Who: Marlene Ricci.
Where: Addison's Lounge at the Regent Las Vegas.
When: 8 and 10 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, and Sunday; 9 and 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
Cost: Free Tuesday-Thursday and Sunday; one-drink minimum Friday and Saturday.
Information: Call 869-7777.
The life of singer Marlene Ricci reads like a fairy tale -- a Cinderella story that began in 1975 at the Aladdin hotel-casino when she was 20 years old and looking for a genie who would grant her wish for success.
The genie turned out to be Frank Sinatra, who saw Ricci perform one night, liked what he saw and invited her to his table when the set ended. He asked her if she would like to open for him when he went on tour.
"It took me two seconds to think about it," she said.
It was a magical moment that transformed the small-town girl from a beautiful young lounge singer with talent to spare into a princess.
Her wish was granted.
For the next 2 1/2 years Ricci opened Sinatra's shows and he opened doors for her career. She performed with some of the top entertainers in the business, including Shecky Greene, Bob Hope, George Burns, Paul Anka, Andy Williams, Alan King and Don Rickles, to name only a few.
People will get a chance to see what attracted Sinatra to this entertainer, who will be at Addison's Lounge in the Regent Las Vegas hotel-casino Tuesday through Sunday, performing two shows nightly.
"I was so young and naive," Ricci, a Las Vegas resident, said of the early years. "It was really a fairy godfather story, almost unreal. I look back and see how amazing it was. When I was going through it it didn't seem quite real."
The Chairman of the Board handed her a glass slipper and she ran with it.
But some people in the entertainment field say that the overnight success went to her head and she became difficult to work with, which short-circuited her career.
Ricci denies that she was vain and says there were other reasons that her skyrocketing career suddenly fizzled before finally getting back on an even keel. "I have never had a big ego," Ricci said.
But Ricci was destined for a career in show business.
In the beginning
When she was a child living in a small town outside of Buffalo, N.Y., she took voice lessons from Audrey Holmes, the mother of Las Vegas entertainer Clint Holmes, who now appears at Harrah's hotel-casino.
"She was an opera singer, but she was the only vocal coach in our area. Clint is about 10 years older than me. I would go to his house for singing lessons and I might say, 'Hi,' when he came home from high school, but we were never really friends," she said.
At age 16 she began singing professionally. "I won a local high school talent contest. The prize was $200 so I thought this could be lucrative," she recalled. "I got a job with a local band. I was still in school, but by my junior year I had enough credits so I only had to attend classes half a day.
"I was a minor, so my dad would drive me to the clubs and sit in the audience and watch the show then take me home."
When she turned 18 she had to choose between college and a career in entertainment. "All I ever wanted to do was entertain," she said.
So she joined a band called Fancy Colors and went on the road. Her first out-of-state performance was at a Ramada Inn in Detroit, where she met Jim Burgett, a singer whom she eventually would marry.
Burgett had his own band, which played mostly at Ramada Inns across the country. Although still with Fancy Colors she auditioned for Burgett and he liked her but didn't have an opening at the time.
"Three months later I quit Fancy Colors and called Jim. He said to meet him in Minnesota. We traveled around the country for a year and then came to Las Vegas," she said.
They played a few small clubs and lounges locally but also played at Lake Tahoe and Reno, where they became acquainted with Jilly Rizzo, Sinatra's closet friend and manager. Rizzo arranged for Ricci to audition at the Aladdin hotel-casino.
"Jilly kept saying he was going to bring Frank in to see the show, but he would never show up. After six or seven times of no-shows I didn't think it was ever going to come to pass," she said.
"But finally, one night, I see them walking across the room with 20 people -- Frank Sinatra and his wife, Barbara, Danny Thomas and his wife, and three or four other stars in the entourage coming into the lounge at the Aladdin. An area was roped off and they sat down to watch. After the show Frank stood up and applauded. It blew me away."
Within three weeks Ricci was touring the country as the opening act for Sinatra. She was the first onstage, followed by comedian Pat Henry and then Sinatra. "All of a sudden I'm playing in a big venue with a big orchestra," she said.
She was so young and inexperienced that she didn't know who the guy was who was sending her flowers after each opening, signing the card "Good Luck, Francis Albert."
"I didn't know Frank's legal name was Francis Albert Sinatra," she said.
Ricci opened for Sinatra until 1978 and then occasionally after that until about 1982, she said. "I was in awe of him. I would sit and watch him perform, picking up pieces here and there, learning things I use now," she said.
Double-edged 'Cinderella'
For about three years it appeared that her career was destined for greatness. And then came Cinderella -- rather, "Cinderella at the Palace," a television special shot at Caesars Palace hotel-casino.
Sinatra tentatively agreed to play the part of the fairy godfather in the two-hour musical about a young woman who dreams of becoming an entertainer, drives across the desert to a big city and auditions for a lounge show.
The character sits awestruck as she watches a long list of show people perform: Ann-Margret, Sammy Davis Jr., Tom Jones, Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams, Merv Griffin, Jackie Gayle, Don Knotts, Elaine Joyce, Rip Taylor and Jimmie Walker.
Gene Kelly was the show's narrator.
When the producers failed to cast the role of Cinderella soon enough, Sinatra turned the godfather role over to Paul Anka. Comedian Jackie Gayle, who had a part in the show, suggested that the producers look to Ricci as a possible Cinderella, a part that closely mirrored her life to that point. She was still opening for Sinatra at the time.
Winning the role both opened and closed doors for the young singer when the show aired in 1978. She was seen by an international audience and booked several concerts in the United States and abroad because of it. But it killed a possible recording career.
"I was going to sign a deal with RCA to make records," Ricci recalled. "They wanted to sign me, but then when 'Cinderella' came out they said there was a conflict of image."
She said that before the television show aired RCA was looking at her as a Linda Ronstadt-type, a country-rock singer. "Then 'Cinderella' came out and I was this cutesy girl with a page-boy haircut and a flowing gown," she said.
The image that went out nationwide wasn't the one the record company wanted and the deal fell through, she said.
Although she continued opening for Sinatra and other big-name entertainers she said she couldn't seek out other recording deals because she had a contract with Rizzo, who was too busy to nurture her career.
"He didn't have time to give me the care that I needed, the care and the attention," Ricci said. "An offer would come in and he'd be off in Barbados or somewhere. He was Frank's right-hand man. He was involved with Frank, but he didn't want us (she and Burgett) to make any decision without him.
"What happend was so involved. Some day I will write a book. It's a long story. But when you get on a roll you have to jump on the bandwagon right then, take advantage of it. And that was the problem. He (Rizzo) didn't follow up with stuff," she said.
She continued to open for Sinatra sporadically and also to pursue her career apart from him until her contract with Rizzo ran out.
Then, in 1982, she was lured to Europe with a record deal. Her first single, called "Tonight," capitalized on the disco craze. The record was a hit in Europe and it looked as if she might have a meteoric career there. But more bad luck hit.
Her magical career seemed to be cursed.
The production team that helped her make "Tonight" lost a couple of key people and her producer could never re-create the success of that first record, which made the Top 40 charts in Europe.
"I didn't realize (when I was starting out) how important records would be for a career," Ricci said. "I just liked performing live so much I wasn't concerned with recording."
Ricci was in Europe off and on for three years. In 1985 she and Burgett were married while she was working at the Four Queens hotel-casino in Las Vegas. "Jim and I were good friends first," Ricci said. "Basically, when I started doing tours he got out of singing and became my personal manager."
After Ricci returned permanently from Europe an agent who had seen her perform at the Dunes hotel-casino convinced her to join the corporate circuit, playing conventions around the country.
Performing at conventions is the main source of her work now, playing for such corporations as IBM, Kodak and Revlon. "A lot of artists do that. It is very lucrative," she said.
She worked with impressionist Danny Gans on the corporate circuit early in his career, before he became one of the top entertainers in Las Vegas at the Rio hotel-casino and then at the Mirage hotel-casino, where he is now.
Gans, through a spokesman, said that he remembers Ricci very well and that she was a great performer.
She also performs on cruise ships, but keeps those gigs to a minimum because she has a 10-year-old son and doesn't want to spend extended periods of time away from him.
Last year she performed for two months at the Flamingo Las Vegas hotel-casino, as a special guest star with the Rockettes in "The Great Radio City Spectacular." She is working on producing her own album and would like to find a permanent showroom in Las Vegas.
"There are no female (headliners) here. They're all guys. I have a niche of people my age, Baby Boomers," she said. Her show includes a number of pop songs and some standards.
"I do a variety of stuff, like 'Somewhere' from the musical 'West Side Story,' and some Celine Dion things," she said. "I do two songs from the '40s that Don Costa (Sinatra's arranger) arranged for me. And there's an oldies section, with (songs by) Connie Francis, Dusty Springfield and Linda Ronstadt, women who influenced me."
Ricci has come to terms with her career, which has endured in a profession where talented people routinely appear and disappear in the blink of an eye or the wave of a magic wand.
"I look back and see where the mistakes were made and, sure, I would correct them. But I'm at a good place now," she said. "I am still successful and I can win over an audience without them knowing who I am."
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