Las Vegas is betting on sports. The Tropicana hotel, home of the showgirls, is a victim of the new era

The showgirls burst onto the stage on Christmas Eve in rhinestone-laden, feathered topless glory, the 1959 debut of Paris-tinged Folies Bergere launching the Tropicana into a new level of Las Vegas legend – and forever intertwining the identity of Sin City with the image of showgirls themselves.

It was an over-the-top production that cemented the Tropicana Las Vegas as a mainstay on the Strip and an integral part of the city’s mystique. Folies Bergere would go on to entertain audiences for 50 years, to this day retaining the title of longest-running show in Vegas history.

But the Trop, as it’s known in the city’s shorthand, had already been building a glamorous reputation in the short years since its 1957 opening; it had quickly become a draw for the famous, rich and beautiful in the burgeoning desert playground in the post-Second World War years.

Stars like Frank Sinatra graced its stage, and the Tropicana would go on to be name-dropped in the 1971 film Diamonds Are Forever, in which none other than James Bond stayed in one of its swanky suites. Liz Taylor, Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher hobnobbed together at the hotel’s opening – which featured a performance by Fisher two years before the trio’s love triangle sent the world’s gossip pages into overdrive.

In April 1959, about nine months before showgirls put the Trop on a new map, Taylor and Fisher were pictured chatting to Sammy Davis Jr in a pre-dawn tete-a-tete at the hotel – discussing how their wedding