LOST VEGAS: Celebrity Casino Greeters
Posted on: June 12, 2025, 02:14h.
Last updated on: June 12, 2025, 03:23h.
- Celebrity greeters were once a popular Vegas tradition
- They’ve gone the way of 99-cent buffet and showgirls on the Strip
Another once-popular tradition that Las Vegas has abandoned is the celebrity casino greeter.
Hired from the 1950s through the 1970s, celebrity greeters helped casinos draw crowds to their gaming floors and provided a thrill for regulars.
In retrospect, the gig — which typically required shaking hands, signing autographs, starting games, and golfing with high rollers — is commonly regarded as a sad and unfitting end for once-proud icons of sports and Hollywood.
But it also gave the fading stars — many of whom hadn’t saved enough money to weather old age — an easy and pleasant way to monetize their remaining recognition and public goodwill.
Joe Louis
Caesars Palace
1970-1977
One of the greatest prizefighters of all time, Louis, who hung onto the heavyweight boxing title for 12 years, greeted guests entering Caesars Palace for seven years.
Louis struggled with drug and mental issues in his later years, so the free room and $50K salary (according to the Las Vegas Advisor) was a godsend. He retired from the casino following the 1977 heart surgery that left him wheelchair-bound, then died four years later, of cardiac arrest at age 66.
Johnny Weissmuller
Caesars Palace
1973-1974
A former Olympic swimming champion better known for playing Tarzan in movies from 1932 to 1948, Weissmuller struggled after retiring from acting in the 1950s, failing with business ventures including a swimming pool company in Chicago. He greeted guests alongside Joe Louis until suffering a hip injury.
Jayne Mansfield
Tropicana
1958 and 1966
She wasn’t just a celebrity greeter, but it was part of her gig. “The Blonde Bombshell” (a nickname coined by Hollywood publicists) headlined two burlesque revues, “The Tropicana Holiday” and “French Dressing,” in the Trop showroom, and her contract required her to mingle with the guests before and after every show.
Outside Vegas
George Raft
Capri Casino Hotel, Havana
1957-1959
Known for playing hoodlums in the movies, George Raft greeted guests for two years here until the Cuban revolution put a stop to it. His Hollywood gangster persona lent a layer of mob mystique to the Capri — a realistic one, considering that his close friends once included Bugsy Siegel and Lucky Luciano.
Raft’s mob associations occasionally hurt him in Las Vegas, though. They were why he was denied a gaming license when he applied to the Nevada Tax Commission (the predecessor to the Nevada Gaming Control Board) to buy a $65K stake in the Flamingo in 1955.
Mickey Mantle
Claridge Hotel and Casino, Atlantic City
1983-1985
In 1983, former New York Yankees slugger Mickey Mantle, 51, agreed to greet and golf with high rollers at Claridge Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City for $100K a year. For this, the New York Times reported at the time, the Hall of Fame center fielder was promptly told by the commissioner of baseball to sever any active links to the Yankees.
“It’s nothing I’m ashamed of,” Mantle told the newspaper. “It’s not like I’m standing outside the hotel and trying to get people to come in and lose their money. It’s primarily the same job I’ve had since I got out of baseball. But it will take a lot less time and I’ll make a lot more money.”
From 1979 through 1985, former New York Giants slugger Willie Mays performed the same role, for the same money, for Bally’s Park Place Hotel Casino Resort in Atlantic City.
“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.
Last Comment ( 1 )
I was introduced to Joe Lois the summer of 1976 and we became friends. Anyone rember “Spider”?’