Voices: The Atlantic City blues

The last words of the trailer for Atlantic City, the excellent 1980 movie directed by Louis Malle and starring Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon, sum it up perfectly: "For anybody who's ever needed one more chance."

Back in the 1970s, Atlantic City — once the World's Playground, famed for the Boardwalk, the Miss American Pageant, the saltwater taffy — was a struggling, faded resort that desperately needed one more chance. So it gambled on gambling.

Casino gambling was going to be the magic elixir that restored the health of the dying city by the sea. The future would feature sparkling new pleasure palaces, free-spending bettors, lots of new jobs, tax revenue for the city and state, and renewal for the city's crumbling neighborhoods only blocks from the fabled Boardwalk.

The casinos came, yes, and so did the jobs and the tax money (although there was never really much of a spinoff — those neighborhoods remained pretty dreary). For decades, the places you went to gamble were Las Vegas and Atlantic City.

Now you can gamble pretty much anywhere, and Atlantic City's casino scene, and its prospects, are fading fast. Gambling revenue has been shrinking for years. One casino went under this year, another is going out of business in September and two more plan to close their doors soon if they can't find buyers.

All of which makes me very sad. I have to admit it, I've got a soft spot for the place.

When I was a kid, my family would rent a house in Margate, a lovely beach town south of Atlantic City. My brothers and I loved making the pilgrimage to the Boardwalk as often as we could, riding bikes in the morning, enjoying the amusements on the fabled Steel Pier and our favorite, Steeplechase, at night. After they took us home, my parents, avid cha-cha dancers, would dance to Jay Jerome's orchestra at the Traymore — the very hotel seen being blown up in the beginning of Atlantic City.

Atlantic City was already well past its prime, past the glory years my grandmother Ceil would tell me about, when women would dress up in fur coats to go out on the Boardwalk at night, never mind that it was the middle of summer. But it seemed awfully exciting to me.

As an adult, I made forays to sample the nightlife, dancing at the Opus, listening to soul music at Club Harlem and to a band called Goliath at a club I can't recall. I was a young reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer at the time, and my idol, Inky reporter and noted man about town Don McDonough, had a summer place in Atlantic City. On Monday mornings in the City Hall press room, Dandy Don would regale me with tales of his adventures over the weekend with "Skinny at the 5" — Paul "Skinny" D'Amato, Frank Sinatra's good friend, proprietor of Atlantic City's 500 Club. Completely cool.

The city's first casino, Resorts International, opened May 26, 1978, and I was there that day. The optimism and excitement were palpable. Part of what makes Atlantic City such a special movie is the way it captures the spirit of that era, deftly using the city's nascent recovery as a metaphor for the idea (hope) that there are second chances, that all things are possible, that dreams really can come true.

Don Guardian, Atlantic City's wonderfully named mayor, says his town "has a long and storied history of reinventing itself," and its "best days are still ahead."

Here's hoping he's on to something.

Rieder is USA TODAY's senior editor for features and media columnist.