How this impressionist became the biggest act on Vegas Strip
It was easy to assume Las Vegas had seen it all, at least twice, during its first 90 years.
Performing bears. Topless ice skaters. For a while, people couldn’t get enough of watching the mushroom clouds from nearby atom bomb tests.
Seemingly everything that could possibly pass as entertainment had been tried.
Then came the city’s 91st year and the arrival of a singing impressionist with virtually no name recognition – even his nickname, “The Man of Many Voices,” was underwhelming – who became the biggest act in town seemingly on Day One.
You could build a thousand Las Vegases on a thousand planets and still not produce a less likely superstar than Danny Gans, whose death on May 1, 2009, left a hole in this city that’s yet to be filled.
“No one’s ever been as successful doing impressions,”
Rich Little once told us of Gans.
He also perfectly summarized the strange place Gans occupied in the entertainment ecocelebrated system. “In Butte, Montana, they never heard of him. But in Vegas, he was a superstar.”
Gans was almost impossibly charismatic. He had to have been to attract turnaway crowds to see him perform both sides of the Nat King ColeNatalie Cole “Unforgettable” duet from 1991 and both the Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn parts in a scene from 1981’s “On Golden Pond” – in this millennium.
Other signature pieces – of approximately 200 voices in his arsenal, he’d deploy around 60 per show – included achingly poignant tributes to George Burns and Sammy Davis Jr., an Al Pacino monologue from 1992’s “Scent of a Woman” and a bit with Kermit the Frog.
What separated Gans from most other impressionists was his singing ability. When the NBA All-Star Game came to the Thomas & Mack Center in 2007, of all the entertainers up and down the Strip, he sang the national anthem.
Gans connected with locals in a way few headliners have, yet he drew celebrities by the boatload.
Benjamin Netanyahu came to see him. Regis and Joy Philbin their 38th anniversary at his show. He impersonated Michael Jackson, Sylvester Stallone, Tony Bennett and Dustin Hoffman while they were in his audience.
The year “Titanic” was released, Leonardo DiCaprio brought Bar Rafaeli to Gans’ show on a date – then brought her backstage!
Even Gans’ daily life made it into Norm Clarke’s celebrity column, whether it was eating with his family at Benihana or the Carnegie Deli or sinking a bunker shot that “produced a standing ovation from many diners having lunch at the Wynn’s Country Club Grill.”
In the 15 years since his passing, Las Vegas still hasn’t seen anything quite like Gans.
“I think one of the reasons I have a chance of making it here is that the audience is middleof-the-road: moms and pops, people in their 20s and 30s and senior citizens,” Gans told us ahead of his 1996 debut at the Stratosphere. “My act is geared toward people of all ages. People who read People magazine, listen to Top 40 or oldies stations or have a love of old movies.”
Gans wasn’t a newcomer by any means. He turned to comedy and impressions after his minor league baseball career ended with a severed Achilles tendon in 1978.
A Nov. 12, 1979, column by the Review-Journal’s Forrest Duke mentions a show called “Palace Playmates” was opening the next day at the new Nevada Palace on Boulder Highway. Produced by Steve Rossi, the show was to feature impressionist Danny Gans, illusionist David Douglass and the Shirley Freeman Dancers performing 18 times a week. “Palace Playmates” was never mentioned again in our pages.
Gans opened for Lola Falana at the Dunes at the end of 1983, which led to our Bill Willard opining that the entertainer’s “scavenging of celebs for his impressions and coruscating results put him into the upper class of Xeroxers, to be watched.”
He drew raves in May 1991 when he opened for Joan Rivers at the Desert Inn. The following year, Gans marveled at seeing his name on the Las Vegas Hilton marquee when he opened for Bill Cosby with a