Viva Las Vegas - Wayne Newton

Wayne Newton is one of the few headlining entertainers from the golden era of Las Vegas who still perform nightly.

The veteran singer signed one of the largest contracts in entertainment history with the Stardust Resort and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip, which calls for him to perform six shows a week, 40 weeks a years, for the next ten years at the newly renamed Wayne Newton Theater.

In a business that is, at best, volatile, and success sometimes short lived, Wayne Newton - aka 'Mr Las Vegas' - life has epitomised the talent, glamour and energy that is Las Vegas.

By the age of 6, Newton was already doing a daily radio show before school and performed for President Truman when he was in the first grade.

Throughout the rest of his school years he appeared on a local TV show, and toward the end of his junior year a Las Vegas booking agent saw the show and took Wayne and his brother Jerry back for an audition. For 46 weeks the Newton Brothers did six 'lounge singer' shows between 5 and 11PM.

Several years later, when offered the opportunity to open for a comic at one of Las Vegas's 'big rooms' at the Flamingo Hilton, Newton asked if he could headline instead. It was November, a very quiet time for the town, so his request was granted. The night he opened, the locals came out in droves. Newton subsequently broke all the hotel's records, and has been synonymous with Las Vegas ever since.