Between our trip and tonight’s LSU-USC game, I’ve had Las Vegas on my mind. Another reason is my recent viewing of The Las Vegas Story, a 1952 movie set in the casinos of Vegas in a bygone era. The hotels were smaller, the Strip was shorter, but stars still roamed the land in the person of Jane Russell, Victor Mature, and Vincent Price.

The Las Vegas Story was one of the first feature films set in Glitter Gulch. The story is less original involving a love triangle between Russell, Mature, and my man Vinny. Russell is a former Vegas lounge singer who married the allegedly wealthy Price after dumping Mature. Sounds immature to me.

Price insists on stopping in Vegas as the couple travels by rail from their home base in Boston to Los Angeles. Russell reluctantly goes along with her husband’s plan. They stay at the Fabulous Hotel. A fictional name that reminds me of this Eagles song:

Price puts on a show by asking for $100K in credit from the casino. He’s not as rich as he claims to be: they only give him $10K. Vincent Price a fraudster? Imagine that. He hits the craps table and starts losing money:

Russell revisits her roots at the Last Chance Casino where she meets up with her old pal and accompanist Happy played by Hoagy Carmichael.

The songwriter always brought a certain something to his onscreen roles. In this instance, it was The Monkey Song:

Hoagy also sang a duet with the star:

While hanging with Hoagy, Russell meets her old flame. Mature is all grown up now and a Las Vegas detective. He’s never dropped the torch he carried for Russell. Their chemistry is so obvious that even Jay C Flippen as the clueless local sheriff notices:

Jay C Flippen was a fine character actor with one of the greatest names in film history. I suspect I’m the only one who gives a flip about that. Did he ever flip flapjacks onscreen? Beats the hell outta me.

The rest of the plot involves murder, fraud, a corrupt insurance man, and an exciting helicopter chase with Victor Mature riding shotgun.

That’s all the plot I’m willing to share, this feature is called pulp fiction, not pulp spoilers. Besides, it’s the characters that matter in The Las Vegas Story. Russell, Mature, Price, and Carmichael give fine performances. Victor Mature wasn’t the most expressive actor but he brought charisma and gravitas to his roles. He usually got the girl as well.

Then RKO boss Howard Hughes produced the movie. I wonder if it gave him the idea to buy up the town in the Sixties. Hughes spending spree put an end to wise guy Vegas and led to its current status as Disneyland in the desert. I preferred wise guy Vegas.

The movie is competently directed by future Disney guy Robert Stevenson with a script by multiple writers who I’ve never heard of. The wild chopper chase was shot by RKO house cinematographer Harry J Wild.

Grading Time: I give The Las Vegas Story 3 stars and an Adrastos Grade of B. It’s not a bad way to spend 88 minutes of your life.

You’ve seen the stills, it’s poster time.

We begin with side-by-side posters. In tribute to the college football kickoff game, let’s go long.

This one is dedicated to the quad squad. I don’t know what that means but it scans:

The hotel we stayed at Planet Hollywood did not have a proper lobby. Let’s make up for that:

If that were a Vegas lobby, there would be slot machines. What a ripoff. They’re not called one-armed bandits for nothing.

As always, the lobby cards for this black and white movie are in color. They’re also plentiful:

Let’s move from the lobby to the trailer:

The last word goes to TCM’s Alicia Malone: