A shot of old Vegas, on the rocks

THESE are tough times for Mr. Las Vegas. Less than a week into the run of his Christmas show at the Flamingo (scheduled through Dec. 23), Wayne Newton literally fell off his high horse. A lifetime rider, Newton noticed that the white Arabian horse he dramatically enters the show on was slipping on the waxed stage and says he rolled off his mount to allow the horse to steady.

That was just the latest in a series of jarring moments. A few days before that, just after a final rehearsal, union musicians walked off his show after failing to resolve an increasingly nasty dispute over the terms of the Flamingo engagement. For the moment, Newton is using replacement players.

“I have been employing union musicians for decades,” he says backstage after a recent show. “The thing I asked for is that I would not pay for rehearsals after a show or before a show for the simple reason that if you wanted a little extra bread, all you got to do is screw up the show [forcing extra rehearsals] and so at that point you are paying people to be incompetent.”

Musicians Union Local 369 President Frank Leone bristles at that suggestion. “Ludicrous,” he says. “Professionals pride themselves in their consistency and value their reputation. Ergo, professionals play accurately and learn the music in the time allotted. Perhaps with a band now seeded with amateurs, Wayne Newton needs free rehearsals. We are informed that one of the new nonunion players had to ask a colleague where to place his fingers on a certain instrument.”

This caps a year that saw Newton leave the Stardust halfway through a 10-year contract that, when it was announced in 1999, was heralded as one of the most lucrative in Las Vegas history, perhaps $25 million a year. The split was not acrimonious, but Newton’s future here was suddenly uncertain. (Though there are discussions that would likely keep him at the Flamingo through April, Newton says a deal has yet to be finalized.)

On top of all that, there is the problem of Newton’s voice, which has for years drawn savage reviews and, at this point, sounds totally shot even to the most casual listener. But he seems undaunted.

“I would leave show business before it left me,” he says, dismissing the idea of retirement. “We still are selling out. There is still a demand for what we do, and that gives me a reason to wake up. I don’t want to be in a rocking chair somewhere. I will work as long as I can enjoy it.”

And the truth is that except for his horrible voice (even his speech sounds strained), Newton at 63 radiates vigor. The Wayniacs, old and new, still make the pilgrimage to whatever desert shrine of a showroom He happens to be working at. On a recent night, a couple upfront had gone on their first date to see him 38 years ago and were back again, and a young pair were celebrating their first anniversary by seeing Him for the first time.

“I realized years ago,” Newton says, “that my audience was maturing as I was maturing, and I was going to have to also reach a different demographic. So I said, ‘From this day forward, when I do television or a motion picture I want it geared to a different demographic.’ That is the only conscious thing that I did -- from ‘Vegas Vacation’ to James Bond to ‘Cribs’ was really geared to that. It worked.”

So, for example, when potty-mouthed comic Robert Schimmel asked Newton to appear in “Guilty as Charged,” Schimmel’s 1994 Showtime special, the comedian was surprised that the entertainer agreed. “Newton goes, ‘You tell me what time and where to be and I’ll be there.’ Next thing I know here’s Wayne Newton in a tuxedo going, ‘OK, where’s my lines?’ ” (Newton also had a reality show, “The Entertainer,” which aired this year on E!.)

It’s tempting to wonder where a throwback like Newton fits into the new Las Vegas of twentysomething hipsters, celebrity-chasing nightclubs and year-round Celine. But that’s easy. Much of his draw is simply that Newton is one of the last links to the legendary swank of old Vegas. He has performed on the Strip longer than most Strip casinos have been standing -- he headlined the Flamingo back when it was still the joint Bugsy Siegel built. “I came here in November of 1963, and I was here until 1967. In those years it was Bobby Darin, the Supremes, Bill Cosby and Wayne Newton and one or two others. It was the youngsters coming up in the business that were playing the Flamingo.”

That he’s now the elder statesman of Las Vegas Boulevard is a testament of sorts to Newton’s survival skills and to the broad, democratic appeal of the Strip. “The question has been asked from Day One,” he says. “ ‘Where does Wayne Newton fit?’ Magic became the big thing with Siegfried & Roy -- every act in town had white tigers and were magicians. Then the impressionists were up and down the Strip. Then came the Cirque shows. I think the wonderful thing about Las Vegas is there truly is room for everything and everybody.”

And so Newton keeps his show defiantly out of date. A sideman offers an impression of Paul Lynde (who died in 1982), and when one of the young musicians gets frisky in a staged bit, the “wild” sound he plays is the riff from “Smoke on the Water,” a song from 1972. There’s been no need to update the show musically. A younger generation raised to appreciate kitsch has embraced the Midnight Idol. I asked one 24-year-old in the audience about Newton’s voice. “It’s not about the music,” she said. “The experience is seeing Wayne Newton in Las Vegas. That’s what it is all about.”

Schimmel’s ready to shine

MAYBE it was the good luck of getting Newton on his side all those years ago, but Robert Schimmel (who performs at the Monte Carlo Dec. 16 and 17) is one of the few headliners who come to town during this traditionally slow time of year. “It is worth it,” he says. “I get a lot of locals.”

Schimmel says he passed on making an appearance at the recent Comedy Festival here because he knew he had these shows coming up. “I don’t want people to say, ‘We just saw him’ and then not come when I am really there.”

It was shortly after appearing at the Monte Carlo in 2000 that Schimmel was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and this, he says, is a special week for him to return there: “On Dec. 12, I am going to have five years in remission [from cancer].”

This feature on entertainment and life in Las Vegas appears every other Sunday. For more on what’s happening on and off the Strip, see the blog latimes.com/movablebuffet on latimes.com.