May 7, 2009
The Danny Gans Lesson
Know What Matters And Ignore
The Rest
By STEVE FRIESS
Miles shook me awake last Friday at about 7:30
a.m.
“I need you to wake up,” he said. “You need to get up. Now.”
I was confused. I’d told him I didn’t need to be up until
8.
“Danny Gans died in his sleep this morning,” he said, answering
my bleary look.
That bleary look turned into a puzzled one. It was the only
reaction to such strange and awful news. How does a 52-year-old
health nut die in his sleep?
Here was my first and second reactions, in this order: “Oh,
that’s so sad,” I said. Then, after a long pause, “But I wonder
who’s going to care.”
Yes, that sounds cold. But I meant – and Miles got it immediately
– who in the national media will recognize this passing as a
significant story? That’s my job and to some extent my function
in this community, to determine what of the local news rises
to the level of broader significance and interest, and which
publication is going to want me to document it.
And so it was that I was brought immediately back around to
the central conundrum that was always the most baffling part
of the Danny Gans story: How does someone become such a mammoth,
wealthy star, entertain untold millions and grin for years from
the largest billboard along the most traveled Amer ican tourist
thoroughfare and still remain largely anonymous in the broader
popular culture? Just seven years ago, a Los Angeles Times profile
of the impressionist was topped by a headline that summed it
up perfectly: “Las Vegas Loves Who?” Heck, the Wall Street Journal
scribe Christina Binkley, writing an exhaustive book on recent
Vegas history last year, misspelled Gans’ name!
Indeed, none of the East Coast-based papers or magazines I
regularly write for took an interest in this startling passing
as a news event. The New York Times, which furnishes a large
part of my meal ticket, shunted the matter to a staff obit writer
who aptly referred to Gans as “a show business anomaly, virtually
unknown outside Las Vegas but a superstar on the Strip.” The
Agence France-Presse, a Paris-based wire service read largely
in Europe and Asia, let me write just 200 words because, “I’m
afraid if he’s not that well known outside Las Vegas, it’s not
going to make waves,” my L.A.-based editor wrote me. And a CNN
anchor actually said – on the air -- something to the effect
of, “You ever hear of Danny Gans, the Vegas headliner? He died
today.”
I wasn’t surprised, per my mental calculation upon hearing
the news. The coastal media don’t take much interest in Vegas
entertainment unless Hollywood somehow infiltrates it – see
Hilton, Paris or Lohan, Lindsay – or unless there’s some thing
that fits a wacky Vegas stereotype. The on-stage tiger attack
on illusionist Roy Horn was sensational news because there was
blood and animals and traumatized fans and bizarre costumes.
Even then, though, I had to remind photo editors repeatedly
which one was Siegfried and which one was Roy.
Danny Gans wasn’t Vegas in that sense. When I saw Gov. Jim
Gibbons on the news referring to Gans as another “Mr. Las Vegas”
it sounded really odd. He wasn’t ostentatious or outlandish
like Liberace, dramatic and tragic and campy like Elvis, schlocky
like Wayne Newton. Gans just got on stage night after night,
did a bunch of impressions that Middle America loved to see
and went home.
Still, clearly somebody cared. Hits to my blog, where I spent
the day relentlessly covering the developments and reaction,
skyrocketed. On Google News’ home page, “Danny Gans” remained
in the top 10 most-searched terms all weekend. Twitter was awash
in shocked condolence tweets. And Steve Wynn, who has now seen
two of his best show-biz ideas – Gans and the Siegfried & Roy
shows – abruptly halted in tragic manners without proper closure,
was so distraught that he opted to join Larry King on Friday
night by phone even though King was broadcasting from the Encore
Theater in Las Vegas and Wynn lives down the hall. (King’s wife,
Shawn, had been scheduled to perform with Gans over the weekend.)
I had often cri ticized Gans for his low profile and for a
show I deemed as too static. (I did, however, praise his latest
Encore iteration.) I just couldn’t figure out how such a versatile
talent hadn’t done a sitcom in an era when Jerry Seinfeld, Ray
Romano, Roseanne Barr, Bill Cosby, Jeff Foxworthy and countless
other standup acts did. Heck, how about just showing up on Leno
or Letterman once in a while or doing a voice for “The Simpsons”?
It smacked of complacency.
On KNPR on Friday morning, Gans’ manager Chip Lightman said
Gans was on the cusp of new ventures, from recording to acting.
That seemed all the more sad, that he died at 52 and didn’t
get to fulfill his potential as an entertainer.
A short while later, though, Danny Gans spoke to me and I
realized I – we all, really – had misunderstood.
In honor of his death, I decided to reissue the interview
with Danny that aired on my podcast in March 2006.I was listening
through it again to remember what he had said and there I was,
badgering him about why he wasn’t more famous. Did it bother
him?
“No, it doesn’t because it is by choice,” he said. “I’m a
family guy and I really treasure my privacy. So it is more important
for me to be home with my wife and kids and be able to play
golf and be with my friends than be on the cover of TV Guide.
I really love doing20my show but I don’t step out and say, ‘OK,
I’m going to do that sitcom and that movie and that thing.’
It’s going to take away from the time I have with my kids while
they’re growing up.”
Gans went on to discuss the Aaron Spelling sitcom he once
turned down because the Vegas-to-L.A. commute would have left
him with little time for his family. And he recalled advice
from a famous friend who told him, “Fifty years from now when
you’re about ready to go on to the next side, do you want to
look back at your life and say, 'I had a fulfilling life because
I had a successful marriage and had raised three wonderful children
and I had a career that I loved to go to every day’ or ‘My marriage
didn’t last and I don’t even know what the heck happened to
my kids but hey, man, I was on three sitcoms and I did 17 films,
people are gonna remember me forever now.' ”
Finally, I got it. Danny Gans wasn’t just talking a good game,
he meant and lived a set of priorities regardless of whether
he was bypassing fame or fortune or critical acclaim. Were he
alive today to comment on his death, he wouldn’t give a damn
that he never got to release that album or that the national
media took scant notice of his demise. He would only care that
he won’t meet his grandchildren grow up, that his wife is now
alone, that his friends have lost a golf ing buddy.
All those survivors may feel cheated by fate, but they’re
not going to feel cheated by him. He gave them as much as he
could. That’s what Gans was trying to say all that time. And
if we finally get it – if we set aside our notions of what constitutes
a successful life for someone in the public eye – then maybe,
just maybe, this will be his greatest and most lasting impression.
###
