By Gary Dretzka, Photographs: Theodore Marienthal

s anyone who followed Fox's blessedly short-lived reality-based series The Casino already knows, Golden Nugget co-owners Tim Poster and Tom Breitling had the devil's own time coming up with a headliner for the hotel's venerable Theatre Ballroom. Somehow, no matter how much money the dot.com millionaires were willing to throw at the problem, they couldn't find an entertainer with just the right blend of class, sass and charisma to fill the vacancy.

Sinatra wannabe Matt Dusk wasn't quite ready for prime time. Neither was Jenn, the hot blonde in episode three, who weighed careers in singing and hooking before scurrying back home to Oregon with her tail between her legs. John Stagliano dangled his soft-core T&A revue, The Fashionistas, before the boys, but Tim and Tom thought it a bit too hot for downtown Vegas, and quickly nixed the idea. They also gave a big thumbs-down to a pair of fat and unfunny comedians introduced to them by an ambitious blackjack dealer, ditto a professional light-bulb eater, the Trashy Lingerie Girls and a bevy of bowling bimbos.

Just when the situation seemed most dire, Las Vegas übermanager Bernie Yuman strolled into their downtown office and made the lads an offer they couldn't refuse: Sign my relatively unknown singer/impressionist/comedian to a yearlong contract — sight unseen — or watch him become Las Vegas' Next Big Thing in someone else's showroom. In the parlance of craps, they were betting on the come that the man who managed Siegfried & Roy to superstardom would instantly roll a 7 or 11 and make them winners, as well, with a guy named Gordon Brown.

Yuman's take-it-or-leave-it proposal played out before the Fox cameras, even as the entertainer — henceforth to be known as "Downtown" Gordie Brown — weighed offers from properties in Atlantic City. He didn't even know Yuman was conspiring to make his wildest fantasy come true.

"It was perfect timing," recalls the amiable and handsome Québec native, sitting in the hotel's swank Zax lounge (formerly home to the aforementioned Dusk). "Las Vegas is where my focus always has been, and where I wanted to perform. I didn't, however, want to come back as an opening act, or do 20 minutes in the middle of someone else's show."

Brown had first arrived in Las Vegas in 1987, after giving up a steady gig with the Ottawa Sunday Herald as a political cartoonist. Although he had acted some in high school and sang in rock groups, Brown put those interests on hold to pursue a career with some kind of financial stability. It was while watching Ottawa native Rich Little perform in concert — from a front-row seat — that Brown decided that he no longer could deny his primary ambition, and immediately began honing an act of his own...

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