Las Vegas Weekly

December 16, 2008 · 12:08 PM

Exclusive: Donny Osmond’s 51st birthday celebration includes fans, an airplane mishap and making ET’s hot list

By Robin Leach

Donny Osmond in performance mode and wear.

Photo: Erik Kabik/Retna/www.erikkabikphoto.com

Five hundred Donny Osmond fans, some from as far away as England and Hawaii, marked their favorite star singer’s birthday at a private, no-media-cameras, 4-hour celebration in Donny & Marie’s Flamingo showroom.

As it was Donny’s 51st big day, 51 well-wishers made up a “roast and praise” video greeting for his party. There were greetings from sister Marie and her Dancing With the Stars partner Jonathan Roberts, former ’N Sync star Joey Fatone, Penn & Teller, Rita Rudner and entertainer and impressionist Danny Gans, who sang the Osmond hit “Puppy Love” in the voice of Wayne Newton and Larry the Cable Guy!

Also on tape was American Idol music director Rickey Minor, who has partnered with Donny for the new TV series Re-discovered. I even contributed a video greeting, and the tape closed with Stevie Wonder singing “Happy Birthday” and encouraging the 500 fans to sing along with him.

Flamingo President Don Marrandino rolled in a birthday cake and had the Utah Jazz in Donny’s hometown send in a basketball jersey emblazoned with his name and #51! Fans from England presented him with a model church, and Hawaiian fans draped him in a lei of orchids.

Photo: Harrah's

Donny Osmond strums on his guitar.

Donny handed each fan a raffle ticket and then gave the winners iPods and Nanos loaded with Donny & Marie hit songs and videos. In a dance-off contest, he picked 10 out of 20 people to dance with and narrowed it down to one winner who he would take to dinner -- but he couldn’t choose between the two finalists, so he took them both for supper before the evening show!

I got to talk with Donny on his actual birthday, and he joked with me: “You realize at 51 if it was in dog years, I am dead. Fortunately, I feel about 25.”

Here’s the rest of our conversation about the upcoming holiday season:

Robin Leach: What does Christmas mean to you?

Donny Osmond: Taking out loans. Calling my banker saying I need a line of credit for all the gifts. Only joking! Now I’ll get serious! I think it is both ends of the spectrum. It is a time of peace and tranquility. I have five children and two grandkids, and it’s like what do we buy them? My youngest is 10; my oldest is 29. It is such a great time of year. Coming together as a family and the spirit of Christmas. I had to tell the 10-year-old two years ago that Santa was just a wonderful story. I broke the news. Sad part about having grandkids is that you share them with the in-laws, so this year they get to go back to Florida.

RL: What was Xmas like when you were growing up?

DO: Very exciting. The best Christmas ever, as a child, was when I was growing up in the Valley, out in L.A., and we had a real Christmas tree, the snowball lights. We decorated the house, and we did the Andy Williams show. It was two ends of the spectrum. It was fun at home, then back to rehearsal. We had a rehearsal hall in the back of the house. I hated that room because of the hours spent in there.

This year we’ve already put up three Christmas trees -- all next to each other. I found them in my storage unit. I remembered two years ago playing The Orleans, I went off to Target and bought a lot of trees to decorate our stage. I remembered them and found we had 20 of them in storage. We pulled out the first three -- all different sizes -- and I said we’d put those up because I didn’t want to go hunting for more! The house is completely decorated. It gets very festive.

Photo: Scott Doctor/www.greatscottstudios.com

Marie and Donny Osmond show off their dance moves.

RL: Do you do Christmas presents the night before or on the big day?

DO: Christmas Day. The tradition is to open one present on Christmas Eve, which is always a new pair of pajamas. I have more pajamas than you can imagine. Marie says she’s made everybody pink flamingo pj’s this year. I don’t want to wear those. Can you imagine me walking to work in pink flamingo pajamas? It is a tradition my mom started. She always made our outfits back then. She would go and get dark material, and because she had so much of it, she made us all the same clothes.

We do church on the Sunday before Christmas, and we really don’t do a Christmas dinner. It will be Marie’s first Christmas here in Vegas, in the desert, but I’ll be back home in Provo. You know we have a month off starting Sunday, and we don’t pick back up until Jan. 20. It’ll be a wonderful break, and we have decided to all go to Disneyland right after Christmas Day to ring in the New Year there with the family.

RL: You work every night of the week with your sister, so is this an entire month when you don’t get together?

DO: Hallelujah! Isn’t there an Xmas song that has that in it? I’ll be singing that for a month. All joking aside, George Wallace will continue his comedy and Nathan Burton will continue his magic, but we negotiated a month off. I need it. My body is saying, ‘Hello! You are 51!’ Seriously, though, I feel better now than I have in the past 9 to 10 years. There is a certain ease about having a life with a routine and schedule. I like that consistency.

“I flew back to Vegas yesterday and I walked into my Flamingo room and I thought I am home. It is really bizarre. It is my home away from home. My big project now over the holidays is to get my own plane. We had a meeting today to try to work out the dollars -- and sense of it. If we can make it work, I would be home Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. That would be awesome. It means no more driving back and forth, so it would be a Christmas present for my family and myself.

I don’t want to tell you this really, but my new hobby is remote-control airplanes, so my family went out and bought me a Spitfire, acrobatic, radio-controlled airplane for my birthday. I spent an hour assembling it, fixing it and got it ready for its maiden flight. I decided to do some acrobatic maneuvers, and I smashed it right into the ground. It was all of 3 minutes of pleasure.

Photo: Scott Doctor/www.greatscottstudios.com

Donny Osmond.

RL: So now Marie has her new book and her new TV show coming along, what are you going to try and squeeze into the spare moments of your life?

DO: You can work yourself to death. She stays busy, maybe too busy. When the iron is hot and in the fire, you have to strike. I think it is a good idea, given her personal life, that she stays busy. There is me, Jimmy and people around her to help balance and keep her stable. If you’ve got it, flaunt it. She is doing a good job at that. She kind of got burned out last week having to do with the divorce. She bounced back last night, and it was an awesome show. She just didn’t stop poking fun at me for my birthday.

“I have plans to do another album, and I am finally taking dancing lessons. I don’t know if I am going to accept an invitation to do Dancing With the Stars and follow in Marie’s footsteps. I just don’t know. I don’t know if I want to do all that work. I am testing the waters. I want to see if I am capable of that schedule in addition to still doing the nightly Vegas show. Remember when Marie did Dancing, we hadn’t yet signed the Flamingo deal!

“We’ve been here now 4 months, and we’re loving it. I have since I was just 7 years old. It is a great place. After every show, we do our meet and greet, and the fans do come from everywhere. If you are going to be in this business, and you don’t want to tour, Vegas is the ultimate place. We are so happy we’ve been renewed for two years and maybe another two after that.

RL: What is your holiday greeting this year?

DO: Be a little more tolerant, a little less judgmental. We have turned into a world of criticism. We need to be a little kinder to those not of our persuasion and more understanding of each other’s feelings.”

The 90-minute Donny & Marie production, which opened Sept. 9, marks the first time in 29 years that Donny & Marie have performed an extended residency engagement in Las Vegas. Donny built the software himself for the five large video monitors. Their catwalk stage lets them walk out right into the nightly, 750-strong, sold-out audiences.

Photo: Scott Harrison/Retna/www.harrisonphotos.com

Marie Osmond and her dolls.

While Donny was celebrating his birthday, Marie had her own meet and greet with fans dedicated to her amazing doll collection. She happily autographed the dolls for buyers stocking up on Christmas gifts. Click HERE for our at-home Christmas interview with Marie last week.

Even more exciting news for the Flamingo headliners: Donny & Marie have just been voted into Entertainment Tonight’s Top 20 “Hot List” of 2008, beating the likes of Miley Cyrus, Madonna, Katie Holmes, Will Smith and even Michelle Obama! Donny came in at No. 8, and Marie was No. 12, pipped by Britney Spears, Oprah Winfrey, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Barack Obama and Las Vegas Academy DWTSM dancer and singer Julianne Hough. The rankings were based on which stars had the most news coverage this year.

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