Nelson Sardelli and his wife Lorraine. Courtesy photo

Belated happy birthday to Nelson Sardelli, who hasn’t lost a beat as one of the funniest guys in town.

Blessed with fountain-of-youth features, he celebrated No. 85 on September 19 (his birthday is on the 20th) with a raucous crowd in the Italian American Club showroom.

He likes to say he arrived in Las Vegas “just before they paved Las Vegas Boulevard.”

He’s been here since 1965, arriving almost a decade after immigrating from Brazil. His Italian parents moved there in the early 1920s, looking for a better life.

“I came to the United States in 1956, to Pontiac, Michigan, because in Brazil I worked for General Motors, but they were laying off people all over Michigan,” he said. He left a desk job in economic research and analysis. “I could tell you how many (German-made) Opels were in Brazil at any given time.”

He spent most of 1956, 57, 58 in the Army and, at one point, taught soldiers how to dance by the numbers in a USO in Fort Gordon, Ga.

After the Army he returned to Pontiac, where he worked half a day as an orderly in a hospital. He quickly realized this wasn’t his calling. That’s putting it delicately. “The first time I had to watch a nurse put in a catheter, my legs went limp and I had to lay down on a bed to recover.” He spent the rest of the day “trying to figure what I wanted to do with my life.”

He returned to Arthur Murray’s dance school and was pulling in good money. Then an uncle from Brazil called a relative in Detroit and got Sardelli a job in construction. It was less traumatic than dealing with catheters, but he quickly realized it wasn’t his dream job. “That night I went back to my home in Pontiac and I sat down and talked to God,” he said.

His prayers were answered.

“The next night I was waiting for a girl at the Old Mill Tavern in Waterford. Looking back, it might have been one of the first open mic places. I sang and the guy hired me for every Friday for $27.50. Then it became Friday and Saturday and then all the way from Tuesday to Saturday. That’s when things started happening.”

A friend in Brazil offered Sardelli a round-trip ticket if he would fly to Brazil, and pick up a new Detroit-made car that was being shipped by boat to Salvador City, a Brazilian port. “The car cost $2,000 in the U.S. and he sold it for $11,000 in Brazil,” he said. “My cut was a free trip to see my mother in Sao Paulo."

During his stay in Brazil, he met a sportswriter who wrote for a prominent sports publication. The paper ran a two-page spread about Sardelli’s burgeoning entertainment career in the United States. The exposure really helped. “I came back as an international entertainer,” he quipped.

Humor always came easy. “By the grace of God, it runs in the family,” he said.

But there were bumps on the road to stardom.

One night he decided to add standup comedy to his repertoire. “I was in my late 20s. I told my first joke and I bombed. I was supposed to say canary and I said cannery. My boss came to me and said, “Nelson, just sing.’ I was devastated.”

Years later, having honed his act throughout the Midwest and beyond, he got a live audition during a show at the Thunderbird. Soon he was the opening acts for superstar Judy Garland. His combination of standup comedy and singing was a hit.

One night after performing at the Flamingo, that ex-boss who told him to stick to singing approached him and said, “I’m glad you did not follow my advice. You are very funny.”

His Las Vegas act included his portrayal of a gay cowboy. It involved gun play and some lines that “would get me crucified today.”

Sardelli’s gun-handling skills got Hollywood’s attention during a benefit for Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley.

He was signed for a role as a Mexican in the star-studded western, “The Professionals.” The big-name cast included Lee Marvin, Jack Palance, Robert Ryan and Burt Lancaster. “That movie was a classic, like ‘Shane,’” he said. In between scenes, he taught Italian-Tunisian bombshell Claudia Cardinale how to twirl a gun.

He landed a role in “Fake-Out” as a mobbed-up boyfriend of Pia Zadora’s character. “That was funny because I was supposed to be a mafia from New York City. My accent was more Italian so they dubbed in a New York accent.”

His Italian accent and swagger was just what the bawdy, five-foot Mae West and the decision-makers were looking for in the 1970 film “Myra Breckenridge.”

In the campy flick based on Gore Vidal’s 1968 book, a guy (Rex Reed) named Myron Breckinridge undergoes a sex change operation and transforms into the stunning lead character played by Raquel Welch.

Here’s how Sardelli remembers his triumphant audition:

“Norman Kay (of the legendary Mary Kay musical family) was very much a supporter of mine. We went to the studio and a guy wanted me to do a cold reading. Mae wasn’t there. Her stand-in was. There were about 200 people watching.

“I played to the people instead of the camera. Afterwards, Edith Head (the Academy Award-winning costume designer) went running around hollering, ‘We found the guy! We found the guy!”

"So we go to Mae’s apartment. Her place was entirely white. I’m thinking I’m going to go snowblind.

“A guy comes up to me and says, ‘Here’s the script.' I said, ‘I didn’t come here to audition with 350 guys.’ He went to her room and she comes out to meet me. She walks in in thirds. First there was her charisma that you could cut with a knife and her exuding personality. When we went to shake each other’s hand, I missed and hit her coarset. I had an attack of laughter like a Keystone Kop comedy.

“She said ‘I hear you don’t want to waste your time. I just wrote the scene, tell me how you would do the scene?' We did the scene and she said, “Nelson, that was meant to happen.’

“I call my wife, and I couldn’t get the words out because I was laughing so hard at what happened.

“So I go back to the studio. The guy in charge said, ‘We’ll let me you know.” I let him know I had a $5,000-a-week job in Las Vegas.’ I lied by a couple thousand. I flew home and the moment I got in my house the phone rang. I had the job.”

Check out the video. It’s a cinematic classic. Quintessential Mae West and a brash new actor named Nelson Sardelli. West was 77 at the time.

“I worked pretty steady up until the early 2000s,” he said. "Atlantic City was very good for me and the Catskills and traveling to foreign countries. I was the highest paid unknown.”

By any measure, it’s been a life well-lived by a Las Vegas character who can say a catheter was the turning point.

AT 85, SARDELLI LOOKS BACK ON A LIFE OF LAUGHS