She has two grown sons and goes to college at UNLV in her spare time. “There’s this idea of what a showgirl is, but the truth is we’re really very normal, you know,” Heberling says. Tracey Heberling, another showgirl from the “Lido’s” heyday, now runs a child care center, but she remembers having to grin, keep in step and dance around horse or dove dung often left behind by a previous act. Despite the lurid lure of tall, leggy women whose mammary glands hang out for public view twice each night, the original French revue has never catered to anything but the most conservative values offstage, according to former cast members.
There is even a grandmother at work among the girls in the current chorus line. “You could call your wife and tell her exactly when you’d be home for dinner.”įor the most part, the men and women of the “Lido” were, and are, working-class family people who happen to dance, aim spotlights, sew costumes or bare bosoms for a living.
“The show never started or ended any more than 30 seconds late,” recalled Walter White, a 20-year veteran of the “Lido” stage crew. Those who want to watch precisely one hour and 37 minutes of French fluff, flounce and flutter will have to go to the original (and considerably less spectacular) show in Paris. The breasts were just as bare, of course, but the “Lido” was the Las Vegas Strip, and, inside the Stardust, it was Paris. But tonight, after 22,000 performances, the heavy velvet curtain comes down on the “Lido” for the final time. “I’m going to call my memoirs ‘Tits and Feathers,’ ” she continues with a laugh.įor 32 1/2 years, the “Lido” and its troupe of topless showgirls, slick jugglers, animal acts and slapstick comics have done two and sometimes three shows a day, six days a week. If the costume still exists at all, it’s more suited to a museum than a high-breasted model like the one Rena once was. “It was taken in 1970,” Warden said over a glass of white wine that she sipped during the “Lido” farewell party Tuesday night. Carefully unfolding the tattered sheet of paper, she smooths it out on the cocktail lounge table: It depicts a high-contrast likeness of a much younger Rena, draped in a dated costume of white mink and Persian lamb. Adjacent to a full-service health and sports facility which is available to Stardust guests at special daily rates.Lucky Seven Limousine chauffeur Rena Warden carries a folded photocopy of her “Lido de Paris” showgirl photo to show passengers interested in the good old days along the Strip.
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