Thirty minutes after finishing his show at the Linq and meeting and greeting dozens of fans at the showroom entrance, Frank Marino still has a little diva in him. “Do you see any advertising about me around this hotel?” he asks. “Walk around and tell me if you see one picture. No. It’s all on the entertainer.”
The star and founder of Frank Marino’s Divas Las Vegas often vents in such a way. He is frequently an amalgam of his onstage portrayal of Joan Rivers and the real Frank Marino who runs the Divas Las Vegas operation. He’s not completely alone, though sometimes it seems so, as Marino works and lives in a partnership with his life partner, Alex Schechter, and the company for which Schechter is an executive, Adam Steck’s SPI Entertainment.
In September, Marino will celebrate 30 years as a Strip headliner. He first starred in An Evening at La Cage at the Riviera and, for the past five-plus years, has headlined in Divas Las Vegas, in what is now the Linq (formerly Imperial Palace and the Quad). Oddly enough, Marino will outlast his original hotel, as the Riv is now due for sale to the LVCVA and will be demolished this year.
But Marino, in his ever-present Joan Rivers role, just keeps moving along, advancing his show with such new characters as Shania Twain, Katy Perry, Rihanna and Pink. He plans to add Cyndi Lauper and Pat Benatar, and would love to find a guy who can deliver a dynamite Miley Cyrus. “I’m always looking for the next hot mess,” he says.
Highlights from a recent backstage visit with the Strip’s longest-running headliner:
On keeping the show fresh: “The difference between Divas and La Cage is, in Divas we don’t rest on our laurels. Yes, you’re going to see the staples—Diana Ross, Cher, Madonna, Liza. They go crazy for Liza. But we do have to get the new crowd in, so we have the Katy Perrys, the Rihannas. It’s very hard to find new people, because they have to be at the level of the people who are already in the show. I don’t want a big drop. My audience is prom kids to senior citizens. You have to find people who everybody knows.”
On the possibility that some characters won’t work in the show: “We put Adele in and she bombed. Donna Summer bombed, too, and that’s my fault, because we didn’t do it right. Adele just wasn’t a big enough star to integrate into the show. Legends [in Concert] has an Adele in their show, and her voice was flawless and amazing, like Adele’s, and that’s why it sold. But I do best when I go like a horse in a race, blinders on the sides, and don’t look behind me at what someone else is doing. I prevail that way.”
On his reputation as one of the most media-savvy entertainers in Las Vegas: “I am a self-proclaimed media whore. You have to work to be noticed. There’s a thing in town called Cirque du Soleil. So, you can’t stop. Maybe I should change the name of my show to Cirque du So Gay.”
On the pressures on entertainers to produce, market, direct and perform in their own shows: “At the Riv, I was actually an employee of the producer, but I had a deal with the producer of La Cage, and they had a deal with the hotel. It’s called a two-wall. Best situation ever. You got a guarantee of X-amount of dollars ... Now, I’m a vendor, I pay a lot of money for a late-night time slot in a hotel that doesn’t have a front door. It’s a four-wall deal, and the way it works is you are totally responsible for everything.”
On the biggest challenge in his show today: “Trying to sell the show to men. What do I mean by that? The wife will see me on television, and when they’re on vacation—after she’s bought tickets to her Cirque show and Jersey Boys—she’ll see me on a cab and say, “I saw him on TV, on such-and-such a show. Let’s go see him.” I’d bet, nine times out of 10, the husband says, ‘I don’t wanna see it!’ But she’ll drag him to the show—pun intended—and he’ll love it.”
On keeping the Rivers character in the show after her death: “She has a huge fanbase, and those people want to see her. At 82 years old, her average fan was 26 at the time of her death. Amazing. I went to her funeral, and told her daughter, Melissa, “I’m going to take it out.” She said, “Don’t do that. If anybody would want you to keep doing it, it would be my mom.” So I keep it in and the audience actually loves her more now than when she was alive.”
On his next destination after stepping away from the stage: “The grave (laughs). I say always that I would like to retire at 55 from the stage. But if I’m still gorgeous, I’ll keep going.”
Frank Marino's Divas Las Vegas Nightly, 9:30 p.m., $79-$101. Linq Theater, 702-794-3261.
