HOT HEADLINES
*Alarm and serious concern this morning about 65-year-old entertainer Wayne Newton’s deteriorating health as he shockingly cancels a six-week run of holiday shows on the Strip that he was due to start tomorrow night.
Mr. Las Vegas, who has racked up 30,000 solo shows in his lifetime, had been struggling with limited rehearsals, I am told, and was warned he simply didn’t have the strength to get well at the same time as keeping up with the heavy show schedule. Tomorrow and Saturday, Wayne, who battled severe asthma in his younger years, was to have started his holiday run through year’s-end at Harrah’s.
First up, two classic shows and then, on Thanksgiving Day itself, the dazzling Holiday Show was to get underway. We would have known that the “most magical time of the year” was back again and it was “beginning to look a lot like Christmas,” but dramatically late yesterday in a surprise stunning decision, Wayne shelved the entire run through New Years Eve because of “deteriorating health conditions.” Expect the official announcement from Harrah’s this morning confirming the startling news that celebrity reporter Alicia Jacobs first revealed on our Channel 3-TV.
No word yet on who will take over for him. “The set will be a winter wonderland,” Wayne had said just a few days ago before the deadline cancellation. “As is often said - there is no place like home for the holidays. Over the years we’ve had a good time performing the holiday show for audiences around the world and servicemen fighting on the front line, but there’s nothing like coming home for the holidays to the greatest city in the world: Las Vegas.”
He’s the one entertainer who stands tall as Vegas’ ambassador of the holiday spirit. Since Bob Hope’s death, Wayne has also served as the main ambassador for the USO, and more often than not at the Holiday Season he’s entertained our overseas troops, but this morning there’s even talk he may have to give up that role, too.
More on this worrying developing story as it unfolds. Wayne has been battling serious health and voice complications since his stint on Dancing with the Stars with partner, two-time champion Cheryl Burke, this fall on ABC-TV during which he also suffered a heart scare problem.
He had to cancel some concerts and was not well enough to even attend the funeral services of his longtime friend, Camelot singer Robert Goulet last week here in Vegas. (Wayne served as Goulet’s best man at his 1982 wedding to Vera.)
A top Harrah’s executive told me this morning: “We are really concerned about Wayne’s health. It cannot be a good situation because Wayne is one of those performers who live by the credo, ‘the show must go on.’ Nothing ever stops him, but this time he’s been forced to put his health and recovery before a holiday show that was the dearest to his heart.”
Wayne will also not appear in the Dancing with the Stars tour when it hits the Orleans Arena here on December 30. As a regular Luxe Life reader, Wayne: we send you our sincere best wishes for a speedy and safe full recovery so we can see you back on the Harrah’s stage as soon as all is well again!
*Tabloid stories are surfacing this morning that troubled pop-princess Britney Spears underwent plastic surgery here in Vegas the past few days for tummy and tushy liposuction procedures. She denied a report several months ago that she had similar surgery up in a Summerlin clinic, but was seen there by several reliable sources.
*The Beauty of Magic’s busty blonde pinup, Pamela Anderson held another set of secret meetings yesterday here in Vegas to plan her own headline show.
Famed erotic photographer David LaChappelle, who staged Sir Elton John’s Red Piano shows at the Caesars Palace Collosseum, is said to be well underway with the sexy concept for Pamela’s show. Friends tell me she is determined to stay on in Vegas as a “headline showgirl” after her magic shows with illusionist Hans Klok ends their run at Planet Hollywood on December 8.
*Congratulations to singer Clint Holmes who married Kelly Clinton in a surprisingly speedy, intimate and very romantic ceremony at the Vegas home of their friends, Domenick Allen and Leigh Zimmerman.
Domenick is formerly with the rock group, Foreigner and Leigh stars as “Ulla” with Tony Danza in The Producers at the Paris resort. When Kelly entered from the balcony and walked down the spiral staircase towards the pool, Domenick serenaded her with the song “I Can See Clearly Now.” The couple held their reception at the Strip’s south-end Bootlegger Bistro where they met over a year ago at a karaoke sing-a-long night for Strip celebrities. Clint headlined for six years at Harrah’s and will perform a Holiday show at the Suncoast next month. He is also working on a musical show based on his life story, Just Another Man, which he hopes to take to London’s West End and onto Broadway. Kelly produced and hosted the entertainment shows at the Sterling Club in the Turnberry Towers condo complex opposite the Hilton. The couple first showed me their engagement ring just eight-weeks ago at a Planet Hollywood model search event.
*Baja 1,000 race-truck driver, 28-year-old BJ Baldwin from Vegas and his father, Bobby who runs the new MGM City Center project here, battled bad colds and mechanical problems over the brutal 1,296 mile course. Luxe Life learned late last night from Mexico that as a result their longtime rivals, 42-year-old Rob MacCachren of Vegas and his partners, Mark Post and Carl Renezeder, beat them with an average speed of 51 mph to cover the dusty, rain-soaked course from Ensenada to Cabo San Lucas in just 25 hours, 21 minutes and 25 seconds. It was a classic movie-script duel because the win also gave MacCachren the SCORE racing season championship title which BJ Baldwin had looked to win when he was in a one-point lead at the start of the Baja. It was the 2nd trophy truck championship win for MacCachren who first won in 1994. Other Vegas drivers scored well in different classes with our local Ed, Tim and Troy Herbst’s “Terrible Herbst” race team who were one of the race sponsors, placing first in another truck category.
*Gender-straddling host Joey Arias is hanging up his bra, sequined gown and high heels after a near five-year-run as the drag-queen mc of Cirque du Soleil’s edgy topless sex revue, Zumanity. The show was regarded as sex shock for Cirque fans with “Goodbye Clowns and Hello Naked World.” Podcaster Steve Freiss last night confirmed what Luxe Life had hinted at several weeks ago, that Joey will exit the NYNY resort show and return to his New York City base after New Year’s Eve. Joey always told me that before the show’s 5th anniversary he would return to Manhattan, where he was a colorful off-Broadway legend, to headline in his own one-man/woman show! Numerous stars from Joan Collins, rocker Pink, the late Anna Nicole Smith, to Pamela Anderson all met Joe and always expressed surprise at his female transformation.
We wish Joey well because he’s been the rock of Zumanity and has always been gracious, kind and patient, even though it took him over two-hours each night for his transformation—and the girdle was “painful beyond belief.”
In our last chat he told me: “During the run I have broken about three hundred pairs of shoes and my toe has rotted away. I had to put plastic screws in there because of the heels breaking. I have gone through ten dozen pairs of fishnet stockings. It is a 2.5-hour makeup transformation job. I have to start from the boobs up and repaint and powder. It is kind of a meditation to go into character. Then it is about 45 minutes of dressing because I have to put on the corset, which closes my rib cage down to 24 inches. So at the end of the night when they take me out, it is like I get the bends if I am going under water because my lungs are pressed up and with all the singing and screaming I am doing; it is unbearable, so it is a torture. Women cannot believe it. They see me in the seven-inch heels, the 24-inch corset. It’s the toughest part, making the change.”
Good luck, Joey! You have been a wonderful addition and presence on the Vegas Strip during your stay here, and you will be missed!
Unconfirmed reports are circulating that two aerial artists were hospitalized after they crashed 30ft from their ceiling-hung silk sheets during last night’s performance of Zumanity. The male aerialist has since been released but the female is still in hoispital allegedly. Audience members were stunned by the ac cident- the first in Zumanity’s history. Stagehands apparently carried the two unconcscious artists off-stage and in showbiz tradition ” the show must go on” it continued.