‘Vegas’ series based on former sheriff Lamb debuts tonight

Even in a fall TV season littered with over-the-top new characters - the rogue captain of a nuclear submarine, the on-call surgeon to the Mafia and the supernatural owner of a demonic apartment building - Ralph Lamb stands out.

Clark County's longest-serving sheriff, whose 1961-79 tenure spanned the birth of modern Las Vegas, has stories the way other people have chromosomes.

Seemingly the only person not impressed by those tales is Lamb himself.

"I'd tell him some story I didn't think was important. He thought it was great," Lamb says of an early meeting with screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi ("Goodfellas," "Casino"). "So he started keepin' notes on 'em. And he said, 'I can do something with this.' "

After sharing more and more of those stories with Pileggi over the past few years, that something finally can be seen today with the debut of "Vegas" (10 p.m., KLAS-TV, Channel 8).

Set in 1960, it's the story of Lamb (portrayed by Dennis Quaid) and his battles with mobster Vincent Savino (Michael Chiklis), the new general manager of the flashy Savoy casino. (According to CBS, Savino is a composite of several mob figures and, despite speculation, none of them is Johnny Roselli, with whom Lamb frequently clashed.)

"Really, at the bottom of it all, the show is about the building of Las Vegas," Quaid says during a break from shooting the drama's sixth episode. "When the mob came in and the effect that had on the local population there and the way it changed the character of the city."

Quaid had spent a couple of years looking for his first regular TV gig when the project, then known as "Ralph Lamb," came his way.

"It was a great script. Then I learned that Ralph Lamb was a real person," Quaid says, a fact that left him "pleasantly surprised."

"I came to Las Vegas and met him. And it just really felt like something I wanted to do."

Hollywood had come calling for Lamb several times over the previous 30 years, most notably in 1984 in the form of "The Wild Bunch" director Sam Peckinpah.

"He was going great guns with (it), and he died," says Lamb, his voice still a low rumble at 85. "And I can't quite remember, a couple of other guys had started on it, but we didn't have a big interest in it then. And it didn't sound good to me, so I just quit."

As a result, Quaid wasn't the first person linked to the role of Nevada's cowboy sheriff. Lamb's a little fuzzy on some of the other names that were floated around, but there had been talk of Clint Eastwood, Russell Crowe and maybe even Tom Selleck bringing his story to the big screen.

Quaid, though, may have been destined for the role. He and Lamb share not only a birthday but the same shoe size, a fact discovered when Lamb gave the actor a pair of custom-made kangaroo boots to wear on the series.

That's the only time Lamb says he offered to help Quaid get into character. "He seemed to be the most famous of the two (of us), so I just figured he knew more than I did."

That hasn't stopped Quaid from seeking advice during Lamb's visits to the New Mexico set where the "Vegas" pilot was filmed and the elaborately re-created Fremont Street at the drama's permanent home in Santa Clarita, Calif., or during their frequent phone calls.

"He said to me one day," Lamb recalls, " 'When you got two guys in a bar and you wanna get 'em outta there, what do you do?' I said, 'Are you askin' me what I woulda done?' 'Yeah.' 'Well, I'd have whipped one of 'em, throwed him out and then come back and got the other one. If he didn't run, I'd get him.' It's just kind of a joke, you know, but he got a big kick out of it.

"They always say, 'Well that was Ralph Lamb's justice, how he meted out justice.' Which is not the truth. You'd have thought I was runnin' around with a shotgun beatin' up people."

Lately, the only runnin' around Lamb has been doing is on the promotional circuit.

Last week, he was in Los Angeles at a party thrown by CBS, rubbing elbows with many of the network's stars, including another actor keeping Las Vegas safe from TV criminals: "CSI" star Ted Danson, whom Lamb endearingly refers to as "the kid from 'Cheers.' "

"Everybody was there," Lamb says, "just a talkin' and visitin'."

It was yet another chance for Lamb and Quaid to reconnect.

"We were interviewed, I think, 10, 12, 13 times, Dennis and I," Lamb says of his time on the red carpet. "We'd get to the end of the line, they'd make us go back and start over, and there'd be strangers there. And them lights burnin' on ya, boy, I was hotter than a pistol."

That's the Lamb that initially drew Quaid to "Vegas."

"He's just a very colorful character. And just the whole way he talks hearkens back to a different era," the actor says. "The more I got to know him, the guy's a legend. And he was part of the building of Las Vegas to what we know today."

The word "colorful" is frequently attached to Lamb. Survey a hundred people, "Family Feud"-style, and that response would win the round. But much like Lamb dismisses the value of his stories, it's a side of him he tries to downplay.

"I don't know why they would say that," Lamb says of the "colorful" label. "Except I did have my own way of doin' things and runnin' things and tryin' to stay within what the law said.

"Some people didn't think I stayed within the law, and some of 'em did. The people that lived here, the old-timers that lived around here, thought it was just right."

Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567.