Wynn's singing debut in N.Y. raises a ruckus

Steve Wynn's singing debut in New York on Tuesday was criticized by a newspaper there, but at least some in a well-heeled Gotham audience found the Mirage Resorts Inc. chairman's performance enthralling.

"Warbling Wynn Shocks Wall St." blared the headline over the New York Post's Page Six gossip column.

"The Post story is pure B.S.," countered an investment banker who attended a hospitality industry conference at the New York Palace Tuesday.

Wynn was the keynote speaker at the conference sponsored by Deutsche Banc Alex Brown that drew about 200 of Wall Street's top institutional money managers from firms such as Goldman Sachs, Bears Stears, Alliance Capital and others.

The Post column said Wynn "kept them enthralled with a history of Las Vegas and his own role in its renaissance, confiding his plan to open a new 1,800-seat state-of-the-art theater at the Mirage intended to lure the best writers, set designers and choreographers away from Broadway."

Wynn told the crowd about "Miss Spectacular," a musical about an Indiana girl who wants to be a star that Tony Award-winning producer Jerry Herman wrote for Mirage.

"Then he brought out a sound system and started to sing," the Post said.

"As the hardened Wall Street numbers-crunchers watched and listened in dismay, Wynn belted out three of the showstoppers -- sometimes singing, sometimes just lip-synching with the tape, according to one eyewitness," the Post said.

" 'It was extremely disconcerting,' said the witness. 'People were shaking their heads in disbelief. They couldn't get out of that room fast enough to call in their sell orders. It was an hour and a half I will not soon forget.' "

But another conference participant contacted by the Sun said today that the disgruntled Post source "was a complete idiot."

"That was the greatest single presentation I've ever seen," said the investment banker who asked that his name not be used.

"Wynn took his entire 60 minutes to talk about entertainment as the force that drives customers into casinos. He said the casino business is simple: Get people to walk by the slots and table games and leave some of their money.

"He said you can't build one of those buildings on the Strip every day, so you need something to jazz up the customers. He said that to make their trips worthwhile, you have to 'hit their emotional G-spot.' "

"Things that got a wow 30 years ago couldn't get a yawn today," Wynn told the audience, according to the investment banker.

"He's absolutely right," the banker said. "It takes courage to do what he does. In a song by REM there's a line that says, 'We're all standing on the shoulders of giants.' Wynn is a giant, a guy who looks at the forest, sees there's no path, and makes one himself."

And as for Wynn's singing voice?

"He was lip-synching, for Pete's sake," the banker said. "Let me tell you something about the songs, though. My take on whether Broadway-type shows will be a success or not is simple. I ask, would my mother would like this?"

Would she?

"Of course she would," the banker said.

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