Illustration: Steve Wacksman
My parents would occasionally wax nostalgic about catching Frank Sinatra perform at the 500 Club during Atlantic City’s glory days. My mother beamed when reminiscing about the Chairman of the Board performing on Missouri Avenue in 1959. “If you only saw Frank Sinatra up close,” my mother would say. I’d roll my prepubescent eyes, since, at the time, my world was all about the Rolling Stones and the Who.
When my parents hit the slots at Resorts Casino during the late 1970s and early ’80s, they would often leave me to my own devices on the Boardwalk. During Memorial Day weekend of 1981, I checked out a commotion outside Resorts and was transfixed as I witnessed my parents’ hero getting the ultimate tribute while they were feeding one-armed bandits.
I happened upon New Jersey’s favorite son, the lionized Sinatra, sinking his hands into cement. The charismatic singer/actor smiled while flanked by his coterie of approving pals. At one point, Ol’ Blue Eyes stared straight at me, a 15-year-old kid sporting a T-shirt that read, “And on the seventh day God created Van Halen,” since I was the only youngster enjoying the festivities.
Wow, this is kinda cool, I thought. The Kinks classic “Celluloid Heroes,” a clever song about legendary celebrities immortalized in cement on Hollywood Boulevard, played in my head. Hollywood Boulevard was impossibly distant to a Jersey kid who had yet to visit California, but Resorts added some glamour to a fading Atlantic City that lacked the electricity of the halcyon days of the 500 Club.
I never attended another handprint ceremony, but I checked out the plaques at Resorts during the 1980s—everyone from Steve Martin to Stevie Wonder. Prints continued to be collected until 1988, when Merv Griffin bought the property. A hiatus continued throughout Griffin’s run, which ended in 1997. After the talk-show host sold Resorts, the prints came back. Martin Short was the final inductee in 2010.
The concrete autographs resided in the recesses of my mind throughout the ’90s and aughts. I didn’t think about the prints again until I noticed they were no longer in front of Resorts in 2013 due to the construction of Margaritaville. They were placed in the casino’s basement for the next dozen years.
I once asked Don Rickles where his prints were, and the insult comic laughed. “Who knows?” Rickles said. “I don’t go out to the Boardwalk when I go to Atlantic City. I’m afraid I’ll get rolled.”
Now, the prints are back where the public can enjoy them: outside the casino’s Superstar Theater. Some prints didn’t survive the extraction, but many live on, including Sinatra’s. Whenever I see that tribute, I flash back to the look of disbelief on my parents’ faces when I told them what I’d witnessed while they were tossing my college fund into the slot machines.
Ed Condran is a veteran journalist who contributes to AARP and has a cross-generational travel vlog, “The Kids and Travel are Alright,” with his two sons.
