The First Showgirls: How the Folies Bergère Became Las Vegas’ Most Enduring Hit
Va-va-voom ostrich-plumed showgirls were once synonymous with Las Vegas entertainment. While Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl explores the end of an era for the glitzy, glamorous dancers, the first showgirls were introduced to the U.S. in The Ziegfield Follies, a series of revues on Broadway from 1907 to 1927, inspired by the famed dancers at the Folies Bergère in Paris.
Initially kicking off in 1869 in a Parisian cabaret hall, the Folies Bergère launched the career of Josephine Baker, who made a splash in 1926 dancing topless with strategically placed pearls and a skirt composed of artificial bananas. Fast forward to Christmas Eve, 1959, when Lou Walters — then-entertainment director for the lavish Tropicana Las Vegas and father of broadcast journalist Barbara Walters — imported the sensational Folies Bergère act directly from Paris. Touching down in a pre-Cirque du Soleil era when French revues were all the rage, it went on to become the longest-running show in Vegas history, ultimately closing in March 2009. In October, the iconic hotel was imploded to make way for a $1.5 billion baseball stadium for the relocating Oakland A’s.
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The Hollywood Reporter spoke to dancer and choreographer Jerry Jackson, now 88 years old and living in Los Angeles, who directed the Folies Bergère at the Tropicana from 1975 until 2009 and orchestrated everything from choreography to costume and set design, even composing original music and lyrics.
What challenges did you face while trying to launch your career as a dancer?
Well, I’m from a small town, Bristow, in Oklahoma, and I was born with deformed feet, so I wore built-up shoes until I was 18 years old, but I always had a dancer’s spirit. When nobody was home, I would put on classical music and jump around the living room, because I had to dance. When I graduated high school, I hitched a ride to L.A. with my aunt, who was breaking in her new Cadillac. They said my feet were getting better, and so I signed up for dance classes at Eugene Loring’s American School of Dance on Hollywood Boulevard and lived at the Garden Court Apartments. I would walk a couple blocks to Highland to take classes from [concert dancer-choreographer] Carmelita Maracci, and then I would take the Red Car to Beverly Hills to take classes from [Russian-American ballet dancer-choreographer] David Lichine.
And was there a big Hollywood break?
Two months after starting lessons, I danced in my first movie, Deep In My Heart, a 1954 MGM musical. So I got my tuition back from University of Oklahoma and enrolled in UCLA, where I majored in art with a minor in music. In the summers, I would go to Vegas and dance in shows at The Desert Inn. My sophomore year, I danced at the Moulin Rouge supper club on Sunset and Vine before stars like Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald would come on.
In 1962, Hermes Pan, Fred Astaire’s choreographer, auditioned dancers for a TV series in Rome called Studio Uno, and I was one of four American boys to go, so I spent six months dancing on Italian television. When I got back to the States, I auditioned to be one of two male dancers on the Danny Kaye Show on CBS and got in, so I did that for two years. Hermes was asked to choreograph Francis Coppola’s movie, Finian’s Rainbow [starring Astaire], so he asked me to assist him. Fred was great; he would go over and over every step until it was perfect.
Then Ron Field, a Tony-winning New York choreographer, was working on the 1967 Academy Awards and said, “I want you to be one of the dancers for a Thoroughly Modern Millie number.” I said, “I’d love to, but I’m choreographing now.” He said he was counting on it and would get back to me. He did, and he said that he himself would dance along with his assistant Tom Rolla, Tucker Smith (who was in West Side Story) and another guy. I said, “Sure, sounds like pretty good company.” Angela descended to the stage in an elevator, and we wore tuxedos and danced and sang with her.
When did you pivot to Vegas and the Folies Bergère?
In 1966, Hermes got the job of choreographing the Folies in Vegas and asked me to assist him. Every couple of years, they would change the show out and do a new edition. All of the costumes were made in Paris and the scenery was also brought over. The French team seemed to like me and asked me to choreograph the 100th anniversary show in Paris, which opened in 1967. Around the same time, the Trop in Vegas asked me to put a troupe of dancers in that show called The Jerry Jackson Dancers to do a specialized New Orleans number, which was a big success. It was very contemporary, with hip-hop steps and James Brown moves, which Vegas hadn’t seen before in a French revue show. In the early ’70s, Alan Lee, the entertainment director at the Trop, asked if I would come in and revamp the show. By 1975, I began to conceive, direct and choreograph the Folies Bergère.
How did you give the Folies your own unique twist?
Unlike other French revue shows, I always put a theme to our show and had an emcee. I wanted it more like a Broadway musical. So my first show in 1975 had a theme of the music hall, from the 1700s to the present day. First, we did a tableau, so when the curtain opened, there was a huge picture frame and a recreation of Fragonard’s oil painting The Swing that came to life. Then, we went to the can-can in the 1800s to jazz in the 1920s, where I had a screen with 13,000 lights on it that flew into the ceiling, revealing seven red mirrored pianos with girls dancing on top of them as they were wheeled around the stage. The 1930s was a gangster number with 12 showgirls coming out of a 1936 Rolls Royce. And so on. Our 1983 show theme was a salute to American music. I had a huge mirror tilted up that reflected a turntable where all the girls were in patterns with a pink fan in the style of Busby Berkeley. I was inspired because there was a mirror over my bed in the hotel suite (for whatever reason, we won’t say), so I got on the bed and started doing patterns with the music on, and that’s how I designed the overhead shots!
Tell us about how you took over design for those opulent costumes.
Up until 1975, the costumes were shipped over from Paris. Then, I was working on an act for ventriloquist Shari Lewis, who created the Lamb Chop puppet, and she told me about costume designer Nolan Miller. So I met with him. I would do preliminary sketches, because of my art training, and Nolan would turn them into finished sketches. He knew all about period construction and built beautiful costumes. Some of the turn-of-the-century velvet gowns Nolan made weighed about 30 pounds. And he had more gowns at the Academy Awards than any other designer, because he did Joan Crawford’s wardrobe and dressed stars like Liz Taylor and Lana Turner. I changed a couple numbers in 1980, which he costumed, but then Aaron Spelling got an exclusive on him for Dynasty, so he couldn’t design for me anymore.
When I had to do a new show in ’83, Nolan said, “Jerry, you know what you’re doing. Why don’t you design your own costumes and, if you’d like, we’ll build some of them here at my shop in Los Angeles?” For the first time, I designed costumes for the whole show. His beadwork and jeweling were magnificent. When they kept cutting money from the budget in the ’90s, I started doing the scenery, too, so we could have more funding for materials and fabrication. For my can-can, which was in the show until it closed, I patterned the scenery after a Toulouse-Lautrec painting so it looked like a painting come to life and that won awards. One of my favorite costumes was a butterfly costume for the opening with a wingspan of 12 feet, held with a harness.
And then how did you get into composing music and lyrics?
When I was a kid, my mother said, “You have to take piano lessons until you are 18. After that, I don’t care what you do.” So every morning, my brother and I would practice the piano for 30 minutes. It was all classical, so I had that background to draw on, especially when I was doing period numbers. And my minor was in music. One song I wrote for the 1975 Folies was called “The Music Hall,” because I couldn’t find a song that would set up the theme.
It was more sensational back then to have topless dancers than it is now when there is nudity everywhere, which maybe led to some of the demise in interest?
Yes. It was certainly one of the big draws for Vegas because the only other place you could really see nudity would be in a sleazy strip club, you know? But it was done with such style in the revues, which was unusual.
How did you feel when you learned the Tropicana was being leveled?
The Tropicana used to be called the Tiffany of the Strip. It was the most beautiful, classy hotel in Las Vegas when it was built; the gourmet dining room had a violinist playing. But since the 1990s, they let the hotel run down after the last few editions of the Folies Bergère, where they absolutely gave me no budget. They’d say, “Go to the warehouse and recycle old costumes and scenery,” which is terrible because the Folies is known for being very lavish and inventive. So when I heard the hotel was being blown up, I thought it was time, because they had let it run down so badly. They had asked me to do a new show in 2009 but said they didn’t have any budget. So I said, “Well, I think you should close the show, because that’s impossible.” I had used everything out of the warehouse that I could possibly use for the prior editions, trying to keep the show going and looking good. There just wasn’t anything left.
Any thoughts about the new film The Last Showgirl with Pamela Anderson?
I’ve not seen the film, but I read a synopsis. It seems to portray a showgirl, once beautiful and desirable, going through an identity crisis as she ages and so can no longer get a job in an industry that’s fading. There’s another side to that coin, looking at the showgirl as a victim of change. I knew well-paid showgirls who worked five or six hours a night and often spent their days pursuing their interests, such as getting a degree at UNLV and planning for the future. Many studied in the dressing room. One is a forensic expert for the Las Vegas police department, another got a master’s degree in literature and is a published writer, another is a child psychiatrist, one owns a successful beauty salon and, of course, there’s Cassandra Peterson, who developed the character Elvira Mistress of the Dark, which is a huge success to this day.
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