My Lucky Stars

by Shirley Maclaine

  Of course, Ava was as much a mystery to herself as she was to Frank. Therefore, he was strung out on her until she died, even after she had become a heavy drinker and a recluse.

  Having dinner with Ava in her apartment in London explained so much. Her gorgeous body had become more ample, her exquisite face lined with sad bitterness around her tired eyes, but she was plucky. Her sentences were choppy as she spoke about her love for Spain and how much she didn’t miss movies. Her two pet corgis had taken on Ava’s personality. She was their beloved mistress, and they were angry, repressed little dogs, highly nervous and agitated, growling at her, demanding attention at every moment. They were so nuts that I said good night to Ava early.

  But Frank loved all that commotion, the angry demands. Maybe with a mother of such force and a father of such passivity (Marty Sinatra was a fireman who let Dolly rule), it is understandable that Frank would admire and emulate his mother in order to gain her favor, and remain angry with his father for allowing such imbalance.

  Frank could never say “I’m sorry” or admit he was wrong. It was as though he could not betray the expectation of perfection, and an apology would force him to face that imperfection in himself. And the fear he aroused in others was sometimes stultifying. People would literally shiver until they laughed when he erupted in a rage. For some reason, I never felt afraid of him. I don’t know why. Perhaps I was afraid to feel fear. Perhaps I was too naive, and because I was never afraid of him, he trusted me.

  He demanded total loyalty without deviation, yet he loved people who told him the truth. A point of view that contradicted his was okay if it was well thought out. But people never knew when they’d be met with revenge. He could change his own mind on a social or political issue with alarming speed.

  For example he hated Richard Nixon with deep vitriol, then ended up campaigning for him. (Some say because Nixon personally complimented him on a stand he took.)

  He told me that he thought Ronald Reagan was “a stupid bore who couldn’t get a job in pictures, which was why he went into politics.” He threatened to move out of California if Reagan ever got elected to public office. He thought Nancy was “a dumb broad with fat ankles who couldn’t act.” I heard him scream and curse at the television set when they appeared. It was a deep and personal hate that Frank felt for the Reagans.

  But when Jesse Unruh, speaker of the California assembly and a Bobby Kennedy loyalist, decided to run against Reagan for governor, Frank decided to support Reagan. Why? Because Bobby had been responsible for his brother, Jack Kennedy, not staying at Sinatra’s home in Palm Springs. Why? Because of Sinatra’s association with the Maña. Frank then supported Reagan to get back at Bobby.

  His actions and values so often seemed to be motivated by what he perceived as betrayal or disloyalty. I wondered where such suspicion had been born. Or was it because the support and loyalty from his mother had been so unwavering that he required such unquestioning allegiance in everyone else? Frank never questioned his ability to succeed at anything he desired to attempt. His mother saw to that. Sometimes his methods were without conscience. His mother had seen to that too. No one ever questioned his right to succeed, regardless of what he wanted to do. He would have his way; that had been ordained from the beginning, with his mother, and it would ever be thus.

  Even so, Frank was insecure when he was around people he deemed to be of a higher class than he. He felt inadequate and his response was to behave even more like a bum, unless they took the time to put him at ease, as Jackie Kennedy and Princess Grace did. He could relate to these women as a man with sex appeal’; that was the common denominator.

  Frank never said thank you for a present.

  I gave him a cigarette lighter from Japan once. He adored it. It was thin and fit into his pocket easily. But he never thanked me. Instead he gave me a bigger and better gift.

  That was the way it was with Frank, if you helped him more than he helped you, the friendship was doomed because the balance he wanted had been tipped. And if you worked for Frank and attempted to protect him from himself, you committed the most heinous of all crimes. He was the godfather, indisputably. He knew not only what was best for himself, but also what was best for you. And in that way he could be the most extraordinary friend. He was a happy man when he was able to come to my rescue. “Oh, I just wish someone would try to hurt you so I could kill them for you,” he’d say when he was trying to express his feelings of friendship.

  This point of view, this value system, this way of perceiving himself was not unlike the power he required on the stage.

  In that spotlight, trodding the boards in his patent leather party shoes, swinging the microphone around as he made love to the sound of his own voice, controlling not only the rhythm but the volume of a forty-person orchestra, and sculpting the audience’s feelings as they sat mesmerized, he was the godfather of the musical depths, of their sorrows, their lonely nights, their passionate silliness. In that compressed space and time—two hours in a club or theater—no one and nothing in the world was more important than that encapsulated experience. Nothing could disturb the genial perfection he created for his audience. He was a musical dictator because he knew best, not only for himself, but for them. He knew what would move them to feel. And he was a benevolent dictator, because in the final analysis he knew he was serving them. This, indeed, created the only fear he knew. Would he be able to give them what they expected? Would he be able to put aside his own ego to please the mother audience who came because they loved him and wanted to be proud of him, and would he thereby fulfill their expectations?

  In this circumstance, Frank’s inner world of conflict was eased.

  He would see to it that the music was mathematically perfect, its harmonies made in heaven, duplicating the sounds he had heard in his head since he was old enough to be aware of them. His musicians were mere mortals who would unquestionably obey his unearthly commands because they recognized a gift from God in their musical father. His every gesture and move would be duly accounted for, appreciated, and respected because the light was trained solely on him. There was no need for him to command attention because the troops could see no one else. The emotional loyalty that was paramount to him was never in doubt. His audience was absolutely and without reservation his. He’d never allow their attention or focus to stray. Continual attention needed to be paid. And with all these components the audience became his obedient child as well as his mother. He knew what was best for it. And he was right. He had led it into the spheres of what he considered the divine. The spheres of heavenly music. This was the only realm of peace for him. Without it he would die. Yet, as a child of music, his survival was his mother audience. He desperately needed her to love him, appreciate him, acknowledge him, and never betray his trust. So he would cajole, manipulate, caress, admonish, scold, and love her unconditionally until there was no difference between him and her. He and she had become one. He became the mother basking in the image she had intended for him all along. And in that he found peace and a sense of completeness.

  What was always so touching to me, knowing and experiencing so much of what Sinatra could be, was his exit line. He meant it when he’d say, “Thank you for letting me sing for you.”

  Without their permission he would have no reason to live. A tangled contradiction for a man who requested permission from no one.

  In later years, when I had a club career of my own, Frank would sometimes wander onto my stage and kid around. He’d bring Dean with him. In the past I had been the mascot. Now the mascot required respect. I’d look over at them standing in my spotlight, and I would feel ill equipped to measure up to their stagecraft. As the spotlight shone in their eyes, I’d once again observe that magnificent strut of confidence and the mischief playing across their faces. I’d remember the old days when I wished I could be up there with them. How different it was from film. How carefree and raucous and unplanned. I wished I could be that way. Then, when they’d call me up from the au
dience and, in full view of people, teach me comedy tricks or show me how to hold a pose in order to milk a laugh longer, I was in heaven. They could make a joke out of anything. Once one of the showgirls left her sandal in the piano. Dean found it, held it up, and said, “Oh, I see Victor Mature was here.” When I decided to go live, Frank took me aside. “Remember one thing, baby,” he said. “You change the room by showing up.” Sammy said, “Pull out all the stops.” And Dean said, “What do you need it for?”

  THOSE TIMES ARE GONE NOW. AND SHOW BUSINESS IS BEREFT because of it. When The Boys ran Vegas, they knew how to do it. Their hotels didn’t care about a show room paying for itself. Gambling and a good time were the high priorities. The showroom and its entertainers were there to get you in the mood to drop your cash on the green velvet tables. If you were stupid enough to fall for it, that was their gain. Vegas was one of the only towns in the world that told the truth about itself. It wasn’t in any way self-righteous. It existed to seduce you into throwing your money into its greedy pot. Everything was designed to make you have such a good time you’d even enjoy your losses, and furthermore you were warned.

  Today, Vegas is a family resort town, with rides and circuses and cotton candy. It doesn’t exist for the same reasons anymore. The glamour of its power hierarchy is gone now. There’s no danger, therefore no vicarious pleasure. Vegas doesn’t need “stars” anymore. It can’t afford “stars.” So it has no intimate, spontaneous interaction. Frank plays on his own. There’s not much kidding around. The showrooms have to pay for themselves now because Vegas caters to children and their desires. It’s got production shows and exploding volcanoes and pyramids and Treasure Island monsters and day care centers. It’s no longer a place of underground mystery. Everything is aboveboard and boring.

  So I look back with a certain sense of loss when I’m there without the old gang. Dean and Sammy are gone and everyone else is very old. The Boys have essentially moved from public view, exacting their brutal demands on governments and drug runners. Drugs were not part of our world in those days: even crime was cleaner.

  The days of the celebrity train rides when twenty big stars traveled the rails in style while playing gin rummy for a hundred dollars a point are gone. The candlelight dinners at the Dunes, eaten to the sound of thirty violins around a waterfall of glittering turquoise peopled with every star in Hollywood are no more. The days of Don Rickles, Louis Prima and Keely Smith, Ernie Kovacs, or Vic Damone playing the lounge with hundreds of people lined up at four in the morning are over.

  Liberace and Danny Kaye and Mitzi Gaynor and Danny Thomas and Bob Hope and Bing Crosby and Marlene Dietrich and Nat King Cole and Elvis Presley and the Jackson Five used to trod the boards in Vegas. I would fly up and see three shows a night for three days.

  It was a whirlwind of talent, gourmet food, specialty dress shops, absurd jewelry given as good luck thank-yous.

  It was cars and furs bought with poker chips; Ramos gin fizzes at breakfast and anything you wanted all day long.

  You don’t find the stogie smoker with the ten-carat pinkie ring sitting ringside anymore. Today the high rollers are from Hong Kong and Japan and Europe. They win and lose in foreign languages.

  Family mundanity reigns.

  Mob mystery wanes.

  The pictures have changed too, of course. Now no one can afford antics. Directors are auteurs now, or long-suffering traffic cops who just want to finish the day’s work. It’s all about the finished product’s budget rather than the fun of the process.

  The Clan tried to recapture the antics of yesteryear one last time by making Cannonball Run II not far from Vegas, in 1983. It was a disgrace, of course. Frank only worked half a day, and that was too long for him. He did one take and left. It looked as though he was never there at all.

  Dean had deteriorated. I hadn’t seen him in years and he seemed withered, drawn, with a grayish pallor. I noticed he put five spoons of sugar in each cup of coffee. With my new sense of health awareness I chided him for it and said he’d better quit. The next day he emptied a five-pound bag of sugar inside my trailer. Sammy tried to be funny, which wasn’t necessary. Just dressed in his costume he was hilarious (he was a priest). I played a nun and Marilu Henner said if she had known I would win the Oscar soon after we finished, she would have treated me with more respect! As it worked out, Cannonball II was my all-important follow-up picture to Terms of Endearment. So much for calculating shrewd moves in my career. It did bring me together with my buddies of yesteryear.

  IN 1988, DEAN AND FRANK AND SAMMY WENT OUT ON THE road in the Together Again tour, a show Mort Viner put together for them. They believed they could recreate the old days. Booze, broads, bands, and badness. But things had changed. Dean was now seventy-one. And an old seventy-one at that. Frank had always been more active in every way, older in years but younger in spirit.

  From the moment the tour began, it was clear that the differences in energy between Dean and Frank would be a problem. I was hearing the stories from Mort.

  In Oakland, their first play date, Frank wanted to go out after the show and have some fun. Dean was tired and wanted nothing but to sit and watch television. Frank dumped his chair over. Dean did a pratfall and made Frank laugh, but Dean was upset.

  They went on to play Vancouver and Seattle, and Frank became more insistent that the old days could be recreated. But Dean couldn’t. He was slow and too late in his reactions. Frank couldn’t accept Dean’s advancing age. It probably reminded him of his own mortality. He began to make cruel jokes onstage and badger Dean unmercifully. Dean couldn’t use his “I’ve got a broad waiting in my room” line anymore when Frank wanted him to go out at night. He just told Frank the truth.

  “I don’t want to go, dago,” he said. “I just want to go to my room and watch TV and fall asleep.”

  Frank couldn’t take that.

  “What’re you doin’ this for, then?” he yelled. “C’mon, get your ass outta that chair.”

  Dean didn’t move. He never liked being ordered around. He fell silent. That made Frank mad. He picked up Dean’s plate of spaghetti and dumped it on his head.

  Dean did a Buster Keaton and sat stone still. That made Frank laugh. Frank thought Dean was being funny, but he wasn’t. Dean was making up his mind to walk … again.

  When they reached Chicago, Frank was sure Dean would return to adolescence and tear up the town with him. It was, after all, Frank’s town.

  Frank, Dean, and Sammy were booked into the same hotel. But they were not all on the same floor. This was grounds for heavy disruption in Frank’s mind. It didn’t matter that they arrived by private plane at 2:30 A.M. It didn’t matter that the hotel had not been designed to have three big suites on the same floor. It didn’t matter that most of the hotel staff and indeed most of the town was asleep—Frank insisted they all be on the same floor, and that was that. He began making phone calls. He wanted Dean and Sammy to meet him in the lobby to facilitate the matter. Sammy very nearly complied, but Dean just changed rooms with Mort Viner so that Mort got the incessant calls for the next few hours.

  When Frank had exhausted his inquiries to other hotels and could no longer reach Dean, he allowed himself to get tired and finally fell asleep.

  There were three shows in a row in Chicago, which Dean was willing to complete. But on the last night, Mort arranged for a private plane to take Dean back to California, where he checked Dean into a hospital to make it look good. Dean needed some rest anyway.

  Dean and Frank had come to the end of their road, just as Dean and Jerry had. Frank called to inquire how Dean was doing, but Dean never took the calls.

  Dean left our entertainment industry in much the same way as he came in: quiet, stoic, resolved to be left alone, essentially uninvolved with the passions of life and work. He was a true menefreghista. He was happy when he really didn’t give a fuck. I miss him more than I can say, and every time I pass the Copacabana in New York, I remember the laughter I heard as a kid, which inspi
red me to wonder who was in there.

  FRANK WAS UPSET ABOUT THE DECLINE OF DEAN, DEAN’S tired abdication of ambition and the joy of living worried and bothered and needled him. Frank’s iron-willed drive ruled. Dean’s passivity prevailed. Frank couldn’t bear to observe Dean’s deterioration. But the more he pursued Dean, the more Dean retreated. Dean knew what he wanted and didn’t want in his life and none of it paralleled Frank’s.

  Frank went in the opposite direction. He knew in his heart that if he let go for a moment he’d die. He still needed to be appreciated, adored, and acknowledged.

  5

  SINATRA

  Now—and Forever?

  In 1992, when Frank was seventy-seven, he called and asked me to go out on the road with him. We’d play stadiums. I said, “Great, let’s call it the ‘The Team of the Ancients.’” Together we would be 135 years old. He laughed, thank God.

  We never rehearsed. It was just like the old days. We met and reminisced and drank and joked, but we never rehearsed what we were going to do together. Our medley had been written and recorded so that we could learn it from a tape recorder. But it didn’t matter. The tour wasn’t about professional good work. It was about recapturing the old days. “We’re gonna tear up the joint, baby,” Frank said to me as he ushered me around his sunken curved bar at his home in Malibu. “So cool it. These big joints are just like Vegas, no different. It’ll be a ring ding time.” I blanched, not having heard this kind of dialogue in twenty years. Never mind, I thought. It will be an adventure just to observe and be a part of the way he keeps keeping on.