We were forced to go on TV that night, telling everyone not to show up because our permits were pulled and the street fair party was cancelled. Well we all know what that means: Ten thousand kids came anyway, on Easter Sunday, 1974, causing the city to call out hundreds of police in riot gear, trucks, vans, and dogs, costing millions in overtime. The film ended up being nominated for a “Rocky” Best Music Film.
We got “publicity is publicity” all right.
In Charli’s Words
Easter Sunday, the premiere of Ladies and Gentlemen, Frank and I got dressed and took a cab to the Ziegfeld Theater. I could tell he was distraught, worried, and mostly disappointed. As we got close I couldn’t believe my eyes. What was supposed to be a canceled fabulous street fair extravaganza was turned into an armed camp. Police cars with flashing lights were parked everywhere, bus loads of cops in riot gear were waiting to move in, motorcycle cops were buzzing around barricaded streets, and other bunches of police were scattered everywhere. It looked like Beirut.
We got out of the cab. The street and theater were both totally decorated. Joe Lombardo and Donna’s golden Balinese cow was on the roof. Above the theater the giant inflatable Rolling Stones tongue waved in the wind, and hundreds of people were waiting on line behind barricades. Frank pointed out Patti Smith and her boyfriend Lenny in the crowd waiting to get in. It was a very bizarre and surrealistic sight, 56th Street lined in white carpet and palm trees surrounded by cops and horses.
Inside the theater was another story. As you entered the theater lobby the walls were draped in red satin with silver and gold glitter. Specially colored food of red pasta, green bread, purple cakes and multicolored cookies and other assorted items had been moved to the lobby. The Angels of Light, scantily dressed in wild makeup with four-foot lighted headdresses, who along with sword swallowers and tattooed women escorted guests to their seats, handed out Stones-logoed Frisbees and silk and glitter multi-colored scarves and T-shirts. As the lights in the theater faded to black, falling glitter and Frisbees flew in the air, the laser lights went on, flashing in sync to music from the quadraphonic sound system cranked up to a deafening pitch, and the Stones took center stage. The audience roared.
I know one thing: I love Mick Jagger, but not as much as I love Frank.
CHAPTER 12
Atlantis and the KKK
Iwas still freelancing at Penthouse and Guccione was getting a little upset with my popularity. Everybody there knew and liked me, especially the new Pets who were mostly out-of-towners who were not accustomed to my New York style. I was full of advice on how to survive in the big city and assured them if they ever needed anything all they had to do was ask. I grabbed every ball I could and many of my projects and contacts were being considered by Bob at the magazine. Guccione was very diversified, not just a smut peddler or a porn king as you might think; he was involved with many outside projects like real estate, offshore ventures, concrete sales, and a plan to move New York City’s massive garbage problem to South America, where he had connections.
Guccione asked me if I knew anybody who could help with that. I guess he thought all Italians knew someone in the Mafia or the garbage business. Well, I did indeed. That was right around when my father introduced me to the Ponte brothers, Joe and Angelo, who were owners of Ponte’s Restaurant, a rare mob safe house, downtown just off the West Side Highway where all the New York families could come to eat without confrontation. I’ll get into that later.
Although Dad was a silent, calculating type, he and I got into some adventures of our own, and I learned a thing or two. On one occasion he and I were having dinner with one of his associates, Paul Wald of J. S. Wald Trucking. After dinner, for some reason Paul invited us to take a ride in his car. While driving, a voice from the dashboard came blasting over a police and fireman radio scanner. It seems Paul was an honorary fireman chief, which explained the large brass medallion on his car.
“How would you guys like to stop off at the fire station?” Before we answered, he made a U-turn, put on a siren, and sped off to the station. As we entered the firehouse he introduced us to everyone he knew. I looked around and I could sense something similar to what I’ve felt in the Middle East, India, and the Adirondacks: this was a man’s society. The firemen were cleaning, cooking, and sitting around the table eating and telling jokes. The captain invited Dad and me to look around the firehouse, taking us upstairs where they slept on cots overnight and in between fires. It looked and smelled like a boys’ gym. All of a sudden the fire alarm went off and everyone started scrambling. Dad and I slid down the fire pole and were scurried onto a hook- and- ladder fire truck, and the next thing I knew we were on our way to a real fire. I looked across the fire truck to see Dad holding on for life as the lights flashed and sirens blasted, the truck speeding down the avenues and narrow streets, whizzing past red lights and through the parting sea of cars pulling off to the side to make way for us. As we approached the burning building the truck came to a screeching halt. Dad and I jumped off as all the other firemen rushed toward the fire fuming smoke, water hoses started spraying, and me and Dad watched them douse the flames.
One summer break from Parsons, Dad asked me to help him make a delivery during a workers’ strike at the New York World’s Fair. No trucks were allowed to make deliveries, and when we got close to the picket line he scribbled a little note and placed it on the windshield. As we approached the strikers, I was surprised to see them waving us through. I still have no idea what that piece of paper said.
That wasn’t the only time I noticed his quiet way in action. On another occasion Lufthansa Airlines was giving the truckers a problem, and Dad drove over to the shipping cargo hangars and said a few words to this guy, and the next thing I hear is “Okay guys, shut it down,” and all the truckers walked off. Lufthansa lost hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars until the ban was lifted. It turned out Dad was the president of Air Expert, an organization he formed to organize the truck owners against the truckers union. Dad had a strong character, but was subtle and non-abrasive. He knew just how to use it to get what he wanted. I guess it also had something to do with his smile and that look in his eye, which I knew well from my childhood, that said, “Don’t try it.” As they say, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, except I am far from subtle.
One day at a meeting Guccione surprised me when he casually looked at me from behind his desk and simply said, “Frank, I can’t take it anymore. My cup runneth over.”
After his comment a moment of deafening silence filled the air as I was trying to figure out what the hell that meant. Then I realized what he really was saying—I was too popular, too many projects were mine, I was grabbing all the balls. He had had enough of me and I was becoming too important, in his mind making him look bad.
Guccione wasn’t stupid. Instead of throwing me out the door and jeopardizing the things I was working on he decided to get me out of the Penthouse office in a more discrete way.
“I need you to be my eyes and ears and help with a major project in Georgia. I’d like you to meet my partner, Ed Brown. He will explain everything.”
He paused, looking up over his rose-colored glasses. “Can you go?”
I saw the ball and said, “Yes.”
Guccione introduced me to Ed Brown. They were planning to develop a Penthouse “Viva Village” somewhere in Georgia, a Playboy- type mansion resort destination, a Plato’s Retreat with Penthouse Pets.
Ed Brown was a tall, handsome, very tan guy, and Hawaiian singer Don Ho’s manager. We agreed I would go to Marietta, Georgia, which I later found out was the home of the Ku Klux Klan. Charli stayed in New York with Bruno while I set things up. I wondered how she felt about staying with our Bruno while I went traveling with Penthouse Pets.
In Charli’s Words
I must say sometimes at weak moments I did have several reservations about Frank being around all those beautiful women, but Gala’s cashew story prepared me for it so I let the bird fly.<
br />
We arrived at the site where the new complex was to be built on 150 acres of undeveloped land, a multi-million-dollar real estate project outside Atlanta, Georgia, across from the Dobbins Air Force Base. That’s when I first met Ken Partiss, another one of Guccione’s partners, the Pecks Bad Boy of Georgia. Ken had dirty blond hair and blue eyes and resembled James Dean with his blue jeans, cowboy boots, and a jean shirt that exposed his not quite hairy chest. He also had a pet rabbit on a leash. Ken and I got on immediately. That’s how it is with me from that first encounter: you either do or you don’t. Ken put us up in a five-room newly furnished townhouse at his Sundown Apartment complex. Charli and Bruno arrived a few days later.
I set up an office at the site of the soon-to-be Penthouse VIVA Village in one of the trailers on the side of the just-cleared dirt road. Construction had just started. It was amazing to see how the land was taking shape. Several weeks later I heard a commotion outside my trailer. Someone was saying that the project was closed down and that all Penthouse people had to leave. Then Ken walked in with a big ole smile on his face and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He looked at me, smiling.
“Hey.”
“Hey, Ken. What’s up? “
His smile quickly turned to a dead serious frown.
“The town and city officials decided they do not want any Penthouse Pets running around Marietta. They gotta go.”
I looked at him as if to say, “What about me? I thought you liked me and Charli. You said you even liked Bruno …”
“I want you to stay,” Ken said.
“Me? Why me?”
“Cause you’re a good ole boy and the only one we like.”
“What will I do? What about the plans?”
“Don’t worry, I already got a commitment from the bank. You decide what to build.”
Ken was no dummy. He was well read. Ayn Rand, the I Ching, Mein Kampf. A very savvy, smart man, he used the Penthouse name, got the money and commitment from the First National Bank of Georgia, and then got rid of Guccione. I didn’t care. The hell with Guccione; at least Ken was paying me.
Days later it all fell apart. I was on the site looking out my trailer window when I saw six or seven cars and pickup trucks come roaring down the dirt road, kicking up a dust storm, sirens screeching with flashing red lights mounted on their roofs, speeding to a halt. This was Ken’s crew of good ole boys themselves, who had been working around the site, and who I’d later learn were part of the KKK. Instead of white hoods they now wore baseball caps, along with badges and guns. That day it was officially proclaimed throughout the lands that Penthouse and its Pets were no longer welcome in Marietta. Ed Brown and all the rest had to leave except me, Charli, and Bruno. “Come on,” said Ken. “Get Charli. We’re going to a picnic to celebrate Charlie Mixum coming home.”
Little did I know it was also a KKK celebration picnic. Charlie was Ken’s right-hand man and foreman who had just been released from prison for tying his ex-partner to a tree and setting him on fire.
Off we went to a spot somewhere in the middle of nowhere, deep in the woods. Getting out of Ken’s black stretch Cadillac, it dawned on me that this was a southern good ole boy redneck version of the Hells Angels. Charli and I looked at each other with the same thought:.
“Shit, what are we doing here?”
Ken introduced me and Charli to Charlie Mixum, who was standing over a whole giant pig roasting over an open fire pit, waving two fifteen-inch knives. Mixum was a surprisingly distinguished older guy with grizzled short black hair. He tipped his baseball cap.
“Nice to meech y’all.”
Charli and I answered in unison, “Nice to meet you, too.”
Mixum half-jokingly handed me the knives. “Why don’t you make the first cut?”
I must admit his reputation coupled with a sinister grin and gleam in his eye scared the shit out of me, but in the end we all got along fine. I knew just what to say to these good ole boys. I even spoke and cussed with a mixture of Brooklyn and Southern accents.
“Fuuckyaall now.”
I came up with an idea for a new project Ken loved. Having read many books about the subject, he decided to build what I called “The Continent of Atlantis.” It would be built and designed around the theme of the mythological Lost City of Atlantis.
Months later, Charli, Bruno, and I moved our entire five-room Chatsworth apartment—I mean everything: every book, record, magazine, pencil, paper clip, piece of paper, painting, the bookcases and sculptures, all of it—to Power Ferry Road in Marietta, Georgia.
My first job as design and marketing director was to let everyone know we were here, so I had Ken put up a giant sign that I designed stuck in the middle of the Kudzu off of Route I-95, just before our dirt road, with a giant arrow pointing and saying Turn Here … This Way to Beach. The sign was beautiful. It had palm trees on a white sandy beach and turquoise water. It looked just like Dominica.
If nobody sees it, it’s not interesting
People actually drove all the way down our dirt road to our little construction camp looking for the beach even though we were smack in the middle of Georgia, in Marietta surrounded by pine trees and kudzu. Whenever one of the adventurous souls made it to my trailer and asked dead seriously, “Where’s the beach?”
I would politely but with a Brooklyn sarcasm answer, “It’s coming up from Florida. You see we are building a P.U.D. here—a planned unit development that one day will have a beach. It’s part of the concept and plans.” They would shake and scratch their heads and say, “Thank ya… kindly … we’ll be back.”
Over time I began to get it and I learned what that meant. It was a Southern thing. They never really say what they mean, like when they look you in the eye and say, “Y’all come back and see us again now, hear.” But what they really mean is “I hope you don’t.”
I began creating Atlantis, an oasis in the middle of nowhere, complete with a sixty-foot pyramid with a fifteen-foot chrome ball perched at the top, similar to the pyramid and eye on the back of a dollar bill. The pyramid would replace the beach sign, and would rise above the trees where everyone could see it. I commissioned my old friend Charlie White to paint the original art. It was spectacular. Charlie is a true master.
Now I had grabbed the ball, so to speak, in many ways. I had to get the giant chrome ball made. The sixty-foot pyramid structure was being constructed. Ken used dozens of kinds of wood from all over the world and it matched Charlie White’s painting exactly. But I couldn’t find a fifteen-foot ball made out of anything, let alone chrome. It couldn’t be done. No one could fabricate a giant round shiny chrome ball. Now what? How do I get the ball made?
All the naysayers poo-pooed me, gave me the icorno, the Italian jinx horns. Forget it, they yelled, make it without the ball. Who needs the ball?
“It’s all about the ball,” I’d say.
The chrome ball is the most important part, it fits in the pyramid, and without each other they are nothing. The ball must be at the top, reflecting the Earth and solar system. I had designed it so that when you stand at the bottom of the pyramid and look up to the ball, your image will be reflected in the ball as you become part of the universe as well. The Michelangelo in me ignited. And like Michelangelo had his pope benefactor, I had my pope too. His name is Kenneth. “I will produce the chrome ball.” And I did, using my most important ability to innovate.
Innovation is the key to creativity.
We hired a carpenter to make the ball out of wood, hired a specialist to fiberglass it, then cut it in half, separated it from the wood form, sanded the fiberglass smooth, and sent it off to be chromed.
The day of the unveiling of the pyramid and its chrome ball became a media sensation. I was in control, creating the look and feel of the entire project, writing the copy, taking the photos, and designing the sales tools. I did it all. Plans included townhouse apartments, a restaurant, a motel and cabaret theatre, an indoor and outdoor pool, and the beach. The p
roject was completed almost two years later. It was very successful and became Marietta’s wonder of the world.
Ken Partiss also owned the Sundown Apartments. I became the advertising and marketing director, changed the name to “Sundown At at the Oasis,” planted palm trees, and added ponds, waterfalls, and sand dunes.
The following is a lesson well learned: Always get all the facts. Don’t assume anything. To commemorate the original launching of the complex, Ken wanted to hire Howdy Doody and Buffalo Bob Smith to perform. Buffalo Bob agreed to do it, and insisted Ken rent a giant baby grand piano for the show. It was a nightmare finding one and having it delivered to Marietta. But Ken figured why not, anything for Howdy Doody.
The night of the show the clubhouse was packed, as everyone waited for Howdy Doody and Buffalo Bob Smith. The spotlight was on, and out comes Buffalo Bob dressed in his Davy Crocket leather and suede outfit. He takes a seat at the piano and starts to sing and play the theme song, “It’s Howdy Doody time, it’s Howdy Doody time, it’s time …” Then in the middle of the song he stops singing, turns to the audience and says, “I bet you’re all wondering, where is Howdy? Well Howdy’s not here. You see, I don’t have the rights to Howdy, just me as Buffalo Bob.” Well, everyone went nuts, threw things and yelled obscenities at Buffalo Bob, who ran off the stage. He didn’t care, though, since he was paid up-front.
Charli and I witnessed the same thing years later happen to Stevie Wonder when he was still Little Stevie Wonder, opening for The Stones at Madison Square Garden. He came out and started to sing songs from his new album, later to become one of his greatest albums, Songs in the Key of Life. But the audience went berserk, throwing things at the stage, because they came to see Little Stevie Wonder sing “Finger Tips.” Another lesson learned: You gotta play them the hits, the songs they came to see. You can slide in new stuff and hope eventually the new stuff replaces the old stuff but there are those rare songs, the ones that brand you forever, that you must play or die. Like “Jumping Jack Flash.” Jagger must have sung that song a million times. God forbid he doesn’t perform it at a show. His audience expects to hear it. They expect him to be Jumping Jack Flash.
Frank & Charli Page 14