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Frontier Town of Two Centuries (1953)

1953 · Short film · 26 min

  • Documentary
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Synopsis

This black-and-white documentary film from 1953 focuses on the booming frontier town of Las Vegas, Nevada, and the factors that account for its success. The documentary-style newsreel was part of a short-lived "March of Time" TV show, which was produced by Time Inc. and first aired in 1953, as Las Vegas was experiencing its post-war boom. The documentary takes the viewer on a tour of Las Vegas and highlights the hotels, casinos, legalized gambling, liberalized divorce laws, and marriage rules that sparked its rise to fame, as well as the nearby Hoover Dam, natural scenery, and atomic testing areas. Many of the locations seen in the video, such as the El Rancho Hotel, Desert Inn, and Flamingo Hotel, were newly opened at the time and remain iconic landmarks of Las Vegas today. The narrator also provides a perspective on the gambling industry and casinos of Las Vegas at a time in history when gambling remained prohibited in almost every state. Most likely this is part of Operation Upshot–Knothole, a series of eleven nuclear test shots conducted in 1953 at the Nevada Test Site. (25:43) A mushroom cloud is visible We encourage viewers to add comments and, especially, to provide additional information about our videos by adding a comment! See something interesting? Tell people what it is and what they can see by writing something for example: "

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Details

Running time
26 minutes
Collection
Ephemeral Films

Subjects on the Internet Archive

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