He sent me flowers on our opening night in Worcester, Massachusetts, and suddenly I was out there on a postage-stamp stage in a cavernous stadium. I had never performed in front of fifteen thousand people before. I was petrified. When I walked on I looked around and immediately felt myself wanting to fill the space all around me. The sound of the audience was thunderous. I could hardly hear the orchestra. There was a lag between the orchestra pit and me. I had been used to a self-contained band of eight musicians. Now I was working with forty. I finished my opening number and the people went crazy. Why are they acting like this? I wondered. I told a joke to find out if they could even hear my words distinctly. They could. They laughed. Jesus, I thought. This isn’t so bad. I was only doing an hour (half the length of my solo show) so I timed my stuff a little differently. Then I tried something metaphysical. I felt myself expand my energy so that I filled the stadium. It seemed to be working. The people seemed to like it. And when it was over, they gave me a standing ovation, it was one of the great thrills of my life—up there with my opening night at the Palladium in London.
I took a few bows and ran to Frank’s dressing room, somewhere near the shower stalls for the ballplayers.
“Great, baby!” he said. “Didja like it?”
“Oh yes,” I said breathlessly.
“See, it’s no different than a small room. You killed the people. I could hear it. We got a great combination here. We’re gonna tear up New York when we get there.”
So it went. The people loved me because I was with Frank. Just his presence gave them a kind of confidence that the past was not only not dead yet but could perhaps segue into the future. Somehow he made the young people, of whom there were thousands, understand their parents better. He was a bridge across decades.
We toured for a few months in Frank’s private plane, one huge indoor stadium after the other. Frank could go right from the airplane to the stage. I needed some warm-up time. And when the show was over, if I wasn’t in the limo he’d leave without me. Frank loved to end, then leave town like a modern day Roman warrior.
He insisted on a police escort (even at four in the morning in empty streets) with flashing lights and cops on motorcycles leading the way. We looked like a moving, real-live Nintendo game. Sirens wailed, horns honked, lights flashed, waking up the countryside, and if a lone driver who worked the graveyard shift happened to be traveling home on the freeway, the cops practically put him in custody until Frank left town. The tab for such extravagant waste boggled my Scotch-Irish brain, to say nothing of the expense of the extra limos that were on standby just in case we’d inherit some friends who might “wanna eat somethin’ after da show.”
The eating itself was out of an old Coppola film. Almost always Italian and usually a place outside of town, conveniently located for those running from the authorities. From the outside these restaurants looked identity-less. Once inside, however, we were greeted by a set of bouncers with cauliflower ears and big heads. They would escort us to a long table laden with sumptuous antipasto and $1,500 bottles of wine. Usually there was a gangster or former boss waiting to eat with us. He would stand, Frank would introduce us, I would get the once-over, and then he would invite us to sit and partake of his spread.
These were the nights I wished I had the audacity to bring a tape recorder. Not only because of the freedom with which Frank revealed his past, but also because of the subtle power plays that ebbed and flowed between him and the gangsters. Actually I needed a video camera with a real good close-up lens. The subtleties were awe-inspiring.
Giancana was long gone, of course, but the other regional bosses were still in place. I felt safe to regard them with an amused scrutiny. Why so many of them had hooded eyelids is a matter for the professors of “consciousness-creating physicality.” They looked out at life from under those eyelids like paranoid survivors. Nothing escaped them. No move, no untoward laughter, no half empty plate, and no gesture of discomfort. They were psychological masters of summing up the environment.
At the outset of dinner, Frank was usually rather deferential to The Boys, the balance of power seemingly acknowledged and food given the higher priority. But as dinner progressed and Frank had finished his second martini and was about to break open one of the wine treasures, the mood changed. He’d hold the bottle, regard the year on the label, look around the table at The Boys, and say something like, “What the fuck is this?”
The Boys would blink and stiffen, and then they answered him. That was the moment when Frank knew he had control. They answered him. He had psyched out too many audiences to be perturbed by the potential disapproval of a couple of hoods. He needed to prove who was the real Boss.
The answer to his question wasn’t what was important. The fact that they didn’t call him on his rudeness was. And that hurdle having been jumped, Frank would proceed to drive The Boys into the ground for the rest of the night. In between eating their food and bad mouthing their wine, Frank would systematically insult them: their work, their clothes, their big noses, their lack of education, and ultimately the fact that they were serving him “too much fucking food. Get it the hell off the table, for Christ’s sake.” He’d say, “Bring me a Sambucca with three coffee beans.” The food would be whisked away and Frank would light up an old-time Camel cigarette. He used a cigarette lighter I recognized from years ago. It was thin and fit in his pocket without protruding. It was the lighter I had given him. He didn’t remember.
Waiters, maître d’s, and The Boys hovered in anticipatory anxiety as to what Frank might wish next. It was never the same. Sometimes he’d eat dessert, and sometimes he’d just drink. Once he threw a salmon souffle on the floor. The point of tension, however, was most deeply felt by his manager, Eliot Weisman, who knew that there was the rest of the night to contend with. Wherever we went after dinner would have to include a piano player and a bar. Eliot’s problem was figuring out where that might be. Where would the Old Man (that’s what everyone affectionately called him) want to go? Would he want to go somewhere in this town or get on his plane and find a piano bar in the next town? Frank knew piano bars that no one else knew. Eliot understood the consequences of not being prepared. Piano players and good-time bartenders were lined up in every region, close to Frank’s whereabouts, because one thing was for sure—the Old Man would not go to bed until five in the morning, regardless of the city he was in. That’s why we usually traveled the night of the show: if we waited until the next day, he might not get up in time to be on his plane.
Frank’s state of mind, what he ate, how long he slept, whom he talked to, how much he drank, and whether or not he was in a good mood were the subject of concern and conversation among everyone who worked around him.
They had reconciled with his demons, and his musical genius commanded their respect. To me, having witnessed so much of his self-abusive history, it was amazing he was still able to perform. He still preferred his old-time tuxedo for night shows (for matinees he wore his “Sunday school suit”). He pranced around in his black patent leather “party heels” with the grosgrain bows, and by the end of every performance he was wringing wet. Vine, the black woman who has been his maid for many years, would wipe him off and dress him either in the limo or on the airplane. Vine was the only person Frank would listen to. She was the first person he saw when he woke up and the last person before he went to bed. She told him when she thought he was out of line and otherwise melted into the woodwork. Vine was always included at the dinners and Frank was her life. She tended to his meals, his vanity, his clothes, and his sleep. She knew when he’d had a bad dream and whether he was lonely. She nursed him when his longtime friend Jilly Rizzo died and tended to him when he was suffering from a sore throat or the ravages of advancing age. She had been there all the years I knew him and will be there at the end.
The end, however, seemed aeons away. Energy-wise, Frank outdistanced everybody, including me. I could understand that his destiny was to be a legend that lasted long after h
is time. But the source of his energy was unfathomable. I don’t think it comes simply from drive, or ambition, or the pulsating fear of being left behind. Nor is it only the need to be recognized and adored. All of the above are true but rather irrelevant. It has more to do with remaining a perpetual performing child who wants to please the mother audience.
It was my birthday when we were in New Orleans. Frank had been apprised of this and gave me a birthday dinner. My daughter, Sachi, her husband, Frank, Bobby Harling (who wrote Steel Magnolias and the screenplay for the sequel to Terms of Endearment, Evening Star), Mort, and several others were visiting.
We all met at the bar of the hotel. My conductor, Jack French, came along. Frank had worked with him years before. The two of them stood at the bar nursing drinks and chewing the fat about music, two artists who communicated in half sentences about a subject that needed no words at all.
When we went into dinner Frank handed me a present. It was an exquisite gold clock. He thanked me for all the years of our friendship and for always telling him the truth as I saw it.
We sat down to dinner and he drew me a clown on my napkin. He said it reminded him of me. Then he sang “Happy Birthday” to me. It was worth being a year older just to hear Sinatra sing “Happy Birthday.” He directed that the wine bottles be opened. Someone leaned over and said each bottle cost $1,500. When the Mob spent that much money on wine to impress Frank it was so much easier for me to accept than when Frank did the same thing for me.
I knew he could afford it, certainly. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was whether I deserved it. Frank’s lavish spending habits and his generosity over the years had made me examine my feelings about his freedom of spending and my resistance to it. My instinct was to protect myself for the rainy day that I was sure would come. I had been raised this way. Neither of my parents would spend a thing on themselves. Whenever I gave them money for Christmas with express instructions to spend it on something wonderful, they’d put it in the bank. Once I asked Mother why she did that. She said she would need it in her old age. She was eighty-three.
Frank’s relationship to money, on the other hand, seemed so outrageous to me that I felt I was observing a monetary value system from another planet. Once again I seemed to have drawn a person into my life who painted lessons for me with vivid primary colors. I painted with pastels, or maybe I just sketched with gray pencils. He showed me a kind of spending art.
He not only exemplified the freedom to give and spend freely. He exemplified the freedom to take and “lift” freely, like Peck’s bad boy. One night after the show in New Orleans he pulled a caper that was the best of its kind I had seen.
Our entire party was transported by the usual contingent of flashing lights and motorcycle policemen to the front of the glass-walled restaurant, Emeril’s (five stars and a New Orleans must). I could see people stopping in midchew. They must have thought the Pope had arrived. Not far wrong. Slowly we were ushered in, about twenty of us, and ceremoniously seated at a long table in view of everyone, it was a full-dress, New Orleans—style evening with cooking to match.
Frank sat down next to me, against the wall. A first course awaited him, and what was it? A beautifully decorated appetizer of French spaghetti. Oh God, I thought. How could this be so wrong? Frank waited for everyone to sit and as if on an action cue, looked down at the French-looking pasta, and gently moved his plate away. The waiter standing at attention behind him leaped to the rescue and cleared away the unwanted food. That meant that the Old Man was ready for the second course and no one else had even begun the first.
The clatter of forks and spoons audibly speeded up. One or two people declined to eat their spaghetti as well, and waited for what was next. I looked over at Frank. He had stuffed something in his coat pocket.
The waiter brought the second course. A fish dish with spicy sauce. Frank picked it up and smelled it. “Too rich for me!” he said, taking a bite as though to be polite. At least he was trying. The rhythm of “clear and serve” was now clearly out of whack. Should the waiters track themselves according to Frank, or to the rest of the party, who obviously were enjoying the food? They broke rank. Some attended Frank. Others took care of the rest of us.
Frank stuffed something else in his pocket. I looked over at Mort. He rolled his eyes. By now, conversation was in full swing. Frank’s guests, as was usually the case, became interested in their own experience and started to ignore Frank’s autocratically eccentric eating habits. In fact, no one was talking to him. Frank ordered a drink. A waiter snapped to attention. It was there before Frank could repeat the request. One course after another of the specially designed delicacies was placed in front of us. Frank ate bits and pieces. He would clearly have preferred eating pasta and antipasto in a Mob joint. But he remained civil. I noticed his pockets bulging. A waiter leaned over and said, “Mr. Sinatra, I just wanted you to know how much you have meant to me in my life.” Frank smiled and waited for the expected request for an autograph. It didn’t come. He turned to me and said, “Nice kid. It’s the first time nobody’s wanted anything from me.”
Frank asked permission to smoke. It was readily granted since others wanted to smoke too. The main entrée came. Emeril had outdone himself, preparing food fit for royalty. Wine was flowing, and even Eliot and Mort were relaxed because Frank was deeply engrossed in telling me a story I had heard fifteen times. I had been through this with my parents not long ago. One simply enters the reality of the aging and the repetition can be fun. Slowly, Frank would lift a bite of food, examine it, turn it over and around, and finally make the decision to commit to eating it. With each involved commitment, Eliot and Mort knew they were off the hook for the length of time he took to chew and swallow.
People were now enjoying the famous Emern’s desserts, five auspicious creations of sugar shock apiece. Suddenly Frank pushed his chair back. Eliot dropped his spoon and pulled out his cellular telephone. He called the Windsor Court Hotel, where we were staying, and spoke to his assistant, who was waiting for instructions on Frank’s next move.
“Is the guy at the piano bar?” asked Eliot. “The Old Man’s getting ready to leave, I think. We’ve gotta have the guy on standby. And the girl bartender who looks like the librarian. Get her. He likes her.” Eliot hung up.
The rest of the party froze. Were they supposed to leave too? Was that the protocol? Frank recognized the dilemma. He stood up and announced that he was tired, needed to hear some music, and we could join him in the bar at the hotel later. When he turned around I saw him unbutton his jacket so the pockets wouldn’t bulge so much. His waiter leaned over and in a friendly, conspiratorial voice whispered in his ear, “If you want a whole set I can get it for you.” Frank winked and handed him a hundred-dollar bill.
I wondered what was going on. Eliot left with Frank.
The rest of us finished our meal and about an hour later returned to the hotel bar to thank Frank. He was holding court with two traveling-salesman types at the bar. When we arrived he made a new party, it was now about 2:30 A.M. Around three, there was a lull in the conversation, which Frank recognized as a perfect moment. He stood up, reached into his pockets, and turned them inside out. Half a dozen pieces of silver clattered to the floor. We all stared.
“I never go anywhere,” he said, “that I don’t steal something.”
Frank held court until five in the morning. Finally most of us begged off and went to bed. He found some people at the bar. It didn’t really matter to him who they were. He knew they would sit with him because of who he was. They knew he was lonely.
Perhaps lonely is the wrong word. In the way that old people have of making time stand still, he’d get comfortable with his Camels and Jack Daniels, lock back, and bend elbows with people until they wished they had no arms. People working with him would take turns doing their time. It was understood as part of the territory. Those who had the graveyard shift faced the next day with positives and negatives. The bad news was that they were walking on
their knees with fatigue. The good news was they had been privy to stories Frank either hadn’t remembered until then or had never before wished to recount.
The stories would die in the haze and blur of drinks and strangers. Only the memories of those present would keep them alive. But I could see indifference setting in even with them. The nostalgia for yesteryear was short-lived, seemingly without value where today’s ambitions were concerned. The people of the night would turn away, get on with their own lives, and Frank, even though he was the King, would be left, as most older people are, with the feeling that he was grateful someone had stayed up all night and talked to him.
The next day Frank was up about noon to fly to the next city on our tour, Jacksonville, Florida. We landed twenty minutes before the show. He was fine with that. I was a basket case. He was particularly good that night, in an easy mood and having fun with the crowd, so I decided to confront him about the medley we were supposed to do together.
Frank, above all, does not want to embarrass other performers on the stage because of his mistakes. He doesn’t mind being cruel and insensitive when he’s in control. But when he feels he’s not in top form, it’s hard for him to accept that other performers don’t mind.
I knew he couldn’t remember his lyrics and the monitors were direly necessary to him. That was okay with me. The medley was made up of songs he knew and had been singing for years, but I still knew that I would probably have to jump in, just to keep it going. Frank was worried for me. He didn’t know how I’d react to his memory loss. He doesn’t like being anxious and afraid of anything different. Up until now he had refused to try our medley before we opened in New York. So, during the sound check, I said, “Do you like my new dress?”
“Sure, baby,” he answered. “Do you want to make thirty-five cents?”
My Lucky Stars Page 10