Music Mondays Presents Lost Vegas: The Lounge Era
They say that Jazz is the only truly American art form. But clearly “they” had never visited the back rooms of Las Vegas’ most popular casinos during the 1950s, where a group of oddball performers were developing a unique, hyper-regional brand of live entertainment known as the lounge act.
Strictly speaking, lounge acts combined art forms that already existed; they were singers, dancers, comedians and impressionists. But in the swirling haze of booze, broads and money that was golden-age Las Vegas, these individual disciplines fused into something much more bizarre, intimate and entertaining than anyone could have anticipated. Something about the unique atmosphere of the lounge made schmaltzy singing, corny jokes and dressed-up vice work. But unfortunately, it also guaranteed that the form would never grow (in any substantial way) outside the Las Vegas city limits.
Tonight (on what would be Elvis’ 72nd birthday) Alamo Music Mondays presents Lost Vegas: The Lounge Era, a documentary look at the heyday of the lounge act, from the 1950s through the 1970s.
Directed by first-time filmmaker Tim Onosko and Narrated by Ricky Jay (the renowned magician and actor who you probably know best as the narrator in P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia), Lost Vegas explores the rise and fall of the lounge act through interviews, photographs and performance footage. The film touches on some recognizable names like Louis Prima, but for the most part the camera is turned toward the unknowns—the charismatic workhorses of the back rooms who spent thirty years in relative obscurity, presiding over Sin City’s “24 hour parties” for little to no payoff.
Onosko will be in attendance to introduce the film and to (possibly) relate some stories about the myriad characters he interviewed while making it.
Lost Vegas: The Lounge Era (w/ Director Tim Onosko Live In Person)
Monday, January 8th
Alamo Drafthouse Downtown
$2 / $1 Student, AFS
[Tickets]
