Cross-country gossip guru Laura Deni connects New York to Las Vegas on her website

Cross cyber-columnist Matt Drudge with gossip dowager Liz Smith, and what you get is Laura Deni.

Deni edits the new-ish website "Broadway to Las Vegas," a weekly dishy collection of "interviews, gossip, news and show reviews" of celebrities with ties to New York and Las Vegas.

"You couldn't do this website from Podunk, USA," declares the petite, mid-'50s-ish Deni over lunch at the Mandalay Bay hotel-casino. "They're really the two cities that have a certain, different feel to them."

What makes the cut in her weekly column?: Items on celebrities with strong Las Vegas or Broadway connections, such as Danny Gans, Tommy Tune, David Cassidy, Michael Crawford and Chita Rivera; Road stories on Las Vegas legends such as Barbra Streisand, Liza Minnelli and Wayne Newton; And a behind-the-scenes "hissy fit" between Elton John and Tina Turner -- who were scheduled to perform together in Las Vegas on New Year's Eve -- during the taping of VH1's recent "Divas Live '99."

A Las Vegas resident since 1963, Deni maintains the look of a bona fide New York theaterphile -- the angular brunette bob, eyelashes as long as the eye can see and fingernails painted the color of dried blood -- even making the pilgrimage to the Great White Way several times a year to see the season's newest productions.

"I've just always been interested in Broadway," she explains. "When I was a small child, I never collected Barbie dolls -- I was collecting original Broadway cast albums."

This season, the musical "Parade," a Tony nominee, captured her fancy. "It was riveting, it was absolutely magnificent," she gushed. "I think it's one of the best shows of all time.

"And ... it closed," she says with a matter-of-fact shrug. "And that's a shame."

Deni's "Broadway to Vegas" website (www.broadwaytovegas.com) seems fortuitously timed to the much-touted "Broadwayization" of Las Vegas.

But she downplays the coincidence.

"The trend of Broadway in Vegas is nothing new," she harrumphs. "Caesars Palace had 'Fiddler on the Roof' for six months, 'A Chorus Line' has been here twice, the Hilton had a legitimate theater, which was a disaster when (the star) didn't know his lines, Maynard Sloate (co-producer of the "Follies Bergere") also produced dinner theater at the Union Plaza," she says. "I could show you things I wrote in Billboard magazine 20 years ago, and people were talking about Broadway in Vegas the same way they're talking now."

Deni worries over the feasibility of such shows. She questions whether tourists would choose to see a show in Las Vegas that is available elsewhere over a show that they can only see here.

The only way it will work, she concludes, is if the quality is over the top. "The Broadway shows can't be just a show," she contends, "(they have) to have stars and be of the same level as the one on Broadway -- which "Chicago" (at Mandalay Bay) certainly does.

"But are we going to have a line of theaters up and down the Strip? Absolutely not," she declares. "Las Vegas is not a threat to Broadway. Vegas will always be the Entertainment Capital of the World, just as Broadway will always be the theater capital of the world. That doesn't mean they can't co-exist."

It infuriates her when New York critics fail to understand this, bashing Las Vegas production shows as "cheesy" or "glitzy." "They're two distinct art forms," she notes. " 'EFX' is not 'Death of a Salesman.' But we've always had good quality shows here. What we didn't have is what is known as culture."

Among her other pet peeves are the vanishing jobs for local musicians, the ear-drum massacring, high-decibel volume of production shows, the exorbitant consumer-gouging ticket prices and the low-paying jobs for Broadway stars compared to Hollywood.

Like the gossip guru she is, she illustrates her concerns with the appropriate amount of name dropping: the time Liam Neeson confided that the stage was his love but he did films to pay the bills, or the family of a certain headliner at Caesars who don earplugs before each show, the Stephen Sondeim show that opened in Chicago with a scant 10 musicians in its orchestral ensemble.

The beginnings

Born in Kansas, the daughter of a musician, Deni's first foray into writing was for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which imparted her first financial lesson.

She discovered that she was earning $60 a week, while a man with comparable experience was earning $70. When she marched into her boss' office to ask why, she was told simply "because he's a man."

From there, she used her business acumen to get hired as a business reporter for Baron's, where her first assignment was to critique a dairy company's newest product. "It was yogurt in a cup," she says with a laugh, noting that it featured the novel concept of fruit at the bottom. "That's how long ago it was."

Deni eventually parlayed her musical upbringing into a 20-year stint as a writer for Billboard, traveling around the country to produce special issues, while simultaneously raising a son as a single mother. In the '80s, she penned a series of health text books, then battled with health issues of her own after a diagnosis of breast cancer came at the age of 43.

About a year ago, she launched the website with "no fanfare," relying on her 30 years in the writing biz as her main credential. "That is where journalism is going, totally to the Web," she says. "It's changed the complexion of the way writing is done."

When she began, Deni admits that she lacked even a speck of knowledge about the Internet, knowing only she was of the "Keep it Simple, Stupid," philosophy.

But she quickly brought herself up to speed. Her first posting, on April 25, 1998, was a simple column in black and white about a lecture in New York featuring actor Jack Klugman. Her latest included an interview with country star Eddy Arnold, who was feted at the Orleans hote-casino last week after announcing his retirement, and featured color photos and paid advertising icons.

Deni now hires computer programers to scan the photos and relies on a staff of occasional stringers to provide out-of-town coverage, but otherwise does all the reporting and writing singlehandedly.

"It's mostly me finding things out through 30 years of knowing people," she explains. "I hear from press agents all day long, they call, they fax," she says, sighing. "The hardest part is deciding what shouldn't go in."

The site has yet to turn a profit, but is not bleeding financially, either. "Very quickly, it had a nice following of several thousand hard-core viewers, er, readers," she amends. "We had people from New York (who) said, 'What took you so long? It's about time' -- that was the reaction I got. Which is a nice reaction."

And Deni has found that the miles between Broadway and Las Vegas continue to shrink.

"I was sitting in the theater at 'Parade,' " she relates, "and I heard a voice behind me saying that the stage looks just like the stage of the Bellagio."

Checking her program, she found to her surprise, that the same sound designer had worked on both.

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