René Angélil will be buried in Montréal’s Notre-Dame Basilica (the site of his 1994 marriage to Celine Dion) today, January 22, after lying in state for a day. On the 23rd, here in Vegas, the Celine Dion Fan Club will hold a candlelight vigil at the backstage doors of Caesars Palace’s Colosseum. The February 3 memorial observance at Caesars Palace is, indeed, intended for the general public, for whom Angélil’s was a well-known and beloved face.
On the night of Angélil’s death (Jan 14.), the hotel where his wife has been performing, on and off, since 2002, posted a giant photo of him on its marquee in tribute stating simply, "We will miss you friend. From your Caesars Palace family." As for the memorial service itself, organizer AEG Live says it will be held from 7 until 9 p.m. on February 3, but that it couldn’t confirm anything else at this point. Neither could Caesars, with whom we also spoke, although some celebrity-gossip sites we checked are suggesting that it will take the form of a "Celebration of Life"-themed concert by the singer.
With Angélil’s passing, tales of his gambling habits are re-emerging from the woodwork. But while Caesars executive and former Las Vegas mayor Jan Jones landed herself in hot water back in 2007 when she claimed that he gambled (with the implication being also lost) $1 million a week, World Series of Poker publicist Nolan Dalla recalled that while his inscrutable visage was a familiar sight in the poker room, the pots tended to be around, say, $15,000 and "Angélil probably had handkerchiefs that cost more than that!"
Decades earlier, Las Vegas Advisor Publisher Anthony Curtis used to play blackjack on the same tournament circuit as Angélil, or "Frenchie" as he was known by his card-playing contemporaries, in a nod to his Canadian roots. (Although born in Québec, the former singer was actually half-Lebanese, half-Syrian.) Curtis recalls that out on the main casino floor, Rene was a big-time player of negative-expectation games, like craps -- a fact acknowledged by Celine upon her return to the Colosseum in 2011, when she quipped from the stage that for Rene,"being in Vegas again is an even bigger dream come true," whereupon she mimicked throwing dice and declared, "He's all in!"
Apparently lamenting some bad press regarding his habit, Celine once told the Los Angeles Times: "He’s got this gambling thing that I don’t. It’s unfortunate that people can write whatever they want." However, in a rejoinder for a local Vegas publication, Anthony Curtis countered from his own personal experience: "Back in the mid-’80s (Celine would have been about 15), I played with a team of tournament experts. A handful of regular players would show up at these competitions, and Rene was one of them. While I can’t comment on how well he plays all the casino games, I can vouch for his talent in big-money tournaments. When I’d get my table draws, there were a few names I didn’t want to see—and René Angélil was one of them." Curtis also vouches for the fact that Angélil had a reputation for being a good poker player – a mantel not bestowed lightly in this city. According to poker site CardPlayer.com, he amassed $750,505 in live-tournament cashes.
Along with his lifelong passion for games of chance, the young Angélil had turned to music management after his rock group, The Baronets, broke up back in the Sixties, after having limited success with records like a cover of The Beatles’ "Hold Me Tight." In 1980, he encountered the work of a 12-year-old Quebec vocalist, Celine Dion, who sent him a demo of her performing a song composed by her mother. So impressed was Angélil that, to finance Dion’s debut album, La Voix du Bon Dieux he mortgaged his house. "At that time I had been in the business for 20 years. In those 20 years, I had never heard or had a feeling come out of someone like this little girl I had in front of me. I had shivers all over, you know," Angélil explained to The Associated Press.
And, on the subject of being on the wrong end of a gamble, it was during that same time that Curtis and others had a chance to invest in a budding young French-Canadian chanteuse, a tape of whose singing her mentor would play for anybody who’d listen, in an effort to raise additional funding to help launch her career. Perhaps to his eternal regret, Curtis, along with others, passed on this opportunity of a lifetime. (Instead, Rene wound up mortgaging his home in order to get Celine’s first album, , La Voix du Bon Dieux, made.)
It was Angélil who coaxed Dion into learning English, leading to her international breakthrough in the early 1990s. As the singer matured, her professional and personal life became increasingly entwined with Angélil’s, culminating in that glitzty, 1994 wedding in Notre Dame Basilica. (The marriage was Angelil’s third and longest.) Their married life was not always smooth. In 2000, he paid $2 million to Yun Kyeong Kwon Sung after she accused him of groping her in an Imperial Palace elevator. Sung and her husband were later indicted and sentenced to jail time for extortion and bribery but the charges were eventually overturned on appeal in 2008. Angélil rationalized the payoff as a way of shielding his wife from stress when they were trying to conceive a child.
Although Angélil has two children from previous marriages, starting a family with Dion was a struggle. Eventually, with medical intervention, she was able to have three sons, Rene-Charles (b. 2001), and twins Nelson and Eddy (b. 2010). However, Angelil was not fortunate with the throat cancer that eventually killed him. It went into lengthy remission following a 1999 surgery (whereupon Caesars Palace became the scene of a lavish renewal of Angélil and Dion’s wedding vows), but another operation was needed in 2013, and he was diagnosed with it yet again, fatally, in 2015. "We have asked many times, how long does he have, three weeks, three months? René wants to know," Dion told USA Today, "but they say they don’t know."
Angélil’s honors included a 1988 Felix Award for Manager of the Year. He also starred in the French-Canadian talent show Star Academie in 2008, and again in 2009 (the same year he reportedly underwent aortic surgery) and 2012. So great was Angélil’s celebrity in his native Canada that his funeral will be televised on three networks. Montreal police, in deference to the occasion, will be setting aside their dispute with the city over new uniforms and wearing their dress blues. Observing a period of mourning, Dion will not sing at the service.
Trevor Payne, founder of the Montreal Jubilation Choir, knew Angélil for almost 50 years and told the CBC of him and Dion, they were "out of the eye of the general public, they were the kindest, most down-to-earth, superstars that I've ever known in my entire career. Once they decided that you were what they wanted as part of the show — whether you were making the sandwiches or backing them on stage — it made no difference. Everyone was equal, everyone was important, and they went out of their way to drive that home to everyone."
And as Nolan Dalla fondly remembers, during an interview with Barbara Walters, in which Celine was being probed none-too-subtly about whether her husband had a gambling problem, the singer responded matter-of-factly, and to everyone’s surprise: "The truth is — René’s a gambler. Of course he is. And, I’m glad he is. One reason I’m glad he’s a gambler I’ll give you: Because he mortgaged his house so that I could do my first album when I was 12 years old. We had absolutely no money at that time. Want to talk about being a gambler? That was a really big gamble. That’s probably the biggest gamble we’ve ever done."
As to when full details of the Feb. 3 tribute will be announced, your guess is as good as ours, but we'll be sure to post them in Today's News and via @LVA_Tweet, so keep an eye out for updates in the days ahead.
