Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Carolyn V. Hamilton arrives in Las Vegas in 1973 to join a circus. When that job doesn't work out, she opens the new MGM Grand Hotel/Casino as a cocktail waitress. This turns out to be more involved than a nice Lutheran girl from Seattle would think: parties, stealing, sex, drinking and drugs are the main entertainment for a bored crew of casino employees. Some waitresses date culinary union bosses, who have their own high drama of payoffs, fights for control, fire bombings and an 18-day culinary union strike. Each story told in this memoir-of the Martin Scorsese "Casino" era of Las Vegas-is true, and many are humorous as well as outrageous. "Carolyn V. Hamilton's memoir of her time as a Las Vegas cocktail waitress is told with uncommon candor, humor, and insight. Her stint at the world's largest hotel-casino, in a city on the verge of explosive growth and unending controversy, is a blend of Hollywood casting couch, 2 Broke Girls, and Fear and Loathing. It reads as fast as the characters she profiles."Jack Sheehan, author of "Skin City: Uncovering the Las Vegas Sex Industry," and five other non-fiction books on modern Las Vegas history.
Synopsis
"Candid, informative, impressively well-written, and at times downright eye-brow raising,
Coming to Las Vegas is an inherently fascinating and thoroughly absorbing read from first page to last." -
Midwest Book Review In this fast-paced, eye-opening, tell-all romp through 1970's Las Vegas, Carolyn V. Hamilton's social commentary names real names, real places, and real events. These true stories reveal keen insight into casino life in the Las Vegas of the era.
Fresh out of commercial art school, Hamilton has moved from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to join the newly-formed and short-lived Las Vegas International Circus. When she is hired for the opening of the MGM Grand, Hamilton quickly learns the ways of the casino world. Along with her fellow female workers, she battles sexual pressure from bartenders and the machinations of unscrupulous casino bosses who resent the tips players give to cocktail waitresses.
She also learns how government affairs really work as she deals with federal government job discrimination, a bigamist husband, and a 1974 crippling, city-wide Las Vegas Culinary Union strike that, while none of the cocktail waitresses take it seriously, proves to be an eye-opening political experience.
Coming to Las Vegas, A true tale of sex, drugs & Sin City in the 70s is a highly personal, revealing and entertaining memoir of three years in the seventies in the life of a nice Lutheran girl from Seattle who finds herself making a ton of cash in Las Vegas' newest, biggest, and most extravagant hotel/casino, the original MGM Grand.
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