Binion’s 65th, Caesars Palace’s 50th anniversary inspire nostalgia for ‘old Vegas’

Like praying for departed poker players. Or the Hollywood starlet who circled a buffet table like a cheetah looking for prey before pouncing on an apple slice.

With Binion’s celebrating its 65th anniversary and Caesars Palace celebrating its 50th, it seems like the right time to share again. Stop me if you’ve heard these before.

When I first arrived in Las Vegas in 1976, I was advised to mind my manners at Binion’s Horseshoe because the supersized guards had well-earned reputations for being tough. Card counters weren’t merely asked to leave. At least two, probably more, were hurled into the street. But the Binion’s coffee shop was a popular Review-Journal lunch spot, and parking was easy. (Are you listening, Jim Murren?)

One day I parked in an angled corner spot, and when I returned, the two cars on either side had pinned me in. I went back inside and asked for help.

A brawny security guard walked me to my car and lifted an adjacent car by the bumper, bouncing it over so I could pull out. It was an eternal reminder to me to not cause trouble — at least at Binion’s.

One fond memory came from my stint as a gaming reporter, during the World Series of Poker. It was either 1985 or 1986. Before the start, the hotel had a spectacular buffet for the players and the media. Before the buffet opened, Jack Binion asked for a few minutes of silence to honor poker players who had died the previous year. My entire family prayed.

But when there is a moment of silence, someone has to break the silence. I looked up, and Jack Binion was starting to laugh at the ridiculousness of us all standing near the shrimp table, praying for poker players. He broke the silence, but couldn’t stop from chuckling. Then we all dove into the buffet.

I haven’t prayed for a poker player since.

A buffet also played a major role during the 1984-86 period when I wrote about gaming, when gaming was more about personalities than the Securities and Exchange Commission.

There was an event to celebrate the opening of some circus-type event, and actress Brooke Shields, very young at the time and spectacularly beautiful, was involved.

A friend and I cased the buffet. We came hungry and ate with gusto. Shields walked in with her mom and walked all around the buffet table. Finally, she reached forward. She took an apple slice. Then a second. That was it.

I didn’t even see the apple slices.

I have hundreds of other memories and stories of both the downtown everyman Binion’s and the Strip’s glamourous Caesars Palace.

I took my Arkansas granny to see Sammy Davis Jr. at Caesars, tipping big so she would see him up close when he flashed his jewelry. Her amazed comment afterward was not about his rings, but that “He didn’t say one cuss word.”

Then there were the fights at Caesars, where a friend and I were part of a relay team that ran film from ringside back to a trailer where The Associated Press developed it, edited it and raced to beat UPI to get pictures out on the wires.

We managed to slip into those media parties, too. At one, we were standing by a piano in a Caesars’ suite and the bedroom door opened. Fight promoter Don King came out, looked us up and down and purred, “Hello, dollies.”

No one has called me a dolly since.

Those two hotels, so different in their styles and their customers, were among my favorites back in the day.

I’m glad they’re still standing.

Jane Ann Morrison’s column runs Thursdays. Leave messages for her at 702-383-0275 or email jmorrison@reviewjournal.com. Find her on Twitter: @janeannmorrison.