Turner Classic Movies sometimes airs a 1943 newsreel about Reno, featuring a drive-along shot of the era’s gaming halls and informing us that “the ever-increasing number of vacationists and divorce-seeking residents who come here from all parts of the United States may account for the rather ambiguous sign that arches the city’s main street” – and to this day, the nighttime view of Virginia Street’s blazing electric banner welcomes you to “The Biggest Little City in The World.” The final tournament showdown between Kingpin rollers, Roy Munson and Ernie McCracken was filmed just around the corner at the National Bowling Stadium, but it’s outside amidst the glittering casino marquees that Clint Eastwood protects a woman on the run from her murderous husband in Pink Cadillac. Indeed, that old TCM newsreel highlights just how long Reno has been the place where many a marriage ends in divorce – “where quick service at the celebrated Washoe County courthouse gets the whole affair over with,” and “occasionally, a divorcee is met in the middle of the steps by a man who induces her to try again.” And yet, when unhappy wife, Marilyn Monroe is met on those very steps by her soon-to-be-ex, Kevin McCarthy in The Misfits, she walks right on past to get a divorce of her own, then almost tosses her wedding ring into the nearby Truckee River (her friend joking that there’s “more gold in that river than there is in the Klondike”) before heading to Harrah’s Club for a cool drink. Director, John Huston drank plenty during the troubled location shoot, and part of the cash he dropped to local gambling houses came out of the production’s budget. Yet games and liquor aren’t Reno’s only vices. Just across the border in Storey County, prostitution has been legal since 1971, making the Mustang Ranch the first legal brothel in the country. That story is told through the thinly-fictionalized Love Ranch, which focuses on the stormy relationship of its married owners. The dangerous effect of Reno’s nightlife upon budding romance plays out in P.T. Anderson’s Hard Eight, where a gambler and a cocktail waitress (who moonlights as a prostitute) marry, and are quickly forced to flee town. And though it’s set in Las Vegas, The Cooler used Reno’s old-school Golden Phoenix Casino as the place where a professional luck-killer romances a waitress of his own, leading to dire consequences. In Jinxed, a Reno blackjack dealer with a curse on his head conspires with a lounge singer to kill her husband for the insurance money, while Sister Act finds a Reno lounge singer running for her life from a Mafioso boyfriend. So with all this scandal, is there anyone left in town who’s on the cinematic up-and-up? Well, fighting crime in Washoe County was the theme of television comedy series Reno 911!, whose opening theme featured location shots of the city’s shadier nighttime elements (including the smaller Reno arch over Lake Street), as well as scene transitions that provide a gritty daylight glimpse of town. Of course, it’s worth noting that the exploits of this “Reno Sheriff’s Department” were actually filmed in Southern California (though the show’s writers would later use Reno’s Peppermill Hotel Casino in Balls of Fury), and their mixed record with local crime-busting probably meant Washoe courthouse saw more divorces than perp walks. But, hey, some things just never go out of style.