Las Vegas Weekly

May 28, 2009 · 7:38 AM

Exclusive: Suzanne Somers plans return after selling out lectures at Hilton

By Robin Leach

Suzanne Somers on the Hilton's red carpet.

Photo: TVT

Most entertainment experts would say that on a hot holiday weekend, the last place people would want to be is inside a theater for an afternoon lecture about health and aging! But when actress, entertainer and best-selling author Suzanne Somers is providing secrets on “Good Health, Good Sex and How to Live to Be 100,” audiences follow every word.

Suzanne’s friend Barry Manilow’s theater in the Las Vegas Hilton was packed for two consecutive days with young, old and in between. They gave her a standing ovation as she talked about anti-aging medicine and bio-identical hormone replacement for her “Eight Breakthrough Steps to Wellness.”

Photo: TVT

Alan Hamel and Suzanne Somers.

Suzanne, her husband Alan Hamel and I have been friends since the early 1980s when she achieved TV stardom as Christmas “Crissy” Snow on Three’s Company. Now 62, she’s proudly beaten cancer and says she’s restored and maintained an exciting sex life. Although they live in Palm Springs and Malibu, Calif., they’ve seriously begun thinking of moving back here.

“I’ve seriously begun thinking about coming back to the Vegas stage,” Suzanne told me backstage. “I know I took time off to write 18 best-selling books, but I’d like to do some song and dance in a late-night cabaret setting. Barry has offered to write some music and create the act for it. I’d like it to be intimate, a one-on-one kind of feeling that Sinatra and his pals had when they did the late-night lounge shows. I think Vegas is getting ready for that revival again.

“I have a very faithful following for my lectures all across the country. They always keep asking me to perform again and entertain them. I’ve probably got one or two more books to do, one a cookbook on how to eat and beat cancer, and then I will seriously plan a return to the Strip with a variety show.”

Photo: TVT

Robin Leach with Suzanne Somers.

Click HERE for my interview with Suzanne before she arrived for the lectures. While here, they attended two nights of their friend Barry’s special fan club performances of Here at the Mayflower, and their final night was at Cher’s last show of her current run at Caesars Palace.

Suzanne had the last words: “Barry was pure genius. I know people want to hear the hits, but they loved Mayflower. Half the show was that, and he still had the fans enthralled. We will come back to the Strip to sing, and with Barry helping us, it will be great.”

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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