From Las vegas advisor
www.lasvegasadvisor.com
Q:
I watched a new TV show called "Vegas" this season and wondered if the main hotel in it, The Savoy, was based on any particular existing or former hotel in Vegas?
A:
We confess to not having watched the series (too busy writing QoD!), although we do intend to rectify this situation (not least because the current writer is something of a Michael Chiklis fan, in addition to being an historian). Hence, what follows stems from research, not from watching the show.
All sources we’ve come across state that The Savoy in "Vegas" is an entirely fictional establishment, although its location is real, namely Fremont Street. Sheriff Ralph Lamb was — and still is — a real-life person, and apparently his real boots are also featured, since it turned out that he and actor Dennis Quaid, who portrays him, share both the same birthday and the same shoe size! Prior to filming, the two of them met up and apparently instantly hit it off — you’d have to like someone to lend them your boots, right? The Golden Nugget (or a replica of it) is also prominent in some scenes, we understand, although most of the filming for the series took place in California and New Mexico, and from the brief portion of the first show that we did happen to catch, we seem to recall that very little casino signage was actually shown, doubtless to neatly get around the problems of authenticity and historical accuracy.
While The Savoy, as portrayed in "Vegas," is fictitious, there was, briefly, a casino downtown on East Fremont called Club Savoy, although each initial reference we found for it cited a different location and different dates! The 2002 edition we have of the Chip, Check and Token Collectors Guide* says it was open from 1941-’45, but we’ve frequently found the data in this guide to be unreliable. A local website, vegasmikey.com, maintained by a history buff who’s been a mine of useful information over the years, says it was on the site later occupied by Binion’s Horseshoe at 116 E. Fremont, from 1945-’53, with the additional tidbit that for its last four years in operation it was known as Khoury’s Club Savoy.
A different locally maintained site, inoldlasvegas.com, states that Club Savoy was replaced in 1957 by The Mint [which we know is incorrect, because while The Mint did indeed open in 1957, its address was 100 Fremont Street]. (*When we came across the Khoury’s reference, we checked back with our first source, which lists casino names alphabetically and noted that Khoury’s Club Savoy existed in 1945. At least it got something right, although there was no closing date/name change listed. It also lists a casino called Khoury’s El Rancho Rio, that apparently opened in 1942, although no location is given. We wonder if these have anything to do with the popular Khoury’s Mediterranean restaurant currently operating in town and will investigate, but that’s a task for another day…)
We were about to give up hope of finding the definitive answer when we stumbled upon this fascinating 2006 guide to the history of Fremont Street, evidently produced by two members of the the always-reliable Casino Chip and Gaming Token Collectors Club, which not only concurs with Vegas Mikey that Club Savoy existed at 116 E. Fremont, between 1945-’53, but also states that the property was licensed for slots, 21, craps, and roulette. There’s a black and white photo of the joint, with its sign advertising "cocktails and gaming," while it also confirms that in its latter years it operated as Khoury’s Club Savoy, a fact substantiated by photographs of chips from both Club Savoy and Khoury’s Club Savoy, posted by collectors on the club’s message boards. We were evidently on a roll by this point, when we found the Museum of Gaming History site, an online project produced by the same club, which shows the only example we’ve seen of both a $5 and a $25 chip from Khoury’s (the more usual one we’ve seen is a yellow NCV — no cash value — chip).
We seem to have gone off on something of a tangent here, but one final point worth making about Club Savoy is that, should you happen to be in possession of one of these chips, they’re highly collectible. They are all from what’s called the Arodie mold, the most popular of all chip molds for collectors. Manufactured by Tom Haines & Company between 1953 and 1968 only, the pattern is characterized by twelve arrowheads, alternating with 12 dice (click the links above to see). We’ve seen the yellow chip, in good condition, for sale for up to $159; whether an original club Savoy chip, which predates the Arodie mold, but is older and possibly more rare, is more or less collectible/valuable is something you’d have to ask an expert.
Returning to the original question (yes, at last!), the CBS series is set in the 1960s, so there’s no way The Savoy casino could accurately be based on Club Savoy, which we assume is also a bigger and fancier affair. The name may well have been borrowed for inspiration, as something somewhat authentic, and yet simultaneously obscure and short-lived; had the producers opted for the name of an actual casino from that time, they would have laid themselves open to all kinds of scrutiny in terms of accuracy for what, is all intents and purposes, a fictional series similarly inspired by some reality, but not based upon it too closely.
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