wayne newton

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 23 ― When Cheryl Burke traded in her ballet slippers for a ballroom dancing outfit at age 11, it was not because she anticipated performing one day for a weekly audience of 20 million people.

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Axel Koester for The New York Times
Cheryl Burke at rehearsal for "Dancing With the Stars." As the season heats up, she often practices up to eight hours a day.


Craig Sjodin/ABC
"Dancing With the Stars" has turned Cheryl Burke, a two-season winner, into a star in her own right. Wayne Newton is her partner this fall.
A dozen years later Ms. Burke, 23, has become one of the biggest draws on ABC's hit reality series "Dancing With the Stars." The show, which starts its fifth season on Monday night, pairs professional ballroom dancers with celebrities and has them compete in the fox trot, tango, paso doble and other traditional routines. Its estimated weekly viewership of 20 million people last year was second only to "American Idol."

That has made Ms. Burke, a winner of the competition two of the four seasons she has appeared on the show, as recognizable as any professional dancer in the United States. Certainly she has become more of a star than some of the ex-boy-band singers and obscure sitcom actors who have joined with the professionals.

In addition to showing up regularly on the red carpet at Hollywood premieres, Ms. Burke no longer goes unrecognized in airports. Her Web site, strictlycheryl.com, draws adoring notes from fans, and she has gone from never having read, she said, a celebrity tabloid to having her preference for thong underwear chronicled by Women's Wear Daily.

The popularity of "Dancing With the Stars," an import version of the international television hit "Strictly Come Dancing," has surprised even executives at ABC, some of whom were reluctant to embrace the series when it started as a summer replacement in 2005.

At that time Ms. Burke, who is originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, was living in New York. She was training with a ballroom dance partner at a studio on West 42nd Street, not far from the giant screen on the facade of the ABC studios building in Times Square that regularly spotlighted clips from the first season of "Dancing."

"People in the ballroom world thought it was kind of cheesy," she said of her first impressions of the program. "I had seen the show, but I really wanted to focus on competition dancing." Though she had won some titles, including World Cup Professional Rising Star Latin Champion in 2005, "I still hadn't reached my goal of becoming a world champion."

But she also had been unlucky with partners, she said. She was approached to audition for the show about the same time that her last partner and boyfriend decided to pull back from professional competition. That led Ms. Burke to decide that the move to Los Angeles for the show might do her good.

One recent afternoon in Beverly Hills, Ms. Burke, wearing a maroon halter dress, flip-flops and new shoulder-length hair extensions instead of ballroom-dance regalia, looked supremely relaxed, every bit like a Southern California aspiring television star. She also looked far younger than she does on television, particularly without the heavy, circuslike makeup that the ballroom profession seems to demand.

Though she was prepared upon joining the show to teach a neophyte partner the basics of the ballroom world, she was not prepared for the level of scrutiny. Rehearsals are taped, partners are given special activities to do to provide footage of them in "actual life" settings, and after each show the competitors face a gantlet of cameras from television tabloid shows like "Extra" and "Entertainment Tonight."

Conrad Green, executive producer of "Dancing With the Stars," said Ms. Burke underwent a noticeable personal transformation beginning in her first season.

"Her confidence increased a lot," he said. "She always had enormous charisma as a dancer, but she was shy. She wasn't the Cheryl that we know now."

Ms. Burke credits much of that transformation to Drew Lachey, a former member of the pop group 98 Degrees who was Ms. Burke's first partner on the show. "He would help me out with the cameras," she said. Conversely, Mr. Lachey said that he benefited from the fact that, having just come from the world of professional competition, "she was very much into strict, formal rehearsals."

The combination worked, with Ms. Burke and Mr. Lachey winning the show's second edition. The next season Ms. Burke teamed with Emmitt Smith, the former professional football star, and they also won. Last spring she finished in fourth place with Ian Ziering, an actor from "Beverly Hills 90210."

The pace is grueling. After each professional dancer is paired with a celebrity, they spend about four weeks learning basic steps and practicing for their first performance. If they make it past the first round, the intensity grows, with each team having just a week to choreograph and learn first one dance, then, later in the competition, two dances for each performance. By the middle of the competition, partners are working seven days a week and as many as eight hours a days.

The coming season is likely to be considerably different for Ms. Burke, whose partners have been progressively older over the seasons. Mr. Lachey was 29 at the time the couple won, Mr. Smith was 37, and Mr. Ziering was 42. This fall Ms. Burke is paired with Wayne Newton, 65.

Though she has bought Mr. Newton's signature 1963 song "Danke Schoen," Ms. Burke admits that she did not know much about him. That's not unusual, she said: "I lived in a bubble as a kid." Indeed, she had to Google Emmitt Smith to learn who he was.

"Wayne and I are taking it a lot slower" than she has with other partners, she said, at first keeping their rehearsals to two hours a day. "But he is a performer, and he assures me that when it comes time to perform, he is able to turn it on."
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- "Danke Shoen" was what Staten Islanders were saying last night to the legendary Mr. Las Vegas -- Wayne Newton -- as the famous crooner performed hit after hit in the St. George Theatre.

"I just can't wait to see him," said Jean Lombardo of Richmond, as she and her husband, Lou, waited for friends in the historic North Shore venue's grand entryway.

So, you want to buy Wayne Newton's boyhood home?

I said, WAYNE NEWTON'S BOYHOOD HOME?!!!

You're too late. Just barely.

The small bungalow where the legendary entertainer lived when he was 7 years old just sold. The deal should close next week, just days before Newton makes his first concert appearance in Roanoke in 23 years.

The house sits on Gearhart Road, a quiet street in Garden City, where a sweet gum stands tall in the front yard and blocks the morning sun. The house is so unassuming, so nonglitzy, so un-Wayne-Newton-like, not even the real estate agent knew Newton had once lived there.

"I guess it could have increased the value," joked Roanoke real estate agent Marilyn Perdue, who brokered the sale. When asked if the value would have decreased had the buyer not been a Newton fan, Perdue said, "Oh no. Not a chance."

This is Roanoke, after all. We claim Newton -- Mister Las Vegas and, this fall, one of the stars of the prime-time hit "Dancing with the Stars" -- as a native son, even if he was born in Norfolk and only lived here briefly.

When you're a Virginian, "you're always a Virginian," Newton told The Roanoke Times in 1999. "There are certain states that are that way."

Newton's boyhood home listing in the real estate guides wasn't overly eye-catching: Built in 1940, 763 square feet, valued about $100,000, the house would make a good starter home for a family. That's exactly what it was when Patrick and Evelyn Newton moved in with their two sons in June 1949.

By the time the family moved to Arizona less than five years later, much had transpired. They lived in three different houses in four years. Little Wayne Newton and his brother, Jerry, learned to play musical instruments at the knee of the late, great Elmer Ridenhour, who taught thousands of students in 47 years and opened several music stores throughout the Roanoke Valley. Wayne Newton is the only one who made it big in Las Vegas.

Wayne and Jerry Newton got so good (Wayne Newton alone learned 11 different instruments), they played on WDBJ radio every morning before going to school at Garden City Elementary. The brothers' first public performance was a $10 gig at a union Christmas party at Hotel Roanoke. They wrote original songs, including "Mill Mountain Boogie."

Jim Meador played a few shows with the Newton boys back in the early days. Meador, 69, who lives in Moneta, was himself a child star with the Four Little Hillbillies, a youthful quartet that played bluegrass music on Roanoke radio and television in the 1950s. Meador remembered playing a show with the Newtons at the old American Legion Auditorium.

Wayne "played steel guitar and Jerry played guitar," Meador said. "They played sort of a blues, swing style of music. Wayne gave me a picture that he wrote a little note on."

Wayne had written on the back, "Thanks a lot, Jimmy. I think you all are the best entertainers in Roanoke, Va." On the front was a black-and-white shot of Wayne and Jerry, clad in dark shirts with tassels and cowboy hats.

Wayne Newton suffered from bronchial asthma, so the family moved to the arid climate of Phoenix about 1953. There, the brothers were discovered by Jackie Gleason, then Wayne Newton headed for Las Vegas, and quicker than you can say "Danke Schoen" he was "Mister Las Vegas." He now has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and received the first star on the Las Vegas Walk of Stars.

Only two of the three houses the Newtons lived in are still standing. The family sold the Garden City house in 1950 and rented a two-story home on Rutrough Road. In 1953, the family's last year in Roanoke, they lived in a long-gone residence that sat where the Sanco Drugstore stands at the intersection of Riverland Road and Garden City Boulevard.

Newton told The Roanoke Times in 1999 that he remembered the Rutrough Road house best of all, if for no other reason than the fact that he and his brother rolled the family car into the creek in the backyard.

Newton's father was a $48-per-week automobile mechanic at Wright Motor Corp. Evelyn Newton was a stay-at-home mom who made her sons cowboy outfits they wore when they performed.

Even though Wayne Newton, 65, has not called Roanoke home in more than 53 years, his performance Friday at the Roanoke Civic Center feels like a homecoming. He has returned to the Star City before -- coincidentally, Newton moved here the same year the Mill Mountain Star was erected, thus "the Star" and Roanoke's biggest star arrived at the same time -- but has played only two concerts here.

The 1971 show attracted a paltry crowd of 600 fans in the shiny, new and mostly empty Roanoke Civic Center, but the 1984 concert brought 4,312.

Tickets are still available for Friday's show. Too bad it wasn't scheduled sooner. Newton could have made an offer on his childhood home.

Instead, he will have to console himself in his 13,000-square-foot Casa de Shenandoah in the sands of Vegas.

A random sampling of Wayne Newton quotes from over the years that make reference to Roanoke.


"My childhood years were very, very happy years. I had a radio show [on WDBJ] in the morning before going to school -- Garden City Grade School."

(1999, interview with The Roanoke Times)


"You know everybody wants to say they came from a poor family and starved. We were poor, but we never starved."

(1967, Associated Press)


"I've always wanted to be an entertainer; it's the only thing that ever excited me. My brother and I used to pick up a couple of brooms and pretend they were guitars. That was back in Roanoke, Virginia. The main thing in our favor was that we had parents who loved us and sacrificed for us and encouraged us."

Mark Cuban is rehearsing a mambo routine with his partner, professional dancer Kym Johnson, and his hips need to be a little looser. Kym pushes on her own to demonstrate. "You've got to push it forward and take it back," she says. "All of the action is happening downstairs."

Words to live by. They're dancing to ... actually, I can't tell you what song they're dancing to -- I'm told it's top-secret -- but appropriately, it's an ode to money. The hip action comes during a line celebrating the green stuff. Cuban tries the pelvic thrust again and nails it. "I like your face during that part!" Kym says to him. "You look so happy."

Cuban grins. "Wouldn't you be?"

Yeah, it's not exactly a hardknock life for the billionaire businessman. So how did an (otherwise) everyman known for his T-shirts and jeans end up in tight pants and sequins, sharing a stage with the likes of Marie Osmond and Wayne Newton on the new season of Dancing with the Stars (8 p.m. ET Mondays, ABC)?

Producers called Cuban a few weeks before he underwent hip replacement surgery at the beginning of the summer and, well, asked him. "I figured I was going to have to rehab it anyway," he says. "I might as well have fun doing it." He started practicing less than a month ago and already has lost 20 pounds. "He has a dancer's body now," Kym says.

A dancer's body. As if the boys in the locker room needed any more ammunition. "Jerry Stackhouse told me I had some big ones to go out and do this in front of 20 million people," Cuban says. "Dirk (Nowitzki) just smirked and shook his head." At another point, Cuban tells ABC's camera crew about his team: "These guys can't dance, so they have no room to talk. You've heard of the white man's overbite? Dirk's got the white man's bucktoothed overbite."

And if you're lucky, you might even get a chance to see Cuban incorporate that white man's bucktoothed overbite on live television this fall. Kym choreographs each dance, but as Cuban exclaims, "I help!" Their deal is that he gets to work one classic "guy" move into every routine. The foxtrot he'll unveil tonight features the "churn the butter" move; next week -- mambo week -- he'll sneak in a "snake."

This is his first go at the mambo, and, after walking through the steps dozens of times, they do it at full speed for the first time all the way through. He looks up at me when they're done: "How was it?"

"Fun!" I say.

"Fun or fun-ny?" Kym asks with a grin.

Fun, I assure her -- and it is. At one point, Cuban asks me if his performance is what I expected. "You thought I was going to be a stiff, didn't you?"

The truth is, I don't quite know what I expected, but this isn't it. Cuban is fun out there, he's charming ... and you know what, he's pretty good. Good enough to send women across the country -- and maybe even a few NBA fans -- scurrying for their phones like a bunch of American Idol-crazed preteens. As with everything else in his life, he's determined to excel at this -- he's already talking about being in the show's finals as if it's as certain as the sun coming up tomorrow.

But not yet. Their second time through with the music is a bit, uh, sloppy. "I didn't have my mambo attitude that time. I was thinking about my arm," Cuban says, shaking his head. Kym starts to give him some advice, and he gets the look of a player who's being told by his coach that he released the ball too early -- he already knows. "I was thinking about everything else," he says crisply, definitively. "Let's do it again."

Sure enough, the next time through is much smoother. "Every time, I pick up a little piece," he says, leaning on his knees, out of breath. "It's repetition, repetition, repetition." Kym nods. "It's definitely getting there."

He stands upright, the sweat dripping off his arms, and looks at Kym. "Again?"




"Tonight we could have done this show in my hotel suite."

(1971, The Roanoke Times. Newton performed to an estimated crowd of 600 inside the Roanoke Civic Center on Oct. 16, 1971.)


"I cannot tell you what a great thrill it is to finally come home."

(1984, Roanoke Times & World-News. Newton performed to a crowd of 4,312 at the Roanoke Civic Center on Oct. 27, 1984. According to the newspaper's review, he told dumb jokes, accepted flowers and kisses from women, and maintained a running conversation with a couple from Buena Vista in the front row.)





Tommy Barghaus of Meiers Corners knew Newton only from his role in the Chevy Chase film "Vegas Vacation," but was looking forward to seeing the entertainer in person.

"It's nice to take the family out," said Barghaus, who was seated in the seventh row of the front orchestra with his wife and assorted family members.

The pre-show kitsch factor was comparable to Vegas, as showgirls dolled up in skimpy white outfits, feather boas and elaborate headdresses worked the crowd; two animal handlers from the Staten Island Zoo showed off an American alligator and a black rat snake, and an Elvis impersonator twitched his hips.

But come 8 o'clock, the night belonged to Newton, just as it usually does in his hometown of Sin City.

Opening with "Viva Las Vegas," the finger-snapping Newton -- decked out in a stylish tux -- stormed the stage to thunderous applause.

"Hello, New York," he said, following the song.

Next, Newton did a rocking blues number featuring keyboard, guitar, sax and drum solos. His orchestra also boasted a string section, horn players, a drummer and a percussionist.

On backing vocals was a three-woman chorus.

"I love you, Wayne!" someone shouted once the song was done.

"I love you, too," responded a chuckling Newton.

He then performed "Mack the Knife," dedicating the classic song to a couple in the audience married for 37 years, and altering some lyrics to give a nod to his Staten Island stage.

The evening moved along in similar fashion, with Newton telling jokes and stories, interacting with the crowd and covering many of the hits in his catalog.

And, yes, he sang "Danke Shoen."

"When we reopened four years ago, our goal was to have big, renowned artists, so we are so proud to have Wayne Newton," said Doreen Cugno, vice president of programming at the St. George Theatre. "He's a megastar."