She went back to radio and signed a new record contract with Columbia, and by the end of the war she was an even bigger star. She was named Top Female Vocalist in all the polls and had a dozen more million-selling hits, including “Shoo Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy,” “Doin’ What Comes Naturally,” and “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”
Dinah was always striving to improve as a singer. She rehearsed for hours, listening to playbacks, revising arrangements, analyzing and polishing her technique. Despite deadline pressure, she refused to release a record until it was perfect. She believed she had an obligation to give her best, and she studied fan mail and reviews to find out exactly what listeners wanted to hear.
Dinah was always open to fans, and it wasn’t phony. She enjoyed meeting people. We’d miss planes because she’d be talking to strangers. Once we were going back to L.A. from New York and we both had to be on the set early the next morning. We were running late and missed our plane. Dinah worked the crowd while we waited for the next one. When it came time to board, she was having trouble breaking away. I said, “Dinah, we’ve already missed one flight, we can’t miss the next one.” I went to the man from the airline and said, “Please come over and tell her she has to get on the airplane!” The poor guy tried, but she wound him around her little finger. She asked him where he was from and told him about all the people she knew in his hometown . . . and we missed the second flight.
I couldn’t be angry with Dinah, because I feel pretty much the same way. I think any actor who says, “My life is my life and I don’t owe the public anything but a good performance,” is an ingrate. I feel lucky to have people out there who’ve never deserted me, and they’ve given me more joy than any ten producers. I’m grateful to them and I’m thankful they still care.
Not long ago I dared to go to Costco. I was looking for a tiny paintbrush, and when I turned around, there were eight people staring at me. When I went to check out, people came up asking for autographs. If you sign one, you have to sign them all, and the people behind me were getting pissed off, so I got out of the line and kept signing.
The manager came over and said, “Can I help you get out of here?”
“Thanks, but I’ll be fine,” I said.
It took an hour to buy that brush, but I enjoyed every minute of it. When people come up to me in public, they want me to be a certain way, and I try not to disappoint. But I don’t pretend to be something I’m not. They’ll say nice things, and we might giggle about something in one of my movies. Some of them are surprised: “I always said you were a nice guy!”
“You mean there were people arguing?”
Sometimes they’ll cross the line and get too personal . . . but I let them off the hook.
“Nah,” I say, “we can’t go there.”
In the old days some people were disappointed if I didn’t insult them or knock somebody down or burn rubber on the way out of the parking lot, but now everyone I meet is friendly and respectful, and I try to respond in kind. I don’t do it for them, I do it for me. It makes me feel good. So if you see me in Costco, come over and say hello.
—
IN 1950, Dinah was up for the lead in the Hollywood version of Showboat but lost out to Ava Gardner (whose singing voice was dubbed in the movie). It was a big disappointment, but Dinah didn’t mope. She launched a fifteen-minute television program that soon led to a Sunday-night variety show sponsored by Chevrolet that made Dinah the first woman with her own prime-time progam. At the close of each show she’d look into the camera and blow a kiss—“MMMMMM-WAH!”—and belt out her theme song, “See the USA, in your Chevrolet . . .”
The Dinah Shore Show ran for ten years and made her a household name. It was Dinah’s personality as much as her singing that did it. She cared about people and it came through over the airwaves because she treated the camera—“old red-eye,” she called it—like it was a single person.
Dinah never had a penny’s worth of prejudice about anybody. In 1961, when she did a duet with Nat King Cole on her show, it was the first time a white woman had sung with a black man on American television, and it caused an uproar. Most of the affiliate stations in the South dropped the show. Dinah responded by having Sidney Poitier on the next week. That was her way of dealing with prejudice, and it worked. Eventually all the stations came back.
Dinah was amazing in terms of her friendships with blacks, on the one hand, and with people who couldn’t put a governor on the way that they spoke, on the other. They’d make racist remarks, but she’d never tell them to shut up, which I know is what she wanted to say. She’d never confront people that way. Instead she’d quickly change the subject. Most of them got the message not to talk that way around her.
I had the same problem with people I knew, particularly some of the guys I played ball with. Like Dinah, I would try to change the subject, but if that didn’t work I’d have to tell them: “I won’t listen to that stuff. If you can’t accept that, get the hell out.”
—
IN 1973, I did a series of four television specials called The Late Burt Reynolds Show. For one show I took Merle Haggard, Jonathan Winters, and Dinah to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary and we performed live for the prison population.
Merle had done time in San Quentin for robbery before he became a country music icon. I’d never met him and found him fascinating. I thought that if there ever was a born actor, it’s this guy. He did play a couple of small film parts, but somebody should have given him a shot at something bigger, because he had something. He didn’t try to act; he was just as real as he could be. He’d done hard time, but he wasn’t bitter.
One day during rehearsals we were all standing around talking and I noticed that Dinah was gone, and nobody knew where she was.
“Goddamn it!” I said. “Wasn’t anybody watching her?”
I was frantic. I started running all over the prison searching for her. I knew I’d find her in the worst place, with the baddest of the badasses, and I did. A group of inmates were having a cigarette break and Dinah was right in the middle of them, talking and laughing.
“Dinah,” I said, “I think it’s time for you to come sing your song.”
“Really? Oh, okay.”
She shook hands with every guy there, calling each one by name. As we were walking away, one of them said, “You’re a lucky son of a bitch.”
Johnny Winters had spent time in a psychiatric hospital for bipolar disorder. He was frightened when we came to the front gate at Leavenworth, and when the big doors slammed shut behind us, he froze.
“Are you okay, Johnny?” I asked.
“I can’t move,” he said.
“It’s that fuckin’ sound, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I thought I’d never hear it again.”
We talked for a few minutes until he said he was okay, and we walked in together.
Johnny was the funniest person I ever met. He lived to make people laugh and would perform for anyone on the street just because. When he lived in Manhattan, he couldn’t get from his apartment to Rockefeller Center without stopping on every corner to do shtick for anyone who looked at him.
Johnny and I planned to do an improvisation in the Leavenworth show. I figured I’d just let him do his thing, with me as straight man. Before we went out, the warden told Johnny, “Look, I know the kind of stuff you do and it’s fine, but I don’t want you to mention the cook. You can talk about blacks, you can talk about gays, you can say anything you want, but don’t mention the cook.”
Johnny and I came onstage and sat down on wooden stools.
I said to the audience, “Shout out anything and we’ll do improv on it.”
Three guys in different parts of the hall yelled, “THE COOK!”
“Anybody else, anybody . . .” I said.
“THE COOK!” they shouted.
Johnny whispered, “You be
the cook.”
And then he tore into me: “Same ol’ shit! Same ol’ shit ya gimme yesterday! It’s shit!”
The inmates went wild, and Johnny went on to do the funniest twelve minutes I’ve ever seen.
But here’s the kicker: A couple of days later they killed the cook. They knifed him and killed him dead. I called Johnny’s manager and said, “I’ve got to talk to Johnny. I don’t want to upset him, but they killed the cook at Leavenworth.”
“We can’t tell him that. He wouldn’t handle it well,” his manager said.
I didn’t see Johnny again until a year later. I said to him, “It’s been a long time, but I think you should know: they killed the cook at Leavenworth that night.”
“Son of a bitch deserved it,” he said.
—
MY DAD WAS over the moon about Dinah, and he didn’t get over the moon too often. My mom thought she was wonderful, too. She just couldn’t figure out what the hell Dinah saw in me.
Dinah and I attended the First Baptist Church in Palm Beach. It was just like Dinah, who’d been raised Jewish, to go with me to a Baptist church. Southern Baptist. Our pastor, the Reverend Dr. Jess Moody, came up with a clever way to get us in and out of the church without a fuss. It was like a military operation. We’d sneak in after the service started and stand in the back. Jess would have everyone bow their heads in prayer and we’d slip into our seats. When they raised their heads, there were two more people in the congregation.
Jess is retired now, but he was a great preacher. He brought humor to all of his sermons. It didn’t matter which chapter in the Bible he was talking about, he’d find something funny in it. And he wasn’t judgmental. I went to his church before I knew Dinah, for a while there with a different girl every Sunday. Jess would look out at me and smile.
Jess had a huge congregation, and the church was always packed on Sunday. It got so that he had speakers installed so the overflow crowd could sit outside by the lake and watch the boats go by while they listened to the service.
Jess recently lost his wife, Doris, after sixty-four years of marriage. Everyone who knew Doris will miss her. Jess’s son Patrick is a lay preacher and an actor who has been in several of my films—not because he’s Jess’s son, but because he’s a good actor and a delightful young man.
—
DINAH AND I were soul mates, but marriage wasn’t in the cards. My career was on fire and my ego was out of control. I wanted to enjoy the fruits of my popularity and I didn’t want to do it on the sly. And there was something else. I finally admitted to myself that the age difference did matter in one important respect: I wanted a child of my own. But I loved Dinah so much, I couldn’t face life without her. I’d been at war with myself over it for a long time.
Dinah and I had the same doctor, a wonderful man. One day he told me, “You know, you can’t go on like this. You’ll end up breaking each other’s heart, and I don’t want that for either of you.”
“That could never happen,” I said.
“You’re too smart to believe that,” he said.
I hoped he said the same thing to her. I hoped it wasn’t just me. But once he said it, I knew what I had to do.
Breaking up with Dinah was the hardest thing I’d ever done. She sat on the couch holding a hankie. She kept her composure, but I lost mine. I missed her the minute I walked out the door. I could barely function for weeks. I was in the kind of pain that she would have consoled me about.
In the spring of 1993, Dinah was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. I didn’t know how sick she was until our doctor said, “You’ve got to expect the worst. If you want to spend more and more time with her, that’s fine. I think that would be good. But at the same time, prepare yourself for the inevitable.”
Dinah was not close with her children, and it was their fault. She wanted to have a good relationship, but for them it was all take and no give. And they weren’t there for her at the end. They just didn’t care, and I’ll never forgive them for it.
When people wanted to know why I was with Dinah, I always said, “Why not? She’s the most wonderful person I’ve ever known.” We had so much in common. We were both from the South. We both loved sports, especially football, and she was knowledgeable about it. And in all the years I knew her, we never had a fight.
“But what about the age difference?” they’d say.
The answer is, Dinah was ageless. She had both wisdom and the eyes of a child. She was this extraordinary person whom I was lucky to be with. Despite all the negative publicity, I think our relationship appealed to women because it showed them that they could be interesting to a younger man. And men told me that it gave them the courage to be with an older woman.
Dinah was one of the rare people who are what they seem to be. I never met anybody who didn’t like her. She hated gossip and never said a bad word about anyone. If you mentioned Hitler, she’d say, “Well, he was a good painter.”
She kept everything negative to herself. She never wanted to burden others with her problems, and she never blew her stack. “I’m not a shouter, I’m a sulker,” she always said.
It was against her nature to tell a lie.
She taught me about music, art, food, and wine; she taught me which fork to use; she taught me how to dress. And she was full of wisdom about show business. When I met Dinah I didn’t have a clue about handling the press. They were horrible about our relationship, always questioning whether it was real, and I’d get angry. But Dinah kept saying, “No, the worst thing you can do is get angry. Just smile and be happy.”
Dinah always tried to encourage me: “You don’t have to worry, honey,” she said. “The camera is an X-ray machine. People look inside you and decide whether they like you. If they do, there’s almost nothing you can do to change their minds.”
—
OVER HER FIFTY YEARS in show business, Dinah was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame, had a dozen gold records, and won ten Emmys, a Golden Globe, and a Peabody (she was proudest of the Peabody). She was frequently among the Gallup Poll’s Ten Most Admired Women in the World. But I think her greatest legacy is the love she gave so freely to everyone who crossed her path.
Frank Sinatra
I’d heard a lot of stories about Frank Sinatra, good and bad. I finally met him one night when I took Dinah to dinner at Nicky Blair’s on Sunset Boulevard. When we walked in, he was seated at a corner table with the actor Harry Guardino, two bodyguards (Poochie East and Poochie West), and Jilly Rizzo, who owned Frank’s favorite joint in New York.
Frank waved at us and we waved back. Then he motioned us over.
Dinah whispered, “I think he wants us to go join him.”
I was feeling ornery and said, “Well, we’re not going. I’m not a waiter here. We’ll have dinner first and maybe go over later.”
We sat down and ordered a drink.
Harry Guardino came over like a messenger. “Frank would like you to come say hello.”
“Tell him we will when we finish eating,” I said.
“Do you really want me to tell him that?”
“Yes, I do.”
He went back to Frank’s table and I could see him bend over and say something in Frank’s ear.
And then I could read Frank’s lips: “What the fuck?”
Dinah and I finished our meal and went over. “How do you do, Mr. Sinatra?” I said.
“Fine, pal. How’d you like to play a little poker?”
“Sure! When would that be?”
“Tonight. Right now, back in the kitchen.”
I began to excuse myself because I had to take Dinah home, but she said, “Go ahead, I’ll get a cab. It’ll be an experience to play poker with Frank.” So I put Dinah in a taxi, and when I came back, Frank, Jilly, Harry Guardino, Poochie East, and Poochie West were seated at a big round table in the middle of the kitchen, with all
the waiters and busboys rushing back and forth.
I sat down and Frank called the game: five-card stud. But before he could deal the first card, there was a big crash. An unlucky busboy had dropped a tray of glassware.
Nicky Blair came running in, yelling at the poor busboy.
“Wait a minute, pal,” Frank said. “How much do those glasses cost?”
“I don’t know, Frank, a few bucks apiece,” Nicky said.
Frank nodded to Poochie East, who hauled out a roll of hundreds the size of a calzone and counted out three thousand dollars. Frank took it and gave it to Nicky. Frank nodded again and Poochie East counted out another three thousand and Frank gave that to Nicky and said, “Now bring me three grand worth of glasses.”
“I beg your pardon?” Nicky said.
“Bring me three grand worth of glasses,” Frank repeated.
Nicky shrugged and went away.
A minute later, busboys were coming from all directions with glasses.
Frank said to the unlucky busboy, “What’s your name, kid?”
“Hector.”
“Hector . . . break ’em!” Frank said.
“Qué?”
“Break ’em!” Frank repeated.
Hector smashed them, one by one, until the floor was covered with broken glass.
I wondered what the customers thought was going on in the kitchen.
Frank told Nicky, “If I ever come in and don’t see Hector, I’ll never come back again. Understand?”
“I’ve always loved Hector,” Nicky said.
Everybody turned back to the game.
As Poochie West shuffled the cards, I got up from the table and began crunching my way to the door.
“Where the hell are you going?” Frank said.
“Home,” I said. “I got my Sinatra story.”
—
AFTER THAT I saw Frank a lot, always with Dinah. They went way back, to the radio days in the early 1940s when they were both starting out. Frank had an amazing capacity for booze, but no matter how many bourbons he had, he never showed it. He was always a perfect gentleman around Dinah. He would tell me, in a kind of threatening tone, “I assume you know what a great woman you have there . . .”
But Enough About Me: A Memoir Page 12