Alison Martino recalls her father’s Las Vegas

When singer Al Martino was a showroom headliner performing on the Las Vegas Strip years ago, the mobsters who ran the casinos sometimes paid entertainers in cash, says his daughter, Alison Martino.

That wouldn’t happen at the corporate casinos now operating along the resort corridor. But that’s how it was when “the boys” were in charge, she said. Some entertainers took their cash payment out to the casino floor to gamble, mingling with hotel guests at the table games.  Her father liked going back to the kitchen and cooking for people dining at the hotel restaurants.

“That’s old Vegas to me,” Alison said in a telephone interview from her home in Los Angeles. Known as “the Godmother of Old L.A. and the Sunset Strip,” Martino, 54, is a writer, historian and television producer. She also founded and runs the popular Vintage Los Angeles website and Facebook page.

On a recent trip to Las Vegas, Martino was impressed by the changes taking place in town, including the addition of the Sphere, an off-Strip music and entertainment venue, where she and friends attended an Eagles concert.

Before heading out from Los Angeles, Alison let her Facebook followers know that reconnecting with old Las Vegas also would be an important part of the trip. She mentioned restaurants such as the Peppermill and Piero’s. Both were the setting for scenes in the 1995 Las Vegas Mob movie Casino. In addition, Alison wanted to check out the “great historic hotels” that are still intact. Many from the Mob era have been demolished.

“Vegas has certainly changed since my father used to play the Strip,” she told her social media followers.

Her father was a World War II Navy veteran headed for a career as a bricklayer in his hometown, Philadelphia, before finding fame as a singer, initially appearing at a tavern in South Philly. He ultimately signed major record deals and headlined at Las Vegas Strip resorts such as the Desert Inn. His many hits include “Here in My Heart,” “Spanish Eyes” and “Volare.” He became even more well-known after being cast as singer Johnny Fontane in the 1972 Mafia movie The Godfather. He also was in The Godfather: Part III.

Baby steps

After arriving in Las Vegas for the Eagles concert, Alison Martino visited places familiar from the earlier, “more romantic” period when her father performed there, beginning with his first appearances in 1960s. She went to Piero’s, the Italian restaurant whose founder, Freddie Glusman, is a family friend and where comedian Don Rickles once proudly introduced her around as Al Martino’s daughter. Piero’s occupies the former home of the Villa d’Este restaurant, known in its day as a Mob hangout.

“There’s still old Vegas in Vegas,” Alison said over the telephone. “You’ve just got to find it.”

Throughout the years, Las Vegas has become a different place in many ways, Alison said. During her father’s time, there was more open space between casinos along the Strip. The neon casino signs back then were more appealing to her than the current digital displays. In the early days, you couldn’t take pictures inside the casino or showroom. Now everyone in the resort has a cellphone camera, shooting pictures and video.  And, Alison said, today’s audiences might not quite understand the comedy of performers such as Rickles and Joan Rivers.

“The comedy was different,” she said. ”The music was different.”

Entertainers like her father, who died in 2009 at age 82, came from a crooner background and “were singing love songs,” Alison said.

She said the Las Vegas entertainment scene turned a corner in 1969 when Elvis Presley began a seven-year residency at what now is the Westgate, attracting sold-out nightly audiences.

Around that time, large numbers of people began traveling to Las Vegas specifically to see certain major entertainers.  Previously, many tourists ventured to the desert to gamble and, dressing up for the evening, would find their way to a showroom for whichever performer happened to be there, Alison said.

Her father was one whose name would appear on casino signs lining the Strip, including some resorts that no longer exist, such as the Desert Inn, Riviera, Sands, Frontier and Dunes. Though she was born in Los Angeles, Alison experienced many childhood memories at the resorts where her father performed. She took her first baby steps at the Sands, a moment preserved in Alison’s photo collection.

The photo collection also includes pictures of an incident involving a casino sign on the Strip. At one point during the 1990s, Al Martino and Eddie Fisher were on tour together, performing at the Dunes. On the large sign in front of the casino, Martino’s name was listed first. Overnight, someone, though not Fisher, arranged for the order of the names to be changed so that Fisher’s would be first, Alison said. Al Martino didn’t mind.

“My dad was such a laid-back guy from South Philly,” Alison said. “He could care less if his name was up front.”

Blacklisted from the Strip

The friendship between Al Martino and Eddie Fisher dated back to the 1950s, when they were struggling performers rooming together. Martino began appearing again on the Strip in the ’90s, having been banished for years apparently at Frank Sinatra’s urging, Alison said.

Supposedly unhappy about the Johnny Fontane character in The Godfather, at first in Mario Puzo’s novel and then the movie, Sinatra had Al Martino blacklisted from Las Vegas showrooms, she said. The Fontane character is a singer seeking a Mafia don’s help in securing a movie role. During his career, Sinatra was rumored to have organized crime connections.

Alison said the blacklisting was nothing personal against her father. Sinatra probably wouldn’t have liked whoever was cast as Fontane, she said, adding that Al Martino later wished he had “gotten on the phone with Frank and worked it out.”

Her father’s comeback, while touring with Fisher, occurred not long after the movie Goodfellas was released in 1990, putting classic Mob films in the forefront again. Over time, books and television programs about movies including The Godfather have come out with inside information on details such as how the actors were chosen. At least where her father is concerned, those details aren’t always exactly accurate, Alison said.

In reality, her father got the Fontane role after singer Phyllis McGuire, who had a romantic relationship with the Chicago Outfit’s Sam Giancana, told him about the part and said he would be perfect for it, Alison said. He lobbied for it and was chosen without having to audition, she said.

Alison said Coppola flew to Las Vegas and helped get her father out of a contract at the Desert Inn so he could be in the movie.

Las Vegas ‘mystique’

During the recent trip to Las Vegas, Alison stayed at the Fontainebleau resort on the northeast end of the Strip. The 3,644-room Fontainebleau, which opened in 2023, is another component in what many hope will be a North Strip revival.

From her room at the Fontainebleau, Alison could see the 1960s-era Circus Circus resort across the street, still in operation. The two newer hotel-casinos on that section of the Strip, the Fontainebleau and Resorts World, tower over Circus Circus.

“It’s amazing how much smaller the casinos were,” Alison said.

While in town for the Eagles concert, she went to the steakhouse at Circus Circus, regarded for years as a favorite restaurant among tourists and locals.

“Every time I go on a trip I always try to find all the vintage places I can find and promote them so they can stick around a little bit longer,” she said.

Walking into the Circus Circus restaurant was like entering “a time warp,” she said. The red-leather booths and dark lighting reminded her of another classic Las Vegas steakhouse, the Golden Steer.

With Circus Circus up for sale, Alison said if it ceases to exist, she hopes the famous clown sign along the Strip will be preserved at the Neon Museum.

Though Las Vegas is dynamic and always evolving, its earlier version, when entertainers such as Shecky Greene and Norm Crosby would drop by their friends’ rehearsals, had a special appeal that still exists at places around town, Alison said.

She said there was “a mystique to Las Vegas” that she hopes never goes away.

Larry Henry is a veteran print and broadcast journalist. He served as press secretary for Nevada Governor Bob Miller and was political editor at the Las Vegas Sun and managing editor at KFSM-TV, the CBS affiliate in Northwest Arkansas. Today, he is a senior reporter for Gambling.com.