A day in the life of Frank Marino — PHOTOS

Frank Marino is in for a long day.

Not that most days aren't on the longish side for Marino, star and creator of "Frank Marino Divas Las Vegas" at The Linq; he's been performing on the Strip for 30 years straight. By his own reckoning, Marino has done more than 25,000 shows, taking the niche art of female impersonation to audience members from all over the world.

But, today, Marino is feeling the effects of what he suspects was a questionable potpie that kept him awake the previous night and dialed back, even if only by a meager notch or two, his usual frenetic pace.

Nonetheless, Marino soldiers on, remaining exactly the kind of guy you'd expect him to be: gracious and gregarious, thoughtful and determined, candid and comedic, and always ready to tell a story, loose a quip or offer a mock verbal tidbit prefaced by "My motto is ..."

Because you don't headline on the Las Vegas Strip for three solid decades by letting some iffy entree get the best of you.

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It's early afternoon when Marino greets visitors at his home, in a community near The Lakes. The cozy, only slightly extravagant place is packed with souvenirs and mementos of Marino's career, plush toys from fans (many of which will end up with children at local hospitals), furnishings that tend toward the blingy and, cutest of all, Marino's dog, Cherie, a ball of jumping white fluff who sleeps in her own miniature canopy bed.

Marino was born in Brooklyn, N.Y, and grew up in Oceanside, Long Island. Adopted at birth, he was raised by godparents after the deaths of his mother to breast cancer when he was 6 and of his father to lung cancer when he was 9.

"When I was 28 I found my birth mother," Marino says. "We had a great reunion. She looked like me in drag."

Marino had planned to become a doctor. But, while attending college, he worked part time at a pharmacy that happened to have a well-stocked makeup counter.

"I was very interested in it and I don't know why," Marino says. "I became very good with makeup, and I was selling that makeup out the door to the women. It was unbelievable.

"So Halloween came by and, like any law-abiding gay guy, I went out in drag, dressed like Diana Ross, and I won the Halloween contest."

That led to paid appearances as Diana Ross, before Marino decided to create an impersonation of Joan Rivers. During a trip to Atlantic City to see Rivers perform, he met Rivers backstage. The producer of a show called "An Evening at La Cage" also happened to be there and offered Marino a role as Joan Rivers in one of its productions.

Then, after Pia Zadora and her then-husband, Meshulam Riklis, who ran Las Vegas' Riviera hotel, caught "La Cage" in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Riklis invited its producer to bring the show to the Riviera. Marino, then 19, came with it in 1985 and has been here ever since.

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Female impersonation shows, perhaps surprisingly, don't have a particularly long history on the Strip, says historian Dennis McBride.

While shows and performers did play Las Vegas in off-Strip and downtown venues at least as far back as the '30s, McBride has written, female impersonation "has always lurked at the edge of Las Vegas entertainment culture."

Then, in 1977, Kenny Kerr's "This is Boy-Lesque," opened at the Silver Slipper, and McBride counts Kerr as "the first major female impersonator to play the Strip."

Marino, who arrived in Las Vegas several years later, said he "idolized" Kerr. However, the two performers would become "rivals," Marino says, because Kerr "was not willing to share the Strip. And we had some major blowouts. I have to say it generated a lot of publicity."

Kerr "died a few years ago, and we became friends before he passed," Marino says. "I had some good times with him."

McBride attributes both Marino's and Kerr's success to their respective shows "being built entirely around their personalities. 'La Cage' was Frank Marino. 'Boy-Lesque' was Kenny Kerr."

"I think it was the power and force of those two extremely talented performers that carried their shows for so long, and still carries Frank's," McBride says.

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"I may throw up on you."

An odd greeting, sure, but Lance Inamine, head trainer at David Barton Gym at Tivoli Village, takes Marino's caution in stride.

Marino looks pretty much like any other client of the upscale health club. The only possible giveaway to his professional life as a female impersonator: The black, silver and decidedly blingy training shoes he wears.

Marino greets fellow clients with a friendly hello, and a few glance at him with that "I know him from somewhere" look. Marino says that, even out of his signature Joan Rivers ensemble, he's recognized in public dozens of times in a typical week.

"It used to be, 'We love your show.' Then it's, 'My mother loves your show.' Now it's, like, 'My grandmother loves your show' " he says with a laugh.

The workout resumes, and Marino discovers that abdominal crunches actually feel good today.

"I have a motto," he says: "Success is not for the lazy."

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After the workout, Marino drives — in his Cadillac, not the pop art VW Beetle with long eyelashes affixed over its headlights — to a gated community in Summerlin to check on the progress of his new home, a spacious place that he bought two years ago and is still renovating.

"When I first got it, it looked like the Palace of Versailles meets Mount Charleston, so it just didn't work," Marino says.

He takes visitors on a tour, showing them the location of the yet-to-be-built movie theater, the hair salon and a bathroom that will feature wallpaper bearing images of Audrey Hepburn in "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

During conversations with the construction manager, the tile and closet people and others, Marino's attention to detail becomes evident. His perfectionism also extends to "Frank Marino Divas Las Vegas," which Marino premiered in 2010 after "An Evening at La Cage" closed following a 23-year-run.

Marino not only stars in "Divas," but co-produces it, too (Marino's partner of 22 years, Alex Schechter, is vice president of the company that produces it with him). While he was confident of the show's chances of success from the start, "to this day, we have the same problem, getting people to realize that ("Divas" is) not a, quote, gay show," he says.

"It's hard to get some people to even understand what it is and to come in. So I've got to work twice as hard to get half as far, because it is a drag show."

Marino figures his show is one that people might see after buying tickets for Celine Dion or Blue Man Group or Cirque du Soleil. So, he says, "you've got to spend a lot of money on advertising and you've got to be creative, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith will see me on a cab or a billboard, or (say) 'I saw him on Travel Channel' — or on one of the 'Housewives' shows on Bravo, whatever it is I did — 'and I want to see that show.'

"If you have a supportive husband, they say yes," Marino says, smiling, and even if husbands "don't want to see a man in drag, the wife usually wins. That's the good part of the story."

Could his show be changing audience members' attitudes toward gay culture? Marino isn't sure.

"I think the drag queen is still shunned," he says. "And not even the drag thing. The gay thing."

Even today, Marino says, there are those who "put sugar on the fact they still don't like the fact of homosexuality."

But it is possible that shows such as Marino's could acquaint audience members with a culture, and others who belong to a culture, that they're not familiar with.

"I think that the female impersonator shows (are) a symbol of the real diversity and humanity (of) not just the gay community" but of people in general, says Ron Lawrence, founder and clinical supervisor of the Community Counseling Center of Southern Nevada.

"So female impersonation is a true art that could express the diversity in gender, and how we can take something that lives inside of us and make it into an outward expression."

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Marino's next stop is his dressing room at The Linq, where he dons his Joan Rivers attire before heading to KTNV-TV, Channel 13. He's taping promotional spots for Divas Day Out, a women's event scheduled for Feb. 27 at the South Point, and his weekly post-show analyses of "Dancing With the Stars" on KTNV's midday news.

Marino's dressing room is packed with photos of celebrity guests, racks of gowns, pillows emblazoned with "Queen of Effing Everything" and lots — like, lots — of wigs.

The art and science of female impersonation is trickier than you'd think. For example, Marino's impersonation of Joan Rivers began by observing her walk. Then, he uses wigs, glue, putty and makeup to flesh out Rivers' physical likeness. Marino estimates that he has gone through "maybe 10,000 tubes of lipstick in 30 years, 25,000 pairs of pantyhose and about 10,000 pairs of eyelashes."

The promos at KTNV go well, and Marino heads back to The Linq about 30 minutes before showtime. When he arrives, the theater already is nearly packed with members of just about every demographic.

"I've got young kids coming to the show before they go to the clubs. I get older people having dinner and then coming here to see the show," Marino says, as well as gay couples and straight couples and bachelorette party attendees.

Each night, Marino sets the lineup of performers for the show, and an average of 15 acts will be seen on a given night. Marino opens each show with a monologue, then introduces performers throughout the evening, wearing a different outfit each time.

Those costume changes are done in a separate quick-change area backstage, where dressers change his outfits — as well as jewelry, wigs and accessories he wears — in minutes as dancers and performers race by in what Marino calls a unique sort of choreography.

Shortly before 11 p.m., Marino is preparing for his final costume changes. "I'm tired," he says to nobody in particular before parading back onstage as if he'd never felt better.

After the show, Marino and the cast meet with fans. Marino poses for selfies, signs souvenirs, smacks lipsticked kisses on T-shirts and moves merchandise ranging from souvenir books to Frank Marino Barbie Dolls.

Then, back in his dressing room, the day is nearly, finally, over. Usually, Marino would go out to dinner and spend a few hours unwinding. Today, he says, "just a shower and bed. I really don't feel good."

And tomorrow — actually, later today — he'll do it all again, strutting toward his 31st anniversary on the Las Vegas Strip. But, first, Marino offers, smiling: "My motto: The ladder of success is even harder to climb wearing high heels."

— Read more from John Przybys at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at jprzybys@reviewjournal.com and follow @JJPrzybys on Twitter.