Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Noted Hollywood agent Viner dies at age 72

When hotels along the Las Vegas Strip were not quick to dim the lights to honor Dean Martin after the entertainer died on Christmas Day 1995, longtime Rat Pack photographer Don Pack called Martin's longtime agent, Mort Viner, in Los Angeles.

"I couldn't believe it -- Dean had played Las Vegas for many years and they hadn't paid tribute to him," said Pack, who is retired and lives in Las Vegas. "When I called Mort and told him about it, he said, 'Hold the line.' A few minutes later he came back told me not to worry."

The efforts of Viner and other Strip executives got the lights to dim just as they had five years earlier when Martin's longtime friend and fellow Rat Packer Sammy Davis Jr. died.

Mort Viner, a Hollywood agent who brought Martin, Shirley Maclaine and Broadway sensation Michael Crawford to Las Vegas for major bookings and who was the longtime agent of Academy Award-winning actor Jimmy Stewart as well as Gene Kelly and others, died Sunday in Beverly Hills, Viner's fellow publicist Warren Cowan said. He was 72.

Services were scheduled today in Los Angeles.

"Mort visited Las Vegas a lot over the years and was one of the best known and most beloved agents in Hollywood," Pack said. "We have lost a real giant of show business."

Viner was a longtime agent for ICM, one of Hollywood's leading booking agencies.

In March 1995 Viner, who had represented Crawford since his appearance in the 1969 film version of "Hello, Dolly!" brought the singer to Las Vegas to star in the MGM Grand's $40 million production EFX.

Crawford, who in 1988 had won the Tony for his career-defining performance in "Phantom of the Opera," left the Las Vegas show in September 1996 after he sustained a hip injury during rehearsals for the special effects extravaganza. The injury resulted in hip replacement surgery that year and a lawsuit against the MGM Grand.

Nevertheless, several months after the suit was filed, Viner booked Crawford into the MGM Grand Garden Arena as part of his three-month tour promoting his seventh album, "On Eagle's Wings."

In 1988 Viner put together the ill-fated Frank Sinatra-Martin-Davis "Together Again" tour, which ended up with Martin leaving after just one week of performances. Martin performed for the last time in Las Vegas in 1990.

Viner later said of Martin, who continued to drink and party despite a 1993 diagnosis of lung tumors, "It's obvious that Dean has resigned himself to facing death with a beer in one hand and a bottle of pills in the other."

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