Las Vegas History Series - Sands Hotel and Casino

The Sands hotel was established in 1952 by Jake Freedman, who had established restaurants in Las Vegas years earlier.  Construction began on Sands Hotel in early 1952, built to a design by Wayne McAllister. Freedman had initially intended naming the hotel "Holiday Inn" after the film of the same name starring Bing Crosby, but after noticing that his socks became so full of desert sand he decided to name it Sands.  The Sands hotel was opened on December 15, 1952 as a casino with 200 rooms.

The opening was widely publicized, and the hotel was visited by some 12,000 people within a few hours. Each and every guest was given a Chamois bag full of silver dollars when they entered the casino that opening day and Sands ended up losing $200,000 within the first eight hours.

In the late 1950's, (then) Senator John F. Kennedy was occasionally a guest of Sinatra at the Sands.

In the 1960 the Sands attained iconic status, with regular performances by Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis. Jr., Red Skelton and others, who performed regularly in the hotel's world-renowned Copa Room. The Sands hotel's biggest claim to fame was a three-week period in 1960 during the filming of Ocean's 11, after which it attained iconic status. During that time, the movie's stars Sinatra, Dean Martin, Davis, Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford performed on stage together in the Copa Room. The performances were called the "Summit at the Sands" and this is considered to be the birth of the Rat Pack.

Howard Hughes purchased the hotel in the mid-1960s for $14.6 million and he soon added a 500-room circular tower, which opened in 1967, making it a true Las Vegas landmark.

Howard Hughes was particularly annoyed every time the Rat Pack were in his hotel, due to a hatred of Frank Sinatra which stemmed from the fact that he had been in love with Ava Gardner in the 50's and she had run off to marry him. Hughes plotted to get rid of Sinatra from the Sands for good, and drew up a plan shortly after the new hotel opened in 1967. The hotel imposed restrictions on how much Sinatra could gamble in the casino, just $3000 a night. Under previous management, Sinatra had no limits on the amount of credit extended to him by the Sands casino. His I.O.U.'s, chits or "markers" were torn up at the end of Sinatra's engagements because he was considered to be good for business-bringing the hotel more monetary value than the worth of his gambling losses.

Infuriated by the new policy, Sinatra began what The Los Angeles Times describes as a "weekend-long tirade" against the "hotel's management, employees and security forces".  The FBI report says the incident began when Mia Farrow lost $20,000 at the Sands casino. Sinatra bought $50,000 in chips and made an attempt to win the money back. He lost this sum within a short period of time. Sinatra then asked for credit, which was denied. This culminated when Sinatra reportedly drove a golf cart through the window of the coffee shop where casino manager Carl Cohen was seated and began "screaming obscenities and anti-Semitic remarks" at Cohen.  Sinatra reportedly punched Cohen, a heavily built man, who responded with a smack in the mouth, bloodying Sinatra's nose and knocking two of his teeth out. As a result, Sinatra never performed at Sands again while Hughes owned it.

In its final years, the Sands became a shadow of its former self, a throwback to the old days, and it ultimately could not compete with the newer and more exciting mega-resorts that were being built on the Strip.  The decision was eventually made by its final owner, Sheldon Adelson, to shut it down and to build a brand new resort. The last dice in the casino was rolled by Bob Stupak just after 6:00pm on June 30, 1996. On November 26, 1996, it was imploded and demolished, much to the dismay of longtime employees and sentimentalists.