My first time in Las Vegas was 1948 when I was at the Flamingo Inn for the Lido show for 12 months. It was the last hotel on the Strip, and was so far away from anything that we never had more than 10-12 people in the house. In the Frontier, where I worked also, there was a small stage surrounded by tables. They'd have a name, two variety acts and a line of girls. That was it.

 

There was nothing in Las Vegas then, only three or four casinos on the strip - The Last Frontier and the Rancho, and later on the Thunderbird and the Sahara. It was too expensive for me to stay in the hotel, so I stayed in a motel a quarter mile away. There was very little to do in the beginning except gambling. That first time I came I was only 18 or 19 and wasn't even allowed in the restaurant because it was surrounded by gaming machines, and you had to be 21 to gamble. They were very strict about that. It was very monotonous. But now... my goodness!

 

The first big show I remember was the four weeks I spent opening Frank Sennes's Minsky Show at Wilbur Clark's Desert Inn. Everyone thought it was crazy because it had strip tease! It actually caused a sensation, and people from California came in from all over to see it.

 

I started doing my 14-minute full act when I started doing just two shows a day in Reno and Las Vegas. It was easier to do a long act than so many shows. I still warmed up for two or three hours, and practiced the spots in the routine where something went wrong.

 

One of the things in my act was tricks while I jumped rope. First I jumped a small rope in time to the music, changing to a big rope, and jumped it while I bounced a ball on my head. Then while jumping I stopped it and rolled it in circles around my head. I caught it on the back of my neck, threw it high and jumped the rope again.

 

I was the first to do the three ball spin - one on each finger and one on a mouthstick and do a back roll-over. In the last couple of years I did two roll-overs. That's difficult because you have to do the second turn very fast or the balls will stop. I can't do that one any more, though, because of my bad leg.

 

For a long time I did seven balls with bil­liard pockets. For a finale, when all seven were coming down I would catch the first six in my hands, then do a pirouette and catch the last one in my back pocket. It has to be so right, it was very hard and unpredictable.

 

I went to six balls later because it was slower and more sure. I did up to eight cocktail shaker cups. Meneses used to do three. My father, who was an engineer before he joined the circus, designed cups that were easy for me, and that's how I was able to do eight. We worked on 10 and I could do them, but not consistently.

 

I was a very famous child juggler in South America, but when I came to America I couldn't speak English at all. But I was friendly with everyone and they were nice with me. I worked with the Harlem Globetrotters on a European tour in 1953 the second time I was in the US, and made good friends with one of them. Later in Las Vegas my friend was there and I invited him to come see me and Sammy Davis Jr. in a show. But he begged off and I couldn't understand it. Then Sammy's uncle, who was traveling with him, explained to me that black people couldn't be in the room. And I found out that Sammy and his uncles had to live in another part of Las Vegas because weren't allowed to stay in the hotel. That was a very big shock for me.

 

Another big shock was taxes. When I arrived in Miami I had $14,000 in travelers checks. That was a lot of money. Then at the end of the year they told me about taxes. I had never in my life heard of taxes. So I went to an accountant and he told me he needed to consult with someone in the IRS. They decided I had not made enough money that entire year to pay what l owed the government!

 

It was because I had no residence anywhere in the America. We used to travel every single day, and since I had no residence, I had no rights to deduct any of my expenses. And in those first years I was making an awful lot of money, about $750-$1,000 a week, with extra pay after five shows and it wasn't unusual to do seven!

 

The IRS said they were going to sue me. But one of the heads of Paramount said he had a friend in Washington. My agent went with me along with someone from the company to Washington to see one of the IRS people. My agent described the problem, and the IRS man looked at all the numbers. He told me I made as much as the president of the USA! He said two words only, "Pay it!" After he figured it out and I paid up, I had less money than when I arrived!

 

After that I declared a residence with a friend, and from that moment on it was much better. But my first two years when I lived in the theatre were terrible. The third year my company said they had a gift for me, and gave me a Lincoln automobile. Where I came from, though, no one had a car! The only people who had cars were professional drivers. I had never driven in my life, and with all the traffic here I didn't want to learn. I told them I didn't want it and they sold it.

 

The first time I worked with the Harlem Globetrotters in Europe there were five jugglers, a bicycle act and someone who did a one-finger stand act. I was the last juggler to appear, and it was very hard to make an impression after the audience had seen four other jugglers.

 

Then I went back home and worked for the Paramount again, working a lot with Frankie Laine. They sold the Frankie Laine show to the Palladium theatre in London in 1957. They weren't anxious to have to me because they said there were so many jugglers there. But I ended up being on the front page of three newspapers, and got standing ovations even from the orchestra.

 

When I arrived in the u.s. I was very good, but I needed something else. The key to my success came in Cincinnati at the Beverly Hills Club, where I worked with producer Don Arden. We became friends, and when we were working in Vegas later he said to me one time after rehearsal, "Rudy, may I talk to you?" I said "Sure." He said, "Sit down. You know Rudy, when you do something, do it two or three times, not more than that. You lose the sensation of moving from one thing to another. If they see it once or twice is enough."

 

I was so mad with him I could kill him. But I practiced like that and before you knew it it made a tremendous difference. Rene Friday, the head of the lido, told me one time when we went out to see a juggling competition, Why do jugglers think that just because they juggle one more hoop or ball it will make any difference? People don't care, they just want to be entertained.