Boobs bring bucks to Vegas

Jan. 10, 1957. It's a day in Las Vegas entertainment that should be celebrated, though probably a bit chilly to be observed in the proper manner.

Which would be topless.

That's the day "Minsky Goes to Paris" opened at the Dunes, with an advertising tagline proclaiming, "The show that made America blush ... Goes Parisian!"

"Parisian" apparently was a code word for losing the pasties, the little nipple covers that protected the last inch of modesty for burlesque stars such as Lili St. Cyr (who was billed at the El Rancho Vegas that same week).

The reasons why -- and why then? -- are vague. Entertainment wasn't treated like regular news in those days. Entertainment columnist Ralph Pearl confirmed Minsky's was "undraped like you've never seen the word used before." The unwritten explanation was likely the Dunes' struggling since it opened nearly two years earlier.

Then and now, there are two proven ways to sell tickets. They were even saluted in the novelty song "Boobs" by the late Ruth Wallis, preserved in "Crazy Girls": "You've got to have boobs, if you want to impress tycoons and rubes."

Boobs were good for our town. And no one ever looked back. At least until a month ago, when the big-budget "Peepshow" opened at the Planet Hollywood Resort. Even the P.C. in our midst were asking, "What's with the pasties?"

"It is sort of the elephant in the room," agrees co-producer Scott Zeiger. And in the weeks since, the elephant has, as Siegfried & Roy used to say, vanished.

Call it a New York-Vegas thing. "Peepshow" was brought to us by Broadway director-choreographer Jerry Mitchell, based on his annual "Broadway Bares" benefits in the Big Apple. Pasties don't slow the fundraising there.

If "Peepshow" opened on Broadway or London's West End, "It would be the sexiest, most over the top show ever created for Broadway or London," Zeiger notes.

Beyond that, "Our theater is almost 1,400 seats. ... All of the other shows in this genre play to a smaller house. What we didn't want to do is alienate what could be 50 percent of our audience. We wanted to do a show both men and women are comfortable seeing."

But it turns out Vegas is more like Paris. "It's a major city where (toplessness) is not a big deal," Zeiger says. As the show settled in, "What we learned is the final button on each number can be taken pasty-less, so to speak," without losing women or the show's message of empowerment.

"Full-on toplessness at strategic and important moments in the show" is not merely inoffensive, "in this market it is expected," Zeiger says.

Ruth Wallis could have told him that. "To make a bull for the earth and mother, even a cow has to show her udder."

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.