Are the Stars Out Tonight?

By Gerald Clarke

Less and less in Las Vegas, more and more in Atlantic City

The news may not rouse much sympathy from autoor steelworkers, but even big-name casino entertainers are finding it harder to shake the money tree these days. Salaries, which jumped as high as $350,000 a week during the palmy '70s, are quietly being renegotiated downward. Many casinos, in both Las Vegas and Atlantic City, have discovered that they do not need megatalent at all. "Tell me," asks John Jenkins, former co-owner of Vegas' Aladdin, "which of these lousy monkeys is worth $300,000 a week?"

It is a good, if rudely phrased, question that more and more casino operators are asking themselves. The answer: very few. In the past year, most of the 36 major Vegas casinos, hit by the economic slump like nearly everyone else, have done some simple arithmetic: they can put on a flashy revue, with a whole troupe of dancers, magicians and comics, for less than they pay one star.

"Star salaries just went crazy," says Edward Torres, owner of the Aladdin, which made the switch to revues in March. "The performers have absolutely no regard for the casino operator. People don't want to pay $40 or $50 a ticket to see them." Indeed, after Labor Day, only three Vegas casinos, Caesars Palace, the MGM Grand and the Riviera, plan to book headliners, less than half the number often years ago.

By comparison with depressed Vegas, the Atlantic City casinos are booming. Since 1978, when gambling was made legal, nine casinos have opened on the four-mile-long Boardwalk, and two more are on the way. Located within 300 miles of 50 million people, and an easy drive from New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Baltimore, Atlantic City draws a less sophisticated crowd than its more cosmopolitan Western rival. Many people come to Atlantic City for only a few hours, in fact, changing clothes in their cars before the evening's show. Others arrive by bus; some 200,000 buses disgorged passengers in the city last year.

To the tourists who crowd this giant slot machine-by-the-sea, stars are still a novelty, and an appearance by a Wayne

Newton or a Tom Jones is an almost certain sellout. One of the oddest spectacles in America, in fact, has to be a Tom Jones audience, in which a couple of dozen women, usually attractive and well dressed, throw their panties onto the stage and compete for what appears to be a deep kiss from the male master of the bump and grind. Yet even in Atlantic City only four casinos regularly count on stars to help fill the gaming rooms. Like their counterparts in Vegas, the other five produce their own revues.

For the casinos, entertainment is a lure, a come-on to entice gamblers through the doors; the value of an act is measured by how much it raises the "drop," the total volume of bets on the gaming floors. Five years ago, even a fee of $100,000 or more a week seemed a bargain if a star actually pulled customers onto the gaming floors. Just before his death in 1977, Elvis Presley was paid about $125,000 a week by the Las Vegas Hilton, for example, and, in the way salaries are measured, he was worth every penny. "Elvis not only sold out every show, but we had to turn down thousands of requests for tickets every day," says Hilton Executive Vice President Henri Lewin. "He would have been reasonable if he had cost the hotel $1 million a week."

In the late '70s, however, the fees suddenly doubled and tripled. When the Riviera signed Dolly Parton for a widely publicized $350,000 a week in 1979, every other entertainer in town put a call through to his agent. As Jenkins remembers it: "Every other performer with an ego the size of the Astrodome said, 'If that big-bosomed broad is making that kind of money, I should be too.' " Two years ago, the bubble burst: for only the second time in its 50-year history as a gambling resort, Las Vegas felt the effects of a national recession. Now, even if they do attend a show, too many customers avoid the slot machines and the gaming tables; when the curtain descends, they head for the side exits, asking only if the casino validates parking tickets.

As they watch the golden goose waddling away, even some of the entertainers are angry at their greedier colleagues. "Star entertainers have escalated salaries to the point that they have become prohibitive," complains Comedian Norm Crosby. "It is not living money they are asking for. It is ego money." Says Robert Goulet: "Performers have priced themselves out of work. No one deserves the money some of them were getting."

Goulet, who stars at Las Vegas' Dunes, got his job by agreeing to a unique deal: the casino gives him no fee at all, but picks up all costs and splits the gate with him. If he packs the house, he can make about $40,000 a week. Other stars have cut their asking prices. Bobby Vinton and Dionne Warwick, for instance, have gone down from $125,000 a week to $75,000.

Still, some of the stars continue to draw, and a very few continue to command huge salaries. Frank Sinatra, for instance, attracts not only customers, but high-rolling customers. During the eight days he played Atlantic City's Resorts International this past June, the drop was $6.5 million larger than it had been during the same period in 1981, more than enough to justify his staggering fee of $50,000 a show. "We didn't fork over the kind of money we gave Sinatra because we're nice guys," says Resorts Executive Vice President H. Steve Norton. "It pays off for us as a marketing tool. It's better for us financially to have this crowd on our property than in another casino down the Boardwalk."

Another marketing tool named Diana Ross helped add $5 million to Resorts' drop in May, and when Engelbert Humperdinck appeared there over the Fourth of July weekend, the casino set all-time records. Says Norton: "We've basically eliminated most of the performers who don't cover their own costs." No casino is likely to repeat the mistake of the Aladdin Hotel, which put Donnie and Marie Osmond into its Baghdad Room last summer. "Their crowds drank Cokes and left," says one Vegas marketing analyst.

In their sometimes desperate search for the perfect but inexpensive come-on, both cities are experimenting with different kinds of entertainment, including old-fashioned Broadway shows. A road show of The Pirates of Penzance was a hit at Resorts, and Las Vegas' Desert Inn reported success with touring troupes of A Chorus Line, Annie and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Most of the stars may have priced themselves out of their old homes at the casinos, but Broadway may have found a whole new, high-rolling audience. --By Gerald Clarke. Reported by Phil Hevener/Las Vegas and Jack E. White/Atlantic City

With reporting by Phil Hevener, Jack E. White

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