A reworked show opening reflects Lance Burton's affinity for the tradition of stage magic by paying homage to past greats. Burton's mother, Hilma, attended a party celebrating her son's 10 years at the Monte Carlo. "He never changed his mind" about being a magician, she says. Photo by Craig L. Moran.

The tuxedo looks just right on him now, after wearing one since childhood. "I'm one of the old guys now," says 46-year-old magician Lance Burton.

"He always, even as a kid, was pretty set in his ways," says Mac King, a Harrah's Las Vegas comedy-magician and Burton's friend since they were teens in Louisville, Ky.

It often has been told that Burton first decided to become a magician at age 5, when he attended a party at the Frito-Lay plant where his mom worked and a magician pulled a coin from behind his ear.

"He never changed his mind since he was 5 years old," his mother, Hilma, confirms. "Most kids, one week they want to do something, another week they want to do something else. But he never changed his mind."

It's less known that the party magician, Harry Collins, went on to become Burton's mentor. It was Collins, King says, who taught Burton, "If you're going to be a magician, you should look like a magician. Lance really wanted to be the classical magician, with the iconic look."

And so it remained last week, as Burton entertained friends and fellow performers in a special performance marking his 10 years at the Monte Carlo. He looked more and more the part he has played since his days as a silent variety act; especially in contrast to magic's new star, Criss Angel, who worked the after-party in black T-shirt, M?tley Cr?e hair and tilted ballcap.

"He represents the traditional magician better than anybody does. I represent more the magician of today. Both are relevant approaches," Angel says. "Because he comes from different worlds, we work well together."

It also helps Burton stick to his guns on a Strip that's changed around him. "I don't look around and try to second-guess, 'What is the public going to want to see? Will this appeal to that demographic?' " he says on the phone the day after the party, slightly huffing because he is running on a treadmill.

"I just say, 'Is this something I would like to see? Is this something that appeals to me?' In the end, that's all we can bring to the table is our own viewpoint and our own judgment."

When Burton made his 1996 jump from the bygone Hacienda to a Victorian-styled theater built to his specifications, Las Vegas was still in its family-friendly phase. Now he benefits from the thinned-out competition for the family dollar, selling more tickets during the summer and holiday stretches when school is out.

"When I first came to town (in 1982), there were no kids, at least not at the 'Folies Bergere,' " he says. "Now they're saying it's gone back to an adult town. I don't accept the concept of that." He prefers to think the Strip is responsive to all tastes. "Those announcements to me are simply PR press releases."

Burton's laid-back style and old-school approach also may explain the two years it took to update his show. The anniversary celebrated a new lighting system, a new opening -- in which the history of magic is traced back to Howard Thurston and Harry Kellar -- and a comic slapstick sequence riffing on "The Twilight Zone," complete with a killer clown.

An illusion in which Burton turns one of his six female dancers into a "Solid Gold Lady" was barely finished in time for the anniversary show. "We were really cramming to get that in," he says with a laugh.

Changes are expensive and "take a long time to work out," he explains. His entire 30-member crew is smaller, he notes, than the wardrobe department for Cirque du Soleil's "O."

"If it's a new trick, there's the research and development and rehearsing. ... I always am jealous of guys like (Harrah's singer) Clint Holmes, who can put a new show together with 90 percent new material by rehearsing for 10 days."

Burton's show still ends with him crossing swords with a caped villain. King recognizes the duel as a grown-up version of "Zorro vs. Godzilla," a stunt the two performed during the high-school summers they spent working together in a bygone Kentucky amusement park called Tombstone Junction.

Not long after that, Burton loaded up his rebuilt Plymouth Duster -- which he and King called The Action Mobile -- and headed for California. "He told me he'd have to go to the East Coast or the West Coast to make a living doing magic," his mom says. "I couldn't see him going and staying. I thought he'd be back home."

Instead, Burton ended up on "The Tonight Show" within two weeks. Johnny Carson was a lifelong magic buff and overruled the usual time limit to allow the young magician to perform his entire act.

The Duster next headed for the Tropicana. "He had the passenger door tied up with a rope," his mom says. "He'd pull up to the valet parking in front of these big hotels in that beat-up old car." Burton performed his nine-minute dove act for nine years in the "Folies" while building props in his garage that eventually went into his five-year run at the Hacienda.

Over the years, the lifestyle of a Las Vegas entertainer has always been in contrast with Burton's quiet demeanor. He weathered an ill-fated show-business marriage to "First Lady of Magic" Melinda (Saxe) in 1993, and now is seeing "Erocktica" star Gabriella Versace.

During his years at the Monte Carlo, Burton has been reunited with a grown son he didn't know he had, and he is now a grandfather.

During the anniversary show, he told a crowd heavy with family members that he had no profound words for the occasion. "The decade just went by," he said. The next day, he says, "I'm just one of the guys that's here, plugging along, trying to entertain people who had enough faith to plunk down the 60 bucks, or whatever it costs."

Asked if he felt more pressure after late 2003, when the closing of Siegfried & Roy's show left him as the year-round standard-bearer for Las Vegas magic, the answer is a quick "No."

"I think that's a sure recipe for going crazy."