but business magnates such as the enigmatic Howard Hughes had finally cottoned on to the huge sums of money that could be made from the Strip.
And with the big corporations willing to splash out on ambitious construction projects, the place that had been nothing but a watering hole some 30 years earlier was now the place for Americans to let their hair down.
It wasn’t just the economic boom that allowed Vegas to flourish. Indeed, the first time Hughes rolled in to town – by private train, under the cover of darkness –it was after five men had sprinkled their unique blend of showbiz glitz over Sin City.
Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop – they never referred to themselves as ‘The Rat Pack’ but that’s how they became known. And from the time they came to Vegas to make the original Ocean’s 11 until they moved on to pastures new, the Strip was theirs.
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