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The untold story of the world’s most famous neon sign and the extraordinary woman who created it.
Las Vegas in the 1950s and 1960s was a city coming out of wartime and into the public eye. All it needed was the right person to light it up – and against all the odds, that person was Betty Willis.
With the Cold War heating up and A-bomb tests going off just outside of town, Willis led a diverse team of glassblowers, metalworkers and electricians in a bold project to illuminate the desert sky. Her iconic neon creations would attract gamblers, filmmakers and artists from across the world. But working in an industry dominated by men, in a town run by the mob, presented its share of challenges.
Welcome to fabulous Las Vegas charts the career of one of the twentieth century’s most brilliant designers. It is an epic tale of a city and the people who built it, from famous showgirls and entertainers with their names in lights to the women and men working behind the scenes.
‘Bravo! Though Betty Willis was ignored in her time, today she belongs alongside Ray Eames, Florence Knoll, Helen Liu Fong and Natalie de Blois in the pantheon of midcentury Modern designers. Harbison’s astonishing research brings to life Willis’s career and an entire chapter of American culture that has been shunted to the margins for too long.’
Alan Hess, architect and author
‘Smart, well-written, meticulously researched. Isobel Harbison fills a lot of gaps with Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas, which is both a biography of famed sign designer Betty Willis and a history of the city itself.’
Matthew O’Brien, author of My Week at the Blue Angel
‘In her biography of Betty Willis, Isobel Harbison provides not just an important account of this pioneer of the sign industry and designer of the iconic “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign, but also a persuasive story of the promotion of the desert city in the 1950s.’
Larry Gragg, author of Bright Light City
Prologue: Nevadan skies
1 Welcome to Las Vegas, 1929 (on liquor, gambling and injurious practices)
2 Wilshire Boulevard, 1944 (on the war years)
3 The El Rancho, 1951 (on planting bombs, atomic, anatomic)
4 The Riviera, 1955 (on creativity amid criminality)
5 The Moulin Rouge, 1955 (on pockets of solidarity)
6 The Blue Angel Motel, 1957 (on making angels)
7 Motel Row, 1958 to 1959 (on fragile states)
8 Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada, 1959 (on the neon fabulous)
9 Her Midnight Sign Company, 1964 (on dark thresholds)
10 Stardust, 1968 to 2015 (on endings, of sorts)
11 Drive Safely and Come Back Soon, now (on flipsides and comebacks)
Index