Oldies but Goodies: Acts of Past Decades Wow ‘em at South Bay Venues : Entertainment: From Phyllis Diller to the Captain and Tenille, shining stars of yesteryear thrill crowds.

The audience is screaming with laughter.

One man pounds on a table so hard it almost tips on its side.

On stage, dressed in a blonde wig and a sequined gown open to her thighs, 76-year-old Phyllis Diller was taking uproarious aim at her age.

“You know you are getting old when your walker gets an air bag . . . If your sexual fantasies involve Jesse Helms . . . and your liver spots show through your gloves . . . and they discontinued your blood type . . . “

The venue is the Normandie Casino Showroom in Gardena. And while it ain’t Vegas, the red-velvet room is packed.

Comedy clubs, concert halls and sports arenas may get the cutting-edge acts these days, but the Normandie sells out with stars from as far back as the ‘50s. Golden-oldie acts also sell at The Strand in Redondo Beach, where recent performers have included Kansas, the Jeff Healey Band and the latest incarnation of Jefferson Starship.

“They know I’m funny,” said Diller, who performed two shows at the Normandie in November, between appearances in Fresno and Tucson. “I have a long, long history of comedy, 38 years. I’m sort of pre-sold, packaged. Sort of like Morton salt or Coca-Cola. Steady as she goes.”

For performers like Diller, gigs on the Vegas strip may no longer be in the cards. But at clubs like the Normandie and The Strand, the retro stars are treated like royalty.

“She’s one great lady,” said Renee Chesonis, 40. “I’ve seen her through the years. I grew up with her and I always thought she was hysterical.”

“Did you see her? She did 50 minutes straight!” Bob Kiernan, 63, a retired machinist from Downey, said of the Diller show. “Not once did she give up a line. Not once. It’s like she hasn’t changed.”

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He and his wife, Eileen, 58, come to the showroom about twice a month. In fact, they are showroom regulars, having come to watch Blood, Sweat and Tears, Della Reese, and the 5th Dimension.

“I was a bit upset because we had to miss Frank Gorshin,” Kiernan said of the nightclub impressionist who played the Riddler on TV’s “Batman.” Gorshin had a concert at the Normandie in October.

At The Strand, acts from the past come most often from the 1970s, even though early 1980s stars are starting to sneak into the line-up. Cyndi Lauper, who reached popularity with the single “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” appeared there earlier this month.

“These are people who are more concerned about working than when their next album will be released or marketing products for their tour,” said Jon Lee, publicist for The Strand, which sometimes features new musical groups.

The Normandie Casino began featuring booked shows two years ago, when it invested almost $1 million to upgrade its showroom with an improved sound and lighting system. The casino eliminated regular variety shows for individual performances, mainly as a way to lure people into the casino to gamble.

But the likes of Diller, Crystal Gayle, Wolfman Jack and Percy Sledge came at a price. At the Normandie, in fact, the big acts rarely break even.

“It’s more for the advertising exposure,” said Steve Miller, general partner in the Normandie. “They have the name value, which is great in the marquee. But it is costly to subsidize.”

And most of the big names perform only on weekends.

“There’s still a following for them,” said Lou Alexander, a Beverly Hills booking agent and producer of Vegas stage shows. “But you can do it for one or two nights. You can’t do it for seven.”

So the Normandie still uses some variety shows and lesser-known individual performers to fill in the gaps. Mexican recording and singing star Olga Breeskin recently performed at the casino.

Star performers from yesteryear have no illusions that clubs like the Normandie rival the Hollywood Bowl. Halfway into her act, Diller blurted out: “Here we are in Arcadia. Where the hell are we?”

But to Diller and other longtime stars, it makes little difference. Where you perform isn’t as important as whether you keep up your routine, she said.

“Either you are in the business or you aren’t,” she said in her dressing room, before donning her silver gloves and boots and the pink gown. “And besides, the more you work, the better you get. Would you believe that if you take two weeks off, your timing, it takes a little bit to get it back?”

Before Gardena, she played Fresno, and after that it was Tucson. But no Vegas. These days, most Vegas showrooms feature big production shows, minus the celebrities.

“I’ll tell you what happened,” Diller said. “Dolly Parton asks for $250,000 a week. Everyone had to make a little more than the other guy. So what do the hotels do? For $250,000 they can all put on a girlie show for a whole year, or a country or rock ‘n’ roll show.”

The Vegas hotels that still feature headliners get the superstars: Diana Ross, Frank Sinatra and Barbara Streisand. Streisand will reportedly earn millions for performing at the new MGM Grand Hotel, Casino & Theme Park on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

Not so in the Normandie showroom, where the list of attractions reads like a “Whatever Became Of?” book.

Diller’s opening act at the Normandie was Billy Davis Jr. of 5th Dimension fame. An extra treat: Davis introduced a special guest in the audience, Marilyn McCoo, former host of “Solid Gold” and 5th Dimension cohort. The Normandie’s New Year’s show will feature Freddie Fender, at $30 a ticket.

In September, The Captain & Tenille, the 1970s icons who rarely perform live anymore except for benefits, private parties and cruise ships, performed two shows. They filled the 250-seat casino showroom to capacity, attracting fans from all age groups, including twentysomethings catching on to a 1970s resurgence.

“Our hits, we know that’s what they come for,” said Toni Tenille, who lives with the Captain (Daryl Dragon) just outside Reno. “So we sang ‘Love Will Keep Us Together’ and ‘Shop Around.’ And you can’t do the Captain & Tenille show without ‘Muskrat Love.’ ”

But it wasn’t easy coming back to Los Angeles, much less to Gardena. Tenille’s sister, who lives in Torrance, checked out the Normandie beforehand and was impressed with the stage, sound system and rain curtain, which proved useful when the couple performed “Come into the Rain.”

“When I first heard Gardena, you can imagine, we said, ‘No thanks,’ ” Tenille said. “But we did it, and it was really nice. We didn’t expect it.”

Although they have another Normandie show planned in April, it doesn’t mean they are begging for a comeback.

“There’s just not that many venues in L.A.,” she said. “Obviously, the Forum would be too big. But that’s not for us. We by our own choice have withdrawn from those shows. We were never happy in the big spotlight.”

Not that the oldies won’t get to the big gigs again. Tony Bennett, who a decade ago was performing in shopping malls, was the hit of radio station KROQ’s “Acoustic Christmas” at the Universal Amphitheatre, generating wild applause from a young crowd.

Diller’s crowd was no MTV generation. But she was still as sharp as ever, even with raunchy humor that could rival today’s stand-up comics.

“I’ve made the very best of what was once a tragedy,” she sang at the end of her show. “My breasts are firm. They ought to be: They used to be my knees . . . I’m nearly half bionic, but it looks so good on me.”