Friday, November 22, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Movie Magic

Role in `My Big Fat Greek Wedding' revitalizes Kazan's show-business career

Once a Las Vegas regular, Lainie Kazan, right, made only sporadic showroom appearances in the past 20 years. But her role as the mother of Nia Vardalos' character, left, in the surprise hit "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" put the singer in demand once again.

Memories can be short in show business. Just ask Lainie Kazan.

Once a regular on the Strip, the singer-actress was invited back into a casino showroom only after first cracking its multiplex.

Kazan's Suncoast stint this weekend breaks a nearly 10-year absence from Las Vegas, and she's not about to pretend it isn't because of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding."

As one of the more recognizable cast members in the low-budget independent comedy, Kazan is part of the film industry success story of the year. The movie is still in theaters after six months, and looking to break the $200 million mark at the box office.

As "Greek Wedding" began to snowball, Kazan's phone "started ringing off the hook," she says. "I have had so many job offers it's unbelievable. It's fantastic. I am so excited and so thrilled and so grateful."

Kazan, 62, has been a big-belter diva longer than she's been a character actress, and was part of the Sahara's stable of regulars during the Del Webb-owned days of the early '70s.

Her big break in show business came as Barbra Streisand's understudy in the original Broadway run of "Funny Girl." She held tight for 18 months waiting for the possessive Streisand to finally miss a performance. She didn't get to keep the job, but was able to parlay the critical praise into a steady nightclub and film career.

Her first Las Vegas date was downtown at the Fremont in 1967. "I worked with Sid Caesar and a guy who was billed as the fastest tap dancer in the West," she recalls with a laugh. "He danced real fast for three minutes."

George Burns later brought her to the Riviera, which led to a few years of regular engagements at the Sahara. She may play movie mothers now, but back then she was a sex symbol.

"I had my poster up there on the side of the building, a very famous picture of me in a wet shirt," she says. "I did that whole bit."

Most of her publicity photos from the era are equally heavy on the cleavage and big hair. "I had a sense of humor about it, but it was also my way of saying, I'm not `Funny Girl.' I'm something other than `Funny Girl,' " she says.

Her Las Vegas memories are tempered by the boys' club that was Las Vegas back then and by the stress of the nightclub limelight. "Then I was so nervous all the time and just felt such a pressure to succeed," she recalls. "I don't know what I felt pressure about, but I did feel tremendous pressure.

"And I was being manipulated by all these high-powered guys. I was so sensitive and I had been brought up on Broadway. My whole ethos was just so different. But I got used to it pretty quickly, and it became my way of life. It was hard on my heart and hard on my stomach."

Eventually, however, it was a broken leg and resulting complications with blood clots that sidelined her from the showrooms. "I came back periodically with a job here and there, but it wasn't like in the old days," she says.

In 1992, she co-starred with Mickey Rooney at the Dunes. Except for a single New Year's Eve with Bob Newhart -- at the Sands in 1995 -- she's been away from Las Vegas ever since, concentrating on cabaret dates and character roles in films such as the 1998 action farce, "The Big Hit."

"I enjoy so much more my life and singing and doing what I do now," she says. "I just have such a joyous attitude."

When she was invited to read for "Greek Wedding," she didn't see it as anything more commercial than, say, "I Don't Buy Kisses Anymore," an obscure 1991 comedy that featured a pre-"Seinfeld" Jason Alexander.

"I was asked by my agent to do a reading of this piece. Would I like to go up to Playtone, which is Tom Hanks' company, and have some breakfast and sit around the table and read the script? And I thought, why not?"

She enjoyed meeting Hanks and Nia Vardalos, the Second City comedian who was adapting the piece from her one-woman stage show about her old-school Greek family (with Kazan as the mother, natch) and their reaction when she falls for a non-Greek vegetarian.

"They said, `Listen Lainie, if we ever do the movie we'll call you.' I thought, `Yeah sure.' About a year and a half later I got a call."

No one could predict the success of a film that's the highest-grossing independent of all time.

"The American people made this movie happen. This country needs a movie like this," Kazan says.

But that said, she adds: "But you know, they were very clever in their marketing and they have a brilliant distribution company. Everybody knew how to market it and knew what to do. It started out on the Internet, soliciting Greek churches to go to the first weekend."

Now she and much of the cast, including Michael Constantine as Vardolos' father, are headed into a CBS sitcom adaptation of the movie. For every "M*A*S*H" or "The Odd Couple" that's made a successful jump to the small screen, there are dozens of movie adaptations that didn't.

Kazan is aware of that, but optimistic. "I don't know, I think this (movie) has a little light gleaming over it. A little halo on it."