Posted on: April 28, 2024, 06:18h.
Last updated on: April 28, 2024, 07:09h.
“Carmen Miranda, Danny Thomas and other big entertainers here are being upstaged by a new star that dances, is pretty, but has no sex appeal,” read a wire story by United Press (UP) on May 3, 1955. “The new celebrity? Plain, ordinary water.”
The Bellagio fountains were not the first fountain show in Las Vegas. “Dancing Waters” debuted in 1955 at the Royal Nevada Hotel.
In one regard, it was actually more of a star for the brand new resort than the fountain show has proven for the Bellagio. And that’s because it was an actual showroom headliner. The fountains performed nightly at the back of the Crown Room theater’s stage — for customers who paid to see them, unlike all those Bellagio freeloaders.
Other acts booked by the Royal Nevada, such as soprano Helen Traubel and comedian Dave Barry, actually opened for the fountains.
“While the orchestra plays and the tourists ooh and ah, the colored waters do the mambo, waltz, and skip around,” according to the UP account.
Youth of Fountain
“Dancing Waters” was invented by German engineer Otto Przystawik and Hans Hasslach, the impresario who functioned as his Steve Jobs.
Because there were no computers yet, Hasslach controlled the show’s five fountains — which sat over a $250K plumbing system ($5.8 million today) — via a contraption with 400 switches and buttons connected to 10,000 feet of wiring. Resembling a recording desk, this console commanded 19 50-horsepower engines that determined how the 4,000 jet streams revolved, swayed, and shot 5 tons of water up to 50 feet in the air.
“His actions are so interesting, the audiences often watches him instead of the water,” the UP reported.
“Dancing Waters” debuted at the West German Industrial Exposition in 1952 and headlined Radio City Music Hall the next year, playing an eight-week run that drew 1.5 million.
Though the Royal Nevada called itself “the Home of the Dancing Waters,” however, it was only one of a few systems from the same company operating in the US, most of which toured throughout the 1950s. (One returned to Radio City every Easter for six years.) And luckily, Hasslach had previous experience breaking the equipment down.
And that’s because the Royal Nevada turned out to be no place for a permanent anything.
Battle Royal
The resort — one of four to open in Vegas within a six week-period — struggled from the very start, closing and reopening several times before finally going under, for the last time, three years later.
In 1959, the Royal Nevada was repurposed, by the operators of the resort next door, to become the Stardust Auditorium. It served as convention space and overflow hotel rooms for the Stardust until it was imploded in 2007.
Resorts World now stands on the site.
For the rest of the ‘50s, “Dancing Waters” entered a circuit of temporary, small-time events including the Southern California Exposition at the Del Mar Fairgrounds, the Community Fair in Ontario, Calif., and Neptune Days in Redondo Beach, Calif.
One of the touring systems was displayed at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, and made a return visit to Las Vegas in 1969 (for a special event at Circus Circus). Others were displayed at Universal Studios, Sea World, and Hershey Park.
Liberace performed with one during a 1978 residency at the Las Vegas Hilton.
Another system finally found permanent digs in a specially built Disneyland Hotel amphitheater in 1970. In 1992, that show was replaced by one called “Waltzing Waters,” which happened to have also been designed by Otto Przystawik.
What became of Hans isn’t preserved by the internet or newspaper archives. But Otto’s son, Michael, carries on the family tradition today by operating another fountain show called “Liquid Fireworks.”
“Lost Vegas” is an occasional Casino.org series spotlighting Las Vegas’ forgotten history. Click here to read other entries in the series. Think you know a good Vegas story lost to history? Email corey@casino.org.
