Lanni was one of industry’s best

By Jon Ralston

Sunday, July 17, 2011 | 2:01 a.m.

It is the nature of what I do that I interview people on television who put on a false front when the camera comes on.

The smile is forced. The answers are scripted. It is a performance, not a dialogue. The more successful they are, the more on guard they are.

But not Terry Lanni.

The former MGM Mirage chairman, who died Thursday, was the same on “Face to Face” as he was across a lunch table. He was direct, convivial and incisive. In an industry known for outsized egos and where bombast is the default setting, Lanni was, despite a lifetime of privilege, a gracious, down-to-earth guy.

I didn’t know Lanni well, but I interviewed him many times and had lunch with him occasionally. He never — not once — did what so many similarly situated either in business or politics have done, which is try to impress me with his vast knowledge, boast of his accomplishments or drop names of luminaries he knew. Nor did he do what so many do, which is ask to go off the record to snipe about competitors, deride a politician or puff about himself.

There is a tendency to minimize faults and highlight virtues whenever anyone passes away. But Lanni, who fought cancer for two years before succumbing, truly was a man who made a deep impact in a superficial milieu.

“This was a guy who kept his ego in check,” said Alan Feldman, the longtime MGM spokesman. “He didn’t think he was better than anyone else.”

Mike Sloan, a longtime friend of Lanni’s who shared his passion for horses, said, “What you saw is what you got. Terry was one of those people, somewhat of a rarity. When Terry gave you his word about something, he kept it.”

Frank Fahrenkopf, former GOP chairman who has survived more than 15 years helming American Gaming Association, is not a man given to gushing. But he could not contain himself Friday and that says a lot.

“Terry was without question one of the best and most decent people to ever work in the gaming industry,” Fahrenkopf said in a statement. “He was a kind, generous leader with an uncanny knack for making the people around him better. People loved working for Terry, and we loved working with him on so many of the industrywide issues that were important to him over the years.”

I was not surprised to hear from Feldman that Lanni told everyone he met, from someone on the casino floor to someone in a business boardroom, that he should be addressed not as “Mr. Lanni” but as “Terry.” That was emblematic. A man named J. Terrence Lanni, which conjures up images of a foppish, effete nobleman, just wanted to be called “Terry.”

I experienced it many times when I tried to be deferential (really). I also chuckle as I recall our lunches where there might be a moment of silence, and he would faux chastise me by saying something like: “You’re a guy from the Fourth Estate. You must have more questions.”

I always did. And he was always responsive, whether at lunch or on the air, often with a gleam in his eye and a wry smile on his face. He was serious man, but he didn’t take himself too seriously, as too many do.

Lanni also was a rock-ribbed Republican — he supported Jim Gibbons for governor and John McCain for president. But he also knew what was best for his company and his state.

He openly supported Rep. Shelley Berkley, saying publicly that her seniority in the House was important. He also loved to joke, quite accurately, about the relentless congresswoman, “Shelley is the one person who won’t take ‘yes’ for an answer.”

When his friends in the Chamber of Commerce were trying to block the gaming industry’s desire to broaden the tax base, he went to the organization’s major yearly event called Preview and told the crowd exactly how he felt. He did it in that public forum and plenty of times privately to friends and colleagues.

Like any business leader, Lanni’s legacy is mixed. He clearly was a pioneer on diversity in the casinos. He also led the company to remarkable heights.

But Lanni also was there as it piled up near-unsustainable debt. And he was devastated after he retired in 2008 with allegations of résumé-padding, which seemed so out of character and certainly should be buried by what he accomplished on Las Vegas Boulevard South.

Feldman talked to me Friday about “the humility and the humanity” of Terry Lanni. That is how he should be remembered and how, I am confident, he will be.

(You can watch Lanni’s final appearance on “Face to Face” here.)