Since You Went Away
1944
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Aug 13, 2016 · Prevalent racism legend holds that a Las Vegas hotel once completely drained their pool because black entertainer Dorothy Dandridge stuck her toe in the water.
Cigarette girls in frilled dresses and rouge-jacketed waiters served guests looking over the hotel’s palm-lined swimming pool.
Mar 8, 2021 · Dorothy Dandridge once dipped her toe into a pool in a Las Vegas hotel that was to be used by only white people. The pool was drained
- No First-Hand Account
- What Draining A Pool Entailed in The 1950s
- That’S Exactly What Happened
- Las Vegas Finally Integrates
Dandridge, who died of an antidepressant overdose in September 1965 at age 42, never once publicly mentioned the pool-draining incident while she was alive. Though her autobiography is frequently cited as a source for the story, “Everything and Nothing: The Dorothy Dandridge Tragedy,” compiled from taped interviews by author Earl Conrad and publish...
The Last Frontier pool held about 70K gallons of water, according to photos analyzed by Todd Olcott, owner of Las Vegas’ Four Aces Pool and Spa. In 1953, according to Olcott, it would have taken 24 hours to drain, then another 50 hours to refill, using a 5/8-inch-diameter hose delivering 17 gallons per minute. “Maybe hotel staff threatenedto drain ...
The pool-draining story doesn’t appear in a single book, newspaper, or magazine until 32 years after Dandridge’s death in the 1997 biography “Dorothy Dandridge” by Donald Bogle. According to the book, “it was said, perhaps to rattle management, that (Dandridge) sometimes ‘indicated that she was going to take a swim.'” This was according to an inter...
It wasn’t until the Moulin Rouge, Las Vegas’first fully integrated casino hotel, opened on the Westside on May 24, 1955, that the town’s racist mindset began changing. The Moulin Rouge immediately entered Hollywood gossip columns as the hottest nightclub in town — a cultural Valhalla where one could rub elbows with Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, and Ro...
Mar 25, 2024 · Enraged and with much indignation, Dandridge ignored hotel management, appeared poolside in her swimsuit and stuck her toe in the pool as onlookers stared in disbelief. As promised, the pool was drained and scrubbed clean by the hotel’s Black maintenance workers that evening.
Jun 21, 2020 · The pool might be most famous for an incident involving Dorothy Dandridge in April 1953 that illustrates the segregationist rules of Las Vegas Strip hotels in the 50s. It was described in Donald Bogle’s biography of Dorothy Dandridge.
Dorothy Jean Dandridge (November 9, 1922 – September 8, 1965) was an American actress and singer. She was the first African-American film star to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, which was for her performance in Carmen Jones (1954).
