What the Public Wants?

On opposite sides of the continent, a sin spot and a sun spot--Las Vegas, Nev. and Lake Placid, N.Y.--incurred the displeasure of the Roman Catholic Church. The issue: sex.

In Lake Placid (pop. 3,000, more than half Catholic), Msgr. James T. Lyng was outraged when the village's only movie house planned to show Brigitte Bardot in And God Created Woman, called on his flock to boycott the theater for six months. Lyng denounced the movie as "an assault on each and every woman of our community and nation," offered the theater owners $350 in lieu of box-office receipts if they would promise not to show the film on Sunday. The owners stuck with Brigitte.

In Las Vegas (pop. 53,690--20% Catholics) trouble arose not over pictures but over personal appearances: the chorines in three of the town's gilded night cages--the Dunes, the Stardust and El Rancho Vegas--glided about with their breast feathers completely plucked. In a message read this week from every Catholic pulpit in Nevada, Reno's Bishop Robert J. Dwyer gave the warning "that all Catholics are strictly forbidden by the divine law itself to have any part in entertainment which is of its nature indecent, suggestive or calculated to excite thoughts or actions contrary to the Sixth Commandment." Some Vegas saloonkeepers were quick to agree. "We've never uncovered a girl's navel," cried the Sands' Jack Entratter. But El Rancho Choreographer Barry Ashton retorted: "Bare chests are the thing here--it's what the public wants, and we're giving it to them. It will soon be nothing to see a nude girl. All the showgirls along the Strip will be replaced by nudes."

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