#searchlight

Mari Renfro (far left, body double in Hitchcock’s Psycho shower scene), Virginia Gordon, Linda “Ginger” Gibson, Sandi Silver, and Patti Brooks at Willie Martello’s El Rey Club. Photo by Jay Florian Mitchell, Nevada State Museum, Las Vegas.

The women were on the set of a movie production called Wide Open Spaces. It was never released but the footage was later used in Tonight for Sure, the result of editing a 12-minute short by Francis Ford Coppola together with the Wide Open Spaces footage. Coppola was hired to intercut the two and credited himself director on the final film.

“The El Rey was the main bordello when I was growing up in Searchlight. Every Thursday afternoon, the whoremonger in town, a kindly bear of a man by the name of Willie Martello, would ask the girls who worked at the El Rey to clear out, and he’d invite the children in town, usually no more than a dozen or so at a time, to swim in his pool.” - Senator Harry Reid in The Good Fight.

El Rey Club, '58 and '59. Photos by Jay Florian Mitchell. 0107:0635, 0107:0643. Nevada State Museum, Las Vegas.

Andy Martello. The King of Casinos: Willie Martello and The El Rey Club. 2014.