Sticking to the old game

By Jerry Fink (contact)

Friday, Aug. 15, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Chris Morris

In this election year, I vote for Steve Lawrence as the new Mr. Las Vegas — icon of a bygone era when the Entertainment Capital embraced class, talent, showmanship and personality.

Wayne Newton, the other Mr. Las Vegas, arrived here as a teenager a few months after Lawrence and Eydie Gorme were married Dec. 29, 1957, at the El Rancho.

Lawrence performs solo tonight through Sunday at the Orleans, filling dates left open by the death of comedian George Carlin. (Gorme is recovering from knee surgery.)

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Lawrence says. “Maybe Marvin Hamlisch is going to write music to the seven dirty words for me.”

Steve and Eydie headlined the final show at the Stardust before it closed Nov. 1, 2006, to make room for Echelon, the $4 billion project stalled by the economic downturn.

“We’ve closed more hotels in this town. It’s embarrassing,” Lawrence says. “The Stardust. The Desert Inn. The Sands. The showroom at Caesars Palace before they put in that colossal thing. We’ve become synonymous with the wrecking ball.”

At 73, the polished singer still has a voice as smooth as satin and perfect comedic timing.

He recorded the first of more than 30 albums in 1953. His 1963 recording of “Go Away Little Girl” — arranged by Marion Evans — hit No. 1 on the Billboard pop chart. He and Gorme teamed with Evans on their latest album, tentatively called “Still Swinging After All These Years,” which is due out in the fall.

Lawrence also is a pretty good actor who received a Drama Critics Circle Award and a Tony nomination for “What Makes Sammy Run?” on Broadway in 1964.

Over the years Lawrence has received nine Emmy Awards, a Grammy and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

He recently talked to the Sun by phone about his career and Las Vegas.

You and Tony Bennett are two of the classiest guys in the business. How have you survived?

We’ve managed to hang around, stick to our guns and do what it is that brought us to this point. When the audience comes to see us we don’t have any shock, no surprises. They know they’re going to hear some of the greatest music ever written in the Great American Songbook. Eydie and I, individually and collectively, still work with a big orchestra — live musicians, no lip syncing. What you see is what you get. We were brought up in that era and that’s what we do. I have seen performers that literally have on a microphone with a button they push and a prerecord comes on. Why would you come see that? Stay home and listen to the records. To me a live performance should be a live performance because that’s where you get that electricity, that heat that changes things.

You’re performing solo this weekend. Is it easier working alone?

Working with Eydie is a lot better than working alone because there’s somebody there to bounce off. Very often she’ll say something I’ve never heard before. So I’m listening like an audience. Someone asked, “Who wrote your act?” Nobody. I say, “How are you?” and she talks for an hour. But it’s always fun. You never know what the other one is going to say. We are professionals and we’ve been around a long time so we know there are bits that work and we have a beginning, a middle and an end, but in between we’re just fishing and sometimes things pop up for the first time and we’re happy we showed up that night, too.

Is it harder for entertainers of your caliber to get a gig in Vegas?

Most of the places that offered that kind of entertainment are gone, everything is big and water and explosions. It’s the new show business.

It used to be about the personality — whether it was Frank or Dean or Sammy or all three or four. Whoever the comedian or the performer was it was more about the variety, about the singing and the dancing and comedy and music. Today, they wow you with the explosions. But I think there is room for a place for entertainers like us, a place in a smaller hotel, a boutique, where you walk in and they know your name.

Where do you do most of your performing now?

Some of the Indian places, casinos in San Diego, Palm Springs. We go back East to a couple of Indian casinos. But for the most part Eydie and I work theaters and concert halls all over the country, and on occasion we work with symphonies.

Vegas has changed in the 50 years you’ve been performing here. Good or bad?

Nobody ever envisioned a vertical Vegas. It’s different. If you liked it before, you’re probably not so crazy about it now. I’m not so crazy about the fact that the traffic is like Los Angeles, and the pollution and the crime that never existed here. We used to take chips from the El Rancho to the Sahara and they would honor the chips. You could take them to the grocery store and they would even cash your chips. But change is the only thing that’s constant. Sad, but true. Some changes for the better.

What about the cultural changes, the way people act and dress?

That’s not too good, is it, when you get up there and you’re opening line is a four-letter word and nobody flinches? What’s happened is people don’t dress in the show and so people don’t dress to come see the show. Years ago you couldn’t get in without a shirt and tie. Some women wore gloves. When you go to a concert hall and see people next to you with thongs, shorts, T-shirts, tank top, I don’t know. Pretty soon they’ll just be coming in g-strings, and those are the guys.