The Four Coins can still make a dollar.
The East End Canonsburg quartet is back on the road almost a half century after its heyday.
The Coins are scheduled to perform Wednesday through March 19 as the featured act at The Fabulous Palm Springs Follies, a three-hour vaudeville-style extravaganza of the 1930s and 1940s, and, in the case of The Four Coins, the 1950s.
As Follies headliners, they will perform two 16-minute shows a day at 1:30 and 7 p.m., five days a week in the Historic Plaza Theatre. The theater has 809 seats and often is sold out or is more than 90 percent filled, said Greg Purdy, Follies' media relations manager. Tickets cost as much as $93 each.
Annual attendance tops 160,000, he said.
The Fabulous Follies has been featured on "60 Minutes II" and other news shows because its performers, including the Legendary Line of Long-Legged Lovelies, are 55 or older. The oldest Lovely is 82.
The Four Coins fill that bill: Lead singer George Mahramas, of Tucson, Ariz., George Mantalis, of Palm Beach, Fla., and James Gregorakis, of Canonsburg, are 71. George Mahramas' brother, Jack, of South Park, who joined the group after its heyday, is 65.
In the early 1950s, the four original members served as musicians for Bobby Vinton and His Band of Tomorrow. While traveling to gigs, they sang and developed four-part harmonies. Eventually, they quit the Vinton band to mint reputations as The Four Coins.
The Coins had 10 hit singles which sold more than 500,000 copies each. Their biggest, "Shangri-La," sold more than a million copies and was the most played song of 1957, while "The World Outside" sold just shy of a million.
They appeared numerous times on "American Bandstand," twice on "The Perry Como Show," and three times on "The Ed Sullivan Show." They also performed on "The Patti Page Show," "The Tonight Show" with Steve Allen, and numerous times on "The Mike Douglas Show."
On one occasion, Elvis Presley caught their performance and posed with them for a photo. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. were among other celebrities to catch Coins concerts. Tony Bennett once gave up his New York hotel room so their mothers would have a place to stay.
The Coins also performed in the nation's top nightclubs, including the Copacabana in New York and major Las Vegas casinos and nightclubs. But after touring for 15 years, and working 48 weeks a year, the Coins disbanded in 1970 to pursue second careers.
Mr. Gregorakis, for example, owns five Snowy White Laundromats and other real estate in Washington County.
After a 33-year hiatus, the group reunited in 2003 for a concert at the Pepsi-Cola Roadhouse in Hanover. The success of that concert persuaded them to repeat the concert in 2004 and consider returning to the road for short stints.
Recently, the four practiced together, with one on a speaker phone. They planned to arrive this weekend in Palm Springs to practice before their Wednesday debut. They expect to sing about six songs each show.
Their newfound popularity is flipping the Coins.
"We're kind of excited about it," Mr. Gregorakis said. "This will be like a vacation, and they're paying us big money, too." He said the group expected to sell about 5,000 compact discs of their music while in Palm Springs.
And if all goes well at The Follies, Mr. Gregorakis said, they will take time off while their manager works to line up another gig, this time in Las Vegas.
First Published: January 8, 2006, 5:00 a.m.
