Showroom icon celebrates 85th

One of the last showroom icons from a golden era turns 85 today.

Emilio Muscelli was the showroom maitre d' when The International, now the Las Vegas Hilton, opened in 1969, when Barbra Streisand and Elvis Presley made $125,000 a week for opening what was then the world's largest hotel.

Muscelli arrived in 1952, when Jack Entratter, his former boss at New York City's famed Copacabana, brought him in for the opening of the Sands.

He saw it all: Judy Garland's last appearance, at the Sands in 1953; the mob years; and the night the El Rancho Vegas, where he was maitre d', burned down in June 1960 under suspicious circumstances.

No one brought in a crowd like Elvis during his seven-year sellout run at The International, said Muscelli, who lives at the Las Vegas Country Club.

"Before he came here, December was so dead the hotels gave tickets to the cab drivers and their wives. Elvis packed the town. We'd have 4,000 a night, two shows, seven nights a week."

REMEMBERING BILL WALSH

The first time I met Bill Walsh was over a brewski or twoski in 1973 at a bowling alley in Wilmington, Ohio, the sweltering summer camp of the Cincinnati Bengals.

We struck up a fast friendship. Officially he was the Bengals quarterbacks coach. Unofficially, he was the offensive coordinator, meaning head coach Paul Brown hadn't given him the title.

I was covering my first NFL camp as a young reporter with The Associated Press.

Walsh had joined Brown and the Bengals five years earlier, when they were an expansion team. Soon he was getting credit (and possibly taking too much credit, his detractors whispered) for the early NFL successes.

Two years later, when Brown retired at age 67, he named offensive line coach Bill "Tiger" Johnson as his successor, which was no surprise to Walsh.

What came as a surprise to me, during a late-night shift at the AP office, was a phone call from Walsh about two weeks after Brown's retirement.

Walsh, going off the record, wanted to know if I had heard anything about coaching staff hires.

When I realized what he was saying, I was shocked: He was still waiting to hear if he was going to be kept on the staff. Talk about twisting in the wind.

But the bigger shock came when a distraught Walsh, after swearing me to secrecy, revealed a more devastating development.

He had just returned from Chicago, he said, where he had been offered what he called "a great job" with the Bears, who had gone 4-10. But, he said, within a day or two, he was called and the offer was rescinded.

"I asked them why, and they told me Paul (Brown) said I was 'unstable,'" Walsh said.

A short time later, Walsh resigned and went to the San Diego Chargers as offensive coordinator.

After big seasons as head coach at Stanford, he took over the San Francisco 49ers in 1979 and won three Super Bowl titles in the next eight seasons, including two against Cincinnati.

Years later, I read that he went public with the meddling by Brown, a Hall of Fame coach. Walsh acknowledged that Brown "worked against my candidacy" to be a head coach anywhere in the league.

"All the way through I had opportunities, and I never knew about them," Walsh said. "And then when I left him, he called whoever he thought was necessary to keep me out of the NFL."

It was the biggest story I sat on.

San Francisco paid tribute on Friday to Walsh, who died July 30 after a long struggle with leukemia.

When I said my goodbyes to him at the 49ers reunion in March 2005 at Paris Las Vegas, I told him his son Steve, a Denver-based ABC radio correspondent, was a good friend. He knew. Steve died in 2002, also of leukemia.

SIGHTINGS

1970s hitmaker Tony Orlando and Sammy Shore, Elvis' opening act, in the audience at George Wallace's show (Flamingo) on Thursday. Orlando went on stage with Mosaic, the a capella group that opens for Wallace.

THE PUNCH LINE

"It was so hot in Washington, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales got delirious and almost started telling the truth." -- Jay Leno

Norm Clarke can be reached at 383-0244 or norm@reviewjournal.com. Find additional sightings and more online at www.normclarke.com.