Deconstructing Sammy

by Matt Birkbeck

  Altovise was still drinking, and she was becoming increasingly agitated over her lifestyle, which had improved considerably, given that all her bills were being paid and she had spending money. But she wanted more, and that was a return to her previous lifestyle and reclaiming her role as a celebrity. Sonny warned that wouldn’t happen again, especially since her income had to remain at a workable level until 2003. But Altovise couldn’t—or wouldn’t—see it Sonny’s way. All she saw was that Sonny had paid himself, even though it was a small amount, and she grew resentful. It was money owed to Sonny for years of work, but Altovise saw it as a hand dipping into her pool of money, and her paranoia returned, along with thoughts of Al Carter, Shirley Rhodes, and John Climaco.

  Sonny had once been a dear friend and savior. But now, after so many years, she had come to see him as the enemy.

  Fucking Sinatras!”

  The screaming, angry voice on the other end of the phone belonged to Mort Viner, and Sonny couldn’t understand one single word from the profanity-laced diatribe.

  “Calm down. What’s going on?” said Sonny.

  It was HBO, said Mort, and they cut a secret deal with the Frank Sinatra estate over the Rat Pack movie.

  A year earlier, Mort, Sonny, and Bob Finkelstein all agreed there was little they could do to attach their clients’ estates to the picture, which HBO said was based on public domain. The film aired in August 1998, with a storyline focusing on events that transpired during the early 1960s, from the Rat Pack’s appearances at the Sands in Las Vegas and the filming of Ocean’s Eleven through the 1960 presidential election. The storyline also included Frank’s close relationship with Sam Giancana, and Frank’s introduction of Giancana’s mistress, Judith Exner, to John F. Kennedy.

  But Mort said he just learned that Finkelstein negotiated a deal that paid the Sinatra estate $250,000 based solely on assurances they would not sue HBO.

  “He knew all along they were going to get some money out of this and they just played us along!” Mort screamed.

  Sonny didn’t know what to say or do. He remembered the meeting in Las Vegas, and orders were given, with no room for negotiating. Even in death, Frank Sinatra got what he wanted, and Sonny listened as Mort continued his rant. When he was finished, both men realized they had little recourse.

  It was, said Mort, typical Sinatra business.

  “Ah, I’m never going to deal with them again. They’ve screwed us. I can tell you this, they will never control me,” said Mort.

  “That’s easy for you to say. Dean’s got millions in his estate. I don’t have any money. I’m starting from scratch,” said Sonny.

  “Yeah, I know that, but stay strong,” said Mort. “And listen, kid. Remember what I told you in the beginning. Respect the Sinatras, but don’t ever get too close to them. And don’t ever, ever trust them.”

  Another long flight from New York to Los Angeles arrived in the late afternoon, and, as he had many times before, Sonny simply jumped into a cab at the airport and headed straight for his destination, which this time was Burt Boyar’s penthouse.

  The Quincy Jones musical had stalled after it was announced to the world in 1997. Quincy was busy with other projects, as was his co-producer on the musical, famed lyricist and composer Leslie Bricusse. Burt was none too happy with yet another start, then stop. And he was also displeased that the potential book deal with Altovise fizzled. But Sonny’s visit had nothing to do with movies, musicals, or books.

  It had to do with tapes.

  With no Broadway musical and no serious bites for film rights, Sonny gave television producers Gary Smith and David Wolper exclusive rights to produce a six-hour television mini-series on Sammy’s life. Smith had produced seven variety shows featuring Sammy dating back to Hullabaloo in 1965. Altovise and Sammy’s children would have a financial stake in the series, and Altovise and Sonny would coproduce.

  To sell the project to a network, Sonny and Gary decided to produce a short film with video highlights of Sammy’s career. But they wanted to overlap the video with Sammy’s voice, and the question of the day was: Where is Sammy’s voice?

  Altovise recalled that Burt Boyar had roughly 150 hours of unedited, recorded conversation between himself, his wife, Jane, and Sammy, taped during research for the 1989 book Why Me? It was raw, unfettered, and uncensored conversation between the authors, on which Burt and Jane would draw to complete the book. Sonny thought Sammy’s tapes could also fetch a fair price, or even be used as part of a museum, and given that Sonny believed that Sammy owned the rights to half the tapes, they were now coowned by Altovise. Sonny wanted the tapes, but when he arrived at Burt’s penthouse and explained his plans, Burt refused to give them up.

  “I’d destroy them first, before they were ever made public,” Burt said.

  Sonny was miffed. What, he said, could there possibly be on those tapes that the world already didn’t know about Sammy Davis Jr.? Drugs? Adultery? Devil worship?

  “I think you’d be surprised,” said Burt.

  “Surprise me,” said Sonny.

  Burt said Sammy talked in great detail about his relationship with Altovise, about the guilt that had overwhelmed him at what he subjected her to, and how he never truly loved her. Altovise was simply an object Sammy controlled, said Burt.

  But there was more, and Burt paused for a moment before leaning forward. What he had to say had to be said in a whisper.

  “Sammy,” said Burt, “knew who killed John F. Kennedy.”

  Sonny pulled back, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “What?” said Sonny. “That’s ludicrous. How in the world would Sammy Davis Jr., of all people, know who killed Kennedy?”

  Burt reminded Sonny of wide and diverse circles in which Sammy traveled. One day he’d be having lunch in Mexico City with Sam Giancana, and days later he’d be talking national affairs over breakfast with the president of the United States. Burt said it was fair to say that Sammy knew people, many people, and that despite his reputation he was a very serious man. Burt also said he would never talk about the Kennedy assassination again.

  Sonny was taken aback and unsure what to believe. If true, this was a profound revelation, and one that came out of left field, and beyond. But a revelation that struck Sonny hard. Sonny quickly collected himself, and his tone became vastly more serious as the old federal prosecutor emerged.

  “I need to hear those tapes,” said Sonny.

  “Absolutely not,” said Burt.

  “We can take this to court,” said Sonny.

  “Do it, and I’ll burn them,” said Burt.

  The two men were at a loggerheads, and Sonny didn’t know what to do. He was still processing the Kennedy revelation and his mind raced in different directions.

  “I don’t understand something,” said Burt. “From what you tell me, you haven’t really been paid, yet you continue on this quest. People are thinking that you are involved with Altovise, that you are having a relationship with her.”

  “What?” said Sonny. “That’s ridiculous. Who would even suggest something like that?”

  “Shirley Rhodes, others who were close to Sammy,” said Burt.

  Sonny’s eyes were on fire.

  “Shirley Rhodes? I’ve never spoken to her. But I’m assuming you have?” said Sonny.

  “Shirley’s always been a good friend to me. And she really cared about Sammy,” said Burt.

  Sonny didn’t realize until now that Burt had been and still was close to Shirley Rhodes. Burt played all sides of Sammy’s family in his quest to continue to exploit his work with Sammy, and Sammy’s legacy. His wife gone, it seemed like Sammy was all Burt had left in the world. But his offensive question about Sonny’s relationship with Altovise crossed the line.

  “I do this because I represent the estate of Sammy Davis Jr.,” said Sonny. “And I will tell you, I want those tapes!”

  Sonny was incensed. He and his family had cared for Altovise, nurtured her, spent years and money trying to get her well.
Yet the sum result of those efforts was a scurrilous remark. And Sonny couldn’t get his mind off what Burt said about Sammy and Kennedy. Sonny knew that Sammy, indeed, traveled in very diverse circles. But could he have had that kind of contact with the true power brokers, and did he really have insight into America’s greatest mystery?

  Sonny wanted to know more, but then he didn’t. He knew this was sensitive territory. But he had so many other questions, and when he returned to his hotel, he hesitantly picked up the phone and dialed the number of the person he hoped would have some answers.

  CHAPTER 19

  The voice on Brian Dellow’s answering machine was Sonny’s, and he asked if they could talk again.

  It was March 1999, and it had been four years since Brian and Sonny had spoken. Brian watched from the sidelines as Sonny regained control of Sammy’s estate from the IRS. And he thought his discussion with Sonny about Sammy’s will, especially the insurance policy for Sammy’s road manager Murphy Bennett, would lead to some sort of investigation into Transamerican Entertainment. Yet no investigation materialized and Brian, disappointed, continued on with his own life, providing security for Quincy Jones. Now, there was yet another plea from Sonny Murray for help from Brian, the former British intelligence officer to whom Sammy bared his soul.

  It began with conversations about the Kennedys. Not even Frank Sinatra could come to Sammy’s aid after he married May Britt. But the bitter, and public, disappointment over the Kennedy flap didn’t stop Sammy from calling Ethel Kennedy years later to express his condolences following Bobby Kennedy’s assassination in 1968. Sammy always liked Bobby and even campaigned for him. He waited several weeks for the appropriate time to make the call, which Ethel received. But Sammy told Brian how Ethel immediately hung up the phone, refusing to hear Sammy’s words and leaving him with a click and a dial tone. Sammy couldn’t explain it. Ethel, of all the Kennedys, had always been kind. No doubt she lumped Sammy in with Frank and the darker elements of his associations, people Ethel believed were involved in her husband’s murder and the assassination of her brother-in-law.

  Jacqueline Kennedy also believed those same people were involved in her husband’s death, and fearing the Kennedys were targeted, Sammy told Brian that after Bobby’s death Jacqueline turned to Frank Sinatra for assurances that her two children, John Jr. and Caroline, would not be harmed. Frank promised her the children were safe, but Jacqueline didn’t believe him. She married Aristotle Onassis just months later and dropped her Secret Service protection. And for good reason, said Sammy. It was the Secret Service, he said, that took part in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

  Sammy told Brian that following his election, Kennedy had Secret Service protection every second of every day, which meant they were with him during his clandestine, extramarital romantic trysts, particularly with Judith Exner. The young brunette was Frank Sinatra’s former lover, and it was Frank who introduced her to Kennedy during the 1960 campaign. But Frank had also introduced Judith to Sam Giancana, the Chicago mob boss. Secret Service agents assigned to Kennedy knew of his affair, and the FBI later learned of it through wiretaps of Giancana. When Kennedy was informed in February 1962 that the FBI knew of his romantic liaison with Judith, and her relationship with Giancana, he ended the affair and canceled his stay at Frank Sinatra’s Palm Springs home in March 1962. It was a national security nightmare, a sitting president sharing a woman with a major mob boss.

  When Kennedy’s motorcade left Love Field on November 22, 1963, the Secret Service called off the Dallas police detail usually assigned to accompany presidential visits, saying it would handle all security. Others were involved in the assassination, said Sammy, and Brian could only surmise who they were. Sammy didn’t say and he never told Brian how he knew it or who told him. As ludicrous as it may have sounded—Sammy Davis Jr. knowing some of the details of the Kennedy assassination—Brian believed every word of the story. He had his own share of national security secrets while serving for British intelligence, and he knew from experience that Sammy traveled in very powerful circles. Sammy was among the select few who could claim personal relationships with presidents, kings, and queens on one hand, and gangsters, scam artists, and murderers on the other. In 1972 Sammy visited with Giancana in Mexico City, where he lived in exile in a villa near Cuernavaca. Following the reunion with Giancana, Sammy was a guest at the White House, visiting with President Nixon.

  Sammy told Brian about his first meeting with Nixon at the Copacabana in New York in the 1950s. Unlike the Kennedys, Nixon seemed to genuinely respect Sammy, or at least Sammy’s talent, which is why Sammy agreed to work for the Nixon Republican administration. But the pairing inflamed black America, and those flames turned into a wildfire when, on the final day of the Republican National Convention in 1972, Sammy stepped out of the shadows after giving a performance and wrapped his arms around Nixon. It was a momentary outpouring of genuine warmth between two friends, but black America saw “the hug” as a traitorous act and it only served as affirmation of a longstanding view that Sammy indeed was an Uncle Tom.

  “I wouldn’t tell you I’d do it again and I wouldn’t tell you why I did it,” Sammy told Brian. “It was just something I did at that moment.”

  Sammy was always doing things in the moment, but by the 1980s the moments were few and far between. Sammy’s fees had declined and his expenses had risen, leading to even leaner times. By 1985 employee payroll checks were sometimes delayed, as was an occasional alimony check to May Britt, who still received $2,500 per month. Sammy had hip replacement surgery in 1985 and later announced he had overcome addictions to alcohol and cocaine. But he couldn’t overcome his failing financial health, which despite his earnings had been on life support for so many years. Now it was about to flatline. He turned to E. F. Hutton for a $1 million loan and borrowed off the equity from his home while tapping his myriad of life insurance policies. When George Rhodes, Shirley’s husband and Sammy’s conductor, died suddenly from a heart attack in 1985, a despondent Sammy asked his good friend Jesse Jackson to come to Los Angeles to perform the eulogy. Jesse agreed, but for a price. He demanded $5,000 in cash, four first-class plane tickets, and two suites at the Four Seasons. When Jesse arrived, Sammy didn’t have any cash on hand, so he turned to Brian, asking him to take a $5,000 cash advance off his credit card. Brian complied without question.

  Sammy’s home life remained as turbulent as his finances. When Altovise returned from the Betty Ford clinic where she underwent treatment for her alcohol addiction, she was forced to share her home with Sammy’s live-in lover Sue Turner, along with a bevy of other characters who wondered in and out of Sammy’s home.

  Harvey King was still there, running his games while watching over Sammy. Burt Boyar arrived from Spain with his wife, Jane, to begin their research for Sammy’s next book. Donald Rumsfeld was also there, spending his nights at the pool house, while other, more ominous characters lurked in the background. Among them was Martin Taccetta, a high-ranking member of New Jersey’s Luchese crime family, who came to California to build up the family’s porno and video business. It was Al Carter who introduced Taccetta to Sammy and Altovise.

  It wasn’t until 1988 that Sammy’s finances improved, thanks solely to the reuniting of the Rat Pack for the Together Again tour. It was Frank Sinatra’s idea, for the aging Rat Packers to reunite for a final fling around the world, and Brian was at one of the first organizational meetings with Sammy, Shirley, Mort Viner, Eliot Weisman, and Bob Finkelstein. Finkelstein said Frank knew about Sammy’s poor financial situation and, knowing his friend wouldn’t take a handout, thought a tour would clear Sammy’s debts and provide a few laughs.

  “Frank wants to do this so Sammy will make some money,” said Weisman. “He’ll make money, we’ll all make money.”

  Dean initially resisted the tour. He still suffered greatly from the loss of his son Dean Paul earlier that year and he was in no condition emotionally nor had the desire to tour arenas and stadiums around the
world. But Frank insisted, arguing it would be good for Dean to get away. Dean grudgingly agreed.

  For Sammy, deeply in debt or not, there was no choice.

  The order came from Frank and Sammy of course said yes. But Sammy did like the idea that he was with the “big boys” again, and he embraced the tour. They dressed in tuxedos to announce the tour at a press conference at Chasen’s Restaurant in Los Angeles on December 1, 1987, and they opened on March 13, 1988, before a full house at the Oakland Coliseum. Dean performed first, but problems with the sound system muted his voice. Sammy followed, announcing that he had been sober for three years, before singing a thirty-five-minute set of his famous standards. Frank came out last, sang for thirty minutes, and then, after a brief intermission, they came out together for a medley to close the show. Dean’s heart clearly wasn’t in it, and during that first week Frank became increasingly annoyed at Dean’s poor performances. He forgot lyrics, sometimes didn’t sing loud enough, and had a blasé attitude toward the entire endeavor. Dean was also agitated about Frank’s insistence that they party like they did years ago. Frank, even at seventy-two, wanted to drink, carouse with women, and, of course, throw cherry bombs in the hotel hallways, something he learned long ago from Sam Giancana. Dean, now seventy, wanted to sleep at night, as did Sammy, who at sixty-two couldn’t keep up with his old ways and preferred instead to get to bed early.

  But as he always did when it came to Frank, Sammy gave in and joined his old friend for the late-night gatherings. Dean’s continued reluctance sent Frank into a tizzy. After their arrival in Chicago, Dean was given a suite on a separate floor from Frank and Sammy. Frank wanted everyone together, just like old times. But Dean wanted to stay put. Frank called Mort and lost his famous temper, ridiculing Dean for his poor performances and for not pulling himself up and out of his emotional funk. Frank wanted Mort to straighten Dean out, and he was to start by ensuring that Dean would attend a party at Frank’s suite that night. Sammy was there, but Dean was nowhere to be found, and Frank yelled over to Brian, who was talking to Jilly Rizzo.