The Aladdin Resort was dreaming of a genie and its wish has been fulfilled: her name is Carmen Electra. The light at the end of its tunnel is "Lumiere" ("Loo-me-air," French for light), a production starring the actress in its new showroom opening early next year. "We've studied the market very carefully and predict this will be a first for Las Vegas," says Mark Fleischman, who owned New York City's legendary Studio 54 and now is a partner with Showclubs of America.
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Executive producer David Tumaroff, a veteran of live television events and theater, says that it "will push the envelope of live scenic arts with cutting-edge special effects like you saw in the film The Matrix." He believes that " Lumiere" will do for variety and performing arts what "O" did for the circus and "EFX" for mechanical arts. He credits much to Showclubs partner Gary Oulett, who has produced illusions for Las Vegas illusionists and magicians Lance Burton, David Copperfield, Melinda, Steve Wyrick and Rick Thomas.
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Electra will play an angel who loses her wings and descends through seven levels of reality, singing and dancing to everything from world beat to Gregorian chants, says Tumaroff, who has worked with Elton John and Gloria Estefan. "People who think of her just in terms of " Baywatch" or Playboy are going to be surprised, because she really delivers the goods on stage," he says.
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Her fellow former "Baywatch" babe, Traei Bingham, agrees. "Carmen is an incredible dancer who is daringly uninhibited in her self-expression," observes Bingham. The two were especially close during Electra's troubled times three years ago (Electra served as bridesmaid for Bingham that year). "She's one of the few people I know in this industry who believes in taking the risks to live life to its fullest and she gives her all to everything she does," adds Bingham, who currently stars in Comedy Central's series "Battle Bots." Bingham was having lunch with Tumaroff one day when he wondered aloud if Electra would have an interest in a song-and-dance production, since he believed her full potential had not been tapped by her TV career. Bingham knew she would and encouraged what eventually would become "Lurmiere," which was written specifically with Electra in mind. But Tumaroff was not sure she would accept the ambitious commitment it would entail and had "a backup list of other multi-talented stars we thought might be able to handle this, but we were lucky our first choice accepted."
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Electra calls dance her "first love," starting at age 5. By 9, she was choreographing numbers at the School for Creative and Performing Arts in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she was born in 1972 as Tara Leigh Patrick. Music is in the family blood: Her mother was a singer and her father a guitarist.
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From 12 to 14, Tara did some modeling for Sears, but believed that to make it big-time in entertainment, she would need to move to Hollywood. She flew out at 18 over her mother's strong objections.
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Tara immediately began working as a dancer on "Soul Train" and within one week, the first of many serendipitous events that would super-charge her career took place. Underage, she and friend sneaked into a nightclub. A woman who was a scout for pop sensation Prince spotted Tara and told her that she had the right look for an all-girl rap band he was forming. Could she sing and dance?
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At the audition, Tara did what Prince asked, but she could not read his reaction at all. "I assumed I didn't make the cut and was bummed out," she admits.
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After signing a record demo deal with Capitol records a few days later, Tara returned home for a couple of months. When she returned to make the demo, she ran into Prince at another nightclub. "He told me that he had indeed decided I wasn't right for a band," she laughs. "He thought I should have a solo album instead!" In fact, he said he had written a song for her and took her immediately to listen to it.
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Incidentally, he said she looked like a Carmen and the Artist-Formerly-Knownas-Tara added the name of a figure from Greek mythology for a new stage name. Under that name, she recorded an album in Minneapolis, out of which came a top- 20 single, "Get On Up."
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After two years working with Prince, Electra took an offer to be a regular on the Nickelodeon show 'All That." Then in 1996, she vaulted into international consciousness.
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Her exotic Cherokee-lrish-German looks got her into the March Playboy and cast as a lead singer in a Playboy video. Then she was chosen to replace Jenny MeCarthy as the host of MTV's "Singled Out" dating show for two seasons and hosted some episodes of the network's popular "Loveline" advice program.
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Her visibility exploded when she was named Budweiser's national spokesperson, appeared two more times in Playboy, and replaced Pamela Anderson on "Baywatch," coming on just as Bingham was leaving the most successful syndicated TV production in history. At the end of the season, Electra was enticed away to develop her own series for the WB network, but ended up being recruited in a failed attempt to save "Hyperion Bay."
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Then, just at the peak of her fame in 1998, her personal world caved in. She was first devastated by the death of her mother, then her sister. And largely, she claims, because she was in emotional turmoil and feeling the need for another family connection, she married colorful Chicago Bulls basketball star Dennis Rodman in Las Vegas.
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Electra met him the year prior at the Billboard Live! club on the Sunset Strip, where he grabbed her as she walked in. After talking and dancing for an hour, her girlfriend slipped and broke an arm. In the resulting turmoil, she and Rodman separated. He tracked her down later through mutual friends and began calling for dates.
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Finally, Electra flew to Chicago for a game and began spending a lot of time with Rodman. But ' she never took his frequent talk of marriage seriously "since I knew it didn't fit his lifestyle."
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Returning to Los Angeles, Electra was too busy working at the WB and dealing with family crises to see Rodman. Finally, in November 1998, he persuaded her to go to Las Vegas, sending a private jet to pick her up. "When we got together again, I thought I noticed that he was a changed man," Electra recalls. "On the 14th, he woke me up at 4 a.m. and, with tears in his eyes, asked me to marry him. I said yes and obviously didn't think this through."
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By 6 a. m. they had tried in vain to find a place to wed when they came across the Chapel of the Flowers. And despite reports to the contrary, they were totally sober. "Everyone who was there knows that and I wish I could say we had been drinking because then I'd have a good excuse," Electra sighs.
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Nine days later, Rodman filed for an annulment, claiming he had been of "unsound mind." For a year until the divorce was final, they remained close friends by phone and she kept to herself, reading the Dalai Lama and spiritual books to give her perspective on yet another devastating personal blow. "It turned out to be a good thing because it forced me to learn to deal with the pain of all these losses," Electra states. 'AS Oprah says, 'If you want to heal, you have to feel,' and I had been surrounding myself with all this drama to distract myself and avoid hurting."
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Today, she finds herself nearly a year into what she describes as "a very healthy relationship" with Dave Navarro of The Red Hot Chili Peppers. "He allows me to be myself and we have a trust that is really beautiful," she says.
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Electra's career is also rising fast again. In last year's smash box office horror parody, Scary Movie, she made fun of her wild woman image in the opening scene. She has shot half a dozen films in the past year, including the upcoming The Guest (with Tara Reid, Ashton Kutcher, and Molly Shannon) and Rew Control (Aith Melissa Joan Hart), hosted MTV's Florida dance party program "Hypermix" this summer and is developing her own TV series, entitled "Diabella," with "Spiderrnan" and "X-Men" creator Stan Lee.
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And soon, Carmen Electra will be lighting up Aladdin's lamp. ivm
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by Scott S. Smith