Meet Mr. Las Vegas

02/14/2002 7:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Pamela Des Barres

America is running out of icons. Let's face it: Good, old-fashioned, all-around entertainers are a rare breed. Once upon a time in Technicolor America--Las Vegas, Nevada, to be exact--there was a plethora of smooth, slick-suited, sugar-throated dandies gracing the stages of the Sands Hotel, the Tropicana, the Desert Inn, and the Hilton. I just thank God I saw Elvis down on his bejeweled knees before he left that building for good. I even witnessed Dean Martin's slippery slink at the Sands on my 13th birthday. But what you get when you go to that apocryphal desert town these days are circus acts, magic tricks, and fellows with overly tight faces trotting out tigers on Xanax. Gone are the Sinatra glory days when good manners and impeccable glamour raised Midwestern eyebrows and made Las Vegas the naughty, bawdy playground of the stars.

But lest you give up on Vegas for good, there is still one entertainer that remains: One fully decked out, perfectly coiffed, superduperstar lighting up the stage at the good old Stardust Hotel every damn night.

What comes to mind when you think of Wayne Newton? For me, he always represented American showbiz at its grandest. He's been around as long as I can remember. From his early, teen-dream, freckle-faced "Danke Schoen" days to his most recent USO stint in Afghanistan, the man has led his nine lives in the shameless, peeping-Tom glare of the public eye. He's been adored and ridiculed, worshiped and defamed, over and over again, and at 60 years old, he still fills the Wayne Newton Theater night after night. When the curtains part, and Wayne, clad in flawless tux, is revealed in all his perfect Wayne-ness, the packed house goes nuts. As he makes his way around the room, glad-handing and smooching, the ladies from Des Moines actually blush, swoon, and babble while their hubbies grin maniacally. It's quite a trip.

I was supposed to meet with the man they call "Mr. Las Vegas" at his ranch, and am a bit disappointed that we have to meet at the Stardust. I was looking forward to taking a gander at his 65 Arabian horses and beloved pet penguins. (Only an American icon like Wayne would create igloos for sub-zero fowl in the middle of the desert.) Instead, I am ushered into a Stardust room full of attractive women holding stacks of cards and wielding phones, and am told that Wayne is in the midst of calling loved ones for soldiers he met on USO tours.

"Yes, this is Wayne Newton! That's right! I ran into Danny on my USO tour, and he looks great, he's doing great, and I told him, 'If there's anybody you need me to call when I get back home, I'd be happy to do it.' He wrote out a special message to you and I'm gonna read it..." And so it goes. Wayne makes many calls to lonely moms, dads, wives, and fiancées, bringing news of Danny, Joey, and Big Daddy from far, far away. What a guy.

Personally, I adore icons--bigger-than-life people who stuff a room so completely with their presence that it's a tad hard to breathe. Wayne certainly crams a room, and his energy level is so high, he literally thrums. He's warm, gracious, opinionated, canny, surprisingly spiritual, and astutely, acutely aware of who he is. When I ask which of his nine lives he's living, he laughs and says, "At least the fourth!" He began his singing career in Vegas at the age of 15: six shows a night, six nights a week. "Nobody ever told me it was difficult," Wayne insists. "I didn't know any different. Las Vegas and I both grew up together, and all of a sudden I was doing things that no performer had ever done before. It isn't that I came here and became, as Bill Cosby says, 'The Wayne Newton!'''

Before Wayne, performers only did two-week stints at a time, but by the late '70s, he'd upped the ante by performing 36 straight weeks, two shows a night. Vegas changed, he says, when it became a convention town, and the hotels became monolithic: "I miss the personalization that Vegas was--there were showroom captains and all the dealers knew the gamblers by their first names."

During the Vegas slayday, Wayne spent quality time with the greats. "When I first met Elvis, we had so much in common and became fast friends. It was something I was sure would be there forever, and when he passed away, it left not only a void as a friend, but also as a fan." Wayne sings a handful of Elvis tunes almost every night. They're real crowd-pleasers. "He's still here with me; I can do his music and sing his songs. The same with Frank. We became--thank God--wonderful friends, and I miss him terribly, but maybe it's just part of the fantasy...for me, they're not really gone. They're just in a different place."

My sentiments exactly. Wayne seems to be riddled with faith. He's pretty accepting of life's unpredictable ups and downs. And he believes in his fellow man. "I've screwed up and made mistakes," he says, "and paid dearly for them. I've always had great faith in people. They're only gonna let me down so far, and at the last minute, somebody's gonna reach down and grab my hand before I go down for the third drink.

"I've always had great faith in the Man Upstairs," Wayne continues. "I believe that fate is choices--it's not chance. Somebody doesn't just take your life and pre-ordain it, and no matter what you do, that's what's gonna happen. You have to go through those mountains and valleys--because that's what life is: soul growth."

Just don't mess with his integrity. When it was erroneously reported on NBC that Wayne was doing business with a certain Mafia family, he sued for big, big bucks. Even Johnny Carson, who made jokes on The Tonight Show about Wayne's supposed "family ties," became part of the lawsuit. It took him 10 years, but Wayne prevailed. "They hit me in a place where I couldn't live. I was supposedly fronting for this Mafia character..." Wayne is at a loss for words, and still horrified by the allegations. "If you want to take a shot at me then I guess it goes with the territory," he concedes, "but there's nothing that angers me quicker than somebody hurting the people I love. When I saw my mother cry..."

Being an out-on-a-limb risk-taker, Wayne has made and lost a couple of gigantic fortunes. He invested heavily in a Branson, Missouri development project a few years ago, and crashed hard. "I love taking chances," he smiles. "It's part of my personality." He worked his ass off, 51 out of 52 weeks the first year, and it hurt him. For the first time in his life, he felt like he was doing it for the money. "I realized it was temporary, and I could work my way out of it, and I did." In a huge way. In 1999, he signed a $250 million deal to headline his own theater at the Stardust Hotel--where right now, he's smack dab in the middle of his fourth life.

"I don't really believe in regrets," Wayne explains. "If it were not for the bad things that've happened to me, I wouldn't be the person I am today. There's no room in my life for feeling sorry for myself. Sure, I've been a victim, but in retrospect, most of it has been of my own making. I allowed it to happen."

Whenever a rare free week presents itself, Wayne heads out on another USO tour. He's been performing for the troops since the '60s, and he has no-nonsense views about this nasty war business we're involved in. "I think we're on the right track," he says. "I think we've ignored the problem far too long because we weren't hit with it until 9-11. It's my belief that we're handling it the right way. You cut the snake's head off. Maybe that goes along with my personality--it's white or black, never gray."

For a long time now, Wayne has supported the men and women protecting America. "After the events of 9-11, the one group of people who were forgotten were our military, the Pentagon, the people who carry the message for us." Living conditions for the soldiers, he says, are horrendous: "For latrines there's a hole in the ground--no power, no running water. When you think about what we're asking these kids to do for us, the least we can do is support them." Sure--and call their lonely moms, dads, wives, and fiancées back home.

Mr. Las Vegas finally gives me a warm, all-engulfing bear-hug before heading off to delight the sneakered, denim-clad American masses. They may no longer wear furs, diamonds, or sharkskin suits, but they're still being entertained by one of the smoothest, most decked out, perfectly coiffed, sugar-throated, superduperstars to ever light up a stage.