From the Rat Pack to the Wolf Pack, the Riviera was always ready for its close-up

We’ll always have the Riviera.

Not the real one, of course — it’s cashing in its chips at noon today.

But the reel Riviera — the one that’s been ready for its close-up since the hotel-casino opened on the Strip six decades ago — will live as long as Vegas movies do.

From the Rat Pack (in 1960’s “Ocean’s 11”) to the Wolf Pack (2009’s “The Hangover”), the Riviera has played host to a very varied cinematic clientele.

Let’s start with secret agents, both sleek (Connery, Sean Connery as James Bond in 1971’s “Diamonds Are Forever”) and geeky (madcap Mike Myers as 1997’s “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery”).

Everyone from the gangsters of director Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 “The Godfather” to gonzo, drug-addled journalist Hunter S. Thompson (Johnny Depp), the latter witnessing literal lounge lizards slithering around in 1998’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” visited the Riviera on screen.

The folks who come to rob Las Vegas can been as cool as the original “Ocean’s 11” wave or as violent as the imitation-Elvi ex-cons (led by Kevin Costner and Kurt Russell) who machine-gun the casino during an Elvis convention — before escaping via helicopter from the Riviera rooftop — in 2001’s “3,000 Miles to Graceland.”

And let’s not forget the spouse-swapping “Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice” (alias Robert Culp, Natalie Wood, Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon) in director Paul Mazursky’s 1969 comedy. Or the MIT math-whiz card counters in 2008’s fact-based “21.” Or the mismatched, culture-clashing cops (Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker) hitting Vegas in 2001’s “Rush Hour 2.”

Yet when it comes to capturing the quintessential Vegasness of Vegas, you can’t do better than two diametrically opposed 1995 movies, both of which feature the Riviera: director Martin Scorsese’s epic “Casino” and Paul Verhoeven’s epically trashy “Showgirls.” (We’ll get to them later.)

Instead, let’s begin our Riv-on-film recollections on a decidedly ring-a-ding-ding note with the original “Ocean’s 11.”

Truth be told, not that much of the Riv, besides its marquee, winds up on screen, as Danny Ocean (who else but Frank Sinatra?) and his ex-Army pals (yes, kids, this was only 15 years after World War II) plot a complicated commando mission: a simultaneous heist at the Flamingo, Sands, Desert Inn, Riviera and Sahara. (After Monday, the Flamingo will be the sole Strip survivor of that group.)

Maybe it’s because the team member assigned to the Riv is the ill-fated Anthony Bergdorf (Richard Conte), whose — SPOILER ALERT FOR A MOVIE THAT’S BEEN OUT FOR 55 YEARS! — bum ticker is about to give out at a most inopportune time.

Speaking of inopportune times, Scorsese and Co. filmed the fact-based “Casino” in 1994 — but the twilight-of-the-mob saga it chronicles took place in the 1970s and early ’80s at the fictional Tangiers.

As anyone who’s ever seen the movie knows (SECOND SPOILER ALERT!), “Casino” concludes with a gloomy medley of casino implosions and an even doomier assertion by protagonist Sam “Ace” Rothstein (Robert De Niro as “Casino’s” version of Frank Rosenthal), courtesy of screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi, that “the town will never be the same. After the Tangiers, the big corporations took it all over. Today it looks like Disneyland. And while the kids play cardboard pirates, Mommy and Daddy drop the house payments and Junior’s college money on the poker slots.” (Note to Ace: Treasure Island’s cardboard pirates are gone now too. Feel better?)

Before the melancholy finale, however, “Casino” needed a casino that looked like it could have been around during the disco era. Enter the Riviera, which Oscar-winning production designer Dante Ferretti transformed into “Casino’s” Tangiers.

Although the hotel’s penthouse, restaurants, kitchen, counting room, ballroom and La Cage showroom also played prominent roles, the Riviera’s casino was at the heart of “Casino.”

Four nights each week, for more than six weeks, from midnight to 10 a.m., part of the Riviera became the Tangiers while real-life gambling continued out of camera range.

As Scorsese told the Los Angeles Times, “Oh, I’ll never forget it, never forget that sound” — the omnipresent sound of casino gambling. “Sometimes dice would go flying and land on my (video) monitor.”

Very frustrating, yet “the trade-off was worth it, because the energy was alive, people really winning, yelling and screaming,” the director said. “We couldn’t tell them to be quiet in order to get some dialogue — forget it — so we have it all on the soundtrack. It’s like a breathing mass of people and machines and money.”

Indeed, Riviera officials even touted the shoot with a banner reading “Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone and Joe Pesci Filming The New Movie ‘Casino’ Inside!”

Meanwhile, outside the Riv, “Showgirls” shows you exactly how Vegas can change your life.

Hard-luck hitchhiker Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley) discovers the driver who transported her to Sin City, promised her his uncle could get her a job — and gave her $10 to go gamble — has made off with her suitcase.

That revelation prompts her to dash out of the Riviera (narrowly avoiding being run over by oncoming traffic), then take out her anger on another car, whose owner (Gina Ravera) arrives to transform the confrontation from human-vs.-car to genuine catfight. At least until the combatants bond over a fast-food repast, then become roommates while Nomi launches her strip-to-Strip odyssey. (Some things aren’t remotely believable, even when they happen in Vegas.)

If 1995 proved the Riviera’s on-screen peak (and nadir), subsequent years provided notable supporting turns.

It’s hardly a surprise that swinging ’60s relic Austin Powers — accompanied by his very-’90s partner in espionage, Ms. Vanessa Kensington (Elizabeth Hurley) — would wind up at the Riv, considering he probably first visited Neon Nirvana while Frank and Dino still ruled the Strip, if not the pop charts.

“Austin Powers” pays homage to that glittery, glamorous era with a witty twist on that inevitable Vegas movie cliche, the cruising-the-Strip sequence.

Austin and Vanessa experience Las Vegas Boulevard’s light parade from atop a double-decker bus, dancing to then-showroom regular Burt Bacharach crooning “What the World Needs Now.” (Among the scenic highlights: the Riv’s wall-of-neon “Splash” marquee, plus such vanished relics as the Silver Slipper’s spinning namesake, the Sahara’s camel-bedecked marquee and slot machines spitting out actual coins.)

By the time “21’s” card-counting kids hit town in ’08, the action has shifted to such newer resorts as the Hard Rock, Planet Hollywood — and the so-far-off-the-Strip-it’s-in-Summerlin Red Rock. (Not that “21” worries much about local geography, as witness its depiction of a Hard Rock high-roller suite overlooking Caesars Palace.)

But when it comes time for “21’s” card-counting hero (Jim Sturgess) to (FINAL SPOILER ALERT!) get a beatdown from Vegas’ lone old-school enforcer (Laurence Fishburne), the Riv’s where it’s happening, baby.

“You think you can beat the system?” Fishburne’s character rages. “This is the system, beatin’ you back.”

Or, as Dino himself tells his “Ocean’s 11” pallies, “old times are only good when you’ve had ’em.”

Thanks to the magic of the movies, we’ll always have good (and bad) times at the Riv.

For more stories from Carol Cling, go to bestoflasvegas.com. Contact her at ccling@reviewjournal.com and follow @CarolSCling on Twitter.