Aural History: Anna Bailey

CLAYTEE WHITE: Opening night at the Moulin Rouge has been talked about for years. People talk about the cocktail dresses. They talk about the wonderful entertainment there that evening. In the audience that evening were personalities from Los Angeles, and actresses of renown came to enjoy that kind of entertainment.

It was unusual, even for Las Vegas. The line of Black dancers appear on the cover of Life magazine with waiters trained in the best restaurants in the country. And they came here and they served the food in tuxedos with white gloves. It was supposed to have been just magnificent.

[Archive sound of a live show from Sammy Davis, Jr. plays in the background]

In May 1955, the nation's first major interracial hotel casino, the Moulin Rouge, opened in West Las Vegas. The Moulin Rouge attracted Black entertainers, such as Sammy Davis, Jr., Pearl Bailey, Louis Armstrong, and many others. Because of segregation, these headliners could play on the Las Vegas strip, but weren’t allowed to stay in those hotels.

The Moulin Rouge offered them a place to play and stay in fabulous fashion. For this aural history, we turn to the voice of Anna Bailey, a dancer and business owner.

ANNA BAILEY: We came out here in 55, 1955. This is my first time, and we were just excited about coming to Las Vegas, entertainment capital, but it was the Mississippi of the West then.

And they had 27 girls that came from different cities across the United States. This is where you want to be, and there was no telling that the agents would come and see you. And so, there was a possibility to some of the girls that go off maybe and do movies or something after that.

But the town was very, very prejudiced then. Like I said, we would go downtown and, if you try on a hat, you would have to buy that hat.

WHITE (NARRATION): I’m Claytee White, Director of the Oral History Research Center at UNLV. On March 3rd, 1997, I sat down with Anna Bailey in her lovely home here in Las Vegas.

WHITE: [Voice fades in] Fine, how are you?

BAILEY: Good

WHITE: Now, could you give me the correct spelling of your first name?

WHITE (NARRATION): Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Bailey has been a professional dancer since the age of 13. Before settling in Las Vegas, she had traveled nationally and internationally in integrated shows. After marrying singer and MC Bob Bailey, the pair traveled and performed together with prominent African-American producer Clarence Robinson.

When Robinson was hired as the show producer at the new Moulin Rouge, he called upon the couple and brought them to Las Vegas.

VOICE OF UNNAMED ARCHIVAL NARRATOR: This is the one state that attracts like a magnet. And whether they come by car, rail or circle the city and drop in by plane, their eyes pop wide open with that first glimpse of Las Vegas.

BAILEY: We thought it was on the strip. So, when they met us at the airport with cameras, and television, and just everything, we was just so thrilled and they put us in limousines and buses, and we started riding, and riding, and riding. We passed the strip. We went past the railroad tracks and we just looked at each other and said, “well, here we are, again,” you know? But when we saw the Moulin Rouge, it was so beautiful.

Then, we were thrilled, once we got in there.

WHITE (NARRATION): The Moulin Rouge was located just a few blocks outside of the predominantly Black West side. The hotel owners believed this would be the prime location for the first racially integrated hotel casino. It’s proximity to the West side brought opportunity and employment to the surrounding Black community.

BAILEY: They were just thrilled cause you’re putting something that they could be proud of to build up their neighborhood, and everything’s springing up then, more hotels, more businesses. Everybody was so optimistic. There was employment, cause I think they employed over 300 people or maybe more. Their uniforms were beautiful.

The service was just the best in town. I think that show was three o’clock in the morning, so that was a late show, and we’re the only ones in town that was doing it. So, all of the Strip would empty out, and they would all come over to the Moulin Rouge. And you’ve never seen so many stars, Tallulah Bankhead, and [Harry] Belafonte, and Sammy [Davis Jr.]. Just all the stars would hang out there.

And I really, in my heart, believed that’s why it was closed because we closed the standing room only. Because we had really just cleaned out the Strip, and they started doing the early shows. They still couldn’t have the flavor where we had over there.

WHITE (NARRATION): The original Moulin Rouge closed in October of 1955, after just five months. There were many rumors about why the seemingly successful hotel casino didn’t last, from unpaid contractors to location. But regardless of the reason, it was the community that was left to deal with the aftermath of losing a source of employment and business.

BAILEY: It was very, very sad because they just didn’t understand it, but gloom fell over the West side. That was really sad. All the building that was going up stopped. The Mardi Gras, there was going to be a mall, just stop, and that building stayed up for years half completed. Everything stopped when the Moulin Rouge closed. That’s what’s so sad about it. Just like the West side was just killed.

WHITE (NARRATION): In 1960, Black community leaders and organizers met with city and state officials at the Moulin Rouge to demand the integration of establishments downtown and on the Las Vegas strip. This was the first step in ending segregation in Las Vegas, as most hotel owners complied immediately, and all others following soon after.

While the closing of the Moulin Rouge did bring a great deal of sadness to the community, Bailey exaggerates the community’s response just a bit, as the West side did continue to grow along with the rest of Las Vegas and was by no means a ghost town. In the following years, the Moulin Rouge would reopen with a few different owners, including a Black owner in the late 1980s, early 1990s.

But, it was never the same after it closed in 1955. After a fire in 2009 destroyed most of the Moulin Rouge, the lot it once sat on is now mostly empty. In December, 2020, the site sold for $3.1 million to a newly formed Las Vegas-based company backed by an Australian investment firm. The area’s councilman is confident the new owners are committed to understanding the history of the property.

Bailey continued to dance in shows, both nationally and locally, after the closure of the Moulin Rouge in 1955. Her husband, Bob, went on to have a successful career in television. Not long after Bailey’s retirement from dancing, the Baileys started opening up businesses, and Anna became one of the first African-American women to hold a gaming license.

BAILEY: So, the girls went off and did wonderful jobs, and that’s what made me so proud. I went into business where I opened up a cocktail lounge, and then my last one was on Paradise and Sahara called The Baby Grand.

[Archival sounds of an announcer asking for an encore during a live performance]

So, I still had a lot of performers that would come and work for me, and a lot of the girls I used to dance with would come and work with me there.

We all either went into business or we went into management or something. We all did something with our lives. I think it was the background of being able to travel so far and meet so many different people on so many different walks of life.

[The sound of the crowd and wild jazz horns fades out]