After further review of the offers, Summa announced in February that they had been approved to sell the Landmark to a group of investors from the Midwest, including Zula Wolfram, Lou Tickel, and Gary and Sandy Yelverton, after their bid of $12.5 million, ended up being the highest.⁴⁵ Wolfram’s husband, Ted, was a brokerage manager from Ohio, and his investments were used to purchase her portion of the property. The three parties formed the Mark III Corporation to handle the sale, each owning a 1/3 share.⁴⁶ They planned to add a 750-room tower to the property within a few years.⁴⁷ Mark III assumed ownership on April 1^st, 1978, but the casino was forced to close because it failed to acquire a gaming license. To remedy the situation, they approached former Landmark general manager Frank Modica to take over the casino’s operation for one year while they sorted out the license issue. He agreed, and the casino re-opened at 11 a.m. on June 1^st.⁴⁸

Summa was later sued and forced to pay a settlement to DeSure Corp., a brokerage firm that worked to make the sale to Tickel and Wolfram successful. Summa claimed that it did not hire real estate brokers to assist in the sale of the Landmark, nor was it in the habit of paying commissions on such sales. DeSure claimed they had placed four offers on Tickel’s behalf, and Summa encouraged them to help Tickel come up with a successful bid so the failing hotel could be offloaded quickly. At that point, Landmark was costing Summa $500,000 monthly in losses. DeSure was awarded $375,000 in the settlement.⁴⁹

The Landmark was the backdrop for scenes in several episodes of the television show VEGA$ during this time. Created by Michael Mann, the show follows the exploits of private detective Dan Tanna, played by Robert Urich, who drives around the streets of Las Vegas in a 1957 Ford Thunderbird. Each episode saw Tanna working for various clients, including casino mogul “Slick” played by Tony Curtis. The hotel was only featured in the show’s first season.

Mark III is notable for making the Landmark a racially inclusive operation. When a new hotel manager was needed, they selected Jesse Jackson Jr., a six-year Landmark employee who worked his way up from clerk to porter to housekeeping supervisor. He was the city’s only African American hotel manager at the time.⁵⁰

For the job of Entertainment Director, Zula recruited Faye Todd, a friend she met at the Desert Inn. Todd worked as Special Events Coordinator at the Desert Inn when she befriended Wolfram, a high roller there. When she planned to purchase the Landmark, Wolfram asked Todd to leave her nine-year position to work at the Landmark instead. Ms. Todd was also the only African American serving in her position in the city at the time.⁵¹ She also served as Corporate Executive Assistant to the Wolframs. Zula told her, “Faye, you would be my right-hand person, my eyes, my ears, and my voice.”⁵²

Wolfram would eventually buy out her partners for a majority interest in Mark III. In December 1979, she purchased all of Tickel’s third and all but 5% of the Yelverton’s.⁵³ In April 1980, she sold an 18.7% share to Bernie Glannon’s Passport Travel, Inc. Passport’s share was for the land, buildings, and equipment, not the casino.⁵⁴ Around this time, Mark III made some minor changes to the Landmark by adding exterior flood lights to the base of the tower to make it more visible at night. They were also required to conduct a fire safety retrofit as mandated by an updated fire code prompted by a massive fires at the MGM Grand Hotel⁵⁵ on November 21, 1980 and the Las Vegas Hilton just three months later on February 10, 1981. New sprinkler systems and smoke alarms had to be installed, and emergency exit corridors were added to the third floor of the tower, which ran across the roof of the casino to the south and the kitchen to the north.⁵⁶

Making good on the statements made by former partner Louis Tickel when they had purchased the property four years earlier, Wolfram hired Martin Stern Jr. to design an expansion for the Landmark in April of 1982. The expansion included a redesigned casino, pool, showrooms, restaurants, a shopping pavilion, and a new parking garage. A new tower would have provided 750 new rooms.⁵⁷

At about the same time, Wolfram formed T-Z Entertainment to produce her own shows at the Landmark.⁵⁸ Landmark’s Entertainment Director Faye Todd was looking for new acts when she found a star for Wolfram’s first show: Roy Clayborne. “…somebody told me, “Faye, I know what kind of country-western you would like. It’s an act over in Los Angeles at the Playboy Club, that you need to see.” I went over there and I saw Roy. Right away I signed him up, right there that night.”⁵⁹ They called it “Spellcaster” and hired 1979 Grammy Award Winner Larry Hart to design the 80-minute show around Clayborne. He sang 15 songs in the show – all country versions of contemporary hits like “Great Balls of Fire,” “Love Lifts Us Up,” and “Love on the Rocks.”⁶⁰ Landmark staff made the show entirely in-house and was doing well until fate intervened…