ENTERTAINMENT: Will the real Mr. Las Vegas please wear it well?

  The Las Vegas Sun’s John Katsilometes was generous enough to “reach across the aisle” in a recent piece about Wayne Newton taking issue with comedian George Wallace’s “The New Mr. Las Vegas” billboard campaign. Instead of saying “another publication” as the R-J and Sun sometimes do when at war about Harry Reid or whatever, Katsilometes cited one of my past reviews as the source of Wallace’s ad campaign.
  That made me want to read the original review again. And that turned out to be something of a challenge; it seemed to have disappeared from both our Newsbank and Factiva archiving services. But after some help with a little task that turned into a longer one, the original review is here (below).
  When I see Wallace’s billboards around town, I recall that “The New Mr. Las Vegas” stemmed from sitting through a double feature when Newton and Wallace shared the Flamingo showroom in 2006.

  What I didn’t remember is that the billboard turns out to be a paraphrase.

You can read for yourself. (And who knew the opening question would prove so prophetic?)
  This one isn’t too much of a stretch out of context; I’ve been “mis-blurbed” worse. But now I wish the ads wouldn’t put the phrase in quotes. The Wayner already thinks I have it in for him. Ah well, it was a long time ago and most people (who aren’t our editor) would say they squeeze a lot of words out of us around here.
  And you would get in a car crash by the time you read “(The New Mr. Las Vegas) is a title now starting to wear just as well with comedian George Wallace.”
 

Feb. 3, 2006

SHOW REVIEWS: Cult of Personality
Newton, Wallace have little in common aside from the same showroom

By MIKE WEATHERFORD
REVIEW-JOURNAL

  Who knew that someday this “Mr. Las Vegas” title might be contested?
  It has been Wayne Newton’s nickname for years, whenever he’s not called “The Midnight Idol” or simply “The Wayner.” But it’s a title now starting to wear just as well with comedian George Wallace, Newton’s current roommate in the Flamingo’s old-Vegas showroom.
  In the past two years, Wallace has turned himself into the comic equivalent of a TV game show host, giving away $100 bills at the end of his show and proving himself a true friend of the tourist.
  The old song “Personality” comes to mind as the shared trait of two entertainers with little else in common but the room. Newton begins his show by materializing in the audience. Wallace ends his by leading the march up the center aisle to a merchandise stand where he signs autographs.
  And while Wallace is the comic pro, it’s safe to say both entertainers get laughs from the delivery as much or more than the material itself. Among Newton’s many self-referential Indian jokes, this is one that got a laugh from the crowd but seems puzzling as transcribed in my notebook: “Indian trade horses for squash.”
  Charm is certainly Newton’s chief attribute these days, given his chronic vocal problems. His new show at the Flamingo is mostly the same ol’ drill, from the “Ho down” jokes to Newton’s instrumental bursts on various instruments to the generous solo spots for sidekicks Jeff Brandt (impressions), Scott Alexander (banjo duet) and Frances Lee (gospel).
  The key new additions are a few “Brokeback Mountain” jokes and a new backup singer, Patricia Welch, who adds operatic punctuation to “The Shadow of Your Smile.” The act also benefits from a trim to 90 minutes -- necessary to turn the room over for Wallace -- though you miss “MacArthur Park” and the rain curtain.
  Newton’s singing voice isn’t any better, but at least his speaking voice is. Last summer at the Las Vegas Hilton, his throat was pinched so nearly shut that you couldn’t even understand his patriotic finale. This time it was clear as a rusty bell when he trash-talked “those gutless, fatherless, motherless cowards who call themselves terrorists.”
  And there’s an old-Vegas nobility to him plugging away up there. As hoarse and awful as he sounds, he’s not cheating by lip-syncing or running his voice through pitch-correcting software, as many much younger pop stars do.
  After the show, Newton stations himself behind black drapery for a “meet and greet” with patrons who shelled out for $100 tickets, $25 more than the next-highest price. He may have hit on the perfect solution to his vocal woes: Forget about the show and just do the photo op.
  Think about it. The real commodity is not the bad singing, but face time with a Las Vegas legend. Newton could just park himself behind that curtain for, say, three hours each evening and let people line up for the $25 photo.
  A George Wallace autograph comes free with a CD or whatever you buy, and by the end of his set he has already met a bunch of people in the room. The new giveaway twist gives his act something to build up to, instead of losing momentum as it did before.
 It would take away too much to give away the specifics of the comically orchestrated giveaways. But it’s worth noting that none of them involve plugs or ads. When Wallace bestowed a cruise upon a local teacher at the end of the show, he didn’t mention the cruise line.
  The comedian still cultivates a loose vibe from the beginning, when he calls back opening act Max Alexander for a little banter, to the unplanned moment near the end, when two women in the crowd one recent night walked away with $100 each for singing a Yolanda Adams gospel song.
  This all stems naturally from the populism of a stand-up act that still centers on common-sense fixes for things -- “If we’re gonna waste money, we should waste it on education” -- and life’s little annoyances, like opening a bag of chips. “The other day I bought a candy bar and had to put it under the car and run over it.”
  Then there’s the post office, out to make a fool of him by raising the price of stamps to 39 cents instead of an even 40, so they can catch “me standing at a machine waiting for a penny to come out.”
  Combine the pennies with the C-notes, and you’ve got a man of the people.