The Kings of Cool: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop.

A moment of sophistication accompanied Las Vegas’ modern birth in the 1940s and 1950s and it continued for more than two decades. In the era when the hotels spoke of the desert, when the Sands, the Dunes, the Desert Inn, and the Sahara were the places people flocked to, Las Vegas entertainment was chic. It began at center stage, with Jimmy Durante opening the Flamingo in 1946, Frank Sinatra’s arrival at the Sands in 1952, the interracial Moulin Rouge’s brief moment of afterhours cool in 1954, and the pinnacle: the early 1960s, when the Rat Pack—Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop—made the night their own. Las Vegas made its own mythology and Americans today remember that era with a wistful joy.

In that initial moment, when Las Vegas was hot, American chic was nightclub culture and Las Vegas mirrored its sharpest edge. Throughout the 1950s, Liberace, Rosemary Clooney, Lena Horne, Jimmy Durante, Milton Berle, Danny Thomas, and others headlined the clubs. Liberace received $50,000 a week to open the Riviera in 1955 and the flamboyantly gay man from the northern prairies drew them in.