![]() ![]() In 1978, he played casino mogul in the TV series “Vega$.” At a 1990 roast at the old Desert Inn in Las Vegas for mob lawyer (and later Las Vegas mayor) Oscar Goodman, Curtis brought down the house with this line: “I don’t know what I’m doing here. When Caesars Palace opened on the Las Vegas Strip in 1967, Curtis spent a month there hosting a live variety show for ABC. He was frequently photographed partying at the Sands. Curtis’s first speaking role was as a Las Vegas bellboy in the 1949 film noir The Lady Gambles. In 1948 he relocated to Hollywood, changed his name and soon hit it big as a classic good-looking leading man. After a stint on a Pacific Ocean submarine tender during World War II (he watched the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay a mile away through binoculars), he studied acting. man in Sweet Smell of Success, a desperate escaped prisoner in The Defiant Ones, and, most notably, a cross-dressing musician ducking the mob while wooing Marilyn Monroe in the wildly funny Some Like It Hot.īorn Bernard Schwartz in 1925 into a struggling New York Hungarian-Jewish family, Curtis was headed as a kid for a life of crime until a family friend helped set him straight. But much of his fame stems from a series of roles in the 1950s: a famous magician in Houdini, a morally compromised P.R. He had a six-decade career on screen and TV playing all kinds of characters. The biggest name buried hereabouts likely is movie actor Tony Curtis. So today I tell the stories of two prominent performers. They are heavyweight boxing champ Sonny Liston, baseball pitcher (it would be a stretch to call him a star, but everyone knew his name) Bo Belinksy, and once-dominant tennis competitor Pancho Gonzales.įrom the New To Las Vegas world headquarters, I repeat again my belief that Vegas has a fatal attraction for a certain kind of celebrity. Part 1 described the journey to their final resting spots hereabouts of three celebrated athletes. A commenter to Part 1, my long-ago Dallas Times Herald colleague Mary Don, further pointed out that the population of Las Vegas only began to explode after home air conditioning made possible Mojave Desert living in great numbers. I attributed that to the city’s relative youth–barely a century old. As I wrote in Part 1, for such a large and prominent place, the Las Vegas area is the eternal home of a surprisingly meager number of well-known individuals. Here’s Part 2 of my journey to the few famous graves of Las Vegas, and the back stories of how they came to be here. Tony Curtis memorial, Palm Eastern Cemetery, Las Vegas
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