Selena Gomez latest teen to headline Las Vegas

Las Vegas is no town for minors. Unless they're on a stage.

The adult Disneyland abandoned its attempts to copy the real Disneyland in the 1990s. But Selena Gomez is the latest Disney-groomed pop star to pack an arena in presales. Saturday's Mandalay Bay concert with her band, The Scene, should be mostly filled by local youths.

Though her schedule is multitasked with acting as well as pop stardom -- "Monte Carlo" visited theaters briefly this summer -- history suggests the 19-year-old should save room for Las Vegas in her long-term plan.

A surprising number of Las Vegas fixtures and/or legends got a toehold in the casinos before they were of legal drinking and gambling age. Let's compare a few of them to Gomez's career trajectory.

■ Ann-Margret: Gomez is way ahead of the game at age 19 than the future "Kitten with a Whip." Ann-Margret Olsson was still officially a college student at that age, when her summer job with an act called the Suttle-tones brought her to a lounge gig at the Dunes in 1960.

She never made it back to school. Not long after that lounge date ended, George Burns cast her in a Christmas show at the Sahara. For the next 20 years, the smokin' and drinkin' men who packed showrooms would watch Ann-Margret fire up a mix of sugar and spice not unlike Gomez today, if you flip the ratio of spice to sugar.

■ Donny and Marie Osmond: Gomez was one of Barney's TV friends when she was just 7 years old. But that was two years older than Donny when he first sang on Andy Williams' TV show.

Both Osmonds were seasoned pros before they were 15, Gomez's age when Disney began fashioning her into the next Miley Cyrus. Donny had played the Strip with his brothers several times before he and Marie co-headlined the Tropicana in 1974, when he was 16 and Marie 15.

"We were trained on those (showroom) stages when we were kids," Marie noted when she and Donny started their Flamingo Las Vegas residency in 2008. (While Mom was at work, were any of Marie's youngsters home watching Gomez in "Wizards of Waverly Place"?)

■ Liza Minnelli: Mother Judy Garland introduced her fabulous daughter (due at the Las Vegas Hilton Oct. 7-8) onstage at the Flamingo when she was only 9 years old. But Liza was the magic age of 19 when she first headlined the Sahara in 1965.

Gomez's mother, Mandy Teefey, also had a show business past as a stage actress. Liza had a cameo in "The Muppets Take Manhattan," while Selena does the same in "The Muppets" reboot hitting theaters in November.

■ Michael Jackson: The King of Pop was another young singer who charted at an earlier age than Gomez. Jackson was almost 16 and still had a dude's nose when he and his brothers played the old MGM Grand (now Bally's) in 1974.

■ Wayne Newton: The Midnight Idol was only 21 when "Danke Schoen" became a hit. But by then, Newton was already a veteran lounge singer. He and brother Jerry had been working Glitter Gulch casinos at least three years before Newton was old enough to be a casino customer.

■ Paul Anka: Nowadays he wears a tux and an authentic Rat Pack aura. But Anka's hit roster was sticky with bubble gum in 1959, when the 18-year-old sang "Diana" and "You Are My Destiny" as Sophie Tucker's Sahara opening act.

■ Frankie Avalon: Pop stars need pop-star boyfriends or girlfriends to stay in the chatter mix. Gomez's stock can only rise as long as she and Justin Bieber remain very special friends. Any chance of them becoming the new Frankie and Annette in a remake of "Beach Blanket Bingo"?

If so, that might fold in with the career path of Frankie Avalon, who was 20 when he played Las Vegas in early 1961, not long after "Venus" took him from "Bobby Sox to Stockings."

"We were looking to have some longevity in the business once the hit records were there," Avalon recalled in 1996. Fifty years later, he played Vegas again this summer.

Selena and The Bieb, are you listening?

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.