Visiting Las Vegas has become an American rite of passage. It’s a town that has platformed major musical artists from the Rat Pack and Elvis Presley to Celine Dion and Adele, making Nevada’s largest city an international destination for music and live entertainment. Across four immersive episodes, Vegas: The Story of Sin City showcases the past seventy years of America’s cultural maturation through the lens of this unique city, featuring the entertainment acts, the visionary entrepreneurs, the infamous mafia figures, and the colorful political history that put it on the map.
Through interviews with notable entertainers like Paul Anka and Wayne Newton, former showgirls, journalists, and cultural historians, the city’s evolution into an entertainment mecca is unspooled, revealing the role Las Vegas played in the most important movements and moments shaping American culture as we know it today.
From Sand to Strip
The arrival of the mafia and its money catapults Las Vegas from a raffish frontier town to a glamorous entertainment destination featuring the biggest stars of the nightclub era.
The Golden Age
The legendary Rat Pack show at the Sands Casino in 1960 inaugurates the Golden Age of Las Vegas, an era defined by a heavy-drinking, broad-chasing, irreverent kind of hip embodied by Frank Sinatra.
Shuffling the Deck
As the rest of the country is swept up in a cultural revolution, Las Vegas becomes farther and farther removed from national attitudes. But by the end of the 60s, Elvis makes a comeback in Vegas that helps cement the city as an international entertainment destination.
The Greatest Show On Earth
With the opening of a spate of fantasy hotels, Las Vegas once again transforms into America’s playground – but this time, as a family-friendly, fun-for-all-ages theme park boasting entertainment spectacles unlike anything seen onstage elsewhere in the world.
