Email this page  Print this page  del.icio.us  digg

Janice Kleinschmidt

Barbra Streisand, Tina Turner, Reba McEntire, Madonna, Bette Midler, and Michael and Janet Jackson have moved to the Coachella Valley.

Well, OK, not the real Barbra, Tina, Reba, et al., but rather their look-alikes, who will perform regularly at the new CopyKatz Showroom and Backstage Bistro in downtown Palm Springs. Their acts mark club owner Elyse Del Francia-Goodwin’s fourth continuously running show — but the first in her own venue.

Before producing celebrity impersonator shows, Elyse worked in the sales and marketing department at Palm Springs’ Riviera Resort. At the time (the late 1980s), she was dating Howard Goodwin, the executive director of sales and marketing for Imperial Palace in Las Vegas — home of Legends in Concert. Convinced the Riviera needed to bring in more entertainment, Elyse told the general manager, “There’s this fabulous show in Las Vegas. Why don’t you let me see how much they charge?”

When she reported it would cost $25,000 for a weekend, he said, “Don’t be ridiculous. We’re not going to do that. Go back and book some hotel rooms.”

Three months later, Elyse attended an Elvis impersonators convention in Las Vegas to try to get the annual event for the Riviera. “I thought it was ideal because Elvis’ honeymoon house was nearby, and he used to work out his routines in the [Riviera’s] Mediterranean Room before he took them to Vegas,” she recalls.

When she mentioned to the convention producer that she wanted to book Legends, he said, “Oh, I’ll get the celebrity impersonators, and we’ll just ‘work out the door.’ All they want is room and food and beverage.”

The Riviera offered them Mary’s Nightclub, downstairs in the adjacent Bono’s restaurant. “We ran three weeks and the producer had a heart attack. That’s the crossroads of my life,” Elyse says. “The showbiz bug bit me. So I quit my job and never looked back.”

Elyse assumed solo production of the show, which was moved inside the Riviera, for 18 months. She subsequently produced impersonator shows at the Spa Hotel and the female impersonator Boylieve It Or Not! at Fantasy Springs Resort Casino. She also produced a celebrity impersonators convention at Imperial Palace in Las Vegas. The seven-year contract began in 2000, and the convention made the front page of The Wall Street Journal in its third year.

Although they ended up marrying different people, Elyse and Howard stayed in touch throughout the years. In 2002, the divorced Elyse and widowed Howard married. “We just fell back into each other’s lives,” Elyse says. Now he’s backing her as she follows her dream.

This summer, Elyse took over the former Atlas nightclub space and shaped it to her vision with major renovations. Getting the performers was the easy part.

“The impersonators are seeing my dream come true, and they want to be involved,” Elyse says. That’s why they’re moving here and why Elyse says, “You’ll never know who you might see on the street” — as well as in CopyKatz.

— Janice Kleinschmidt