The principle of most games held in the casino is the result of the game, for its participant depends, first of all, on the element of chance. In casino games, a casino can act as the actual organizer (roulette, blackjack, craps), and as a serving party (Texas poker, Omaha poker, baccarat, etc.).
In the most casinos in the world gambling halls are divided into two types: a hall of traditional games and a games room. Games that have gained the most popularity in casinos around the world: roulette, blackjack, poker, baccarat, punto-banko, craps, slot machines etc.
In 1994 the internet brought forth the web's first online casino named the Gaming Club. It was developed by Microgaming software and is still operating with active players today. Microgaming became one of the internet casino industry's largest providers of online gambling software early on. Internet casinos are currently legal and regulated in the United Kingdom and some parts of the United States.
Casino (movie)
Casino is a 1995 American movie starring Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, Frank Vincent and Joe Pesci. It was directed by Martin Scorsese. It is set in the 1970s and 1980s and is based around criminals and gambling. This movie was released in autumn 1995 in the United States, and like many movies set in the 1970s, has some anachronisms.
Cinderella (ballet)
Cinderella, Op. 87 is a ballet. The scenario by Nikolai Volkov was based on the 1697 fairy tale "Cendrillon" by Charles Perrault. The music was composed by Sergei Prokofiev between 1940 and 1944. The premiere of "Cinderella" was conducted by Yuri Fayer on November 21, 1945, at the Bolshoi Theatre. The choreography was composed by Rostislav Zakharov. Galina Ulanova danced the title role. Three orchestral suites were extracted from the ballet, and three collections of piano arrangements.
Cinderella lives with her wicked stepsisters. A beggar (who reveals herself to be a fairy) rewards Cinderella by giving her a coach and a new look. At the royal ball, Cinderella falls in love with the prince. She stays only until midnight when the spell wears off. She leaves her slipper behind. The prince uses it to find her again.
Judy Garland as gay icon
American actress and songstress Judy Garland is a gay icon. She rose to iconic status in the 1950s. At that time, gays admired her talent as a performer, and her value as a camp figure. She was often parodied in drag revues. Her struggles with drugs, alcohol, and personal relationships during her adulthood mirrored similar struggles among urban closeted gays during the same era. Garland's role as Dorothy Gale in "The Wizard of Oz" may be the foundation stone of her iconic status. Following her death in 1969 and the Stonewall riots, Garland's status as a gay icon began to slip. Young gay men embraced their sexual orientation with pride rather than shame, and could or would not identify with Garland's melodramatic victimhood and emotionalism.
Judy Garland was born Francis Ethel Gumm in Grand Rapids, Minnesota in 1922. Her parents were vaudevillians who operated a movie theatre that featured vaudeville acts. Judy was a toddler when she joined her two older sisters in singing "Jingle Bells" from the stage of her parents' theatre. The sisters performed as The Gumm Sisters for the next few years. The Gumms moved to Lancaster, California in 1926 when Judy's father was rumored to be making sexual advances to young male theatre ushers.
The Gumm Sisters continued to perform successfully. They made their movie debut in 1929. In 1934 they changed their name to The Garland Sisters. Judy was signed by MGM in 1935 and made many movies including the Andy Hardy series with Mickey Rooney and "The Wizard of Oz". Judy was given amphetamines and barbiturates to keep up with the hectic pace of moviemaking. She became addicted to drugs.
Judy was insecure about her appearance. Her feelings were exacerbated by cruel studio executives. In April 1947 she had a nervous breakdown and was placed in a sanitarium. In July she tried to commit suicide. She was released from the studio in 1950, but found a new lease on life performing on the concert stage. Her personal life was troubled with drugs and alcohol. She was married five times, four marriages ending in divorce. She died in London in 1969 of an accidental drug overdose. Thousands attended her funeral in New York City.
Gay identification with Garland as a tragic figure was being discussed as early as 1967. "Time" magazine reviewed Garland's 1967 Palace Theatre engagement in New York City, and wrote that a "disproportionate part of her nightly claque seems to be homosexual." The review goes on to say that "[t]he boys in the tight trousers" (a phrase "Time" repeatedly used to describe gay men) would "roll their eyes, tear at their hair and practically levitate from their seats" during Garland's performances.
"Time" tried to explain Garland's appeal to the homosexual. Psychiatrists thought that "the attraction [to Garland] might be made considerably stronger by the fact that she has survived so many problems; homosexuals identify with that kind of hysteria". They speculated that "Judy was beaten up by life, embattled, and ultimately had to become more masculine. She has the power that homosexuals would like to have, and they attempt to attain it by idolizing her."
William Goldman wrote in "Esquire" magazine about the same Palace engagement. He too disparages the gay men in attendance. He dismisses them as "fags" who "flit by" chattering inanely. He also advances the tragic figure concept. He suggests that "if [homosexuals] have an enemy, it is age. And Garland is youth, perennially, over the rainbow." He wrote, "Homosexuals tend to identify with suffering. They are a persecuted group and they understand suffering. And so does Garland. She's been through the fire and lived – all the drinking and divorcing, all the pills and all the men, all the poundage come and gone – brothers and sisters, "she knows.""
Gay movie scholar Richard Dyer has defined camp as "a characteristically gay way of handling the values, images and products of the dominant culture through irony, exaggeration, trivialisation, theatricalisation and an ambivalent making fun of and out of the serious and respectable." Garland is camp, he asserts, because she is "imitable, her appearance and gestures copiable in drag acts". He calls her "ordinariness" in her early MGM movies camp in their "failed seriousness" and her later style "wonderfully over-the-top."
Garland herself acknowledged her camp appeal during her lifetime. She once said, "When I die I have visions of fags singing 'Over the Rainbow' and the flag at Fire Island being flown at half mast." Fire Island is a resort community that lies off Long Island. It has a large LGBT presence. The Island is also referenced in Garland's last movie "I Could Go On Singing". The movie is described as "her most gay film" and as the movie most aware of its gay audience.
Another connection between Garland and LGBT people is the slang term "Friend of Dorothy". This term likely derives from Garland's portrayal of Dorothy Gale in "The Wizard of Oz". It became a code phrase gay people used to identify each other. Dorothy's journey from Kansas to Oz "mirrored many gay men's desires to escape the black-and-white limitations of small town life ... for big, colorful cities filled with quirky, gender-bending characters who would welcome them."
In the movie, Dorothy immediately accepts those who are different. The Lion identifies himself through song as a "sissy" and exhibits stereotypically "gay" (or at least effeminate) mannerisms. The Lion is seen as a coded example of Garland meeting and accepting a gay man without question.