Gala doesn't reach Sinatra standard

R.I.P., Frank Sinatra, though your gala Las Vegas send-off Saturday night at the MGM Grand generally -- and surprisingly -- did not rise to your heights of swing.

Think of the Oscars in Los Angeles or the Grammys in New York. Think of the red carpet and the velvet rope, those jostling TV news crews and strobing paparazzi; behind them, camcordering tourists and fans snapping away with Instamatics, all just barely held in check by drum-tight security.

There's an aura to these events, with little spikes of excitement and heat shimmers of adulation from the crowds when the limos pull up and those famous faces from movies and TV first appear.

It's usually all scripted, of course, right down to the last spontaneous quip, but once in a great while true magic strikes. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case at the "Thanks Frank" charity-benefit gala, a final chance for the city that Sinatra made his own in the Rat Pack era to say goodbye with elegance and song.

This time, though, it was the script itself that needed more polishing. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was supposed to introduce the late singer's wife, Barbara Sinatra, and his wife, Maria Shriver, were no-shows. Instead, that task fell to Gregory Peck. "I'm now to introduce Barbara," he intoned. "It's good that I know that." A spotlight that was supposed to "find" Robert Stack in the audience so he could deliver brief introductory remarks scanned the ballroom in vain, while the veteran actor carried on gamely. Even the big finale, in which Paul Anka was meant to be joined onstage by the other singers, didn't come off, forcing him to improvise a plea for help from the wings.

The musical program came in the final 90 minutes of a bloated evening that lasted almost five hours from first celebrity arrival to last Paul Anka song. By then, even the classics from the Sinatra songbook, performed by the likes of Steve and Eydie, Wayne Newton, Paul Anka and Vic Damone, weren't enough to mesmerize the black-tie crowd, which included actors Robert DeNiro and Angie Dickinson and big-voiced blues singer Joe Williams.

Pacing was a big problem. Midway through an evening billed as songs from the Sinatra songbook, Danny Gans' imitations of Sarah Vaughn and Billie Holiday, and of George Burns, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. in a "heavenly party," though spot-on, were out of place.

The evening's musical highlights included jazzy Diane Schuur, scatting through impossibly high notes on a bluesy "Come Rain or Come Shine" and bringing the audience to its feet; Damone delivering an elegant, measured two-song set, "Embrace Me" and "In the Still of the Night"; Wayne Newton's polished "Fly Me to the Moon"; and young Teven Campbell's swinging "Come Fly With Me."

Other graceful elements included a video retrospective heavy on early '60s Vegas footage; the big and brassy band, led by an exuberant Quincy Jones; a giant black-and-white photo, blown up to wall size, showing a young Sinatra with Jones and Count Basie, gazing out over a scattering of song charts; and a brief and gracious speech from Barbara Sinatra in which she recalled that Vegas was where she and Frank did much of their "courting."

How significant were the lapses? They would mean much less if the event had honored a lesser man, one not known for the meticulousness of his way.

The audience, which had been promised a glorious wake, instead voted with its feet: a constant trickle of walkouts became a tide by the end of the first song in Anka's three-song tribute at evening's end. Among those dashing out before the finale was actor Leslie Nielsen, one of the leading scorers in the inaugural Frank Sinatra Las Vegas Celebrity Golf Tournament.

The finale was introduced by DeNiro, who blew a kiss up toward the sky as he said, "So long, Frank." Anka began with a duet with Sinatra's own voice on "My Way," which Anka wrote. Despite being amplified, Sinatra's voice was reproduced so cleanly that it was impossible not to momentarily expect the Chairman of the Board himself to step on stage. Anka then segued into "New York, New York" and "Chicago," reworked so that the lyric was "My kinda town, Las Vegas is."

The omens for the evening were not auspicious from the start. A half-dozen camera crews, and maybe twice as many still photographers, including one bemused shooter from "Sports Illustrated," were joined by a handful of tourists, including one New Jersey couple in cowboy regalia who said they'd heard about the gala on the Internet. Soon, of course, they were being interviewed by the local TV news.

By the time comic Tom Dreesen, Sinatra's opening act for years, alighted from his limo, the buckskin-fringed New Jersey tourist lady was complaining about the heat and wondered loudly who he was. "Tom Cruise," Dreesen replied.

Her spirits lifted, though, when she saw Wayne Newton and actor Richard Crenna, both of whom posed for snapshots, and soon she was remarking with pleasure about the beautiful ladies who passed by in their beaded jackets, elegant shawls or spaghetti-strapped, backless, floor-length gowns.

The celebrity art of navigating the press-infested red carpet was on full display. Like DeNiro and Peck, many of the bigger names marched resolutely, and silently, down the side of the carpet farthest from the cameras and made right for the private reception. Others, such as model Carol Alt, actor Jack Lemmon and country singer Mac Davis, spotted the one national crew, from "Entertainment Tonight," along the walkway and headed straight for it. A few, such as "Super Dave" Osborne ("I have a movie coming out, Oct. 2 from MGM, which I don't want to plug") and Robert Goulet, worked the entire press line, stopping for a moment with each TV crew. "We're having a good time because he would want us to," Goulet told one cameraman.

Alas, as it turned out, it was not to be. As he opened the show, Peck quipped, "If you're here for the Finkelstein bar mitzvah, you're in the wrong room." The effect of the long evening was to suggest that maybe we were not.

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