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Forty-one years on a Las Vegas stage, told properly — the trial run that became a residency, the lawsuit that became a friendship, and the long climb up a ladder in heels.
The short version
Adopted at birth, raised in New York, orphaned young. He was pre-med and working a pharmacy counter when he found the makeup aisle more interesting than the pill aisle. One Halloween in drag led to one paid gig, which led to one signature impersonation, which led to a three-month contract in a Las Vegas showroom.
He never left. Over four decades he became the emcee, the star, the producer and finally the institution — the performer other headliners came to see. Two stars in the Walk of Stars. More than a thousand gowns. One very famous wig.
The ladder of success was even harder to climb wearing high heels.Frank Marino
The full record
An Evening at La Cage opens at the Riviera Hotel & Casino, produced by Norbert Aleman, with Marino as star and mistress of ceremonies playing Joan Rivers. Riviera executives give the show a three-month trial. It stays nearly twenty-four years.
Joan Rivers sues him for “in excess of $5 million,” alleging he is using her copyrighted material and that the advertising is misleading. By his account the papers reached him on stage, during his opening monologue. The case settles out of court — and the two later become friends.
Settled out of courtHis first book — written with Steve and Cathy Marks — arrives as a 271-page hardcover. Part memoir, part makeup-and-fashion manual, entirely unfiltered.
On February 1st he receives a star on the Las Vegas Walk of Stars, at a ceremony on the sidewalk outside the showroom that made him. Mayor Oscar Goodman also proclaims a “Frank Marino Day.”
He appears as himself in Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous, and sits for a Discovery Health documentary segment filmed with his birth mother and his partner’s mother.
An Evening at La Cage plays its final performance on February 9th. The cast is told after the nine o’clock show that it is over. About 180 people sat in a 600-seat room. The longest chapter of his career ends on a Monday night.
Over Labor Day weekend he and his co-producers self-finance a showcase at the Imperial Palace with no commitment from the hotel — hoping to draw an offer. It works. Performances begin that October in what the production calls a soft opening.
Self-financedFrank Marino’s Divas Las Vegas is declared officially open at the Imperial Palace on February 25th — his own show, his own name above the title. That same night he is presented with a second Walk of Stars star, reported at the time as the first entertainer to hold two.
The showroom never moves but the marquee keeps changing: the Imperial Palace becomes The Quad in December 2012, and The Quad becomes The LINQ in October 2014 after a $223 million renovation. He plays all three without packing a case.
In May he marks his 25,000th Las Vegas performance. He does twenty-five impersonations instead of the usual seventeen, is handed a “Key to the Strip,” and the hotel strikes a $25 commemorative casino chip.
Production’s own tallyJoan Rivers dies on September 4th. He calls her “like a second mother,” keeps the character in the show, and afterwards describes it differently: “more a tribute than an impersonation.”
Divas Las Vegas plays its last performance at The LINQ on June 26th, closing thirty-three years of Strip production shows.
After thirteen months off he joins Legends in Concert at the Tropicana in September, and on November 19th — the eve of his birthday — retires the Joan Rivers character on stage after some thirty-five years. It does not stick. He is back in the wig by December, and permanent emcee from February.
His second autobiography is published in July, covering the years from Rivers’ death through what its own description calls a public fall from grace, and the return to the stage that followed.
In April he opens the Frank Marino Red Carpet Brunch in a 125-seat cabaret built for him at the Westgate, where guests walk a red carpet past mock paparazzi on the way in. He calls it his last hurrah. It is not.
Divas, Drag & Drinks opens April 7th in the 24 Oxford showroom at Virgin Hotels. The seventy-five-minute revue trades Joan Rivers for the divas of now — Beyoncé, Rihanna, Lizzo, Cher, P!nk, Britney.
At 8 a.m. on September 18th the bulbs on the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign are switched from clear to ruby — the fortieth-anniversary color — marking four decades since he first took a Las Vegas stage. Anniversary shows run that weekend.
40 yearsDivas, Drag & Drinks closes at 24 Oxford with final Las Vegas performances on May 29–31. His last stage dates come a month later at Don’s Celebrity Theatre in Laughlin. He is quick to draw the distinction: he is ending the show, not retiring.
The final bowOn the record
I’m not selling audiences a lifestyle. I’m selling an art form that goes way back to Kabuki and Shakespeare.Las Vegas Sun · 2010
In my house, there’s not one piece of drag. Not an eyelash, a nail or a feather.Las Vegas Sun · 2010
I’m doing it 41 years and I still get nervous — which means I still care.The Blast · 2026