Fembots! Dan Tanna! The Angels! Fred Sanford! (Did We Mention the Fembots?)

Before CSI, Las Vegas and televised poker crowded Sin City onto the airwaves, there were these memorable (and memorably cheesy) Vegas TV moments

Michael Toole



Charlie's Angels




Episode: "Angels in Vegas"



Air Date: September 13 and 20, 1978 (two-part episode)



Locations: Interior of the Tropicana and wonderful shots of the Angels on the Strip.



The Plot: Showgirl Mary Phillips becomes the second employee of the Tropicana to perish in a deadly auto accident. Owner Frank Howell (Dean Martin) hires the Angels to establish a motive for the killings.



The Skinny: The TV Guide tag line alone set up the appeal: "A beautiful Las Vegas showgirl is murdered. Now the Angels must play a deadly game with a killer ... who holds all the aces!" Give a hand to Aaron Spelling, he always knew that a contrived story line that allowed the Angels to wear sexy clothes (the Angels have to go undercover in the Santa Monica Jogathon in tight biker shorts!) would be a surefire hit. Here, Kelly (Jackie Smith) joins the hotel's show as a gorgeous, leggy dancer, while Kris (Cheryl Ladd) is hired as the new backup singer (in dazzling spandex) for sleazy lounge star Marty Cole (Dick Sargent). And Sabrina (Kate Jackson)? She's the smart one who always handled the administrative duties, but two out of three is not so bad. Throw in an archetypal performance by Dean Martin as a semi-inebriated casino owner, Scatman Crothers as the wise old codger who's seen it all, a crossover guest shot of Robert Urich as Dan Tanna (an appearance to promote the ABC network's new show Vega$ for the '78-'79 season) and scenes of the Angels hanging out on the Strip to capture that lovely desert breeze, and it all makes for irresistible entertainment.




The Sacca Brothers on Late Night with David Letterman




Air Date: May 20, 1987



Location: Bally's Ziegfeld Theater



The Production Number: A self-penned ditty from Tony Sacca



The Skinny: For those who are too young to remember, there was a time when David Letterman was even more waspish and funny when his show was still on NBC. For the week of May 18-22, 1987, he took a trip to Vegas to celebrate the city in all its camp glory. I managed to snag two tickets for the Wednesday show (May 20, my birthday, coincidentally) and took my girlfriend, Krista. Lucky us, we were treated to the opening number by the city's leading ambassadors of shameless, rhythm-challenged lounge schtick—twin brothers Robert and Tony Sacca. The song was the radically titled "Las Vegas, the Greatest Town Around," and I can still hear the first few stanzas:




There's no other place like Las Vegas to see


There's no other place like Las Vegas to be


Where beautiful mountains surround the town


Your dreams and fantasies are all around


The lights are so bright they stand so high in the sky


To let you know there's gonna be a show in Las Vegas—what a town!




Better than this cheesy song was the brothers' awkward dancing, and if you've ever seen any clichéd bit about white guys who can't dance (complete with a few pelvic twists and feet that moved with all the swiftness of an insect caught on flypaper), then I probably don't have to describe much more of the duo's 15 minutes of national TV fame. Sadly, Robert Sacca died of leukemia in 1999 at the age of 48, but Tony is still plugging away at the lower echelon of fame with a nationally syndicated program (of the after-midnight variety) called Entertainment Las Vegas, an annual Christmas show at the Stratosphere, and best of all—a key to the city by Mayor Oscar Goodman in 2002.




Vega$




Air Date: 1978-1981



Location: Vegas!



The Plot: Private Eye Dan Tanna (Robert Urich) lives in a warehouse behind the Desert Inn Hotel and combs Sin City, solving cases for both his boss, casino mogul Philip Roth (Tony Curtis), and himself. All the while, he has time to romance a bevy of beautiful gals who reside in Vegas.



The Skinny: Let me get this straight: Nick at Nite will bring back achingingly innocuous shows like Who's the Boss and Full House but not Vega$? Readers, I smell a letter-writing campaign in the works. As we all know, this show set the tone for every hack fantasy people have of this town: a PI who parks his car in his living room, cocktail waitresses who looked like they were handpicked by Hugh Hefner and best of all, an endless array of cameo appearances from Vegas performers like Doc Severinsen, Lola Folana, Dean Martin and Wayne Newton, giving Dan Tanna a nod, a wink or my favorite gesture, the index finger trigger shot, as they pass him in a casino lobby. The Desert Inn is gone and Urich died of cancer in 2002, and since it looks like Vega$ won't be out on DVD anytime soon, it'll just be a pleasant memory for those of us who remember when the series was filmed here. Still, it would be a gas just to catch a few reruns, if only to see Dan Tanna drive across town in a matter of minutes, long before this city developed its traffic issues.




GLOW (Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling)




Air Date: 1986-1991



Location: The Riviera hotel-casino, plus occasional trash-talking on the Strip



The Plot: Beautiful ladies hamming it up for the camera in the ring



The Skinny: Admit it! You watched it! And you loved it! OK, so the wrestling matches were not the most elegantly choreographed routines this side of a Gene Kelly musical; and it's true that some of the personalities were a little over the top (remember Dementia being brought into the ring in a cage, wearing a hockey mask?); yet for all its hokeyness, there was something clicking when these beautiful ladies got in the ring to ham it up with such relish in their outlandish, skintight costumes. And as shrill as some of the personalities were, I enjoyed Attache, Spanish Red and my favorite "The Princesses of Darkness," who would point a plastic bone with a built-in flashlight at her opponent and render them blind! GLOW was a guilty pleasure, pure and simple. On occasion, the ladies would do a promotional bit outside the hotel, and if you were lucky, you could see the ladies trash-talking each other, with tourists gawking from the sidewalk. Once, I had the honor of standing next to a jovial, overall-wearing, skoal-chewing visitor from Alabama nicknamed "Pug." "This is one hell of a city," he said. "Even hookers get their own talk show!"




Bionic Woman




Episode: "Fembots in Las Vegas"



Air Date: September 24 and October 1, 1977 (two-part episode)



Location: Caesars Palace



The Plot: Dr. Carl Franklin Jr. (Michael Burns)—son of Dr. Carl Franklin Sr. (John Houseman in a previous episode)—resurrects the fembots (female robots) his father created to capture an energy ray weapon. To do so, he must kidnap billionaire Rod Kyler (James Olson), who suffers from an immune-deficiency disease and lives in a hotel suite behind a plate of protective glass. Also, Carl wants to exact revenge on Jaime Summers (Lindsey Wagner) and Oscar Goldman (Richard Anderson) for his father's death. Soon, Jaime is involved in a fight contest with the deadly androids, complete with throwing prop chairs and Jaime slapping the face panel off a fembot's face so we can see the bulging eyeballs and wire circuitry.



The Skinny: The showdown between Jamie Summers, the ultimate female-empowerment heroine (cool, intelligent, beautiful and strong enough to bench-press a Humvee) and her archenemy, the fembots, is always a gas. Yet, it's just that much more juicy with a Vegas backdrop. Among the highlights: Jaime going undercover as a Vegas showgirl; Jaime chasing a fembot in front of Caesars Palace and watching in slow-motion as the fembot gets struck by a Cadillac with bystanders on the Strip casually strolling by; fembots dressed in skimpy change-girl outfits taking down hulking casino security guards; and Jaime making a grand escape from the top of a hotel on the landing bar of a helicopter with a sweeping, panoramic shot of the Vegas skyline.




The Strip




Air Date: October 12, 1999, to January 11, 2000 (10 Episodes)



Location: Lake Mead and at least three car crashes on the Strip per episode.



The Plot: An ex-cop named Elvis Ford (Sean Patrick Flanery)—who lives on a houseboat on Lake Mead—along with his partner Jesse Weir (Guy Torry), go to work for casino owner Cameron Green (Joe Viterelli) after losing their jobs as Las Vegas police officers. Elvis and Jesse protect casino patrons, as well as work on individual cases.



The Skinny: Leave it to UPN to make up something so dreadful. This tiresome interracial buddy-cop show was more (or less) than just a pale rip-off of Miami Vice. It was a show so bad that it was downright fascinating in its awfulness. Why? Well, it's not for the clichés: (the real police advise Elvis and Jesse to "leave this work for the real cops"; Elvis' love interest for an episode is actually working for a criminal out to get him). Clichés can be campy fun if served with the right amount of verve. What brought The Strip down were the actors, who mouthed their lines with minimal conviction, and truly listless pacing that rendered this series DOA. As for the car crashes, I got a kick out of the first two or three in the first episode, but after then I got desensitized pretty quickly. Bottom line, The Strip did something that no other show on this list managed to do—make Las Vegas look anemic.




Portrait of a Showgirl




Air Date: May 4, 1982



Location: Caesars Palace



The Plot: Jillian Brooks (Lesley Ann Warren), a Broadway choreographer who has hit hard times, tries to pick up the pieces by accepting an invitation to produce a new revue show at Caesars Palace. But she must battle the petty jealousy of the dancers and affairs of her heart.



The Skinny: If you're looking for a hard-hitting exposé on the trials of being a Vegas showgirl, you should pass on this made-for-TV-movie. If you want an overacted melodrama, Portrait of a Showgirl might warrant your attention. Full of trite dialogue and shallow characterizations, like Tony Curtis as a love-'em-and-leave-'em scam artist; and Dianne Kay as the naive beauty queen from the Midwest, this has just enough overdone histrionics to serve as a fun viewing opportunity if you're in an uncritical mood.




The Watcher




Air Date: January 17 to April 11, 1995 (11 Episodes)



Location: Mostly shots of the Strip



The Plot: A security executive (Sir Mix-a-Lot, or Anthony L. Ray on his birth certificate) watches people through a casino surveillance camera from a mysterious room in a hotel-casino, and makes Rod Serling-style commentaries on their behavior.



The Skinny: An interesting premise, the idea of Sir Mix's voyeurism offering a parallel to what some people think is the attraction of this city, but the script and direction were just too heavy-handed to make the series work. Still, give it a mark for being the more entertaining of the two shows UPN tried to center on Las Vegas.




Sanford & Son




Episode: Earthquake II



Air Date: September 12, 1975



Location: Caesars Palace



The Plot: After a minor earthquake tremble in Southern California, Fred Sanford's paranoia is triggered both by his best friend, Grady (Whitman Mayo), and a pair of Russian seismologists (in the thick of the Cold War, what these Russians were doing hanging around Fred's neighborhood is a mystery). Out of panic, Fred heads to Las Vegas, where he feels he'll be safer—and hopes to hit the big jackpot.



The Skinny: I'm including this one for the plot alone. Apparently, Foxx, who was performing in Vegas at the time, didn't want to go back to Burbank until his run in town was over. He tried to convince the producers to shoot a few episodes in Vegas so it wouldn't conflict with his schedule. Why only one episode, then? From what I gather, the resources for filming in the city weren't as plentiful 30 years ago as they are today. With no soundstages to shoot interiors and a lack of technicians (it was deemed too expensive to fly out technical staff from California and put them up in a hotel for location shooting), this would be the only episode actually shot here. It's too bad, because the scenes with Foxx cutting it up with the likes of Merv Griffin, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme; and sight gags like Foxx throwing himself fully clothed in the Caesars Palace Wishing Fountain to snare loose change after losing all his money, were hilarious.




Why Do Fools Fall In Love
(Music video by Diana Ross)




Air Date: Heavy rotation on MTV when the song came out in the fall of '81.



Location: Downtown Vegas



The Choreography: Diana Ross running down Fremont Street, with her her arm flailing in excitement



The Skinny: Before U2 was inspired to shoot a music video Downtown, Diana Ross had the idea first with her tepid remake of Frankie Lymon's "Why Do Fools Fall In Love." The song was a top-10 hit in late 1981, and MTV, just a few months old, must have needed plenty of material to keep on their programming schedule, because this video of Ross running down Fremont Street was played to death on that channel. If nothing else, shots of the Fremont Theatre and Vegas Vic's welcoming arm are a virtual time capsule for old-school Downtown. A historic curiousity at best.

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