![]() If someone in the crowd had a birthday, she went full Marilyn Monroe, crooning the sexiest “Happy Birthday” in San Bernardino County. She would sashay around the room and throw a bow around the neck of whatever blushing young man caught her eye and serenade him with “The Lady Is a Tramp.” It was not a rare sight to catch her dancing on the bar. She sang a range of show tunes and cabaret and Patsy Cline. Baldy was hardly the Las Vegas Strip, but Unruh spared no effort in her shows. She met her second husband, Rojano’s father, at a Cheesecake Factory, in much this way. She made friends wherever she went, connections that might start with a passerby commenting on her bubblegum-pink sequined boots, or whichever pair she happened to be wearing that day. “She made lemon martinis out of lemons.” In time, she emerged a little, began performing again, and perfected her style, which was to tool around in a snazzy car-first a silver Mercedes, then a red Cadillac DeVille-and to never go anywhere without dressing in a carefully curated outfit, a slash of red lipstick, and a pair of killer shoes-at first, she favored Jimmy Choos, but later she preferred one of her many pairs of crystal bling Helen’s Heart cowboy boots. “But she was a very positive person,” Rojano said recently. Her daughter, Jessie Unruh Rojano, says that Chris withdrew after Big Daddy died. He and Chris got married, in 1986, and she was shattered when he died of prostate cancer the following year. Behind the glamour, Unruh was a dogged progressive: way back in 1959, he pushed through a pathbreaking state civil-rights act that outlawed discrimination by businesses, and he harried Ronald Reagan at every turn. He liked to surprise her with furs and diamonds. He and Chris were a glamorous couple, flitting between political gatherings and night-club events. ![]() ![]() ![]() Unruh became the speaker of the California state assembly, and, in 1975, he was elected state treasurer the treasury building in Sacramento is named for him. Kennedy’s Presidential campaign in 1968, he headed the state campaign for Robert Kennedy, and was just steps behind the candidate when he was assassinated. In 1960, Big Daddy was the southern California chair of John F. That night launched her career as a performer, and she eventually won a particularly important fan, namely, Jesse (Big Daddy) Unruh, one of California’s best-known and most flamboyant politicians. Her performance at the Frontier was momentous in more than the expected ways. had taken a shine to her and underwrote the cost of her audition for the Frontier, which included buying her a stunning black sequinned dress with a yawning slit up the side. (His favorite 1941 Gibson became a family heirloom.) Hers was a hardscrabble childhood-she and her siblings spent their spare time picking fruit and cotton in the fields of central California and northern Texas-but she always yearned to perform. She had learned to sing from her father, Tex Kerr, a guitar-playing cement-truck driver. If you were, say, a young woman with a strong voice and huge aspirations, you would have pretty much died for a chance to be considered for a gig.Īt that time, Chris Edwards Unruh (1942-2022) was a nurse at the U.C.L.A. Elvis Presley had made his first Vegas appearance there. This was as wishy an opportunity as could be imagined: The night club, with its slogan, “Out of this World,” was by then one of the premier showcases in town. For its rechristening as the Frontier, a big celebration was planned, and auditions for performers were held in Los Angeles. In 1936, it was renamed the Ambassador then it was renamed the 91 Club then the Last Frontier and then the New Frontier and, in the late nineteen-sixties, the Frontier. Back when Las Vegas had more Gila monsters than visitors, a night club called the Pair O’Dice opened on what would eventually become the Las Vegas Strip.
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