What Ever Happened To Baby Wayne?

Ever since four blithe spirits from Liverpool turned the world upside down, the most visible pop singers have been those who have dealt with contemporary moods and issues. Simultaneously trend setters and chroniclers of an era, they sing of grass, alienation and oppression. The very names of those who have made it are slogans of rebellion: the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, Wayne Newton . . . Wait a minute--Wayne Newton? Isn't he that big, baby-faced panda, that tenor with adenoidal arrest and the grin that seems to tell you he just made all-state halfback at Waycross High? Where did he come from?

Where indeed? His brother Jerry, the sharpshooting Doppelganger of their nightclub act, calls Wayne (chuckle): "Fig." However obvious, Fig Newton is appropriate. Newton's style is sticky, his humor is seedy, and he is wrapped in dough. He is also astonishingly successful. Beginning with that enduring blob of Teutonic treacle, Danke Schoen, he has two gold records to his credit. He gets as much as $75,000 a week in nightclubs and holds the alltime attendance records at the Royal Box in New York's Americana Hotel, Las Vegas' Frontier Hotel and Melodyland in Anaheim, Calif.

Comic Relief. For all its basic corniness, Wayne's act is shrewdly staged. He oozes sweetness while his brother Jerry makes sour wisecracks. Wayne bounces onto the stage singing Hello, My Baby, or some such wormy number. He then launches into saccharine favorites like Swanee, For Once in My Life and Kids, a patented anti-divorce song that, according to fan mail, has mended many a rending home. Lest the unsentimental throw up, naughty Jerry introduces some comic relief. "You're such a marvelous audience," Wayne coos, "I want to try something that we've never tried before." Jerry growls: "Who are you kidding? We do the same bloody thing every night." When Wayne slides into Danke Schoen, Jerry covers his eyes and moans, "My God, this is so sexy." He exudes disgust as Wayne plays a succession of instruments with ain't-I-cute aplomb. "I'd take off my coat," sneers Jerry, "but I'm afraid you'd play that too." The audiences lap, lap, lap it up.

Wayne, 28, and Jerry, 29, have been a sweet-and-sour team ever since they began playing benefits as youngsters in Norfolk, Va. The Newtons were forced to move to Phoenix because of Wayne's chronic asthma; there Wayne was president of his high-school student body. He and Jerry also had a daily variety show on station KOOL-TV, and in his senior year Wayne quit school to accept a five-year contract at the Fremont Hotel in Las Vegas. Thirty-six shows a week was rugged drill, but it enabled the brothers Newton to broaden and buff their act.

Filial Devotion. Wayne crooned on TV, on records, in nightclubs. Not that everyone was wild about him. As he recalls: "We had a lot of people insult us and tell us to get out of the business. In Las Vegas we even had people throw things at us."

Wayne is square and he knows it; recently he has even considered updating his image slightly by letting his hair grow. But he has stayed with his ducktail sides with pompadour, and he thus remains as lovable as ever to his fans. American mothers get precious little filial devotion these days, and Wayne represents an age when boys loved their mammas and weren't ashamed to show it. The moms and dads who pack his shows must have blanched a bit when he married a Japanese-American airline hostess, but he is still a good, home-loving, God-fearing boy. When he sings Dreams of the Everyday Housewife, women in the audience do everything but fetch him cookies and milk right there in the nightclub.

No Grousing. Wayne Newton's offstage life replays his image. He prefers to spend most of his free time on his Nevada ranch with his wife and horses. He doesn't think entertainers should be politically active because "our voices are too powerful." But his ideas fix him as a patriot of the well-over-30 school. Says Wayne: "Not everybody agrees with the President, but he's still our President and it's still our country."

Wayne certainly has nothing to grouse about. With the aid of a sharp agent named Tony Amato, the main Newton company controls, among other things: a merchandising company that produces Wayne Newton artifacts and recorded musical horoscopes, a music-publishing firm, 4,500 acres of ranch land, four Los Angeles apartment buildings, two condominiums in Hawaii and 30 Arabian thoroughbreds. Wayne's personal goodies include: a nine-acre ranch in Las Vegas, two Bentleys, a Rolls-Royce, an XKE, a Mustang, a Learjet, three Hondas, a power boat and a dune buggy. Obviously an operation that can produce these kinds of holdings is not to be laughed at. Wayne certainly doesn't. "The people who come to my show," he says, "are from three to 93. A father who wants to give something great to his boy will bring him to see us. The couple who has been married 43 years is typical. We have to keep as contemporary as possible for the young, but we can't lose the old either. You might say that I sing for mid-America."

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