ENTERTAINMENT: Monte Carlo was symbolic to Schimmel

In a sad coincidence, comedian Robert Schimmel died Friday, the same weekend Lance Burton closed his long-running show at the Monte Carlo. For at least eight years, Schimmel took over the theater a couple of times per year when Burton went on vacation.

The Monte Carlo dates came to have significance for Schimmel; it was during one of those engagements in June 2000 that he broke out in fever and sweats and soon learned he had non-Hodgkins lymphoma. A year to the weekend he was back on the stage doing his stand-up act; skeletally frail, but a survivor. He continued to celebrate that weekend onstage each summer, and in 2004 one show included a birthday shout-out to the son he was told he could never have (chemotherapy was supposed to have rendered him sterile).

Schimmel was in need of a liver transplant before he died Friday from injuries in an Arizona car wreck the week before. The graphic comedian was a Vegas regular from at least 1994, when he filmed a Showtime comedy special, “Guilty as Charged,” in the old Catch A Rising Star club at Bally’s.

I remember one night of years later, in the enclosed lounge at the MGM Grand (now hosting the Crazy Horse revue) when he did a set that was almost transcendentally funny, one of those nights audiences — and probably the comedians themselves — talk about for years.

In recent years his crazy personal life, told in confessional detail on Howard Stern’s radio show, eclipsed his stage routines. I last interviewed him in 2008 (Doug Elfman was the last Review-Journal staffer to interview him early this year) and was relieved, in a way, not to have talked to him about the break-up with his younger wife Melissa. I met her in happier times during a lunch with the couple at the Monte Carlo in 2001; the first year of his victory against cancer.

Schimmel may be one of those comedians whose legend will grow now that the final chapter has been written. His honesty and gift for gab are becoming more rare in our celebrity culture. With each passing year, it seems like phone interviews with entertainers get shorter and more controlled by publicists; sometimes you feel grateful instead of indignant when they tell you that you get 10 minutes.

By contrast, I will always remember one interview with Schimmel, when I was on the phone with him for more than an hour. So long, in fact, that nature began to call in a big way. The urge became louder, more pleading, finally painful. But Schimmel was not slowing down, and whatever he was talking about was compelling and funny enough to make me try to hold it just a few minutes longer. I finally had to tell him I had to go. I can’t remember another interview where the subject wasn’t ready to end it. Too bad he won’t be calling again down the road.