by James Kaplan
I stopped and we both sat there in the darkness … Finally, Reenie said in a quiet, resigned voice, “Come on, Miss G., knock it off. Why don’t we just go home.”
So they did. It was dawn when they reached Pacific Palisades. They walked into the house to find the phone ringing. It was Hank Sanicola, and he sounded desperate.
“Oh my God, Ava—hurry back!” he said. “Frank’s taken an overdose!”
She hurried back.
A car had rushed us to the L.A. airport. A car had rushed us from the Nevada airport to the house at Lake Tahoe. Hank Sanicola met me at the door. He looked as tired out and worn as I felt. I had difficulty speaking.
“How is he?” I said.
“He’s okay,” said Hank.
I thought, Thank God! I ran through into the bedroom. I looked down at Frank and he turned his sad blue eyes to look at me.
“I thought you’d gone,” he said weakly.
I wanted to punch him, I really did. I wanted to punch him as much as I’d ever wanted to punch anybody. Frank had tricked both Reenie and me back to his bedside.
The difference with this suicide attempt was that this time the authorities were involved. Sanicola had called a doctor, and though he had tried to divert suspicion by identifying the patient as himself, the doctor had been obliged to file a police report. By Labor Day weekend, the newspapers had a juicy new Sinatra story.
Frank and Ava sat down, hand in hand, to meet the press once more.
“I did not try to commit suicide,” Frank said. “I just had a bellyache. What will you guys think of next to write about me?”
“So what really happened, Frank?” a reporter called.
Sinatra looked around the room, making a visible effort to hold his temper. “Tuesday night, Miss Gardner, my manager Hank Sanicola and Mrs. Sanicola dined at the Christmas Tree Inn on Lake Tahoe,” he said. “Ava was returning to Hollywood that night. We came back to the Lake and I didn’t feel so good. So I took two sleeping pills. Miss Gardner left … I guess I wasn’t thinking because I am very allergic to sleeping pills. Also, I had drunk two or three brandies. I broke out in a rash. The pills felt kind of stuck in my chest. I got worried and called a friend who runs the steak house here. He sent a doctor who gave me a glass of warm water with salt in it. It made me throw up and I was all right. That’s all there was to it—honest.”
Honest.
Nevada Route 91, the Arrowhead Highway, was a two-lane blacktop snaking southwest across a vast expanse of sand, mesquite, and sage. The road didn’t look much less desolate in Las Vegas than it did anywhere else in the Silver State, even along the four-mile stretch known optimistically as Las Vegas Boulevard or, more popularly, the Strip. Sand blew across the macadam; scorpions scuttled among the desert weeds. In the early 1940s, the first casino-hotels began to pop up in this unpromising landscape: El Rancho Vegas opened in 1941; the Hotel Last Frontier debuted the following year. The Flamingo came to its problematic completion in 1946; the Thunderbird opened in 1948; and the fifth gambling resort on the Strip, opening in 1950, was the Desert Inn.
The DI was the brainchild of one Wilbur Clark, a onetime San Diego bellhop and Reno craps dealer who, much like the Flamingo’s Billy Wilkerson, found himself strapped mid-project for the cash necessary to bring his dream to fruition. As with Wilkerson, the Mob—this time in the person of the Cleveland syndicate boss Moe Dalitz—stepped into the breach. Dalitz’s good friends at the Teamsters Union’s Central States Pension Fund provided the cash—unbeknownst to most of the teamsters. The Cleveland gangster, who had run gambling operations throughout Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Michigan, had western ambitions. Unlike Bugsy Siegel, however, the businesslike Dalitz chose not to muscle out the casino’s originator but to retain him as an agreeable front man. “Wilbur Clark,” after all, had a more congenial ring to it than “Moe Dalitz” out in these parts. And so Dalitz, a big-nosed, six-foot tough Jew, graciously allowed the place to be christened Wilbur Clark’s Desert Inn. Clark’s name, in mock-signature script, adorned the giant electric sign, with its Joshua-tree-cactus logo.
The groundbreaking architect Wayne McAllister had designed the place to a 1950s-modern fare-thee-well, with pink stucco walls, fieldstone pilasters, jutting roofs, and, around back, the first kidney-shaped pool in town. The inn’s crowning glory was a three-story, glass-cupolaed structure, the tallest in Vegas in 1951, built to look like an airport control tower. Behind the picture windows, the Skyroom lounge, with little lights faired into the ceiling to simulate desert stars, offered dining, dancing, and an unobstructed vista of the Las Vegas valley in all its sand-and-sagebrush splendor. The entertainment might have been Hollywood, but the clientele was strictly string tie: southwestern oilmen, cattle ranchers, and their ladies. Even if the DI’s 450-seat Painted Desert Room could draw some top acts, nobody mistook it for the Copa.
Sinatra was the top of the bill: after him came the comedian-magician Jay Marshall, also known as “The Funny Bunny Man”; Ruby Ring, “Dancer Extra-Ordinary”; and the Arden-Fletcher Dancers. The Singing MC was Gene Griffin, and the orchestra was led by Carlton Hayes.
If Frank closed his eyes, he could remember the Major Bowes Number Five tour unit.
Sinatra’s shows sold out. He ran Carlton Hayes and his musicians through their paces, belting out “My Blue Heaven,” “Come Rain or Come Shine,” and “That Old Black Magic,” singing his heart out and working hard to make his audience—never mind that they weren’t café society—feel he was singing to them alone. He worked a little too hard for Ava’s taste. Sitting ringside with Axel Stordahl and his new wife, June Hutton, “Ava was chatting away happily,” Stordahl recalled, “and then suddenly she said, ‘Let’s get out of this trap.’ She thought Frank was looking at a girl in the audience a little longer than necessary. They ended up throwing books and lamps at each other after the show, and Frank walked out in the middle of the night.”
Jealousy, of course, was their aphrodisiac. Rosemary Clooney, who was working at the Thunderbird while Sinatra played the Desert Inn, remembered how Ava would come in to catch part of her act (perhaps having just walked out on Frank), telling Clooney afterward how much she loved the singer’s rendition of the Gershwins’ “They Can’t Take That Away from Me”: “Every time I get a chance, I’m going to come down here and listen to you sing it, even though the old man doesn’t like it much.” Clooney finally figured out why: Artie Shaw had had a hit with it.2
Jimmy Van Heusen flew up from L.A. for the whole Desert Inn stand—because Frank expected him, and because he loved to fly, loved the desert, and loved the whores who, even in Vegas’s early days, could be found there in such great numbers and variety. In between shows, Chester took to wandering the inn’s halls, looking for fresh talent. One night he was drawn into the Skyroom by the sound of a tasty jazz trio playing his own “Polka Dots and Moonbeams.”
It wasn’t just his own music that Chester was admiring but the way it was being played. The man at the baby grand—cadaverously pale and thin, with a thick head of straight greasy hair, pointed shoulders, and long, spidery fingers darting over the keys—had a hauntingly spare technique, with rich sonorities tossed off like afterthoughts. And, amazingly, he swung.
During the break, Chester went up and introduced himself: “I like the way you play.”
“I like the way you write,” the piano player replied.
His name was Bill Miller, and as Van Heusen squinted in vague recognition, Miller reminded him that he had worked the big bands for a long time, playing for Red Norvo and Charlie Barnet until the mid-1940s.
“Sinatra’s my pal, God help me,” Van Heusen said. “I’m in Vegas to cheerlead—and get laid, of course.”
Frank with his greatest accompanist, Bill Miller, early fifties. (photo credit 28.2)
Miller grew animated—for him. “Speaking of getting laid,” he said. “In the summer of 1940 I was working with Barnet at the New York World’s Fair, and I was dating a showgirl.” He gave that crooked
smile. “One night we were driving back into the city, and the car radio was on, and Harry James was playing ‘All or Nothing At All,’ behind this boy singer. And my girlfriend said, ‘Hey, listen, doesn’t that sound good? That’s Dick Haymes.’ I said, ‘No, it’s not Dick Haymes. Dick Haymes doesn’t sing that good.’ Turned out the singer was someone named Frank Sinatra. I’d never heard of him before, but I thought he was great.”
“He still is,” Chester said. “He’s still a pain in the ass, too. He doesn’t deserve the shit he’s been getting, though.” He paused for a second. “He’s also looking for a piano player.”
“Well, hell, now that you’ve built him up.”
“Listen—he’s still the best singer there is. And he’s only a pain in the ass to his friends. He likes musicians. Especially good musicians.”
“Then why doesn’t he have a piano player?”
“Why the hell do you think? He’s broke!”
Miller grinned. “Now I’m really interested.”
“He’s got a television show, though. And CBS isn’t broke.”
Later that night, having been sold on Miller by Chester, Sinatra accompanied the songwriter up to the Skyroom. The pianist struck up a solo version of “Polka Dots and Moonbeams,” lightly swinging, with sparse tasty chords—the dancers on the floor barely had to break stride—and both Frank and Jimmy couldn’t help smiling.
After a short medley of other Sinatra hits, each played so perfectly that Frank’s vocal cords twitched sympathetically as he listened, Miller took a break and Sinatra walked over to the piano.
“How’d you like to work with me, kid?” he asked.
Miller, who was almost a year older than Sinatra, pursed his lips, then nodded. “Okay,” he said.
29
Wedding day, November 7, 1951. Their bliss was short-lived, as bliss always was for Frank. (photo credit 29.1)
Frank hadn’t recorded since July, the same month the sponsors pulled the plug on his radio show. (He would go into the recording studio only once more that year, in mid-October, to wax a studio version of his Meet Danny Wilson duet with Shelley Winters, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” Due to lack of interest, the record was never released.) There were no future bookings. His six-week Nevada residence was up on September 19, but as he prepared to file for divorce, his attorney got word from Nancy’s attorney that to better protect the children, she planned to contest Frank’s action and secure a prior California divorce. The property settlement in the separate-maintenance agreement was no longer acceptable, Nancy and her lawyer said: Frank owed her back alimony—$40,805, to be exact.
With the checks from the Riverside and the Desert Inn going straight to Nancy, Frank barely had $400, let alone forty thousand. Knowing this, she sent her lawyer to court to obtain a levy against Frank’s office building at 177 South Robertson.
Frank and Nancy were at a standoff: he didn’t want to pay her all he owed her until she gave him his freedom; she didn’t want to give him his freedom until he paid all he owed her.
He flew to New York to rehearse for the TV show, but even as he stood in CBS Studio 50, a cardboard cup of coffee in one hand and a Camel in the other, he got word that the L.A. law firm that had been representing him in the divorce proceedings was suing him for $12,250 in unpaid legal fees. The firm had slapped a lien on the already-levied 177 South Robertson building and, for good measure, on Twin Palms as well.
He drew on the cigarette and exhaled. Fuck ’em.
There was more bad news. Bulova had pulled out of The Frank Sinatra Show. The only sponsor the network was able to attract was Ekco, the housewares company, for just the first fifteen minutes of the sixty. And CBS had moved the show from Saturday night to Tuesday, opposite another TV behemoth, Mr. Television himself, Milton Berle, on Texaco Star Theater.
Fuck ’em.
On October 3, at the Polo Grounds, the New York Giants’ Bobby Thomson hit the most famous home run in baseball history to win the National League play-offs against the Brooklyn Dodgers. The game was all the more dramatic because play-offs were the exception rather than the rule in those days: the Giants, after trailing the Dodgers by thirteen and a half games in mid-August, had surged back and tied Brooklyn on the final day of the season. The teams had split the first two games of the play-offs, and betting was heavy on the rubber match. One of the biggest bettors was Sinatra’s friend Willie Moretti, who laid thousands on the Dodgers.
Willie discovered later that day what it took the rest of the world decades to find out: The Giants had stationed a coach with a telescope and a buzzer in their centerfield clubhouse. With the telescope, the coach was able to pick up the Dodgers catcher Rube Walker’s signs to the pitcher Ralph Branca; with the buzzer, the spy sent a signal to the Giants dugout, whence a hand signal to Thomson told him to expect a fastball.
Willie Moretti decided that all bets were off.
The next day, Moretti went to lunch at his favorite restaurant, Joe’s Elbow Room, a block from the Hudson in Cliffside Park, New Jersey. He left his cream-colored Packard coupe at the curb, walked in, and found four friends waiting for him at a table. The men chatted amiably for a few minutes, and then, when the waitress on duty went into the kitchen, the man on Moretti’s right leaned over and in a low voice began to tell him a dirty story. As Willie smiled expectantly, the man on his left took out a .38 revolver and shot him twice in the head.
The four men departed in such haste that two of them left their hats on the table (and $2,000 in Moretti’s pants pocket). The image of Willie’s body on the white-tile floor in a widening pool of blood, snapped by a news photographer, quickly gained wide circulation. In death, Willie became as celebrated as he had recently been in life, the short, fat, jolly mobster who had wisecracked his way through the televised Kefauver hearings. “Everything is a racket today,” Moretti had told the amused senators. “Why not make everything legal?” When Kefauver himself asked Willie how he operated politically, Moretti said, “I don’t—if I did, I’d be sitting where you are now.”
It was funny to everyone except Moretti’s partners in crime, who hated Kefauver, hated loose talk under any circumstances, let alone on national television, and knew that Willie, in the grips of syphilis, couldn’t help himself. But blabbing was one thing; welshing on sports bets, another matter entirely. Though Moretti had been a marked man for months, he had fast-tracked his own elimination, and Sinatra lost yet another father figure at a time when he needed all the friends he could get.
The second-season premiere of The Frank Sinatra Show, on October 9, co-starred Perry Como, Frankie Laine, and the Andrews Sisters. The reviews were slightly better than they’d been the year before: Variety said the show was “spotty, taking full advantage of its all-star talent lineup to sparkle in some spots and settling down to a slow walk in others.” And the New York Times’s Jack Gould allowed that Frank had “a very real degree of stage presence and a certain likeable charm,” but also sounded an ominous note: “The evening’s honors were captured effortlessly and smoothly by another gentleman, Perry Como.”
Como was a perfect character for 1950s television: attractive, bland, comforting. Who knew who Perry Como really was? Who cared? He seemed to be a solid citizen with a good marriage; he was good-looking, friendly, with a sweet voice and a nice sense of humor about himself.
Sinatra, on the other hand, could sing wonderfully, but that miraculous audience connection he created in person was diminished by the TV camera’s cold eye. Though he could do comedy serviceably, his real skills were elsewhere, and his self-mockery was never entirely convincing: his ego was too palpably gigantic. He was also all too apt to wear his anger on his sleeve, in a not especially funny way.1 By 1951, audiences felt they knew all too well who Frank Sinatra was, and they weren’t buying.
Of course Uncle Miltie murdered him in the ratings.
The miracle was that amid all his travails, Sinatra kept doing the show week after week, and actually got somewhat better at it. Berle’s
ratings even started to erode slightly.
Still, Frank’s sponsor, never fully committed in the first place, grew more and more disaffected. The columnists continued to inveigh against Sinatra; priests advised their congregations to avoid buying his records and attending his movies. He was the anti-Crosby.2
Frank couldn’t bear the thought of losing Twin Palms. He borrowed the twelve grand he owed his lawyers from Ava—though since she didn’t have that kind of cash lying around, she borrowed it from her agent Charlie Feldman. It was a hell of a way to start a marriage, but what else could he do? She smiled sadly and handed him the check. Her dowry. His big grin assured her she’d done the right thing: he was unencumbered at last. He signed a new property settlement, increasing Nancy’s separate maintenance to the tune of one-third of his gross income up to $150,000 a year, plus 10 percent of earnings above that. On October 15, his soon-to-be ex-wife filed for her California divorce.
Two weeks later, Nancy appeared once more in the Santa Monica courthouse, this time to receive her interlocutory decree of divorce. One photographer, presumably a municipal employee, took several shots as she sat in a courtroom.
They are extraordinary images. Wearing a checked suit, white gloves, the triple-strand pearl necklace and pearl earrings Frank had given her, and a small black hat with a face net, Nancy Rose Barbato Sinatra looks radiant. It is a face without mean-spiritedness. In two of the pictures she’s grinning delightedly right at the photographer, but two others, both with eyes averted, are far more arresting. In one Nancy appears lost in thought, and whatever she may be thinking seems of the greatest possible interest. And in the other, smiling slightly and looking up to the left, she looks, quite simply, transcendently beautiful.
Two days later, in a five-minute closed session in a Las Vegas courtroom, Frank was awarded an uncontested divorce. That night he flew east, and on November 2 he and Ava applied for a marriage license in Philadelphia, where they hoped to avoid publicity.