IMPRESSIONIST

45-minute set. “Gans pretty much stole a show from Cosby,” we wrote, adding that the comedy legend called him potentially the next Sammy Davis Jr. – back when an endorsement from Cosby was considered a positive.

Gans really honed his craft, though, by performing more than 100 corporate gigs a year.

“I sat down with enough corporate producers and asked what kind of act would be a big success,” Gans told us in 2000. “They said, ‘Middle America wants comedy, but they’re afraid comics are going to get dirty.’”

“If you can be funny,” Gans said he was told, “be musical and appeal to everyone from (their) late 20s to early 60s, you’ve got it.”

Calculating? Sure. But it worked.

A brief run at the Neil Simon Theatre in the fall of 1995 led to reports of a one-year offer for him to remain on Broadway, but Gans also was drawing interest from Las Vegas.

“I made a stance and said in prayer with my wife, ‘I want to be a family man and put my family first in my life,’” Gans told us in that same 2000 interview. “And I did that by turning down Broadway. And from the time I did that, this touch has been upon my career.”

Gans’ day job as a family man to his wife, Julie, and children Amy, Andrew and Emily attracted the attention of legendary television producer Aaron Spelling. He spent years trying to get Gans to commit to an autobiographical sitcom about a devout Christian husband and father living and working in “Sin City.” But becoming a TV dad, Gans realized, would mean untold hours away from his actual family.

“There’s a time and a place for everything,” he told us in 2002. “How many more (baseball) games do I have with my son? Those things are so much more important to me than having my face on the cover of TV

Guide.”

Despite having some small acting roles before landing in Las Vegas, most notably in “Bull Durham” and on the late-night crime drama “Silk Stalkings,” Gans tended to shy away from TV once he was here. That included talk shows.

“If I’m already selling out, what’s the purpose of doing television?” he asked in a 2006 interview. “It’s better for me to have the word of mouth and the buzz that you have to see this show.”

Instead of talk show appearances, he said, “I’d rather spend that three hours to take my daughter to lunch or play golf with a friend.”

When he wasn’t golfing, Gans spent most days at home going over notes from the previous night’s show. Some of those were provided by his daughter Amy, who worked as an usher and gathered intel from the audience on whether new bits were working.

“It has been great to play such an integral part in my children’s lives,” Gans wrote in a guest column in 2002. “When I was on the road 250 days a year, I was missing out on the joys and frustrations of being a parent.”

Gans opened May 16, 1996, in the 650-seat Broadway Theatre before signing a three-year deal with the Rio and moving to its 700-seat Copacabana Showroom on Jan. 22, 1997. Two months later, Paskevich declared Gans was “the hottest thing to hit Las Vegas since the invention of August.”

After three years at the Rio, Gans moved to The Mirage.

Gans was pretty much everywhere in the valley.

His arrival at the Stratosphere was accompanied by ads atop more than 120 taxis and in nine city bus shelters, commercials played on TV and every 10 minutes at the airport baggage claim, and videos ran throughout the hotel on a loop.

“It was really a fairy tale,” Gans said of his rapid ascent in Las Vegas ahead of his March 31, 2000, opening at The Mirage. “It doesn’t get any better than this. The theater, where I’m sitting on the Strip, right in the heart of it all.”

That theater and its 1,260 seats were converted from a ballroom at a cost of $15 million. It was modeled after two of

Gans’ favorites, the Apollo in Harlem and the Fox in St. Louis, and it bore his name.

Gans called it home for more than eight years, until he was lured across the street to Wynn Las Vegas and its 1,500-seat Encore Theater.

He closed out his run at The Mirage on Nov. 22, 2008, ending his 1,639th show there with a performance of “What a Wonderful World” that included his takes on Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Ray Charles, Willie Nelson, Tony Bennett, Kermit the Frog, George Burns and Louis Armstrong.

The next afternoon, his face was replaced on The Mirage’s marquee by that of Terry Fator, the “America’s Got Talent” winner who was inspired to start singing his impressions, through his puppets, after seeing Gans’ show at the resort.

“I think I’m a much better entertainer than I was when I first came to town,” Gans told us ahead of his Feb. 10, 2009, opening at the Wynn. “I know much more. My repertoire’s grown. I’m a better singer and a better comedian. I’m a better performer, just because I’ve been doing it for 12 years longer.”

Gans sounded energetic and excited about the opportunity ahead of him.

“I take a lot of pride in the fact that I’m still here,” he said in that interview. “I feel like I’m kind of the Rocky (Balboa) of this town. I’m still standing, still drawing. As long as I can do it, why not keep doing it?”

Three months later, on May 1, Las Vegans awoke to the shocking news.

Gans, 52, had died early that morning in his Henderson home, the result of hydromorphone toxicity due to chronic pain syndrome.

Julie Gans and the kids moved to California shortly after he died. Garth Brooks, lured out of an eight-year retirement by Steve Wynn, moved into the Encore Theater on Dec. 11 for a four-year acoustic residency. “This will always be Danny Gans’ room,” Brooks regularly told audiences.

In the end, Gans was named best all-around performer 11 times by the Review-Journal’s Best of Las Vegas. The last honor came in 2009, with the first in 1997 during his initial year of eligibility.

“It’s hard for me to leave a stage,” Gans told us before that first Stratosphere show. “I want (the audience) to leave and say, ‘Wow!’ And I want them to go through all the emotions that I go through in a show.

“I know the idea is to leave them wanting more, but I always want to give them more.”