Question of the Day - 10 September 2024

There’s no clear-cut answer to this one. We forwarded your query to Cult Vegas author and former Las Vegas Review-Journal entertainment reporter and reviewer Mike Weatherford, who knows all there is to know about showbiz in Sin City. Even he was somewhat stumped. 

Mike says, "Ah, the days when I used to try to figure this stuff out. It's easier to quantify by bracket years, but very hard to try to calculate the number of shows. That would take extensive research and I'm not even sure guys like Wayne Newton and others in the Summa rotation back in the '70s were keeping count show by show.

“For instance, Rickles and his PR guy weren't sure if he played here every single year or if he ever skipped a year when he was doing TV shows, or movies like Kelly's Heroes, or whatnot. And Wayne Newton was away from Vegas a few years in the '90s when he tried to make a go of it in Branson.”

According to Weatherford’s obituary of Rickles, the acidic comedian played Vegas for 57 years running. He made his Sin City debut in May 1959, closing out an epic run at the Orleans in 2016. “During that stretch, there is no way to know if he ever missed a year, but no reason to believe he did,” the obit ran.

By contrast, Frank Sinatra lasted a mere 42 years, counting several where he played downtown instead of the Strip. Tony Bennett chalked up 56 years, but those weren’t always consecutive, Weatherford says.

In Sinatra's case, it’s difficult to keep track of how much he played and where, because he favored so many casinos with his talents. According to Weatherford’s record keeping, Ol’ Blue Eyes bowed in at the Desert Inn in 1951 and bowed out at MGM Grand 43 years later. In between, he played the Sands, Caesars Palace, Golden Nugget, Riviera, and Bally’s.

“Even a tally of Sinatra’s Caesars Palace years is difficult. He had to cancel a few times and did one show on some nights, two on others,” Weatherford writes. “That said, a rough tally of Sinatra at Caesars from 1968 through 1983 puts him in the ballpark of 425 shows. So that’s 15 of the most productive of his 43 years on the Strip, and they still didn’t get him halfway to 1,000.”

Even those indefatigable illusionists Penn & Teller might be outdone by David Copperfield, both in sheer number of shows and years playing Vegas. Copperfield is said to be such a workhorse that he does two shows a night, seven nights a week (usually), and even three shows a day around the holidays.

In 2016, when Celine Dion marked her 1,000th Vegas show, Weatherford wrote, “It must be said that resident Las Vegas entertainers — anyone from David Copperfield to Carrot Top — can reach the 1,000 mark in five years or less. Mac King has done two shows a day at Harrah’s Las Vegas for almost 17 years, putting him north of 8,160 by now. Even working outside Las Vegas for part of each year, Penn &Teller are past 3,300 at the Rio.”

Elvis Presley was a lazybones by comparison. After 29 shows at the New Frontier in 1956, he returned famously to the International (now Westgate) for 637, every one sold out. That brings his grand total in Sin City to an eschatological 666. Our thanks to Mike for pointing out that ghoulish fact.

Penn & Teller don’t appear to be even close to the top (we suspect PR hype is being used in the "longest-running" billing), far outpaced by Mac King and others. Given the extreme difficulty of reconstructing the history of Las Vegas, never mind its entertainers, the who-was-first (and second) question made be lost to the sands of time … or at least with the Sands itself.