Not only was Robert Goulet synonymous with Las Vegas entertainment, he eventually made the city his home. Its medical facilities, however, were inadequate to treat him when he was diagnosed with interstitial pulmonary fibrosis in October 2007. While awaiting a lung transplant, the veteran singer, actor and showbiz icon died in Los Angeles, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, 17 days after being transferred from a Vegas-area hospital.
Unlike most of the casinos he played, the site of Goulet’s Vegas debut still stands. He bowed at the Flamingo in February 1963. The month previous, he’d wrapped up a 25-month run on Broadway as Lancelot in the original production of Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot, the first of five shows in which he would star on the Great White Way.
Goulet became such a Strip staple that he particular treasured a mid-Seventies photo that showed his name on the marquees of both the Desert Inn and across the street at the Frontier. The latter had found itself without a headliner on short notice. Goulet, wrapping up a two-week stint at the Desert Inn, came to the Frontier’s rescue. Since both casinos were owned by Howard Hughes’ Summa Corp. there were no contractual hurdles to overcome. Between shows, Goulet would sit out back of the Frontier in a mobile home, kept company by Thor, his fierce German Shepherd.
From that point forward, Goulet was a Frontier regular, playing punishing 12-shows-a-week gigs two months a year. With characteristic good humor, Goulet described the regimen as "a pleasant sojourn," recalling that he’d get home at 4 a.m. and hit the links four hours later. Moving to the Vegas suburbs, near Sunset Park, in 1974 "was almost like a vacation."
Goulet’s Frontier era would be followed by a 36-week stint at the Dunes in 1982. That same year, he’d married third wife Vera Chochorovska Novak at Vegas’ Little Church of the West, riding straight from the chapel to the Dunes afterward. Their marriage lasted 25 years and Vera Novak was at Goulet’s bedside when he died.
During that nine-month Dunes stand, Goulet’s friends and colleagues liked to play practical jokes while he was onstage, to help stave off monotony during such a long run. He also graced many a Vegas-set TV episode or movie, right up to NBC’s Las Vegas in 2005. The City of Las Vegas even held an official Robert Goulet Day on July 27, 1994. That knowledge probably would have galled Elvis Presley; it was the sight of Goulet onscreen that drove the King to famously shoot out his TV set.
But the mid-Eighties marked a downturn in his Vegas fortunes. As columnist and friend John L. Smith wrote at the time of Goulet’s passing, "Despite his incredible gifts as a singer and entertainer, there wasn’t much room for him in the new Las Vegas, which brims with acrobatic expressionism, Broadway hits, and over-the-moon superstars with their own showrooms. Unless your name is Tony Bennett, you’re about out of luck as a Las Vegas legend these days." He "four-walled" showrooms at the Aladdin (in 1991) and, 10 years later, the Venetian, but Goulet’s drawing power had waned, even if his voice had not. Among Goulet’s other frustrations during that period was his inability to revive Camelot as a resident show at the Aladdin Theater for the Performing Arts.
(When the Las Vegas Review-Journal briefly took to running an unflattering photo of a paunchy-looking Smith, Goulet rang the "Bard of the Boulevard" up, exhorting him to suck in his gut. "Suck it in! I do it every day," Goulet declared.)
Following the Venetian gig, there was hope that he’d headline whatever resort Phil Ruffin would build to replace the (now-New) Frontier … but Ruffin never built anything and eventually sold the land to Israeli developers. As Goulet said in 2005, "My dream job would be to be [in Las Vegas] for the rest of my life,"
The entertainer’s funeral was held Nov. 9, 2007 at Vegas’ Shrine of the Most Holy Redeemer. Tony Curtis, Debbie Reynolds, Steve Lawrence, Jimmy Kimmel, Sarah Silverman, Danny Gans, Lance Burton and Frank Marino were among the mourners. One of the readings during the service was a directive that Goulet had penned during the final weeks of his life: "There will be sadness and some tears, but shared memories will evoke laughter and that will make me happy. They should discern a chortle from my urn!"
