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Wayne is square and he knows it; recently he has even considered updating his image slightly by letting his hair grow. But he has stayed with his ducktail sides with pompadour, and he thus remains as lovable as ever to his fans. American mothers get precious little filial devotion these days, and Wayne represents an age when boys loved their mammas and weren't ashamed to show it. The moms and dads who pack his shows must have blanched a bit when he married a Japanese-American airline hostess, but he is still a good, home-loving, God-fearing boy. When he sings Dreams of the Everyday Housewife, women in the audience do everything but fetch him cookies and milk right there in the nightclub.
No Grousing. Wayne Newton's offstage life replays his image. He prefers to spend most of his free time on his Nevada ranch with his wife and horses. He doesn't think entertainers should be politically active because "our voices are too powerful." But his ideas fix him as a patriot of the well-over-30 school. Says Wayne: "Not everybody agrees with the President, but he's still our President and it's still our country."
Wayne certainly has nothing to grouse about. With the aid of a sharp agent named Tony Amato, the main Newton company controls, among other things: a merchandising company that produces Wayne Newton artifacts and recorded musical horoscopes, a music-publishing firm, 4,500 acres of ranch land, four Los Angeles apartment buildings, two condominiums in Hawaii and 30 Arabian thoroughbreds. Wayne's personal goodies include: a nine-acre ranch in Las Vegas, two Bentleys, a Rolls-Royce, an XKE, a Mustang, a Learjet, three Hondas, a power boat and a dune buggy. Obviously an operation that can produce these kinds of holdings is not to be laughed at. Wayne certainly doesn't. "The people who come to my show," he says, "are from three to 93. A father who wants to give something great to his boy will bring him to see us. The couple who has been married 43 years is typical. We have to keep as contemporary as possible for the young, but we can't lose the old either. You might say that I sing for mid-America."