Caesars Palace celebrates 50 years

Through the hallowed halls of Caesars Palace float 50 years of stories; stories of visiting dignitaries and celebrities, high rollers and high society. It’s a hotel with a fascinating past, distinguished present and bright future. This month the property celebrates its golden anniversary—five decades passed since businessman and builder Jay Sarno opened the doors on Aug. 5, 1966. While structural changes have been made, the interior design redone and restaurants and lounges switched out, one of the treasures of Caesars Palace that remains is the cocktail server. When the hotel opened, the cocktail servers were referred to as goddesses. While the name might have changed over the decades, Caesars Palace’s 200 cocktail servers, made up of both new and longtime employees spread throughout the property, share a common bond over the memories, experiences and pride felt for being a part of such a long tradition. Las Vegas Magazine chatted with three of them—Sharron St. Clair, Lisa Exposito and Ashley Shumar—each from different decades, as they shared their cocktail-serving stories.

Road to the Palace

Sharron St. Clair landed in Las Vegas as part of a performance troupe of acrobats from Sydney, Australia, commissioned to dance in the Casino de Paris show at The Dunes hotel. After four years of dancing in the show, St. Clair decided she wanted to be a cocktail server. After a stint at the Stardust serving cocktails, in 1975, she joined Caesars Palace. “I just knew that I had to work there,” said St. Clair, after visiting and falling in love with the property.

Lisa Exposito can remember the first time she stepped foot inside Caesars Palace. “I was 14 years old and in town visiting my brother … and I can remember walking through Caesars Palace,” Exposito said. “And I remember saying, ‘I’m gonna be a goddess one day.’” Five years later, Exposito moved from her hometown of Sharon, Pa. By 1988, she was a Caesars Palace cocktail server. “The first time you put that (uniform) on, it was like being Wonder Woman. You had the gold belt, you had the headpiece on. You just felt like a superhero.”

After five years working in the nightlife industry in Pittsburgh, Ashley Shumar turned her sights to Las Vegas, a city she knew was known for its nightlife. She landed in Vegas in 2014. The first place she applied? Caesars Palace. Just a few months after moving here she was on the Caesars Palace casino floor serving drinks.

“I didn’t really know that much about the cocktail server history, the goddesses. But, seeing all the pictures from back in the day in the break room, all those pictures were so cool,” Shumar said. “They were really considered goddesses; so crazy!”

Star Service

Since 1963, Caesars has steadily welcomed generations of celebrities, from the Rat Pack to the Brat Pack, from A-list actors to Grammy-winning singers.

“I was starstruck the whole time. We met everybody,” St. Clair remembered. “One of my favorites was Sammy Davis Jr., the most-humble and wonderful, as well as the best ever, performer to ever grace a stage. Of course, there was Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams, all those people, all the people who starred in the shows—we knew, we served. (I) was so lucky to be at the right place at the right time, with all that glamour.”

For Exposito, one celebrity encounter remains dear to her heart. As a young girl, Exposito was a huge fan of Muhammad Ali and, in the early 1990s, she got to meet him while she was working a boxing match at Caesars. “I was working one of the fights, and you had to kneel to take the drink orders so the guests could see,” she recalled. “At the time (Ali) was sitting in the aisle, and I creeped up to kneel beside him. He looked down at me, and I said, ‘I’ve always loved you.’ He asked me if my legs hurt kneeling that long. He said I could sit on his lap. So, I sat on his lap! I held his face in my hands and said, ‘You’re so beautiful.’ And, it was just one of the most amazing moments of my life. He had such charisma. He was beautiful.”

For Shumar, her encounter with a celebrity crush happened merely weeks ago. This summer Shumar is cocktail serving poolside at the adults-only Venus Pool Club. One of her VIP cabana guests just happened to be world-renowned soccer player Cristiano Renaldo. “Normally I don’t get starstruck but he’s so handsome in person. So, I was kind of nervous and when he would ask me questions I would kinda of just stand there and stare at him because I couldn’t speak,” Shumar said, laughing. “He was super nice, though.”

Life of the Parties

While not as regular an occurrence today, parties were plentiful back in the day at Caesars Palace, as St. Clair and Exposito recalled. Both cocktail servers picked up extra shifts away from the casino floor and would lavish attention on guests at private penthouse parties, conventions, sporting and special events. They also did modeling for Caesars publicity photos.

“I did a lot of the publicity for Caesars when I first started,” St. Clair said. “And, I also worked many of the parties, some even out of town. One time I was in charge of taking some of the (cocktail servers) along with the costumed gladiators in a G3 to Joan Rivers’ party at Chasen’s in Beverly Hills. There was a wonderful dinner for us, and we waited on all the celebrities and then we boarded the plane and were back in Vegas by midnight.

“Then, there were the parties in the penthouses for celebrities and high rollers—those were some parties, that’s all I can say.” St. Clair said with a giggle.

Exposito’s favorite parties to work were the famous toga parties, held inside the convention center. “They were great—they would happen once a year and all the guests would wear togas,” she said. “They would have elephants, they would carry Cleopatra—it was like watching a movie about Roman times. One entertainer after another, stars all night long.”

Thanks for the Memories

You can still spot St. Clair among guests in the main gaming pit, Exposito carrying drinks at Lobby Bar and Shumar tending to cabanas poolside, as each continues to uphold the long tradition of cocktail serving at Caesars Palace.

“Every single person should come into Caesars, if just for the history. There’s something genuine about Caesars compared to the other mega resorts,” Exposito said. “We’ve made it through with all these new hotels that have been built, and Caesars has kept up. There’s pride in that. We’re still a force.”

St. Clair looks back fondly on her early days. “It wasn’t unusual for the stars to come in and lavish us with flowers; it was a fairy-tale experience,” she said. “We knew everyone—every star, every celebrity—we knew everything they drank, exactly where they wanted to sit. Service and glamour. The guests, without a doubt, have always been my favorite part of the job.”

“I love that pretty much everyone knows what Caesars Palace is so we get guests from everywhere; and, it’s cool to interact with them and hear their stories” Shumar said. “Everyone works together—we just have so much fun at work. Management is great; we just have the best team all around.”