What's Wayne Newton been up to since losing all his money?

Born in 1942, Wayne Newton was one of the most popular singers in the United States in the mid-to-late 20th century. But his life has been a rollercoaster, especially in the financial sense, with dizzying highs and surprising lows. Here’s what you need to know.

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Wayne has been working as a musician for pretty much as long as he can remember. When he was just five he got his first gig on his local radio station in Virginia, playing steel guitar and singing country music. His family moved out to Phoenix for his asthma, and he became a local star there too, eventually performing with his brother Jerry on a TV show called 'Rascals in Rhythm.'

Image: The Arizona Republic, June 15, 1955

A booking agent from Vegas caught the brothers’ show on TV and eventually gave them a deal to work six shows a night, six nights a week when Wayne was just 15. He said they were living in a motel and sent what was left of the $500 per week that they earned back to their family.

In 1962, he was asked to perform for Jackie Gleason, who was incredibly impressed with the 20-year-old performer. Over the next two years, Newton performed on the 'Jackie Gleason Show' 12 times, marking his big break that plummeted him to stardom.

In 1963, Wayne was signed to Capitol Records and started releasing his own massive hits like ‘Danke Schoen,’ which was originally written for Bobby Darin. He was touring around the world and offered his own TV show, which he turned down at the advice of Lucille Ball.

After Elvis died and many of the Rat Pack members were aging, Newton soon became the biggest performer in Las Vegas and was known as Mr. Las Vegas. He was “the biggest moneymaker in the history of Vegas. Nobody has drawn like that week in, week out. Not Elvis, not Sinatra. There’s just no comparison,” wrote Esquire in 2022.

In 1966, he initially bought the first acres of what would become his 39.5-acre estate in Paradise, Nevada. Wayne eventually filled it up with 120 Arabian horses, a heliport, dozens of luxury cars, and massive homes for himself and his family.

Over the years he kept developing, eventually 8 homes. He built a luxury home for himself, modeled to be a replica of the plantation on ‘Gone with the Wind.’ By 1979, he had around 70 servants and aids there too. He also had various animals roaming around like deer, dogs, ducks, swans, wallabies, monkeys, and peacocks. People thought it was an animal sanctuary and would drop animals over the fence.

Image: Ken Lund, 2015 / Wikimedia

Fed up with working for others (primarily Howard Hughes) in Vegas, Newton and his partner Ed Torres bought the Aladdin Hotel in Vegas for around $55 million in 1983. The year prior, several people were convicted for allowing the mafia to exert control over the resort. Then, NBC confronted Newton about mafia ties…

An NBC reporter confronted Wayne about his link to Guido Penosi, who had links to the Gambino mob through his cousin Frank Piccolo. Apparently, he and colleagues boasted about helping Wayne with “a problem.” Newton later said that he asked Penosi for help after his daughter received death threats. NBC reported that in exchange, Penosi was a silent partner in the hotel deal.

Once the story went public, Newton said he was a dead man and hired security and wore bulletproof vests, rarely doing anything besides performing or going home. Newton sued NBC for defamation and Penosi and his cousin were indicted on extortion. Newton won his defamation case. Frank Piccolo was shot dead before the trial. His cousin Guido, eventually had charges dropped against him.

Amid everything, Newton was having clashes with his partner about the hotel: what name it would get, whether to fire staff, what the glasses would look like, etc. Wayne tried to buy the whole thing but ended up selling his stake to his partner Torres for $8.5 million.

A dozen years after buying the hotel, he filed for bankruptcy to manage his $20 million debt. A lot of the money was sunk into the hotel as well as in lawyer fees while selling NBC for libel. However, with his name, he started performing again.

Image: Newton poses with several Miss Universe contestants in his backyard during a 1991 Las Vegas, Nevada, tour of his suburban home.

Over the decade, he put his finances back in order, performing again and even making a very memorable appearance in the 1997 Chevy Chase movie ‘Vegas Vacation.’ In it, he tries to seduce the wife character, and his real-life home even serves as the background.

Image: 'Vegas Vacation' / Warner Bros.

But Wayne’s money troubles didn’t end there. In 2005, the IRS claimed he owed them $1.8 million. The Oakland County Airport in 2009 said he owed them more than $60,000 for having parked and abandoned a $2 million airplane there for three years. He was also embroiled in several other lawsuits for not paying his bills.

Named by CBS News as one of the top five homes in the country, in 2010, Casa de Shenandoah had to be sold. The Newtons sold the estate to the company CDS (of which they were part owners) with the aim of turning the home into a museum. The company charged the Newtons $1/month lease and promised to build Wayne and his girlfriend a private house not open to visitors.

Work on the project was paused in 2012. The company CDS (that he partly owned) sued him for refusing to move out of the mansion, refusing to turn over personal property to the museum, refusing to remove horses from the property, allegedly harassing a young woman, and refusing to remove dogs that had a history of biting people. It was a mess. Newton countersued.

Amid all the drama, the Newtons finally moved out of Casa de Shenandoah in 2013. The company CDS went into bankruptcy. But then, the woman who eventually got the house, went back to the Newtons to try to reboot the museum idea! They moved back in and opened the museum to the public in 2015!

After a few years and many complaints from neighbors, as well as two visitors who said a capuchin monkey bit them, the house/museum closed in 2018 for renovations and never reopened. The Newtons had to get out for good. The house was eventually sold at a steep discount for $5.56 million, then resold for $10.35, according to the Las Vegas press. In 2022, it listed for $25 million.

Well, as he’s been pretty much his whole life, Newton, now 81, is still working in the music industry. In fact, he’s done a full circle and his ‘Wayne: Up Close and Personal’ show is going until mid-2024 in the Flamingo; the same Vegas resort where he started. The theater is named after him now.

Despite his financial ups and downs, Wayne remains a legend in Vegas for his charismatic performances and unique singing voice. His impact on Las Vegas has been so strong that authorities have even named a street after him - Wayne Newton Blvd, which you’d probably drive down if you arrived through the airport.

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