- [Announcer] Ladies and gentlemen, we're approaching Reno!

Fasten your seat belts, we're touchin' down.

Bally Superjet is comin' to town!

- The biggest show in Reno, on the largest cabaret stage in the world, with a cast of over 130 and even more crew, this is Hello, Hollywood, Hello.

♪ Feel the beat, feels good ♪ That's that special beat from Hollywood ♪ ♪ Heaven ♪ I'm in heaven ♪ And my heart (orchestral music) ♪ There's no business like show business ♪ ♪ Like no business I know ♪ Simply fantabulous, hello, Hollywood ♪ ♪ Hollywood hello - Beginning of 1978, and the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino is changing the Reno skyline.

26 floors high, over 1,000 rooms, the opening slated for June and the excitement's building.

But as the cast and crew began arriving, they encountered a construction site and a yet to be completed stage.

- I think my husband and I drove up from Vegas on the 19th of January and we went into rehearsals the sixth of February 1978 and we all arrived, of course the hotel was pretty much just cement floors, it was probably being painted, it was very, very basic.

Got into the showroom, the stage was pretty much ready to go, I mean elevators were a little bit questionable but the seating inside was not.

They had put carpet down but of course there were no booths, there were no seats, there was no nothing at that time but that was fine.

But yeah, it was a shell and we saw it all sort of come alive.

It was pretty amazing.

- Well, when you first walked in, you had to wear hard hats because it was still under construction and then, I never would have thought that we would've opened in time because you walked through this big huge casino and it was all, it wasn't done at all.

They didn't even have the structure done and the roofing and that's why we had to wear the hard hats when we went through but the stage areas was totally finished.

- But I still remember looking at the stage and my jaw dropping and I pulled out my camera and I said, "I've got to take a picture of this."

And I did one of those things where I tried to stay as still as I could and I took a picture here, here, here, here, here and here so that I could get a full panorama.

It took six shots to get the full panorama of this showroom.

It was unbelievable how big this performance space was.

- [Lesley] The stage was huge, an acre in size the casino was almost 120 feet wide and 35 feet high.

It was and still is the largest cabaret stage in the world.

- It was so big, you'd forget where everything was because everything was, it'd be like visiting a neighbor two doors down to go to see what someone's doing over there.

You forget where everything is stored and it took about a week to figure out what I was doing onstage and then the stage became my friend.

- It was huge and it was huge to try to do the warm ups as we were always given every single day that we had to do from one side to the other.

It was miles to go and miles to run and miles to jump.

That was pretty tough but it was, oh gosh, it was a glorious stage.

- [Lesley] The expanse of the stage mirrored the expanse of the production.

Hello Hollywood Hello was big, really big.

When MGM came to Reno, it was the biggest casino in town, the biggest casino in Nevada and they wanted a show to match so they planned the biggest show with a budget of millions and they hired the king of shows to produce it, Donn Arden.

- Oh my God, this man was a genius, he really was and today now that he's gone there is nobody that's anywhere comes up to being what he was and what he produced and his incredible way of moving people I think was his extreme talent.

He just knew however many people he had, 100, 200 on stage, he could just make them all work.

(jazz music) - [Lesley] Donn Arden started producing shows for himself and his dancers when he was just a teen.

Born in Chicago in 1916, he graduated from high school in St.

Louis, Missouri.

He started his career dancing in speakeasies during the prohibition era.

The story goes that one day he complained about the backup dancers for his show.

When the manager asked if he thought he could produce a show any better, he said yes and he did.

He was only 18.

Donn's genius was known far and wide.

He had shows in 26 countries.

He was the guy for decades and decades.

He could move people marvelously, his stage was always filled and it was always interesting.

There were great patterns of people and color and movement and really good stuff to see.

- Well, actually, we worked with Donn Arden at the Lido in Paris before we came here.

He was a very strict producer, director.

It was hard sometimes because he really drove the dancers and the singers really hard.

- He was a nightmare to work with.

- You think so?

- Yes, absolutely but he was a perfectionist and he drove everybody to insane to be perfect but he deserved what he got, he got the best.

- He wanted to make sure that you knew who you were working for and if he had heard anything about you being out of line or suspected anything that wasn't in keeping with what he thought should be, he was one to put you on the grill and he chose to wield his power is what he did and a lot of times he was not extremely nice about that.

- [Lesley] For Donn Arden the show was the thing.

Always appreciative of talent, he could at times be really harsh because the show was it and you as a performer were part and parcel of the bigger picture.

- He was very difficult to work with if you got on his bad side.

He could be I don't know if vicious is the right word but I have seen him just destroy people for minor things if he didn't like you.

I was fortunate, the four shows I worked with him, I was a swing girl which meant that I didn't have a permanent place in the show, I went and did whoever was off that night.

I understood how he worked and I was able to work well with him.

- [Lesley] In 1948 at the age of 32, Donn teamed up with Margaret Kelly.

It was perhaps one of the greatest partnerships in showbusiness.

As a child, Margaret Kelly was adopted by a poor Irish family.

When the family doctor admired her bright, blue eyes, he affectionately called her Bluebell and the nickname stuck.

Miss Bluebell began dancing professionally at age 14.

She traveled throughout Europe with an English ballet troupe.

At 19, she was a featured dancer with the Folies-Bergere.

In 1932, the first Bluebell girls appeared on stage.

They were famous for their beauty, their stature and their professionalism.

People could always tell Bluebell Girls.

There would be two or three together on the street, they would always be well dressed, poised, and always quite tall.

Miss Bluebell is known for how good she is to her girls.

She's always saying, "My girls are my girls."

- Miss Bluebell was just, I mean she was just the matriarch of the girls, you know, and she could kick those legs up and she could do the splits and she would tell everybody what to do and what not to do and she was pretty tough as well.

- When I came in to the Bluebell's, she had a dress code when you were outside.

She was a very secure person to work with, she had her girls work all over the world, you never felt that you were going to be in danger.

If she felt her girls were in any way threatened, we would be taken out of the country.

I have a great deal of respect for her.

- Arden and Miss Bluebell were the most fantastic team.

With his wonderful use of people on stage and her lovely line of Bluebell Girls and the handsome Kelly boys, they mesmerized audiences all around the world.

They had shows in Paris, in Rio de Janeiro, in Hong Kong, in Vegas and now in Reno.

- She and Donn, I think it was the biggest love affair but not that anybody could ever had.

I mean they had their fights, they loved each other deeply.

They would have their breakups, I don't know, it was a wonderful relationship.

Without him, she was nothing.

Without her, he wouldn't have been the same so I really do think they were a team together.

- [Lesley] For every show, there's someone behind the scenes, someone who makes everything work.

For Hello Hollywood Hello, it's Bill De Angelis.

Bill started his career as a carpenter working his way up through the years and by the time Hello Hollywood came to Reno, he was executive producer in charge of well, everything.

- Very, very, very good, his sets, his carpentry ideas, he was very, very knowledgeable in the stage set ups.

He knew elevators, he knew everything he could've possibly known and he was very, very creative in that time and basically he worked well but he was the worker then and Donn of course was the creative force.

As the years went by, they became more and more of a partner situation where he had things designed and he had things made and they put their creative thinking process together.

- Bill De Angelis would give us inspirational talks downstage, downstairs on the top hat getaways we called them that were always down the LZ.

About every week, we'd have a meeting down there.

He'd talk to the crew and the wardrobe people and basically just to cheer us on and to give us inspiration and everything and everyone knew who he was and he was back here while we were building everything, he'd come up and talk to you, ask you how everything was going.

- [Lesley] Our company manager was Jillian Hrushowy.

She started on Hello Hollywood as a principal dancer.

She was a great dancer, a really wonderful adagio partner and after about a year, she took over the company manager position.

- Jillian oversaw all aspects of the performance.

She would run rehearsals, she would watch the show every night and give critiques.

She basically was the anchor that held the performance together in a tight way and that's what captain should do.

- First of all, I danced with Jillian in the beginning of the show and it was a delight to dance with her.

She was very, very professional, very kind, she knew what she's doing and that's how she got the company manager post.

I think she did a very good job for everybody.

- She did, she did a wonderful job.

She did the adagio, the big adagio that we had in the show even like in the beginning of the show and she was just a wonderful dancer and she had all that experience to put forth and when she became company manager, immediately she was great.

She didn't have to learn, she knew it all.

- She attacked and she has consideration for the people and she was really a people person.

(jazz music) - You know we came from everywhere, UK, France, Germany, Australia, South Africa.

I was offered the contract twice actually, once in Hong Kong and once in Australia.

I'd never been to America so I said, "I have to see the States before I stop dancing."

- I was coming to the end of a show in Vegas, Miss Bluebell was in Vegas, this was in the summer of '77 and she came to me and asked me to move to Reno and I said, "Well, I was gonna ask you "if I could go anyway."

♪ I've got my eyes on you ♪ So best beware where you roam ♪ - I had been advised by a friend of mine that I might look for a show position in Las Vegas and I said, "Oh sure, I'm this classically trained singer "who's going to go sing in some smoky lounge in Las Vegas?"

And they said, "No, no, they have these big shows."

And he told me he would hook me up with the right person.

I got a call one day that the auditions were gonna be happening in Las Vegas and I made my way to Las Vegas thinking that I was going to have a private audition with this show producer who I had never met.

So I walked in for this interview found the biggest cattle call I've ever seen, there were hundreds of people lined up waiting to audition for Donn Arden.

- Auditioning was always an adventure and Miss Bluebell and Donn were very particular in their choice of performers.

They always had hundreds to choose from at any audition for this show.

It wasn't enough to be tall and talented, you had to be attractive, have poise, be classically trained and have a real stage personality.

- Mr.

Arden could be rough on people auditioning.

He was nice to his cast.

His main thing was if somebody had put on weight, people could lose their jobs from putting on a few pounds.

Luckily, that didn't apply to musicians who weren't on the stage.

But he could be very nice to people too and say, "Hey, keep rehearsing, come back in six months, try again."

'Cause it wasn't just the singers from the show auditioning, it was outside singers who wanted to get the job and of course, you had to be the right height and the right weight and look and it was really important.

♪ Dancing in the dark ♪ You're dancing in the dark ♪ To the tune, we're dancing in the dark ♪ - Pretty girls, it's a certain, certain type that they liked very much and the males definitely the same thing, good bodies, good technique, height.

He didn't like anybody, we did have a couple five foot 10, never anybody smaller than five ten but he really preferred six foot and six foot two, six foot three because he could get it, it was his idea of this kind of show on this kind of stage, you want tall people.

- I think I still remember 'cause she told you the routine that she wanted and it was all ballet, there was no jazz or tap or anything like that in the audition, it was all ballet.

- She wanted to know if we are very well trained for the job.

- And she would tell you what to do and then you had to do it.

She wouldn't show you, she would tell you.

She had a wonderful eye to pick people and discover talents and obviously she put together the Bluebell Girls and kept them on the top of their profession for 40 years, 50 years, how many years?

Very long time.

(upbeat music) (clapping) - [Lesley] But once you got the job, you still had to keep it and in an Arden Bluebell production that meant reauditioning every six months.

It wasn't just for the dancers, it was for the singers too.

♪ I don't care, I don't care what people think of me ♪ ♪ Are they calling me unlucky ♪ I tell you, Ducky, that I don't care ♪ ♪ Hit it, girls - I'd get together with the singers and we'd rehearse and they'd go in there, instead of going in there cold, they'd do something that I thought Mr.

Arden might like to hear.

The most important thing auditioning for Mr.

Arden was to not do the song from Cats.

He could not stand that song and if you sang that song, you weren't gonna get a song with Mr.

Arden.

- Singing wise, he would be pretty bad.

He could get nasty with the singers.

You're looking for a certain type and you had to be very careful if people came and they were huge or definitely too short or they were ugly.

You cannot say, "I'm sorry" but he did it in some ways where you wanted to say, "Oh my God, Donn, be careful."

"Get off my stage, who do you think you are?"

That was the usual comment.

How did he say, "Piece of trash, you piece of," he would be very bad with that.

It was the singers where he got the most nasty I think in the audition process.

But he wanted a certain look, he wanted a certain voice, he wanted a soprano this time or he wanted an alto and he knew what he wanted.

♪ Just a kiss, yes a kiss in the dark ♪ - We had been in rehearsal for four months.

I have never rehearsed anything for four months.

That was the first and last time I had ever been in a rehearsal period that long.

I could've done the show in my sleep by the time we opened.

So opening night, as exhilarating as it was, opening nights are always fun, it was a little bit like, let's just do this show.

- [Lesley] Hello Hollywood Hello made its debut on June 3rd, 1978.

The months of rehearsal, costume fittings, set construction, all came together on that night.

It was a spectacular night that really delighted the audience.

♪ Safe in your arms - I had the privilege of being center stage at the top of the stairs and walking the lady down singing to her all the while and I still remember looking at that front row of guys that were looking up and seeing me surrounded by all these beautiful women and I just knew what they were thinking, "You son of a gun, how did you get this job?"

So it was a very kicky moment in the show.

- Hello Hollywood was different from any other show of its time.

It had the grand staircase, living curtain but it had more of everything.

The two waterfalls poured over 3,000 gallons of water a minute into a 40,000 gallon tank under the stage.

600 pounds of dry ice and $250 worth of fireworks were used in every performance.

With 133 performers averaging nine sets each, there were almost 1,200 changes of costume every performance.

- These kind of shows, the Donn Arden, Bill De Angelis, Miss Bluebell shows were absolutely classy.

There is not even a question that there was anything that could be put down as I don't even know what the word would be, sleazy, not at all.

It was just beautifully done, the costumes were beautiful, nudity was beautiful.

(audience applause) (mystical music) - Donn Arden showgirls don't have holes between their legs.

This is the stance which really shows off the figure.

The walk is more like a glide.

It really uses the body, it's very elegant and shows the costumes off to their very best advantage.

♪ Just a body, not a lot of legs ♪ ♪ And they're swell, they're ready ♪ - The whole two hour show, I think it really worked as an act, 15 minutes and then you were sitting in your dressing room and preparing yourself for the next appearance.

- And like you said, we had a lot of quick changes.

- And we had incredible quick changes and the show as built in the way that everybody had time to make the changes and in my last show, I did all of the parts out of the costume, in of the costume and back to stage.

- Yeah because we had regular quick changes and then of course being swings and doing different numbers we would actually do a lot more.

So we had the dresses right there with a sheet on the floor that would help us and we would wear costumes underneath and other costumes too to be able to quickly run off and run right back on.

- A lot of drops, a lot of backdrops, a lot of scenic pieces, a lot of waterfalls, there was a living curtain, there was the whole San Francisco set from the park scene into the Knob Hill setting in the staircase and the ballroom and then into the San Francisco earthquake scene where everything collapsed.

It was absolutely amazing, it really was.

The finale, I thought was wonderful.

That's the one that came out of the floor, it came out of the elevator with the wonderful set piece, it had two gold elephants that were rearing up with their trunks and everybody was then, it was a circus scene that was rather magnificent.

- The response we got made it magic because Reno, Nevada had never seen anything like this and of course the response was overwhelming.

As a matter of fact, for the first six months we were open, we lived a pretty exotic life, we were being invited to private parties thrown by every big wig in the Reno area.

I think I went to more parties in six months than I've ever been in my life.

It was just one gala after another trying to welcome all these new European performers who had shown up in Reno, Nevada and we had a great time.

Thanks for the hospitality, everyone, it really made us all feel pretty welcome and pretty special.

- And the costumes, the costumes were absolutely marvelous and the spanned the whole spectrum from skimpy little costumes to huge, elegant beautiful heavy costumes.

- My big hat costume which was in the park scene of the San Francisco number was purple and white, it had a huge, it had a crown, they all had crowns with head and it sat on the side and it was just like this huge incredibly huge dish set on the side with a great big bow and that number I had a shawl.

It was to the ground and you'd hear the material swish as you walked, you felt like a million, you felt beautiful.

- I don't know if the audience could really read the detail of the costumes but they were so beautiful, even up close, especially in the beginning before years of wear and tear, our budget was a million and a half and that was back in '78 for the costumes and they were just beautiful.

They had such detail and even like our lace was from France.

Just seeing these up close, the costumes were stunning.

- My finale costume was a cape that was, I think most of them were capes, mine had sequins all over it in various designs.

From my shoulders, there were these wire things that went out with big balls of feathers.

I had a skull cap hat that had these same wire things with the big balls on them.

So from the back, it would be this fountain and as you walked because there were wires these fountain of big feather balls that would just dance as you walked.

So from the top all the way down to halfway down your back were these balls.

- That was a leotard and with all kind of jewelry built in and put on and painted on and it was very comfortable except the head.

The head was huge and obviously it was difficult to breath in it but it was a short number and you just came in, you bedazzled everybody and you ran out and I had a huge wings and the wings are very heavy and it was very difficult to make them move but I did it very well I hope.

(mystical music) - They were presented, they were fitted they were all pretty wonderfully done because they came from houses all over from Europe and from New York and LA and everything had been measured prior and they really did a brilliant job.

- [Lesley] The costumes were fantastic, wonderful.

They were created by two really talented designers, Pete Menefee and Bill Campbell.

The feathers came from Madame Favreau's in Paris, real lace.

We had fans and tutus and jeweled g strings.

Our shoes were custom fitted from Paris.

It's amazing actually having your shoes made for you.

It feels really, really good.

- I just remember that when we were all hired for this, like I say, none of us knew kind of what a dresser did so it was like this mass education of how to put a show or how to organize and literally we learned as we kind of put the show together.

- The day crew was all the ones that did all the repairs and the fittings.

The night crew were mostly the dressers and doing minor sewing things like fixing a hook and eye or something that needed to be done immediately but they were taking care of all of these performers.

♪ We gotta go - You were pretty much in charge of everything from head to toe from their wigs to making sure that their wigs were turned in for either cleaning or just combing to jewelry repair down to their shoes, making sure that they were turned in for repair.

You'd check their soles a lot, buckles.

A big part of our time went into repairing fishnets so that we got longer life out of them.

- Just imagine the scene, performers doing quick changes in corners, dresses looking like Santa Claus with huge sacks of costumes over their shoulders.

Overhead, were flown big feathered headdresses, sets moving in and out all over the place and in the midst of all this, the stage crew connecting microphones, pushing huge set pieces and out front, the audience enjoying the antics of the acts.

(drumroll) (upbeat music) - And now, great Hollywood Musicals on parade, the immortal show boat.

♪ Why do I love you ♪ Why do you love me ♪ Why should there be two - [Announcer] Wally's grand tribute to the fabulous Wally's with that special Donn Arden touch.

- Just in the circus alone, we had seven circus wagons which were huge and all of the other sets with the calliope was probably another 10 pieces.

So you're talking about 17 pieces just for circus.

Underground for every scene, there was at least six big set pieces.

It would take about eight people just to push it.

And the waterfalls, it took 10 people just to push one waterfall down stage and back.

It went on for two hours and the show never seemed like a two hour show.

It always seemed like 15 minutes 'cause you'd only remember your breaks.

- We all had musical cues and that's what you went by.

You went by where you were in the show.

So at a certain song, you knew that I needed to be stage right during a certain line of the song.

So you had to listen to the show to know where you were.

- Every piece of scenery had its place and everything was spiked, when it was on stage and in storage, every place on stage had the outline of the scenery and it went back to that exact spot every time.

It was used, when they played it, it went on stage, exact spot every night because the lighting had to be the same and when it was stored, it had to be in the right place otherwise other set stuff had to come out to be played couldn't go around it.

So everything was always exact.

That's mainly what the supervisors did was make sure that everything was put back correctly so there wouldn't be a jam up 'cause if there's a jam up, it'd stop the show.

If something didn't work, an elevator didn't work or something was in the way or a castor broke, the show would have to stop.

That couldn't happen.

- Also hidden from the audience, were the musicians.

Hello Hollywood Hello had a live band but they were backstage, way backstage and down three flights of stairs.

As common as this is today, it was an Arden innovation back then.

This left the stage completely free for the show, singers, dancers, performers were the main thing and the musicians instead of interacting with the performance were out of sight.

- Two floors below this stage, we have a great Ballys Orchestra conducted by Mr.

Wally Jones.

Give a big round of applause to Mr.

Wally Jones and 17 piece orchestra, they are great.

- We were actually a good city block away from the show in the back of the stage and down below.

We weren't physically present, we were in a different room and worked off TV monitors and clip tracks and a lot of the shows, the stuff that you heard was taped, the ensemble voices.

There were live singers and a live band but the ensemble voices with all the dancers moving around certainly weren't actually getting that big studio quality vocal chorus thing.

- [Lesley] The musicians would come in and rather than being dressed in tuxes and tails, they were wearing sweats and jeans carrying lunch pails.

There were five saxes, six brass, two keyboard players, a drummer, a percussionist, a bass player, guitarist and of course the conductor.

- I was kind of up on a podium and down here was the drummer and certainly the drummer and I were the closest together.

Over here was a keyboard player and there were all sorts of baffles and walls for the sound.

And then the rest of the band was set up like a regular band.

The percussionist was over here and all sorts of things put up the sound.

It was a drab room with big, fluorescent lights and some couches.

- There were fun things that happened in the show.

During the holiday seasons, one of my friends, Rico, a wonderful saxophone player, used to give us all little treats because in the middle of the space disco number, he's doing counter melodies woven through the traditional what's expected in the score of the show, he's playing counter melodies of Jingle Bells and God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and he's playing counter themes that only those of us that knew the show backwards and forwards knew that he was up to it of course but it was little things like that that the musicians were able to give us to keep things fresh.

(big band music) - The cast for Hello Hollywood Hello came from all over the world and most of us from big cities.

Imagine the culture shock for these young persons when they arrived in northern Nevada in Reno.

For the most part, they settled in very well and joined in the local activities and the local arts communities.

But every now and then they made their own side shows and in Reno, well, it just took a little getting used to.

- There's a great story, when we were first in rehearsal, we had been in rehearsal well several weeks, as a matter of fact, it was early spring as I recall and just early enough for the pools to start being open and all of a sudden, the newspapers became aware of the fact that a lot of these girls had been caught sunbathing topless at one of the pools.

- Well, because of course, in Europe, in Europe being topless is perfectly normal 'cause you go topless on the beach, we're talking about the ladies, not the gentlemen, but yeah, that was it.

- I wasn't affected by that.

- No.

And then of course, we were used to it and also you didn't want to have any lines when you were on stage 'cause that was really hard so you really couldn't, especially for the topless dancers, you had to take your top off and all the dancers around the pool would go and take their top off and the people, the Americans, so not other people from the show but the Americans that were there got really upset.

- And Donn Arden called us all together and in his stern way he says, "I understand that there has been an incidence "of topless sunbathing at the Ainsbury Pool "and I have only one thing to say about this, "keep it up, it's good for publicity."

(laughs) And that was Donn Arden, he was always looking for new angles to promote his show.

- The whole show was completely choreographed both on stage and behind the scenes.

The showgirls and dancers knew exactly where to be and when and the set pieces had their exact spots to be in.

The crew had their own cues behind and it all worked like clockwork except that this is live performance and sometimes things just don't work out as they should every single time but we always managed.

Remember the old showbiz maxim, the show must go on.

- Once, especially, the waterfalls, they're on a switch with safety that they're not supposed to work without the rain doors being down.

So one night, the rain doors, the waterfalls extended, the rain doors went down, and the waterfall started and it takes 40 seconds for the water to make it from the storage tank up into the waterfall.

Well, somehow the rain door got a signal to close so the waterfall's going, the rain doors closed, everyone sees what's happening too late and the water just goes right out into the audience and it just soaked everybody.

It shoots like 1,200 gallons a minute and the people in the front row were just soaking wet.

- [Lesley] One of the things that made Hello Hollywood famous was the animals.

Throughout the years, we had lions, elephants, dogs, horses, ducks, chickens and even orangutans.

Animals were always fun, you just never knew what they were going to do.

- We had two lions.

I remember, the first one was Solomon, the second one was Nimrod and Solomon, the story on that, is that he was a very nasty lion.

- He would just turn around and spray the stage.

Well, I was one of the fortunate ones.

My costume was yellow.

But you can imagine, holding your final pose and just getting showered by this lion and when I tell you a lion doesn't just trickle, it's a fire hose.

I think the audience was as surprised as we were.

- That was just part of the show.

I'd go home smelling like lion and my dog wouldn't know what to do.

It was like, awfully big cat.

- A wonderful scene at the end of the show where a chariot team, four horses, came down to do the Ben Hur number in the finale, they were given specific directions to keep those horses away from the audience, first of all and a little further up stage.

- Well, there's one night, the farthest down stage horse, Freckles, walked on the trough and the trough gave in and the horse fell on the Ben Hur chariot and nobody knew what to do at the beginning.

Some of the stage hands actually jumped in the trough and tried to push the horse out which you think of it now as funny but we'd never seen this situation.

- And because it was this wide and when the horse fell in, he couldn't get out because he couldn't turn and we couldn't get him out.

- You can't move.

- Luckily it was the horse that was the most calm and so we just disconnected the team and Mitch drove the horses off and we did the rest of the show, the horse was in the rain trough and people were in the audience screaming, "Stop the show, stop the show."

The show went on.

- We were singing why do I love you, why do you love me, why should there be two as happy as we?

There's a horse flailing in the hole in front of us.

The horse was probably the biggest trooper of all because he just patiently waited for the end of that show and then the stage hands built a ramp go get him out.

- [Lesley] During the show, there was one tragedy.

The aerialist Jerry Dewert fell from his trapeze.

It was heart wrenching.

- I was out in the audience at that very moment when it happened and he'd done the act brilliantly as always, night after night, year after year and as he I don't know what happened exactly.

- All we heard from back stage was this gasp from the audience and the band stopped and we knew something was wrong but we had no idea what until the word got back stage.

- The rope that he came down, he had burnt all his hands as he came down and fell and crushed his heels.

I can see it to this day lying there in between everybody and I was there trying to get his shoes off but his agony, agony, agony but the paramedics came immediately, got him to the hospital immediately, it was pretty horrendous.

- We ended up finishing the show while the emergency people were attending to Jerry but that was a pretty eerie experience to know that one of your family was sitting out there in pieces on the floor and we were still doing the old show must go on routine.

- Of course that was it, that was the end of his career.

He was never the same, he managed to be okay in a normal facet but my God, he was brilliant, it was a dreadful, dreadful accident.

- [Lesley] in 1986, at a price of $440 million, Bally's took over the two MGM Grands in Reno and Las Vegas.

The Reno Hotel Casino, originally 1,015 rooms on 145 acres, after an expansion in 1981 had over 2,000 rooms.

The hotel was also planning a 26 story tower expansion.

This would bring the number of rooms to almost 3,000.

Donn Arden while still nominally the producer of Hello Hollywood Hello suddenly had less influence.

That wasn't all.

The show had been running for eight years and there were very few people in a small city like Reno who hadn't seen the show already.

Bally's in order to reduce expenses started to cut back on cast and crew and to boost further attendance brought in headline acts.

(upbeat music) ♪ Hello Fercots ♪ You've got class ♪ Anyone can see that you were born a star ♪ - At the time that we made the shift into new ownership by Bally's, this was a huge shock to all of us.

First of all, MGM carried a wonderful mystique about it.

How could anybody replace the mystique that MGM had, let alone a company that made exercise equipment?

- There was a definite difference, just the whole atmosphere between the MGM and rather the lusciousness of it and then the Bally's group coming in.

(upbeat music) - When we made that shift into featuring some of the star performers that came in, it was a new experience to all of us because the show had always been the star.

It was a grand spectacle in itself and it felt a little odd sharing that space with a celebrity.

- Actually, it was lovely, it was fun and it was something different and the dancers worked with the stars.

I didn't mind that at all but it did make a change and certain things of the show did get cut slightly and yes, we did start cutting down people.

Every contract or every year was another well we need to get rid of five more people, another five here.

So by the end, I believe, I think we were 95 in the cast as compared to about 135 in the beginning in the 11 years that we were here.

And really you couldn't cut very much more but on that stage, well now you see that stage with 30 people on it and it's pathetic but you didn't want to go down any lower than that because it just wasn't the same.

You had three couples here, three couples there, now you're gonna have two and two and this huge stage.

It wasn't right for the different groups.

- [Lesley] In spite of the changes, Bally's continued to have problems.

With bankruptcy looming, Bally's vice president of entertainment Richard Sturm, announced the closure of the show.

For the people on the show, it was more than just the loss of a job.

- For me, I was devastated at the thought of closing.

We got the notice, I think it was February the 12th, we had 10 weeks to go to the closing night and of course it was like, what am I gonna do next because the whole idea had been with Donn that we would do another show, I would be company manager and go on for the rest of my life and retire.

Well, those kind of things is like, death and divorce, losing a job is devastating.

- We all had a real privilege, those of us that were so many years on the Hello Hollywood stage and other kinds of performing because we were privileged to do something that we were passionate about.

We loved our work, we were surrounded by other people who were also passionate about their work and not many people get that experience to be able to do something that's that much fun, something that you worked a good portion of your life to be able to do and actually get paid to do this.

And so it was really good fortune for all of us to be part of that show and part of that experience.

When the news came that they were going to shut the show down, of course, we couldn't believe that anybody would be so silly as to shut down something as wonderful as Hello Hollywood.

- [Lesley] The final show.

The final show was on April 18 in 1989.

Special guests were brought in and everyone it seems came to watch.

The last performance was particularly poignant.

We were very sad to say goodbye.

Many members of the cast and crew continued on in show business in one way or the other.

Show girls and guys from Hello Hollywood moved on to perform in venues across the globe.

Others stayed in the area either by moving on to different realms of show business or by moving into different fields entirely.

It is without exception though that the days of Hello Hollywood Hello are remembered fondly.

- It was an extraordinary experience that I don't think any one of us would have given up.

You could probably have this conversation with just about any member of the cast and anyone's gonna tell you that unlike other show experiences, this was a family and we all think of each other as family to this day.

- It was a big family.

It was a fantastic era and you get people today saying there'll never be anything like it, it was unbelievable and anything that you do, anything in Vegas now or anything up here or wherever, never, ever will be quite like it because it was a small town, a huge show, a family and brilliance.

- There's not a show around that I've seen of this magnitude and so huge that once you worked it, everything else is just small.

- I've often made the joke that if they hadn't shut the show down, I'd still be up there probably coming down the grand staircase with a cane and a microphone singing that face, that face.

- The stage is not entirely dark.

Other shows have come and gone, other dancers, other singers have graced what was the Ziegfeld.

But for those of us who gave so much of ourselves to Hello Hollywood Hello, the theater is just not the same.

♪ Somewhere over the rainbow ♪ Skies are blue (jazz music)