Red Skelton jokes on Las Vegas

You know, I know one fellow down in Vegas who did pretty well this year. He came to town in a $10,000 Cadillac, and he went home in a $50,000 bus.
For those who are not familiar with Las Vegas, you’ve heard of the war on poverty? Well, Vegas is where you go to surrender.
You can always tell you’re in Las Vegas, though, by the traffic lights there. They’ve got lights that say “walk”, “don’t walk”, and “2 to 1 you don’t make it”.
You can always tell you’re gettin’ near Las Vegas when you’re driving, they have those big signs that say, “Keep Nevada green … lose!”
When I go, I’m kind of unlucky when I go. I’m so unlucky that I — in the postage stamp machine, I lost my letter.
If you don’t gamble, there are other places you can go, you know. You can go to Hoover Dam. Hoover Dam — it used to be “Hoover Darn” on television, but since Virginia Woolf you can say anything.
I went to Las Vegas – that’s about 300 miles as the dough flies.

I don’t like to brag, but when I was down there I stayed at the Sands Hotel. It’s really a swanky place there. The manager came over to me and he says, “Mr. Skelton, you’ll have to put on a tie”. I says, “In the pool?”
It’s really a big place, it’s really big. This hotel is the first time I’ve ever saw a Texan embarrassed. He came in, and he was a little drunk, see. I says, “These guys are always braggin’ about how big everything is in Texas. Let’s have some fun, see.” He walks into this lobby, and it’s a room that’s 200 feet deep and 300 feet wide, and it’s got a fountain right in the middle, see. He says, “Boy, you call this a lobby?” I says, “No, this is the elevator.”
They got another place there, a new hotel called Caesar’s Palace, and they gave it the right name because I saw one guy that lost everything, he was going around saying, “Lend me your ears.”
And every place in town had those beautiful girl shows, you know. I went to one of them, I went to one of them. My wife says to me, she says, “You look at those pretty girls and you’ll go blind.” I says, “I’ll risk one eye.”
You should see the new dresses they’re wearing down there. They’re short, you know. I said to my wife, “What do you think of these short dresses?” She says, “Nothing is more flattering.” I says, “No, but you can’t carry it that far.” (source: Eenie Meenie Minee Schmo)

Gambling in Vegas

I just got back from Las Vegas, see. I won’t say how well I did down there, but on the way down my wallet looked like Dean Martin – loaded. And on the way back, it looked like Twiggy – flat.
[pantomimes rolling dice in his hand] Oh, these are not dice, these are a couple of teeth I found in the lobby of the Sands Hotel. I felt sorry of old Frank standing there singing “I’ll Never Smile Again”
Everybody in Vegas, they gamble, did you know that? I went to some people’s houses for dinner, and I said, “Pass the bread,” and the guy dealt it to me. I think it was a loaded loaf, the heel was in the middle.
While I was down in Vegas, I went to the nuttiest funeral I ever went to in my life. There was one of these big gamblers died, see, and a bunch of the guys went down to see him off. And one of the pit bosses gets up to deliver the eulogy, and he stands there and he says, “Friends, Willy ain’t dead. He’s just asleep.” And a voice in the back of the church says, “I got five grand says Willy don’t wake up.”
Boy, I’ve lost so many times down in Vegas, they don’t know whether to call me Skelton or Nixon.
Do you know, everybody’s friendly down there, though. The waitress come around and they give you free drinks while you’re playing the slot machine. I had one free drink that cost me $72.