Vegas Floor Show

From pianos morphing into a martini glass to a DayGlo hepcat honing his musical chops, Vegas Floor Show offers up a riotous outburst of cacophonic glitz.

In her 1996 interview with the Montgomery County Times Chronicle, Harriet recalls her experience as a Las Vegas showgirl. In Vegas Floor Show, she gives us a seat at the back of the audience so we can take in all the craziness and excitement.

Above: The star of the show. To the right in the painting is her co-star on this canvas date (best guess), Donald O'Conner.

With its hot colors, frenetic energy and sensory overload, it was pretty obvious where this scene was taking place, and in the absence of a title from the artist the painting more or less named itself. But over time, as the source of her inspiration became clearer, a more nuanced view suggested that her mind was actually focused a few hundred miles to the west:

from Gold Diggers of 1935
Dir. Busby Berkeley

This publicity still from Busby Berkeley’s Gold Diggers of 1935 strongly argues for a change of venue. Hollywood and Vegas are custom-blended here, but this was Harriet’s celluloid moment.

Like so many gifted artists, Harriet Young would at times resort to thievery, lovingly borrowing from others when it suited her, and leaving something completely original for the next generation of thieves in the event they could get their arms around it. That’s what happened here, and our guess is that Busby Berkeley looked down (up, per some accounts) and smiled accordingly.