Things have not been going to well for the Wayner of late, with mounting reports of dire financial straits, compounded by the recent illness of his daughter. Here's a recap of the past few months, and some background, plus the latest news/gossip we've read.
Born Carson Wayne Newton in Norfolk, Virginia in 1942, he was first discovered by a Las Vegas booking agent while performing on a local TV show with his brother, back in 1958. That was the beginning of career that's seen numerous television appearances, movie roles (often as himself), and headlining gigs in Las Vegas at properties including the Flamingo, Stardust, and most recently the Tropicana. In 1994 he performed his 25,000th show in town, by which time he was known as "Mr Las Vegas."
Still, the singer who was once listed as the highest-paid entertainer in the world by the Guinness Book of World Records has had a checkered career financially. In 1992, he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to reorganize an estimated $20 million in debts, much of which was due to a libel suit against NBC. By the end of that decade Newton's finances were said to be be healthy once again, but it didn't last too long.
In 2007, the singer allegedly borrowed $3.35 million from Speedway Motorsports chairman and (at that time) friend Bruton Smith, a loan that Smith says he's failed to repay. The loan was secured by Newton's 38-acre Las Vegas residence, the Casa de Shenandoah (on Sunset at Pecos), and his private jet. However, in January of this year Oakland County International Airport sued Newton for over $60,000 in unpaid parking fees and revealed that the Fokker F28, which was once worth over $2 million, is now rotting and full of black mold and can only be used for scrap. In addition, Newton is also still entangled in a $32,000 lawsuit for hay delivered to the ranch for his dozens of Arabian horses, an action that dates back to 2009.
The word is that Smith's now looking to foreclose on the entertainer's Las Vegas ranch and on the morning of February 25 unmarked Metro police patrol cars and four large moving vans with dozens of movers were spotted at the ranch. It turned out that Clark County Sheriff's process servers were attempting to serve the performer in connection with a case brought by his former pilot, Monty Ward, who in 2009 won a judgement for almost a half-million dollars in back wages -- a sum that's been accruing interest ever since. Security personnel present at the residence refused to accept service of the documents. The presence of the moving vans has yet to be explained, but our understanding is that nothing was removed from the property.
A couple weeks later, online celebrity gossip site TMZ.com reported that Wayne Newton's wife, Kathleen McCrone Newton, had filed court documents in an attempt to separate her assets from those of her financially-troubled husband, claiming that items she keeps at Casa Shenandoah - including art, jewelry and musical instruments - do not belong to him.
On top of mounting financial pressure, the Newtons have also been hit by a series of personal tragedies in recent months. Last December, his wife's eldest sister Mary McCrone died suddenly in Los Angeles of heart failure at age 46. This came just six days after the death of Newton family friend actress Brittany Murphy, who had joined Newton on USO tours of the Middle East.
Then, in February, Newton canceled a string of shows at the Tropicana, where he's currently headling in the portentously titled, Once Before I Go, when his eldest daughter Erin was rushed into a St Louis hospital. The only child of the singer's first marriage to Elaine Okamura, which ended in 1985, Erin was in the third trimester of her pregnancy when she developed the rare condition known as HELLP syndrome, which caused liver, kidney, and respiratory failure. Her baby boy was delivered by caesarean section, but during the delivery Erin fell into a coma, from doctors told her devastated father that she was unlikely to recover.
However, after almost two weeks in a comatose state, Erin unexpectedly regained consciousness. She was recovering but still hospitalized, with her father at her side, when the sheriffs and movers showed up at his home. And that's the last we've heard on the personal front, aside from the fact that these medical expenses only served to worsen Newton's financial woes. Business-wise, Wayne Newton back performing at the Tropicana, where Once Before I Go is scheduled to run through April 24, but reviews of the show -- and his voice -- have not been kind, and there's no word of the contract being extended. Sources allegedly close to the singer claim that his affairs have long been horribly mis-managed, and that a combination of his own extravagance, combined with the pillaging of his money by those around him, have left his finances in acute disarray.
Mr Las Vegas has been down before and turned things around, so perhaps he can do it again, although at age sixty-seven and with long-documented vocal problems, it's hard to know how he'll pull it off this time. Still, we can only wish him and his family well and hope the future has better times in store for them.
