Behind the Candelabra by Scott Thorson

Author:Scott Thorson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: 1988-06-22T07:00:00+00:00

16

I always thought of Gladys Luckie as more than a housekeeper. She became a friend, a good one. On the days when Lee and I were home, I used to enjoy watching television with her in her room. Her comments on the programs were down-to-earth and often perceptive. It was in Gladys’s room, one evening in 1979, that I first saw Andrea McArdle on a variety show. Gladys and I were immediately impressed by the young Broadway star. The minute I heard McArdle sing I knew she’d be right for Lee’s act. Fortunately, he was nearby and I managed to get him to Gladys’s room while McArdle was still on the screen. “Lee, with that big voice, she’d be perfect for Vegas,” I said enthusiastically.

He was putting together a new act and that meant finding new talent. I was eager to help. A few weeks earlier I’d watched the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes and suggested they might be a terrific addition to the new act. There’d been talk about disbanding the Rockettes and their many outraged fans had risen up in their defense. The Rockettes, famous for their high-kicking precision dance numbers, were an American institution, like apple pie and baseball. Lee had instantly agreed with the idea of making them a part of his Vegas show. By employing the Rockettes he’d have a chance to help preserve the act and, at the same time, benefit from all the publicity generated by their proposed disbanding. Lee couldn’t resist the combination.

“Terrific idea, Scott,” he complimented me. “We’ll bring New York to Las Vegas.” It was the kind of “high concept” he favored.

After he heard McArdle sing, his response was equally enthusiastic. “I think we should audition her as soon as possible,” he said. Seymour Heller was given the job of making all the arrangements.

Lee worked with young people whenever he could, in part because audiences were always sympathetic and predisposed to like young performers. In the early days he’d done his chopsticks routine with children from the audience. After the act got too big and elaborate to keep that up, Lee started to feature young performers instead. McArdle would be part of a long line that included such acts as the Little Angels of Korea, the Young Americans, the teenage, banjo-playing Scottie Plumber, and the amazing, under-ten-year-old acrobat David Lee. They were a formidably talented group of young people and very popular with the Vegas audiences. In the future he would pluck his next protégé from their midst.

McArdle flew to Vegas for her audition and she was even more impressive onstage—in person—than she’d been on television. She’d learned her craft on Broadway, where she was an enormous hit in the long-running Annie before growing too old for the part. Those months in a hit show had given her tremendous confidence, a sure knowledge of stagecraft, the ability to project. Her big voice easily filled the cavernous Hilton showroom and barely needed amplification.

She seemed completely at ease both onstage and in the adult world of Vegas.

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