Robert Davi joining Don Rickles at Orleans

Don Rickles has worked in Las Vegas since 1959 and will be back this weekend.

“I’m a nice guy …”

So goes the time-honored patter song no Don Rickles show can be without.

But this weekend it could be the insistence of both the Hockey Puck and opening act Robert Davi, better known for being not nice at all in movies such as “The Goonies.”

He defends his characters though: That Bond villain in “Licence to Kill” did not act, Davi points out, until provoked.

And Davi is now more in the business of crooning the great romantic standards, as he does on his album “Davi Sings Sinatra: On the Road to Romance.”

There is a kind of symmetry in Davi singing with a 15-piece band in a 35-minute opening set in front of Rickles, who was sometimes Sinatra’s opening act. Rickles turns 87 on May 8 and has worked Las Vegas since 1959.

Davi’s first paid acting job was in Sinatra’s 1977 TV movie “Contract on Cherry Street,” which aired on NBC, where Rickles was “C.P.O. Sharkey” at the time. It seems as if all this was meant to be.

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@
reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.