Merrillville, Indiana. Wayne`s World has come to the heartland. Wayne Newton, the Midnight Idol, the King of the Strip, Mr. Las Vegas, with rings to rival Liberace`s and poses borrowed from the King, is here, at the Star Plaza Theatre, and more than 3,000 of his fans have come to see him. They`re buying Wayne Newton T-shirts. Wayne Newton buttons. Wayne Newton postcards. They`re buying it all.
Some of them are seeing him for the third time, some for the 10th. Some, like Karen Peters from Columbus, Ohio, for the 100th. Some of his fans have seen him perform a thousand times.
”I`ve seen him five times, every time he`s here,” says Jean Key of Gary, ”and I`ve never been disappointed. He doesn`t just stand up there and sing. He talks to the audience, like he says to the men, `I bet you thought you were going to see Olivia Newton (John).` He`s just marvelous.”
Newton has been performing for 45 of his nearly 49 years. He has been playing Las Vegas since he was 16, when he dropped out of school to work the lounge in the Fremont Hotel with his brother Jerry; six shows a night, from 5 to 11 p.m.
He was, he says, ”an anachronism”-his contemporaries were the Beatles and the Rolling Stones-and a joke.
”I was the joke of the industry,” he says. A big, fat, baby-faced kid singing in a high, girlish voice.
But sometime between 1963, when he recorded ”Danke Schoen,” and his recent appearance on ”L.A. Law,” he became a show-biz phenomenon. He figures it happened around 1975. He became the act you have to see when you go to Las Vegas.
Wayne Newton?
Wayne Newton.
Rachel Connell of Grand Rapids, Mich., is the president of his international fan club, and she says nobody thinks she`s crazy any more when she tells people she`s his fan.
”He`s gained credibility,” she says, on her way in to catch the show.
Wayne Newton is to Nevada what Don Ho is to Hawaii. There`s a street named after him. There`s a Wayne Newton Day. His license plate is ”Vegas 1.” On the marquee of the Hilton Hotel, it says simply, ”Wayne.” Cab drivers tell you not to miss him. Friends back from junkets say it. The numbers tell the story.
He can play the 2,200-seat showroom of the Hilton, 36 weeks a year, two shows a night, seven nights a week, and sell it out every time. More than 12 million people have seen him perform live. He`s the highest-paid nightclub entertainer in the world.
Each show is two hours long. Newton works without a net: no opening act, no dancing girls, no jugglers. Not even an intermission. Just the band, a couple of backup singers, and Mr. Las Vegas.
”Sammy said to me one night”-no last names are supplied when Newton is talking show biz-”you`ve got something going that none of the rest of us do. When people go to Vegas, they`ve got to see two things: Wayne Newton and Boulder Dam.”
Four ovations
”Ladies and gentlemen, Waaaaaaaayne Newton!!!!!!!”
Newton, who`s part-Cherokee, comes out to an Indian drumbeat and war whoops. He`s big, 6 feet 4 inches, with a massive chest, and about 200 perfect white teeth. His hair is black, his tux is tight, his microphone gold. The Don Ameche mustache is gone, but he still looks a little like Zorro. He`s wearing a red, white and blue ribbon over his heart, and he opens the show with
”America.”
”Ya gotta applaud,” he says when he finishes. ”I`m not just another pretty face.” And his Indiana audience-3,000 strong, a nearly sell-out crowd- does, repeatedly. There are more women in the audience than men, more people over 40 than under. Newton preaches to the converted. He turns around to his band. ”This is the crowd we`ve been waiting for all week.”
The ”week” began in Milwaukee and is ending in Washington, D.C., with three dates in the 3,400-seat auditorium theater in Merrillville last weekend. Newton is on the road seven weeks a year, flying in his own JetStar. The couch converts into a bed so he can sleep from gig to gig. The band, the crew and the equipment travel in two buses.
”Like a briiiiiidge over Barbara Waaaaaalters . . .”
He stops. ”You`re not listening. How many of you listen to the lyrics?
How many of you don`t listen to the lyrics? How many of you don`t give a damn? Talk to me. This isn`t television.”
In response, a long sigh comes out of the audience.
”I hope that was a girl. You ladies, I love you to death-just read the Enquirer. But we men, we`re an endangered species. We`re the only group that doesn`t have anyone out marching for us. Tell me, guys, how many of you thought you were going to see Olivia Newton?”
Newton plays with the audience all night long and keeps the show moving. He does oldies, like ”You`re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You,” and then some rock `n` roll, pounding the keyboard on ”Great Balls of Fire” like Jerry Lee Lewis. He plays a dozen instruments.
When he does his tribute to Elvis Presley-”Are You Lonesome Tonight,”
”I Can`t Help Falling in Love With You”-he not only sounds like Elvis, he looks like him, finishing in profile, in The Pose, head down, one fist raised defiantly.
The first of the evening`s four standing ovations comes after ”Spanish Eyes.” That`s the cue for the women, from 30 to 70, to come down the aisles bringing him the roses that were on sale before the show, getting a chaste kiss in return. Nobody is throwing any panties in this crowd, but there`s some sedate swooning going on.
”You guys,” says Newton. ”You bring `em here, I warm `em up, and you take `em home.”
He picks out an older couple in the front row. ”How long are you two married? Forty-nine years! Oh, my God, that`s a lot of suffering.” The audience laughs obligingly. ”I don`t see any humor in it,” says Newton, whose ex-wife appeared on ”The Oprah Winfrey Show,” part of a panel of kiss- and-tell ex-wives of stars.
”Are you going to do tonight what you did 49 years ago? Do you remember what you did 49 years ago?”
That`s about as risque as the show gets. Newton works clean. He lives clean, on his 52-acre estate in Las Vegas, Casa de Shenandoah, where peacocks strut and flamingos frolic, with his father, his daughter, Erin, 15, and his fiance, actress Marla Heasley.
Admitted flag-waver
He has never been involved with drugs. He says the drug culture avoided him because he was ”too square.”
”Drugs have always scared me to death in terms of not being in control. I`m such a perfectionist. And with the schedule that I keep, the discipline that it takes disallows it. I wish I wasn`t so disciplined. I see people who seem to have a lot better time than I`m having. There are people who can cast everything aside, and I think, `Wouldn`t that be nice?”`
Newton`s show is built, not so much to play to his strengths, but to mask his weaknesses. ”I`m not that good a singer,” he says, comparing himself to those two Las Vegas staples, Tom Jones and Englebert Humperdinck.
”I don`t think there are two finer talents in the world,” Newton says.
”That instrument that God blessed the two of them with is very unique, and I`m very envious of it. Our style of show was built more on the inadequacies I feel than on positive things.
”I was sure I`d never have a hit record, so I never put my energies into that. And I spent a lot of my time developing instruments, the things that I could survive with. I didn`t have that one single thing to hang my hat on like Tom or Engie. I had to develop a whole different show, one with more versatility.”
With no intermission, the only break comes when Newton briefly leaves the stage to remove his jacket and strap on a belt that would make boxing champ Evander Holyfield jealous. And then it`s time to get sentimental.
”It`s been said, ladies and gentlemen, if you take a man`s money, you`ve just taken his money. But if you`ve taken his time, then you`ve taken a part of his life. I`m honored that you`ve spent a part of your life with me.
”I guess I`ve always been superpatriotic, and I`ve even been accused of being a flag-waver when it wasn`t the most popular thing to be. And a lot of people think it`s corny and trite. Well, I admit to all of it.”
And then Newton launches into ”Dixie” and finishes up with a rousing
”Battle Hymn of the Republic.” And then it`s ”Goodnight and God bless”
time.
Two hours after it began, the show is over. And another satisfied audience goes off into the dark.
Elvis similarities
Wayne Newton settles down backstage to chat. He`s casual. Casual to Wayne Newton is a navy jump suit-like something an upscale garage mechanic might wear-black crocodile cowboy boots, a gold eagle necklace, a gold eagle pin, and two rings. There`s a Ping-Pong-ball-size diamond, 13 karats, on the pinkie of his left hand. On his right ring finger, there`s a 7-karat diamond set in the middle of a platinum rectangle with diamond ”X`s” on either side. The whole thing covers three fingers.
”I only wear them when I perform,” he says.
Every 20 minutes, one of his entourage will remind the reporter that it`s time to go, that the interview is supposed to be over, that Mr. Newton`s food is getting cold, that it`s late!
But every time, Newton tells them to bug off. He has the reputation for working harder and longer than anyone else, and this is part of it.
”I do it out of fear,” he says. ”The fear of falling into a rut. I never want to phone it in.”
That`s part of what`s fueling Newton`s acting career. He had roles in the James Bond movie ”Licence to Kill,” and in ”Ford Fairlane.”
”I love going to work and being someone else for a change. I spend my whole life being Wayne Newton.”
Newton and Elvis Presley were friends, and he says he sees a frightening amount of Presley in himself. In his 1989 autobiography, ”Once Before I Go,” Newton, in reference to Presley, wrote: ”I am guilty of falling into the same trap. … Any time you`ve got people accepting phone calls and reading your mail, you`re in danger. I have not gotten a letter from anybody in the last 10 years that has not been previously opened.”
He works hard not to wind up like Presley. ”I have forced myself, literally, and I still do, to find other interests, so that this”-he points to the stage-”isn`t all there is for me. If I lost a leg or an arm tomorrow and I couldn`t do it anymore, I wouldn`t jump off a building. I`d go on to other things.
”What happened to Elvis was that the industry didn`t need him anymore. I liken it to a dog pack. When a dog plants all four feet and looks at the pack, they generally stop. But when he turns and runs, they eat him alive. That`s what happens when the success is over and the fear sets in.”
The other figure Newton identifies with is Howard Hughes, who ended his life a recluse.
”It`s almost a sickness that those of us who are constantly surrounded by the public get. I understand Hughes and his withdrawal, just like I understand Elvis.”
If there is any unfinished business in Newton`s life, it`s his libel suit against NBC. In 1980, the network aired a news report linking him to organized-crime figures. He sued and was awarded $19.2 million. That was later reduced to $5.3 million. But the case is far from over. The appeals are still going on, and Newton is prepared to stay with it up to the Supreme Court.
”They hit me in a place where I couldn`t live. My dignity and honor are not for sale.”
Not many others
Wayne Newton has walls full of plaques and honors. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Medal for Distinguished Public Service from the Defense Department, an honorary doctorate of humane letters from the University of Nevada.
But as a half-Indian, one award was especially meaningful to him. One day, while he and his mother were eating dinner, he told her that he had been named Indian Entertainer of the Year.
”She was cutting her food, and without looking up, she said to me, `Who else was in the running?` Talk about bringing you down to reality.”
