He even took a break from his concert tour in Germany and went to Johannesburg, South Africa. He took me along. There were a lot of houses in Johannesburg that looked like Tara in Gone With the Wind, and had as many servants. This was during apartheid, and the rich whites in South Africa lived in a style resembling that of the old plantations on the River Road outside New Orleans, much grander than anything in Beverly Hills and with far more help, all black. From the little we saw of it on our weekend trip, it seemed as if the Old South had risen again down there in South Africa. The black people I saw appeared very downtrodden to me, with no spirit whatsoever. I was depressed for them, but not in a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I way. I knew those people would rise up eventually; there were too many of them not to take control of their country. Mr. S, who was the archenemy of racism, disagreed with me. He said the situation looked hopeless, too hopeless even for him to try to remedy, that the ruling whites were too entrenched. I’m sure he was thrilled when those walls were finally torn down. I got funny looks at our fancy hotel, but not too funny because I was in the room next to Mr. S. I guess I got to go where few other black men had been in that country, but that was the story of my life. I wanted Mr. S to take us on safari, but he had bad associations with wild animals after having dejectedly followed Ava Gardner to Africa when she made Mogambo. Instead he sent me to the Johannesburg Zoo.
We met the Prowses, nice, middle-class people, lacking Juliet’s upper-crust accent. They lived in a modest suburban house, with no servants. I sensed Mr. S was disappointed. He may have been expecting a South African version of the Kennedys. The most memorable part of the trip was Mrs. Prowse’s gift to me. She gave Mr. S a lion-skin rug. She gave me a spear. Ungawa! I wanted to shout and do a rain dance, but I bit my tongue. I did show Mrs. Prowse the switchblade I carried, just to make her a little nervous about this “savage” she had in her home. Mr. S almost lost it, he was so cracked up. The minute we left, he was crying, he was laughing so hard. This was Mrs. Prowse’s culture, so I couldn’t hold it against her, but talk about being put in your place. A spear!
I showed the spear to Marilyn, who missed the joke. If Mr. S wanted to hurt Marilyn, he succeeded. The Sinatra-Prowse “engagement,” which lasted about a month, drove Marilyn up the wall and out of the Sinatra Arms to her own place in Brentwood on Fifth Helena Drive. It also drove her to the mirror. That Juliet was a decade younger than Marilyn was bad; that her legs were perfect was worse. Both Marilyn and Ava were ridiculously insecure about their legs. Too short, too fat, was the whine. Marilyn must have stayed in front of the mirror for days, trying on a hundred pairs of high heels, asking me and whoever else she could grab which ones made her legs look the best. That she was usually naked in the heels made it hard to focus on the legs, but that was Marilyn. Even after Frank and Juliet called the whole thing off on the grounds that she wanted a career and he didn’t want any wife of his to have one, Marilyn remained in pain, even though Mr. S was seeing her once again. No one took rejection harder than Marilyn. She would see rejection where someone else would see acceptance, she was that sensitive. Because Jack Kennedy was a better bullshitter than Mr. S (after all, JFK was the ultimate politician), he got Marilyn to believe, as she frequently said to me, that she had a better chance to marry him than she had with Sinatra. One more reason why Mr. S came to hate “TP,” the guy he once loved.
I never saw Marilyn alone with Bobby Kennedy. Our neighbors at 882 North Doheny did tell me that Bobby had come to the apartment and that he and Marilyn were having some kind of sexual thing. The Weasel definitely wasn’t her type, which ran to Italian macho-Dago types like Mr. S and Joe DiMaggio, who never stopped seeing her, though his paranoia about showbiz and its toxic shock to her kept them from settling in again. But type never stopped Marilyn from fucking someone who was nice to her. It’s hard to imagine Bobby being nice to anybody, and it’s hard to imagine Jack not being nice. Yet at some point, Marilyn may have gotten too needy with Jack, and because of her fame, Jack got worried that if she went public about their romance, the world would have complete sympathy for her as the woman scorned. So he may have sent Bobby as his reverse Cupid, to get Marilyn off his aching back. Bobby always did Jack’s dirty work. Once Bobby showed up, his own weakness and weaselness may have lured him into Marilyn’s bed. Or Marilyn may have lured him herself. Just to show “TP.” Or just for the fuck of it. With Marilyn, anything sexual was possible, and usually probable.
The bottom line on August 5, 1962, was that Marilyn was dead, and Mr. S was devastated. When the cops said it was an overdose, he had no doubt about it, nor did I. We had both seen her pop pills galore, and mix them with booze, cursing the life that the rest of the world would have done anything to have. She was a walking pharmacy, an overdose waiting to happen. It was only later when the autopsy revealed no residue of pills in her system that we got curious. Mr. S began to suspect Lawford and his brothers-in-law of possible foul play, but since at that point he would get suspicious of them for a rainstorm, I didn’t put much stock in it. What was very sad about the whole thing was that Joe DiMaggio wouldn’t allow Mr. S (or me) to come to the funeral. The two Dagos both loved her in good ways and could have been so helpful and supportive to each other. But DiMaggio held a grudge the way he held a bat, as tightly and viciously as Mr. S. Their friendship was never again to be.
The day Marilyn died was a horrible, and horribly sad, moment not only for me and Mr. S, who both felt we had failed in our efforts to protect her from herself, but also for Hollywood and the country, who had lost one of the prime symbols of what makes America great. Here was this poor, abandoned girl with nothing but liabilities, who becomes the biggest star of the big screen. If that isn’t an American Dream Come True success story, what is? Her death was a bigger blow to the image of Hollywood than James Dean’s. It was one thing to crash a Porsche, quite another to die of an overdose with the president and attorney general of the United States standing in the shadows. If Hollywood had an innocence to lose, it lost it on that August 5.
Marilyn gave the whole world hope. I certainly identified with her, another poor person from nowhere who had made it in Hollywood. If Marilyn could be a star, if I could be the right hand of Frank Sinatra, this was indeed the land of opportunity. Marilyn was one of Mr. S’s favorite people. He loved how much she loved him. Without that love and admiration she constantly showered onto him, he was deeply wounded. The healing of that wound made him harder and colder than ever before. Aside from all the symbolism, I personally grieved for, and missed, Marilyn the woman. Nobody could be as miserable as she was in such a loving, good-natured way. No matter how sad she may have been, she was never mean, never lashed out at me. Instead she just wanted to hug me and have me hug her and tell her it was all going to work out. That it didn’t broke my heart.
Given Mr. S’s turn of attitude toward the Kennedys, I can see The Manchurian Candidate, which went into production in early 1962, just after Joe Kennedy’s stroke and in the midst of Bobby’s anti-Frank rampage, as less than a love letter to the family. “I hope it pisses the shit out of them,” Mr. S said. The Kennedys were anything but closet Communists, as the villains in the movie were, but a lot of the country, particularly the South, thought they were. So Mr. S took pleasure in sticking it to them, the whole hypocrisy bit, the idea of this rich political dynasty controlling their hero son, using him as a charming puppet. Sinatra had absolutely no idea, however, how hideously prophetic the whole assassination theme would be.
My main job during the filming was avoiding the advances of the dashing British star Laurence Harvey, who was such a sensation in Room at the Top in 1959. Women adored him, but he adored men, even though, as a career move, he married the beautiful young widow of Columbia mogul Harry Cohn, whose insane temper finally gave him a fatal heart attack. Echoing the future Forrest Gump, Larry would say to me, “You’re like a box of chocolates, George. I’m dying to take a bite.” It made my skin crawl, but after dodging the likes of Noël Coward a
nd Cole Porter with Swifty Lazar, I knew all the right moves to keep Larry at bay without insulting him. Even though Mr. S was a dyed-in-the-wool homophobe, he was crazy about Larry, as well as in awe of Noël Coward, who had become a great fan of Sinatra. He couldn’t understand why such brilliant men could be “assfuckers,” as he derided them, yet “as long as they don’t try to play drop the soap with me,” he relished having them around. They were superb conversationalists, and he needed people “for the ladies to talk to” while he and his Dagos debated boxing and set off cherry bombs.
The subtle jibes of The Manchurian Candidate went right over the heads of Sam Giancana and his mobster friends. Even though Mr. S was being trashed by the Kennedys the same as they were, Mr. Sam didn’t think Mr. S had shown the proper respect to him, and the proper disrespect to the Kennedys, for fooling the dumb Dagos into betting on the wrong horse. Mr. Sam would have liked the head of that horse to wind up in Bobby Kennedy’s bed. Short of that, Giancana leaned on Sinatra to make a declaration of independence from the Kennedys. To that end, Frank enlisted Dean and Sammy to go on the road and perform, for free and very publicly, for the very gangsters Bobby Kennedy was denouncing to America and the world. In your face, Weasel, was the idea. The Clan, delightedly rid of the dead weight of Peter Lawford, did a week of shows at Skinny D’Amato’s 500 Club in Atlantic City, which was dying at the time because gambling was illegal and everyone was flying to Vegas. I was there, and there was more gambling in Skinny’s back room than on the floor of the Sands. It was as if Mr. S was daring the law to try and bust him. They didn’t.
There was even more illegal gambling, and whoring, a few months later in November when the boys, plus Eddie Fisher and Jimmy Durante, played Giancana’s own club, the Villa Venice, in the Chicago suburbs. It was flashier than a Hollywood premiere, with the guests here being a Who’s Who of Illinois mob royalty. Foreshadowing the Bellagio and the Venetian by four decades, Mr. Sam had gondolas ferrying the guests to the entrance, with gondoliers singing “O Sole Mio.” There was also an adjacent den of iniquity called the Quonset Hut where huge amounts of money were won and lost at Vegas-style and-level games of chance. The “Summit,” as the Rat Pack engagement was called, was said to have grossed many tax-free millions for the Giancana outfit. Shortly after the summit, the Villa Venice, for all its elaborate new trappings all set up for Mr. S’s appearance, burned mysteriously to the ground and was never rebuilt. “Dago lightning,” Jimmy Van Heusen explained the conflagration.
The biggest red flag to the FBI bulls of Bobby Kennedy was the Cal-Neva Lodge, which, ironically, his now-speechless father had put into the mob/Sinatra’s possession. To Bobby every song Sinatra sang hit the sourest of notes. To keep sticking it to Bobby, Sam Giancana loved going to see Sinatra perform at Cal-Neva, despite the fact he was on the Nevada state blacklist, forbidding the gangster’s supposedly dangerous presence. It was hard to exclude the guy who secretly owned the place, especially when his girlfriend Phyllis McGuire and her sisters were on the bill. The idea of Nevada enforcing such laws against the gangsters who built the place seemed particularly ridiculous to the two Misters, S and Sam. Mr. Sam was there the weekend before Marilyn’s death and spent her pre-overdose evening at her lakeside bungalow. Because Johnny Rosselli was also there that weekend, there was talk of an S&M Mafia orgy to teach Marilyn a lesson for bestowing her famous favors on the Kennedys. She was their girl, not those Micks’. But I was the one who drove Marilyn to the plane that would take her back to L.A. In the car, the thing that bothered her most was that her drugged-out behavior had offended the straitlaced Mr. Sam, who was united with Mr. S in a hatred of drugs (this despite the mob’s supposedly making a fortune in the narcotics trade). Marilyn had total respect for Sam, and he always treated her like a lady. That was his Old World style. To her Sam was no fearsome killer figure but a statesman of his own peculiar country. She liked him a lot.
Even though on stage at Cal-Neva, Mr. S looked great, everything else about the place, and his fronting ownership of it, seemed terrible. In addition to Marilyn’s overdose and Giancana’s illegal visits, there was a big investigation of a prostitution ring being run out of the front desk, and there was the mysterious death of a Nevada sheriff who had taken a punch at Frank for fooling around with his wife, who worked as a cocktail hostess at the lodge. The sheriff was driven off the road one night by a speeding convertible that caused a fatal crash. The convertible was never identified. Of course, the connection between the mob and Sinatra caught the imagination of the yellow press. It was too much for Hank Sanicola, who had been inseparable from Mr. S since the thirties. Hank was a nominal coowner of the lodge. Now it was getting too hot, even for a tough old Dago like him. He wanted to sell his share of Cal-Neva. Mr. S went ballistic at Hank. For him it was “All or Nothing at All.” How, he railed to me, could Hank be such a Judas, especially now that the homeboys were being besieged by the Kennedy Gestapo? This was the time to rally round, not break ranks. But there was to be no dialogue with Hank, no debate. The second Hank expressed doubt, he was Out. If you don’t fit, you must quit. Mr. S bought out Hank’s share in Cal-Neva. From thirty years of brotherhood to zeroness in one split second. As with Lawford, he never spoke to Hank again. That was the Sinatra Silent Treatment. As I said, I never thought it would happen to me, but that’s what we all said.
7
Jet Set
IN the face of his humiliating public rejection by the Kennedys and his equally public association with gangland, there were basically two things Frank Sinatra could do in 1962. One was to rehabilitate his tarnished image. The other was to get out of town. Mr. S took full control of the situation by doing both. Instead of being ridiculed as a political bag man or a mob puppet, Mr. S decided to become a philanthropist. The singing philanthropist, Rockefeller with a tune. He spent a lot of time with Hollywood public relations people and with his lawyer Mickey Rudin, and this was the best they could come up with, a three-month around-the-world concert tour that would benefit underprivileged kids. He had just wrapped The Manchurian Candidate, he had just broken up with Juliet Prowse, Marilyn was obsessed with “TP,” Bobby was obsessed with Sinatra. There was absolutely nothing to keep Mr. S in Hollywood.
The only problem with this proposed Great Escape was that Mr. S had no interest in travel. To him travel was work. He had a plane now, the El Dago, which was like an airborne bachelor pad, but he was always nervous about flying. He would triple-check the weather along his route before taking off. If there was the slightest storm, or even possible turbulence in the forecast, we wouldn’t go. Mr. S had lots of Sicilian superstitions, one of which was that flying was tempting fate. It was for the birds, and for that nutcase daredevil Chester, his name for Jimmy Van Heusen. Mr. S was supposed to have gone on the plane with flamboyant Broadway and Hollywood impresario Mike Todd that crashed in 1958. The plane, The Lucky Liz, named after Todd’s wife, Elizabeth Taylor, was bound for a Friars Club affair at the Waldorf-Astoria to honor Todd, the Oscar-winning producer of Around the World in 80 Days (with a script by Mia Farrow’s father), in which Sinatra had a cameo as a Wild West saloon piano player. The Lucky Liz went down in an icy New Mexico cornfield. Mr. S had backed out at the last second on account of some music crisis. He talked about it for years. Now he was on borrowed time. If he had to fly, it had to be essential to be worth the risk. He didn’t trust commercial flights. That was his control factor. He would be more careful than TWA or Pan Am. And he was.
The other problem with traveling for Mr. S was his total lack of curiosity about the outside world. For all his shelves of biographies, for all his hours in the dictionary, geography, history, and culture left him totally cold. He was a homebody, not an explorer. He had done other tours, and they had felt like onerous tours of duty. He vastly preferred Little Italy to the Big One, Hoboken to Hong Kong, Las Vegas to Monte Carlo, Palm Springs to Marrakech. Again it was the control factor, more than being an Ugly American. Here he was the Chairman, there he was just another rich
tourist. Not even the most imperial suite at the Ritz or the Savoy could compare with his Bowmont Drive digs. Besides, where would he get the Campbell’s Franks and Beans?
This time, kicking and screaming, Mr. S agreed to go. It was an essential career move. This time, however, he would bring his friends to insulate himself from the local traditions. They could take the boy out of Palm Springs, but he wasn’t about to let them take Palm Springs out of the boy. I was thrilled to be included. I loved traveling from my Navy days, and this would be for me a sentimental journey to a lot of old haunts. It was also a good time for me to get out of town. Sally had left me and taken the kids, and I was feeling down. There’s nothing like a trip to change your outlook, and there would be nothing like this trip in the annals of travel.
In addition to me, the Sinatra entourage included his banker Al Hart, his restaurateur Mike Romanoff, his sports guru Leo Durocher, and his whoremeister Jimmy Van Heusen. Van Heusen came along as a total civilian. He didn’t play piano, write music, nothing. He was simply there for the ride, for the inspiration, for the girls. Romanoff’s purpose in being aboard was twofold. The old con was, for all his lies, the most worldly man in Hollywood. He had fleeced aristocrats around the globe, and they loved him for it. His address book was unequaled. Also, he was tight with all the other great restaurant men. He would secure the red carpet and best tables at places like Tour d’Argent and Maxim’s. Because Mr. S was very insecure about status matters, Mike was the perfect guy to play his traveling concierge. The second reason Mr. S took Mike was that he liked being around Mike’s beautiful, clever, and much, much younger wife, Gloria, who ran the restaurant for him. Sinatra was often asking me if I thought Gloria had eyes for him. He thought she did, and he certainly had them for her. I wasn’t sure, though I suggested he invite her on the journey so he could find out. What could be more romantic than being in all these exotic locales? Mr. S thought this was a brilliant idea. He relished the challenge of an intrigue along the long way.
Mr. S Page 18