Mr. Las Vegas Has a Bad Knee

Wayne Newton arrived in Las Vegas as a fresh-faced 17-year-old singing sensation, looking like the result of a science experiment involving Brylcreem and estrogen. It was 1959, and to put his Las Vegas tenure into perspective, that was the year that Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper died, that Fidel Castro first took command of Cuba and that American Airlines scheduled its first transcontinental jet flight from Los Angeles to New York.

This is no way intended to make Wayne Newton feel old, since his pompadoured hair is every bit as black as the late Ronald Reagan’s, but the guy has been a Las Vegas fixture for a very long time.

And he is still there, overseeing his 52-acre Casa de Shenandoah ranch, wowing the Wayniacs who flock to see him six nights a week, most recently at the Flamingo, and playing the role of the city’s benevolent elder statesman. As proclaimed in the welcome banner at www.waynenewton.com (where the Wayne Wear Mug goes for just $4), Newton is “Mr. Las Vegas.”

So, naturally, when Newton’s people offered me a tour of Las Vegas guided by the ultimate Vegas insider, I couldn’t say no. Who else would have such a sweeping grasp of local lore and history? Who better to narrate the tectonic shift that transformed the desert oasis into one of the fastest growing cities in America?

I secretly was hoping for a glimpse at the behind-the-scenes workings of Sin City, where visitors are encouraged to unleash the beast within and the primary role of the immigrant class along the Strip seems to be handing out promotional cards for escort services. Newton’s was a name that could open doors, and I knew the story might offer a rare glimpse at the copious consumption habits of Mr. Las Vegas himself. While he gives generously of his time and money to the USO and many other charitable causes, research also suggests that, despite some niggling bankruptcy problems in the early 1990s and a 2005 skirmish with the IRS, Newton’s is a fast-lane life lived on private jets and Arabian horses, on personal yachts and helicopters, and behind the wheel of his fabulous cars. His star may have dimmed and his voice faltered a bit in recent years, but he apparently has maintained his lifestyle by leveraging his fabled stage act into parallel careers in film and television.

In short, Wayne Newton seemed like a decent guy, a fascinating character and the perfect escort into the neon-lit core of America’s naked id.

There was just one problem: actually connecting with Mr. Las Vegas.Even though his own public relations agency had pitched the Wayne’s World tour idea, it took more than three months for me to pull off a preliminary 15-minute telephone interview with the man. Times were set and then canceled, again and again, because being Mr. Las Vegas keeps Newton pretty busy. (In addition to the in-town shows he performs, his road schedule has, in the past two months alone, taken him to venues in Niagara Falls, Ont.; North Myrtle Beach, S.C.; Hollywood, Fla.; Columbus, Ga.; Cabazon, Calif.; and Wendover, Nev.)

To his credit, Newton gave it his all when that short phone conversation finally happened--apparently a hallmark of his lotta-bang-for-the-buck stage act. He was effusive about the tour possibilities. He offered a quick geography lesson about how the mountains that ring the city had for years limited growth. He explained the evolution of Vegas from a gambling capital to “an entertainment-based city” where gaming, “in my opinion, has slipped to third place” as an attraction, behind stage acts, restaurants and shopping. He talked at length about the evolving trends in entertainment, from the Rat Pack singers, to the magicians, to the comedians and the impersonators, to the modern-day circus shows.

He recalled with great irony how “the NBC affiliate came up for sale here in the mid-1970s and Dick Clark, a friend of mine, suggested that he and I buy the station. He checked it out for two months, and when I finally called him to ask about it, he said he’d decided to pass. The opinion was that Las Vegas wasn’t going to last.”

The 64-year-old Newton seemed genuinely excited about showing off his hometown, dropping tantalizing hints about Howard Hughes’ secret tunnels at the Desert Inn. He even suggested that we meet Claudine Williams, whom he described as “my adopted mother” and said had helped build the first Holiday Inn on the Strip, now the site of Harrah’s.

“She’s in her 80s,” he said. “She actually came out here from Texas as a dealer. She knows more about that kind of history than anyone I know.”

Newton reserved a special mention for the New Frontier hotel and casino, which opened as the Last Frontier in 1942. Newton said it “probably offers the best history of the town.” The sparkle-creep of new Las Vegas had “totally engulfed” the venerable Frontier, Newton said, and “it’s probably only a matter of time before it’s imploded.” When a date for our tour was finally set--after several more failed attempts--I didn’t hesitate. I booked a room at the Frontier.

As it turned out, it was as close to historic Las Vegas as I would get.

Despite its endless shimmer, Las Vegas does not encourage reflection. The entire city seems designed to keep visitors from thinking too much. Unless you’re in a place where you’re gambling or spending money, there’s really nowhere to sit. Sidewalks and elevated crosswalks along the Strip are not direct routes from one place to another, but meandering paths that parade you past the endless retailers. It’s the rare hotel that doesn’t require you to traverse the infinite, Pavlovian clamor of a casino to get to your room.

And once there, well, who has time to reflect when the Frontier’s porn channels are free?

If that venerable hotel is the essence of historic Las Vegas, then history here smells vaguely of stale cigarettes and Paco Rabanne. In contrast to the Wynn Las Vegas, towering in tasteful desert shades directly across Las Vegas Boulevard (and boasting both Ferrari and Maserati showrooms right on the premises), the Frontier’s main marquee promotes rooms from $44.95, frozen margaritas for $1.99, “the only Bingo on the Strip” and an “Urban Cowboy”-era Gilley’s nightclub featuring “Cold Beer . . . . Dirty Girls” mud wrestling and midnight “Bikini Bull Riding.” At the Wynn, the registration desk overlooks a magnificent artificial forest and waterfall and features stunning arrangements of fresh-cut flowers. The Frontier’s registration desk resembles the checkout line at Costco.

My cellphone rang as I walked the cacophonous miles between the front desk and my room. I answered, and I wasn’t particularly surprised to hear there was a snag.

Newton was canceling again.

The night before, Mr. Las Vegas had injured his knee while taping his E! network reality show, “The Entertainer,” in Los Angeles. Nasty stuff, according to his assistant. Blown meniscus. Possible surgery. Head fogged by painkillers. Hope you understand.

And so the officially sanctioned Wayne Newton Tour of Historic Las Vegas was not to be. I was reduced to waiting out the hours before my return flight at the Frontier. I spent the time rereading a landmark 1966 Esquire story--headline: “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold”--hoping to emulate Gay Talese’s deft handling of an elusive star (eventually concluding that I’m no Gay Talese, and that Wayne Newton is no Frank Sinatra), and driving around the perimeter of once-remote Casa de Shenandoah like a stalker, wondering what was going on behind the 10-foot-high block walls and gilded gates that shield Mr. Las Vegas from the gas station, tattoo parlor, Jack in the Box and other commercial blight that has spread to his doorstep. And during that excursion, an obvious truth hit me: Historic Las Vegas doesn’t really exist--at least not in any form that you can actually tour. (OK, you can see a sampling of artifacts and structures from the pioneer days at the tiny Clark County Museum, which drew 35,000 visitors in fiscal 2005-2006. The Liberace Museum does better, enticing about 70,000 annually, but neither figure is particularly impressive in a city awash in almost 40 million yearly visitors.)

Occasionally you can spot glimpses of history scattered about town, including the bright-red landmark Klondike hotel and casino that squats at the south end of the Strip, fenced off and abandoned since late June (and, I suspect, still reeking of cigarettes and Paco Rabanne). But when I thought back to my 15-minute phone conversation with Mr. Las Vegas, it was clear that he had been groping for possibilities, trying to think of where, exactly, historic Las Vegas might be found.

The Desert Inn, site of the reclusive Hughes’ aerie? Gone, he had said, replaced by the Wynn. Those secret tunnels? “I’m not sure they exist anymore, but I can show you where they were.” He’d mentioned an old equestrian center, then quickly added that he thought it might be “part of the Trump development now.”

I’d asked him to name people and places in town where the old Vegas and the new Vegas were colliding in poignant or interesting ways. A favorite old diner consumed by the metastasizing city? A blacksmith for his Arabians who can no longer afford to do business there? The questions seemed to stump him.

When I was back in L.A., I called the recovering Newton and tested my no-tangible-history theory.

“It’s funny,” he said. “I realized that the only places I could have shown you that truly represented old Las Vegas were the Frontier and the Stardust.”

With the closing of the Stardust on Wednesday, only the Frontier remains.

Asked what that said about history in his hometown, Newton said it showed the impact of the transition to corporations from individual owners. Before, he continued, gaming laws limited the number of casinos that could be in the hands of a single owner. With corporations, “there is no one person on the gaming licenses,” and so growth is inevitable and seemingly unlimited.

“In Las Vegas, it’s what’s important now,” he said. “And with the corporations able to build these megacities, what was doesn’t matter to anybody anymore. It’s just melted snow.”

Even the people who lived Las Vegas’ history are waving the white flag. “There’s an old-timers club that has met for years,” Newton said. “They’re all people who have been living here for 40 years or more,” including Claudine Williams. He said the club recently held its final meeting: “They wanted to have it at the Stardust before it was imploded.”

So, then, history in Las Vegas is what happened yesterday. The Desert Inn and its secrets are just memories. The now-closed Stardust is expected to be razed early next year, making way for the city’s Next Big Thing, Boyd Gaming Corp.’s splendiferous $4-billion Echelon Place. The Klondike is a slate that soon will be wiped clean, and in its place there will be a 900-room hotel, 1,200 condos and a casino seven times larger than the original. The funky Frontier is a stubborn rock in a rushing river, but someday soon it too may wash away.

Now Mr. Las Vegas has a bad knee, and all things considered, it’s hard not to worry about the way Vegas treats its aging legends.