“The Resort’s Got Talent”

A Look at the 2025 Talent Show

By Dale Dauten

Big crowd, big laughs, big songs. That a quick summary of the second “The Resort’s Got Talent.”

We talked with the woman who put it together, Mary Ruppert, who explained how the first show, last season, came about: “Jean Moon came to me last year and asked me to put a show together. She wasn’t sure how much longer she and her husband, Dwight, would be coming to the park and she wanted to do her character Helga one more time.” Jean was persuasive and the show, last season, was such a hit that Mary decided to do it again.

Plus, Helga was back – this time her appearance fell on her 90^th birthday. In the photo below, that’s Mary leading the audience in singing “Happy Birthday” while Helga appears to be already working on her next joke.

And the crowd was back, too, even bigger: 400 tickets sold last year and 480 this year. The proceeds went to support eight Resort organizations, listed in the program below….

Speaking of talent at The Resort, it happens that Mary is uniquely qualified to put on the show. We wrote about Mary and husband Merle in The Resorter a few years back. Some relevant highlights from her career:

“Mary grew up in Las Vegas. She sang and danced throughout her school days, and traveled with the U.S. Honor Band and Choir. Then, as she recounted, ‘The day I turned 18, I auditioned for every show in Vegas. And guess what I heard? Too short. Too short. Too short. [Mary is just over 5’1”.] They were looking for the standard showgirl type – you know, tall. One of the directors told me, ‘Go see Andre Prince at Circus Circus. They were looking for girls who were under 120 pounds and under 5’4”.’

“No problem for Mary Ruppert. She got the job and before long she was doing four shows a night, six nights a week. She kept up that schedule for five years. Despite that grueling show schedule, Mary would use her days off to work in lounges, performing with both a Johnny Cash and Dean Martin impersonator. She also sang at political conventions — one Republican and one Democrat.”

“Mary eventually left performing and moved to Denver and when asked if she missed those days on stage, she laughed and replied, “I taught dance for 38 years. Every class was a performance.”

As for “The Resort’s Got Talent,” we asked Mary how she had assembled the show. “I went to karaoke nights and recruited,” she explained. Plus, she got Ron Charbonneau to emcee and Paul Klotz to tell jokes, along with recruiting dancers. Pulling it together came naturally because, as she put it, “I used what I had learned doing dance recitals. I learned the professionalism from those years – I did some damn good recitals.”

THE PERFORMANCE

The program, shown below, lists the performers, and we’ve assembled a photo album you can access at the end of this summary.

Even though one of the first comments to the audience from emcee Ron Charbonneau was this: “This isn’t a competition — they’ll be no million dollar prizes,” we paid attention to audience reaction and can point out a few of the biggest laughs:

PUNS

From Emcee Ron Charbonneau: “Two silkworms had a contest over which one could spin the most silk in an hour. They ended up in a tie.”

Also from Ron: “Some mornings I wake up grumpy. Some mornings I let her sleep.”

STORIES

From Paul Klotz: “A man goes to the doctor and he’s bragging about how great is wife is. He says, ‘She always watching out for me. She even rigged up a light that goes on when I get up at night to use the bathroom.’ Later the doctor is talking to the wife and mentions her husband praising her for the light that comes when using the bathroom. The wife says, ‘No, he’s been peeing in the refrigerator.’”

From Helga (AKA Jean Moon): “Two women went to church and the sermon got kinda long. Afterwards, one women says to the other, ‘That sermon was so long my butt went to sleep.’ And the other said, ‘Yeah, I think I heard it snoring.’”

MUSIC

As for the songs, there were many vocal highlights, but the one with the most talked about visual element was Jim Rogge performing a number called “Running Bare.”

We’ll end with a video of the final number, including everyone coming on stage for the finale. (And remember that there are photos of all performers if you click on the “Album” at the end.)