Why Frankie Left The Luxor

This week's Las Vegas Weekly column is now online, a look at Frankie Valli's surprise resurgence in Vegas and his explanation about why he left his Luxor contract unceremoniously in 2005.


The Strip Sense: Working his way back to you
Frankie Valli gets some Vegas vindication at the premiere of Jersey Boys

By Steve Friess

It is hard to believe now, especially after the weekend that just was, that only a few years ago Frankie Valli walked out during a three-week contract at the Luxor and was declared by at least one entertainment writer to have essentially ended his association with Las Vegas once and for all.

Hard, that is, because on Saturday the town stood up and cheered as the pipsqueak Italian from New Jersey with the priceless falsetto blew out candles at one of the city’s most elaborate and expensive birthday parties in recent memory.

Move over, Paris and Nicole. The nightclubs, for whatever bizarre reason, may pay you to stand and wave on the anniversaries of your unfortunate arrivals, but would anyone stage a multimillion-dollar Broadway musical based on your life story and then have a major resort-casino time the premiere of it on the Las Vegas Strip just to honor you?

For Valli, there was no question that the moment was immensely gratifying and somewhat unique for Las Vegas. Sinatra, Rickles and Bennett never fell out of favor in such a way as Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons seemed to and, thus, never had quite this sort of a spectacular comeback as is seen with the triumphant debut of Jersey Boys at the Palazzo.

Except don’t call it that. Valli’s not having any of this “comeback” nonsense. “Every once in a while when we had a resurgence, in the interviews people would ask, ‘How does it feel to be making a comeback?’ and I would say, ‘I had no idea we left!’” Valli said. “In all the ups and downs, there was never a shortage of work. There’s all the work I wanted.”

Perhaps, but the wonderful Jersey Boys not only returns The Four Seasons to the forefront of the pop-culture scene but also restores our faith in the future of musical theater in Las Vegas. If last week’s column pointed out how Steve Wynn must be driving convention-travel innovator Sheldon Adelson bananas by planning a huge new expo center, this week it must be noted that Wynn must be utterly depressed that his vision for great Broadway theater on the Strip has been realized not by his now-failed picks Avenue Q and Spamalot but by arch-nemesis Adelson’s knockout versions of Phantom and Jersey Boys.

Read the rest HERE

R.I.P. Broadway West: We Hardly Knew Ye

Here's this week's column from the Weekly. To hear more discussion of Gill's comments -- including the surprising show Gill believes to be among the most successful in town -- grab this week's episode of "The Strip," which also features a chat with Lance Burton as the magician prepares to return to work Friday at the Monte Carlo. Listen here or right-click here to download the file to hear whenever you want.

R.I.P. Broadway West: We Hardly Knew Ye
By STEVE FRIESS
It’s not as though this ought to come as much of a surprise, I know.
We all saw “Avenue Q” come and go, “Hairspray” come and go, “The Producers” come and go. We saw “Phantom: The Las Vegas Spectacular” cut back from 10 shows a week to eight. We knew that “Mamma Mia!” is in its final throes, even as it this month celebrated its fifth birthday, impressive by any Vegas measure. And we’ve all heard the rumors that “Spamalot” isn’t long for this street.
But that, my friends, is a far cry from the declaration made by the man most responsible for this decade's Broadway wave in Las Vegas, Michael Gill.
He’s the man with his finger most firmly on the pulse of the Vegas entertainment scene and he’s calling the body.
"If there ever was a Broadway West phenomenon, it’s done,” Gill told me this week. “Jersey Boys will be very successful. But that’s an anomaly and that's it. No casino I know is looking to bring another Broadway show here."

Read the rest HERE

BREAKING: "Producers" Closes Feb. 9

You heard it here first: "The Producers" will close Feb. 9. An announcement goes out later tonight.

This is not a surprise, seeing how Mel Brooks basically said as much in June on "The Strip" and in my interview for Newsweek. But the other bit of news is that Tony Danza, who has been playing Max Bialystock since late summer, will remain in the gig for the rest of the show's run.

It's unclear whether we can call this a failure if Brooks himself didn't expect it to be more than a one-year run. From what I understand, the show essentially broke even and brought healthy foot traffic into Paris Las Vegas.

With this show gone, we've still got "Spamalot," "Phantom," "Mamma Mia!," "Menopause" and the upcoming "Jersey Boys." But I suspect that the Broadway "experiment" is petering out, and I'm predicting "Spamalot" won't stick around through the end of 2008. (Wynn did say on "The Strip" in September that the royalties to Eric Idle and Mike Nichols eat deep into his profits.) It's hard to imagine what show anyone would go for now given the difficult recent history although the Billy Joel-scored "Movin' Out" certainly has potential for all of the "Mamma Mia!" and "Jersey Boys" reasons.

The Strip is LIVE Tonight w/STEVE WYNN

OK... for real this time. We're live this week at 7:05 pm PT with a jovial Steve Wynn who deals with the following topics:

* Why the south end of the Strip is going to hell
* Why "Le Reve" is making more money than "Spamalot"
* What his newest art purchase is
* How his nightclubs stack up against Tao and others
* Why he thinks LVS opened Venetian Macao too soon

...And much more.

Join us at LVRocks.Com for the live show and an even livelier chat. Or be that way and wait till Thursday for the podcast. We love you in either case.

My New York Magazine Debut!

After I was shut out of getting to do any major pieces on "Spamalot" by the show's NY-based PR folks on account of my admitting I wasn't in love with the production, I decided to go ahead and find someone to let me write the piece that had been stirring in my mind for a long time, the denouement on why Broadway fails in Vegas.

Our podcast listeners will recognize many of these themes because Miles and I have been working them out orally for more than a year now and on this blog since it began in March. It is a piece that likely would've emerged sooner or later as it'd been on my mind for a while. Being treated badly didn't create this piece; it just accelerated my willingness to write it sooner rather than later.

So go here and see my first New York Magazine piece, a snappy look at the topic.

Apologies in advance for the WHHSH violation atop the story: "What Opens in Vegas Closes in Vegas." I didn't write it. But I did, as I mentioned on last week's podcast, pen a violation of my own in the body of the story, something I felt was suitably clever to be forgivable. Alas, they cut mine out of the piece so they could commit their own. All in all, though, it's less noxious than many of the examples I cite in my new Las Vegas Weekly column, the first one of which you can read here on the topic of WHHSH abuse.

Signs of Woe for "The Beauty of Magic"

The summer's most hyped new Vegas show, the Hans Klok-Pam Anderson production "The Beauty of Magic" at Planet Ho, is showing signs of struggle -- already.

Yesterday, subscribers to a service called HouseseatsLV.Com were offered free tickets. Subscribers pay a flat $169 a year and can have up to four tickets to any shows they come into passes for. It's actually a terrific deal and has been featured on "The Strip" as a Top Secret Tourist Tip of the Week.

Now, we thought it was startling when "Spamalot" was available at discount brokers on Fight Weekend and for free to folks at First Friday in May. But "The Beauty of Magic" has been only been open for ONE weekend. And, unlike any major show in recent memory, its schedule is just a measly four performances - one Thurs, two Fri and one Sat -- a week.

I inquired and was told this is not unusual for a show just getting up and running without previews. Not buying that. This show has, for a split-second anyway, Pamela Anderson.

Word of mouth isn't kind thus far. Mike Weatherford in the R-J hasn't put out his full review, but he did write in his column today:

"Say what you will about the Hans Klok magic show at Planet Hollywood, but it was a classy gesture to invite most of the other lcoal magicians to the big opening-night bash last weekend. Since Klok wheeled out illusions already seen up and down the Strip, it was only fair to invite his predecessors to the party."

Ouch.

Spamalittle?

There's some strong evidence that despite boffo reviews for "Spamalot" at Wynn Las Vegas, audience demand is tepid. To wit:

Exhibit 1: Wynn set up a booth last Friday at First Friday in the downtown Arts District to give away vouchers for 500 seats to first comers. Giving them away! Yikes.

Exhibit 2: I stopped by the half-price ticket counter in the Coke bottle across from the Monte Carlo on Saturday afternoon after trying (and failing due to the MGM Mirage systemwide sportsbook glitch that the mainstream media entirely ignored) to place my losing De La Hoya-Mayweather wager. Spamalot tickets were available at half price, for $66. This was a big, big weekend in Vegas and this was a Saturday night and the show can't sell out?

I still predict Wynn will keep it open at least a year regardless of the cost so as to not declare it a total failure.

While I was at the Coke bottle, by the by, I took note of who else was offering half-price seats on a very busy Vegas night. Mamma Mia had $50 seats, the self-proclaimed "New Mr. Las Vegas" George Wallace was up there for $40, Le Reve was available for $80 (not quite half-price, actually) and poor old Carrot Top was on sale for $20 a stick.

Is it time to start wondering if the Vegas show industry is in trouble?

EXCLUSIVE: Steve Wynn and the Bohemian Club

For those you who are unaware -- as I was before this leak came my way -- the Bohemian Club is a secretive 135-year-old society of very powerful businessmen, politicians and artists who share a common passion for fine arts.

My sources are telling me that Steve Wynn is an aspiring member and next weekend will host rather elaborate Bohemian Club event honoring Henry Kissinger that involves bringing in technicians and other staff to set up. Word is that it's sort of a spoof or roast of the Nixon's secretary of state. (Nixon, according to Wikipedia, was an honorary member of the BC.)

I have confirmed with Wynn publicists that there is definitely a Bohemian Club event next weekend and that Kissinger is expected. Beyond that, they couldn't comment. I suspect Wynn is already a member, given his stature and his art collection, but it's a secretive society so I gather nobody's allowed to say.

So, gentle readers: What rituals do you fancy the Bohemians conduct to haze their new plebes?

[See also, from "The Strip" podcast, Wynn on Spamalot, Wynn in Macau, Wynn on AveQ and Wynn gives me a tour of his then-new hotel.]