The Vegas lounge singer refuses to die

Whatever happened to Mark OToole?

No, not the Mark O'Toole with the apostrophe before the "T," bass player for the rock band Frankie Goes to Hollywood. We're talking about the vocalist Mark OToole who won Ed McMahon's "Star Search" competition back in 1994, came to Vegas, put together a band and has played almost every Strip casino since -- the guy who was mentioned several times over the years in the "Best of Las Vegas" balloting for best lounge singer in town.

"At first I did country, and then I switched over when country died about 2000" to a more traditional lounge repertoire -- Sinatra, Dean Martin, Barry Manilow, Mark says.

Then, about three years ago, Mark came off stage after his regular show with the house band at Paris Las Vegas. "I went to take a shower, and I felt a little lump. Within a week, I was inundated with hundreds of tumors."

Mark OToole was diagnosed with stage four lymphoma. "I was given pretty much no hope. I was given only four months to live."

In fact, Mark was under treatment for a year and a half. He did not come through completely unscathed.

"It altered my face. I have severe neuropathy in my feet because of the chemicals."

Not only that, the time Mark was sick was also the period during which "all the casinos decided to get rid of all their lounge entertainment."

"Makes a comeback a little tougher," I surmised.

"It sure did."

Mark OToole survived. And he came back. M Resort Entertainment Director Jeannine Peterson "remembered me from the MGM," where they'd worked together. "She said, 'This is the guy we need for this room.' There was some skepticism from the food and beverage people, that one guy was going to bring them in on a Saturday night. But the crowd seems to love me. There's no place else in town to go hear this kind of music."

I had to give Mark some grief at that point. "Come on, Mark. I hate to argue with you, but big band music is dead, everybody knows that. Even the Elvis impersonators are giving up. There may be a few fans left for small combo jazz, for be-bop, but otherwise it's all rock 'n' roll now."

"Well, the clientele is older," Mark said. "No one here is under the age of 40, as far as I'm concerned. I'm doing stuff from Eddie Arnold to Charlie Rich to Nat King Cole to Neil Diamond. On the whole, it's the older music from that era. What may help is that I'm not an impressionist, I'm not an imitator.

"Sally Struthers is one of my dear friends, and she opened the room with me. She drove up here, she did the Bootlegger with me and she did the M with me, to make sure it was a success. She took care of me along with my mom when I was sick.

"There was some skepticism here, but when we opened there were 300 people in the room. This is my seventh week, I believe, and now we're starting to get dancers in there. There's a real dance floor, and people are actually dressing up and coming to see me. It's kind of like the old Vegas. I'm not into rap or hard rock. People ask me 'Do you do any Michael Jackson?' And I say, 'Of course not.' "

The M Resort's Ravello Lounge is a large, tiered room -- Mark says he'd call it a theater -- with "booths and a beautiful bar in the front, and two huge glass windows that overlook the pool and overlook Las Vegas. It's kind of zoned off from the rest of the casino. It's one of the classiest places, with a real hardwood dance floor."

Mark OToole performs 6:30 to 8:45 p.m. on Saturdays. No cover charge, two-drink minimum. "Then, right after me, there's about an hour break and then the (featured) bands come on."

"What you've been through," I ask Mark, "it makes you look at life differently?"

"I look at things a lot differently now. You have to enjoy every day," Mark laughs. "And bills and mean people suck."

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Summerlin resident Marie Frances, who produced the Miss Latina Star pageant here (emceed by Charo, staged at UNLV's Ham Hall, broadcast on the Azteca America television network) back in 2005, writes that she believes she'll become the first American woman to have an African street named for her, with a parade and ceremony scheduled for June 25 in Tanzania.

Ms. Frances is being honored for organizing the Mount Kilimanjaro Marathon in Moshi, Tanzania, for the past 20 years.

"The Tanzanians are a very generous people. ... I am deeply honored and thrilled!

"I actually did much more in Egypt than Tanzania, but no Egyptian male would ever honor a female for her work," Ms. Frances writes. "I started the first International Marathon in Cairo in 1989. It was the first full marathon ever held there. Instead of the Egyptian men being happy about it, they were very upset because an American female had succeeded where they had failed. So the Tanzanians, in honoring me, also are honoring their (own) generous nature.

"They didn't need me to start an international marathon; they already had a few. ... The men from this marathon helped me get started in Tanzania. No man was jealous or tried to stop me. Just the opposite, they were generous and kind.

"Very few nations in the world would honor an American female no matter how much she had helped them. I am most sincere about this. The country of Tanzania itself shows how open they are to say 'Thank you' to me."

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal, and the author of "Send in the Waco Killers" and the novel "The Black Arrow." See www.vinsuprynowicz.com/.