We sat at the bar, Wayne Newton and I—wait, no, we sat on the bar—at the entrance of Casa de Shenandoah museum. And as we sat on that countertop, unable to find a pair of barstools, Mr. Las Vegas said, “By now, you probably know more about me than I do.”
That’s a concept at once frightening and … possible. The Wayner and I have conducted many interviews over the years. During these sessions we’ve occupied Rolls-Royces on the Strip, and motorboats on Flathead Lake and a golf cart at Shenandoah. We’ve summoned the horses, penguins and love birds (real love birds) for photo shoots. We’ve hung with friends and family, singers and musicians, and even a little monkey named Boo.
This week, Newton opens Casa de Shenandoah to the public, an attraction five years in development that was at the center of a volley of lawsuits between the Newtons (Wayne and his wife, Kathleen) and their business partners, Texas banking magnates Lacy and Dorothy Harber and the onetime manager of the property, Steve Kennedy, who shared financial stake in the company CDS LLC. In June 2013, the Newtons reached a financial settlement with the Harbers and moved to an estate two miles away on East Oquendo Road, but were lured back in a new arrangement with the Harbers in which Mr. Las Vegas has assembled a lavish museum and tour on the 52-acre ranch.
The museum tour, guided by Newton on video screens, features a series of Rolls-Royces previously owned by Johnny Cash, Steve McQueen, Liberace and Harrah’s founder Bill Harrah; a gold microphone Frank Sinatra gave to Newton back in the 1970s; the letter Elvis wrote from his Las Vegas Hilton suite that sparked the Newton song, “The Letter”; a Stradivarius owned by Jack Benny; the canoe ridden by Katharine Hepburn and Henry Ford in “On Golden Pond”; a set of costumes, including a faded-purple, Western-styled outfit made by Newton’s mother, Evelyn Marie, when he was 4 years old; Newton’s famed Fokker F28 private jet; the Red Room in the main mansion, where Newton conducted many of his one-on-one interviews by a desk once owned by Franklin Roosevelt; a gift shop across the street from the ranch that houses a movie theater playing a 15-minute documentary of Newton’s life and career; and an array of military mementos and jacket from Newton’s service overseas as the USO’s Celebrity Circle Chairman.
This does not count the up-close-and-personal look at Newton’s many Arabian horses, peacocks, Charlie the penguin and, yes, Boo the monkey. It seems they have it all covered at Wayne Newton’s Casa de Shenandoah, and maybe they do. I have yet to take the full tour, but there’s an off-chance there are some elements to Newton’s life that have been missed. Let’s fill in those blanks:
Wayne Newton is a bad driver. This was a now-infamous revelation from a night many years ago, specifically New Year’s Eve 1999. During a mad dash out of the since-imploded Stardust hotel-casino to make an interview with Connie Chung, Newton crisscrossed through the property’s west parking lot, made a left turn against one-way traffic on Industrial Road, and nearly sideswiped a limousine on the Strip while cutting through three lanes of traffic to reach the Bellagio, where Chung awaited. On the drive back to the hotel, he stopped just inches from a 6-foot potted plant at the VIP entrance. This would be the last time I ever took the passenger’s seat in a car driven by Wayne Newton.
The Echelon project helped cut short one of Newton’s runs on the Strip. Boyd Gaming chairman Bill Boyd told me a few years ago that he and Newton agreed to cut short Newton’s 10-year run at the Stardust because the casino company had committed to the multibillion-dollar resort on the Strip. “We made up our mind that we were going to implode [the Stardust] and build Echelon,” Boyd said in 2009. A five-year buyout clause in the original contract was exercised in 2005, a year before the Stardust was knocked down. Echelon, of course, never was built.
Newton has made several thousand phone calls to servicemen and women overseas. This is not a revelation, as Newton’s dedication to the military is well-known. But once, on the fly, he fulfilled a request to call the wife of a good friend of mine who was seriously ill—just took down the number and called from the Red Room’s red phone.
Newton does not golf. Why? “You’d never get me off the course,” he said during a party at the Frank Sinatra Celebrity Pro-Am in 1998, the year Sinatra passed away.
Newton does not gamble. Who has the time? But he is the rare entertainer to have held a gaming license, in the early 1980s when he held financial interest in the Aladdin.
Newton would have made many more TV and film appearances but for … “The fact that they wanted me to depict Las Vegas or myself in some kind of unfair and negative way,” he says. “I have turned down many roles in movies and on TV—including series—for that reason.”
Newton does not Tweet. Nor does he manage or use any of the social-media platforms under his name, or text, or carry a cell phone, or use a computer. At all. But he’s great fun at the counter.
Wayne Newton’s Casa de Shenandoah Monday-Saturday, 9 a.m.-6 p.m.; $35-$95. 3310 E. Sunset Road, 702-547-4811.
