Las Vegas Weekly

June 12, 2009 · 7:03 AM

Terry Fator’s Mirage show comes to a surprising — and shocking — standstill

By Robin Leach

The $100 million man Terry Fator.

Photo: Tom Donoghue/www.donoghuephotography.com

Entertainer Terry Fator looked shell-shocked when a gag with his Mirage audience completely failed. His singing ventriloquist impersonations came to a screeching halt. Terry, who will celebrate his 100th show there over the Fourth of July weekend, said: “That’s the first time in my entire career I didn’t get the expected audience response. For a split second, I didn’t know how to handle it.”

I was hidden backstage, so he had no idea of what was about to happen. He’d just performed a Gnarls Barkley impersonation with his puppet Julius and asked the applauding audience if he should keep Julius in as a full-time addition to the show. Terry expected a resounding “yes,” but what he got was an overwhelming “no!” His face contorted and froze! His sister Virginia, who was watching from backstage, said: “I’ve never seen it like that before. He didn’t know what was happening or where he was. He kept saying, ‘No?’ ‘No?’ ”

But we’d planned it that way because he had to work on his 44th birthday. His manager, John McEntee, had secretly told the audience to rebel so that I could then walk onstage as a second immediate surprise to Terry. He was dazed and slightly reeling, but not KO’d, from the change of events, and then I got the audience to do a mass “Happy Birthday” sing-along while he put down the puppets and sat by the piano to recover! Another friend he hadn’t seen in 20 years flew in from Texas, and we also had him up onstage to sing a special tribute number.

“Terry was simply speechless. Of course the audience loved it all, but eventually Terry recovered and was able to resume the act. He said it blew his mind. It was a perfect gag to play on him, and even a day later, he couldn’t believe he’d been tricked,” John said.

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

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