!Arriba! Las Vegas: Charo isn't just a template for drag queens everywhere--her splashy new Vegas show also reveals her classical guitar chops. (arts & entertainment).

"Liberace was my friend, and out of the blue he would send me jewelry." These are the cheery words of Charo, who is still around and hasn't aged a bit since her bubbleheaded stint as the bust-shimmying, hip-churning cuchi-cuchi girl on the old Hollywood Squares 30-some-odd years ago. Working with gay colleague Paul Lynde on that show ("the most funny, hysterical person I ever met"), she had an inkling back then that she would have an afterlife somewhere over the rainbow.

Upbeat, she flaunts the fact that in New York her "gay following surpasses even Cher!" and says that at Sydney's annual Mardi Gras parade "you can see hundreds of Charos walking down the street." Nowadays, while women her age (61) are getting hip replacements, Charo can be found strutting her stuff in her new show at the Sahara in Las Vegas, Charo Starring in Bravo. Her accent remains, as does her vitality and sex appeal.

This show is something else. Unlike high-tech, splashy spectaculars like Cirque du Soleil's O, Charo brings back the old variety format, with its kaleidoscopic lineup of stand-up comedy, trapeze artists, ventriloquists, jugglers, and big dance numbers. Remarkably, though, the show carefully builds up to its resounding grand finale: Charo playing classical guitar. This brings the house down.

"I make people laugh--great!--and make people dance and sing with me--great!" says Charo. "But when I play beautiful concertos on my guitar, the audience cries." Unbelievably, Charo began her career as a guitarist in a Catholic convent in Spain. In fact, that's how she was discovered by legendary Latin band leader Xavier Cugat, who immediately brought the 16-year-old bombshell to the States after seeing her perform on television with Andres Segovia, considered the father of classical guitar.

"Cugat couldn't believe that this little cucaracha was playing heavy-duty music," recalls Charo, who was soon ensconced in the twilight world of nightclubs and casinos with the salsa pioneer. "But I promised Mr. Segovia that ! would always respect and treasure classical guitar."

The guitar, however, inevitably played second fiddle as Charo's cuchi-cuchi took off. Not that she regrets cuchi-cuchi--it's a gold mine she owes to a childhood pet. "I had a dog called Cuchillo--a nasty, ugly thing--a mix between a bulldog and a Saint Bernard." she says. "First he bites you, then he runs for help. Well, he was my friend, and he wiggled--and I imitated his wiggle. Because of that dog, I'm rich." Charo's still got that wiggle, but in Bravo she comes out of the closet as a voluptuous virtuoso, serious yet sequin-wrapped.

This kitsch-meets-classical brings to mind, of course, the glitz of Liberace, whose far-out formula of Chopin, champagne, and schmaltz captured the imagination of millions. Charo feels she's bringing back to Vegas something the city lost with the showman's death from AIDS complications in 1987, a point not lost on one critic who raved that she is bringing Las Vegas back to Las Vegas.

"What Liberace did with the piano and the glamour in a spectacular production," says Charo, "is exactly what I'm doing with the guitar and glamour." The pianist was a close pal--Charo would like to donate those jewels he gave her to the newly renovated Liberace museum in Las Vegas. She recalls that when she was three months' pregnant while doing a show with Dom DeLuise in 1981, Liberace showed up and quipped, "You're eating too many tacos!"

Hilferty has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal Europe, New York magazine, and Forbes.