When it opened, eight fountain statues greeted guests entering the original MGM Grand.
The statues were erected on November 21, 1980, the day of the worst hotel fire in the United States.
The fountain was removed during the renovation of Bally’s, which took over the MGM Grand, in the late 1980s or early 1990s.
A Las Vegas antique dealer bought them last year from the daughter of a former Bally’s executive.
They were tasked with greeting guests at the entrance to the old MGM Grand, the largest hotel in the world at the time. And they performed the task brilliantly. But they also witnessed one of the darkest days in Las Vegas history.
Forty-four years after the MGM Grand fire on November 21, 1980, three of the building’s eight original fountain statues greeted Las Vegas antique dealer Jeff Young as he entered the courtyard. They belonged to William Hunter, the former technical director of Bally’s—the name of the original MGM Grand from 1986 to 2022.
Hunter died in September 2024, and a real estate friend of Young’s was selling his house and all its contents on behalf of Hunter’s sole surviving heir, his daughter.
“It was a time capsule,” Young told Casino.org. “It was just amazing to go in there. His workshop had rolls of MGM carpet from the ’70s. He took with him palm tree planters, slot machines.”
“His whole house was a casino.”
The statues were mounted on pedestals around Hunter’s backyard pool. His daughter knew exactly what they were, so they weren’t cheap. Handwritten on the bottom of the cherub was the inscription “Fuse Marinelli Firenzi,” which means “cast by Marinelli in Florence” in Italian.
These are bronze pieces from the artistic foundry of Ferdinando Marinelli in Italy, which specializes exclusively in bronze casting using the traditional lost wax technique that dates back to the Renaissance.
“I paid a lot, that’s all I’ll say,” Young said.
Monumental photo
Dee Ennis was a freelance photographer who photographed the statues for this article’s cover image. Ennis, 35, had just returned from his night shift as a refrigeration technician at Las Vegas City Hall. News of the fire came over the AM radio in his car.
With the camera he’d used to film the wedding the day before still in the backseat, Ennis drove straight to the MGM Grand instead of home. He had to park dozens of blocks away. Although most onlookers were turned away, Ennis got through all the checkpoints because he knew many of the City Hall emergency services.
“I was a friend of the sheriff,” Ennis said. “Plus, I was still in uniform as a city employee, so I guess that made me part of the response.”
Ennis walked the entire perimeter, taking photographs as he went. As a Vietnam veteran, he was accustomed to human tragedy and acted reflexively, just as he had in the Air Force. Nevertheless, emotions sometimes overwhelmed him.
“The fires under the portico and the burned-out car in the parking lot were simply unreal, unbelievable,” he said. “Also, the bravery of the helicopter pilots who landed on the MGM roof and braved the smoke and chaos was truly heroic.”
The tragedy claimed the lives of 87 people. Only the fire at the Weinkoff Hotel in downtown Atlanta, which killed 119 people on December 7, 1946, was even more devastating. Helicopter pilots from nearby Nellis Air Force Base rescued more than a thousand hotel guests from the roof. Without them, the death toll could have exceeded the Weinkoff Hotel fire.
Sixty-four of the 87 victims died on the 19th to 24th floors of the hotel tower—half of them in their rooms—from inhaling thick black smoke and carbon monoxide that seeped through the air conditioning ducts and formed a dense cloud. Many of the victims were likely still asleep in their beds.
Consequences
The old MGM Grand reopened without ceremony on July 29, 1981. Four years later, it was sold to Bally Manufacturing and renamed Bally’s Las Vegas in 1986. After a series of ownership changes, the company that became Caesars Entertainment assumed control in 1998, renaming Bally’s Horseshoe Las Vegas in December 2022, bringing it closer to one of its traditional gaming brands.
Sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s, the old MGM Grand fountain was removed during one of Bally’s renovations. Hunter took three statues home from work.
To begin their journey to their next home, Jeff Young recruited four of his employees to help him load them into a pickup truck. (The mermaids weighed about 400 pounds each, and the cherub about 300.)
Young also purchased two Bally’s slot machines, two brass MGM lion head doorknobs, several room number plaques, and other memorabilia.
Young says he doesn’t have a plan for the statues yet, although the Neon Museum called him Friday expressing interest.
“That would be great,” he said. “I just want to find a good home for them, ideally in Las Vegas where someone will appreciate them.”
