Separating Riviera sentiment from reality

The hand-polished "Crazy Girls" statue in front of the Riviera is evidence that the show may have been giving more to the hotel than it was getting back. (Mike Weatherford/Review-Journal)

When it comes to the Riviera, there’s sentiment and there’s business. There are buildings, and the things that happen inside of them.

Pia Zadora is one person who can draw the line. The singer spent a lot of time inside the Riviera in the 1970s and ’80s as the wife of its owner, Meshulam Riklis. Restaurants were named after their children, who rode tricycles in its hallways.

But now?

“At the risk of sounding crass, everyone is so upset and distraught about it being torn down, but I think it should have been imploded awhile ago,” she says. “Either imploded or refurbished. This is not to negate all the memories and all the wonderful stuff that was there, but it just lived too long in a way.”

We could still argue for “refurbished.” Until the day the dynamite goes off, I’d like to hear why the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority wouldn’t want a nice boutique hotel attached to its new convention space. Knock down all those piecemeal additions, yes, but spare the original nine-story part of it.

But it’s not crass to understand the mixed emotions of Norbert Aleman, the producer who on Friday night was to close “Crazy Girls” and, at this writing, was in talks to reopen it later this month in the Sin City Theatre at Planet Hollywood.

“Crazy Girls” was the second-longest-running Las Vegas show in the same room, after Bally’s “Jubilee!” But everything outside the cabaret showroom had changed for the French producer since 1987.

“I’m very sad and yet happy to leave,” he said. “I was hoping to do my 30 years there, you know? But on the other hand, it was getting very difficult to deal with them. Nobody knew much about show business. They all want to make money without spending money. It was time for me to move on.”

He admits, though, “They forced me to make a decision by selling the Riviera. I would still be there if they didn’t sell it.”

In this decade, “Crazy Girls” and its hand-polished “butt” statue arguably brought more to the Riviera than the hotel was giving back.

It was on the north end of the Strip, and not networked in with other properties to cross-advertise the show, as Aleman could have at Planet Hollywood.

It may sound like wishful thinking for a producer in his mid-70s, but Aleman predicts Las Vegas entertainment will drift back to its old ways of doing business: “Listen to what I’m telling you today: Every casino is going to have to go back to the old days. They’re going to have to pay (for a show, instead of renting space to producers). Who is going to spend $15 (million) to $20 million to put a show into Las Vegas today?”

But for now, after “two million shows and two hundred girls,” it sounds like “Crazy Girls” will carry on, and at least one piece of the Riviera legacy will survive.

Read more from Mike Weatherford at bestoflasvegas.com. Contact him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com.