Jack Entratter was gone.  The Summa Corporation (formerly the Hughes Corp.), in a move that foreshadowed the direction Las Vegas Strip would go, tapped Richard Danner, a lawyer from Washington DC to replace the beloved Entratter.

Danner knew enough to keep the stable of performers that Entratter had signed.   Robert Goulet signed a three year, $3 million contract that included performing at other Hughes properties such as the Desert Inn and the Frontier, in addition to the Sands.

Wayne Newton, dubbed the Midnight Idol, was also performing at the various Hughes properties and was keeping the showrooms packed.  He played an unheard of seven weeks straight at one point.

In May of 1976, the Sands made the news for the wrong reasons.  Federal Judge Roger D. Foley had quashed a subpoena for the Sands to turn over all credit records on wealthy Saudi Arabian businessman Adnan Khashoggi.  Khashoggi was an internationally known figure who had ties from London to Hollywood to Las Vegas and beyond.  He was currently involved in a scandal involving American aircraft manufacturing firms and foreign countries  The subpoena had been delivered to Richard Danner who told Foley that he had not been given enough notice to appear in court.  

Khashoggi had flown out of the country on March 4th to apparently avoid testifying in the bribery scandal.  Before he fled though, he had stayed at the Sands Hotel.  They say he took over 20 rooms and was rumored to have spent thousands of dollars during the one-week stay.  The government wanted the records to see who Khashoggi associated with, how he made arrangements for his credit and what transactions had he undertaken and completed before getting on his private Boeing 727 and flying out of the country. 

The Sands, ultimately, turned the records over to the federal government. 

Howard Hughes had left Las Vegas in 1970 as mysteriously as he had arrived.  In 1976, word came that Hughes had died while enroute to a Houston medical center from the Bahamas.  Stories began circulating almost immediately about the poor condition the recluse had been in.  Stories of an emaciated Hughes with long fingernails and a scraggly beard led the nightly news.  As there was no will, a struggle over the Hughes fortune soon erupted.

In 1977, the Sands proposed a Golf Course.  Jack Nicklaus was to design the course which would be a championship  18-hole course on 160 acres of land that would zig-zag behind the property.  The 160 acres was owned by Hughes.  The Course was never built and the land later was used for the Hughes Center complex of offices, condos and retail.

 In February, 1978, the Sands buried another time capsule.  This one was to be opened in a more timely fashion, 25 years.  It included medallions from Wayne Newton and Sammy Davis, Roy Clark contributed a monogrammed handkerchief, Jimmy Durante and his opening act, Sonny King, donated the pairs of trousers they had both worn the last time they worked together before Durante retired in 1970 and a bag of peanuts from then-President Carter's peanut farm in Georgia.  The family that found the 1953 capsule in the landfill contacted the Sands in the days leading up to the burial.  They re-donated Ray Bolger's dancing shoes for the new time capsule.  The family preferred to keep all the other original items.  Mayor Bill Briare donated a box of international messages from other officials, Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew's owners donated the winning silks and NY Yankees manager Billy Martin donated an autographed Yankee's ball.  Like the time capsules at the Desert Inn, this too has been lost to history.

In another example of how the times had changed, in May 1978, Sands slot manager,  Peter Goin, Sr was arrested for embezzling $171,000 from the hotel over a period of nine years.   It was discovered that he had been paying himself $450 jackpots twice a week.  Attorney Oscar Goodman was his lawyer.  Goin was charged with four counts of embezzlement, four counts of forgery and four counts of tax evasion.  Goin tried to take Sheriff Ralph Lamb down with him.  The two had been friends on the rodeo circuit and Goin claimed to have lent Lamb $10,000 without a promissory note.  Lamb was later found innocent of tax evasion charges.  Old-timers remarked how much times had changed by noting that if Goin had done that in the 1950s and early 1960s, the "boys" would have handled the situation much differently.

The struggle over Hughes fortune came to Las Vegas.  Hughes cousin, William Lummis, had been named executor of the estate and it took some time for him to get a handle on all of Hughes' holdings.  Also adding to the problem were long-time employees that had helped themselves to parts of Hughes' fortune by setting themselves up with life-time work contracts complete with high wages.

William Lummis advised the Summa Corporation to sell the casino properties and concentrate on more profitable pieces of the estate such as the many land-holdings that Hughes had purchased.  Lummis was determined that the Hughes Estate not be bankrupted by the under-performing pieces such as the casinos and some of the aircraft holdings. 

Summa entered into a deal with the Inns of the Americas, a Texas based company in December of 1980.  On May, 1st, 1981 it became official and the Sands Hotel was sold for $85 million. 

The new owners began a $15 million renovation.  The Copa Room was closed for renovation on June 24, 1981.  Governor Robert List read a proclamation from the stage that declared the day, Copa Room Day, in Nevada.  

The renovations were completed in January of 1982. Local high-school bands entertained the crowd.  Sands favorite, Sonny King was the master of ceremony and Sammy Davis was the special guest.  Davis pulled the switch lighting up the new new marquee, the Sands tower and the porte cochere.  Over 200,000 balloons were released from the roof of the hotel.  A fire-works completed the grand opening ceremonies.

Inside the casino had been remodeled.  It was now over 30,000 square feet, twice the size it had been.  An invitation-only dinner honoring Davis was held in the main ballroom and featured Harry James and his Orchestra.

The Baccarat room was now done in Italian marble and called the Casino Internationale.  There was over 1,500 lineal feet of neon throughout the casino.

The new Copa Room was opened on March 17, 1982.  Heralding back to its roots, Danny Thomas and 10 Copa Girls took to the stage.  Thomas proved that sometimes the old ways are the best ways and that you could go home again.  For while Thomas was on stage it was easy to imagine that it was still 1953 and the Sands had her whole future in front of her.

In May 1983, Summa had to step in and re-take control of the hotel.  The new owners had had high hopes for the Latin market but when the Mexican economy nose-dived it left the hotel holding bad markers. 

Summa kept the property until Kirk Kirkorian bought it in 1988 and he renamed it the MGM Sands.  Kirkorian was only involved for a short while.  The Interface Group, known for creating the Comdex convention, purchased the property from Kirkorian for $110 million.  The deal was finalized a year later. 

The changing face of the Strip was becoming apparent with the opening of Treasure Island and the Mirage.  The era of the megaresort was on the horizon.  The property was seen as aging and unhip by the new, younger crowd coming to town.  

A 1.2 million square foot Convention facility, the Sands Expo and Convention Center was built to try and capitalize on the burgeoning convention business.  

In 1993, new owner Sheldon Adelson announced a series of improvements.  Changes included another 14,000 square feet of casino space, upgrades to the restaurants including replacing the Chinese restaurant with a coffee shop and making the original coffee shop the buffet.  A Race and Sports Book was enlarged and relocated to be closer to the showroom.  More slot machines were added.

It wasn't enough.  The bottom line was the hotel just couldn't compete with the new resorts rising on the Strip.  The Interface Group share-holders were bought out by Sheldon Adelson.  Adelson sold the Comdex Convention for $865 million. 

Adelson toyed with the idea of bringing the Sands back to its original foot-print and building a modern resort.  Unfortunately, none of the plans for doing that appealed to Adelson.  He announced the hotel was closing and would be imploded. 

The Sands officially closed on June 20th, 1996.  Preservationists and entertainers had beseeched Adelson to save the Copa Room but to no avail.  They had hoped he would turn it into a museum depicting the Sands history and the history of the Strip.  But it was not to be.  Adelson made a deal with the producers of "Con Air", an action-adventure movie starring Nic Cage, to crash a plane into the casino.  The film crew made the hotel look like opening day with new light bulbs and working slot machines. 

An auction was held on July 30 and 31st, 1996 as the Sands was sold off bit by bit.  Slot machines, blackjack tables, craps tables, roulette wheels and more went on the auction block. 

In August the asbestos was removed.

On November 26th, 1996 at 9:00 pm, the huge crowd that had gathered to watch, began the 10-second countdown.  The main power switch was pulled and the marquee and tower lights went dark.   The demolition began.  It was all over rather quickly as the famed Martin Stern tower came down to the ground while the ground hooted and yelled.

In its place would be a new megaresort with 3,000 rooms, restaurants, shopping and luxury, the Venetian.
But it would never be the Sands.

Ad Ad for Hughes' Hotels

Menu from the 1970s

The Changing of the Signs

The Way We Were

Special thanks to UNLV's Special Collections and As We Knew It for letting us use these images

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The Ill-fated Royal Nevada