by Kitty Kelley
He took the children home and gave their mother the small Oscar medallion he had received for her charm bracelet. Then, clutching his trophy, he drove to his apartment, where a few friends had gathered to congratulate him.
“Frank walked up the path holding that Oscar and looking so alone that it almost broke my heart,” recalled actress Charlotte Austin. “Here it was the biggest night in his life, and the only woman he cared about was five thousand miles away in Spain with another man. Frank was very quiet and happy, though, and acted as if he didn’t quite believe it had really happened to him. We had a great time. Gene Kelly was there. Adolph Green and Betty Comden, Jule Styne, Sammy Cahn, and Bert Friedlob, the producer. The first thing Frank did was call his mom in Hoboken. She must have done most of the talking because all we could hear him say was, ‘Yes Mama, no Mama, yes Mama.’ ”
Variety proclaimed Frank’s victory “the greatest comeback in theater history.” The Associated Press concurred. “Frank Sinatra, a wartime crooning idol of the nation’s bobby-soxers, climaxed a thrilling career comeback in winning an Oscar for the best supporting role. A year ago the spindly crooner was considered washed up in Hollywood.”
Psychiatrist Ralph Greenson, who had now been treating Frank for three months, watched the awards on television. As Frank ran up to the stage to get his Oscar, the psychiatrist said to his wife, “That’s it. We’ll never see him again.” Dr. Greenson knew his patient well. The next week Frank called and canceled his appointment, saying he no longer needed to probe his past with a psychiatrist.
“I found out all I wanted to know,” he said. Later, he completely dismissed psychoanalysis. “I’ve never gone in for that analysis bit, and I don’t intend to start now. All I know is that I’m feeling great, and I’m not askin’ myself why. The time you start talkin’ to yourself is when you’re unhappy, and I’m happy with what I am. So long as I keep busy I feel great.”
Keeping busy meant constant movement and incessant action. Even Frank couldn’t explain his restlessness. “This is something I can’t help,” he told film director Vincente Minnelli. “I have to go. No one seems able to help me with it—doctors, no one. I have to move.”
Frank’s success in From Here to Eternity brought him the kind of work that had eluded him for years. “The greatest change in my life began the night they gave me the Oscar,” he said. “It’s funny about that statue—I don’t think any actor can experience something like that and not change.”
Financially, Frank had been revitalized a few months before, when he was approved for a Nevada state gambling license, and bought two percent of the Sands Hotel for $54,000. During the hearing before the State Tax Commission, one commissioner had objected to his application, saying that he should use the purchase money to pay his back taxes. Frank explained that he was paying the I.R.S. $1,000 a week for every week he worked and had already reduced his $109,000 debt to $90,000.
“In the past ten years I’ve paid the government over a million dollars in income tax, and I don’t think they’re too concerned about my not paying them $90,000,” he said. Worried about Frank’s ties to organized crime, the commissioners questioned him about his friends and associates. “My interest is purely as a business investment,” he said, “and my participation would be limited to helping co-produce the dinner shows.”
Robbins E. Cahill, one of the commissioners, later expressed the board’s concern about Frank’s Mafia associations. “Entertainment people are always closely connected to the element that we always feared in those days because both of them had money. I think, like a lot of great entertainers, Frank knew many, many hoodlums.”
After deliberating on and off for fourteen months, the commission finally approved the application that would eventually make Frank a multimillionaire.
“I can’t tell you how happy this makes me,” he said at the time. “I’ve been trying for more than a year to get a foothold in Las Vegas because I believe it has a great future. I want to be a part of that future.… You know, an entertainer’s life is somewhat uncertain. It all depends on the whims of the public. When I am finished as an entertainer, I want to have an investment that will insure the education of my children and a sufficient income for me. I think this Sands investment will keep me very comfortably.”
In addition to mobster Bugsy Siegel’s Flamingo, there were only four hotels on the Las Vegas strip, but Frank knew the city would eventually be a boomtown for gamblers. It couldn’t miss; it was the only place in the country that had legalized casino gambling. Frank’s two percent interest in the Sands, which grew to nine percent, was a testament to his good relations with the underworld, for the new luxury hotel was at that time controlled by more Mafia groups than any other casino in Nevada.
Justice Department files indicate that one stockholder was persuaded to sell two of his five shares of stock in the Sands to Sinatra for $70,000, giving Frank his initial two percent. Informants told the FBI that Vincente “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo then gave Frank “a gift of seven percent of this hotel,” bringing his share to nine percent.
The number one man at the Sands was Joseph “Doc” Stacher, a New Jersey gangster who was second only to Meyer Lansky in the syndicate and looked on Frank as his son. Stacher’s police record listed atrocious assault and battery, robbery, larceny, bootlegging, hijacking, and murder investigations. The casino’s official greeter was Charles “Babe” Baron, once suspected of murder. Some of the less visible gangsters involved with the Sands included Joe Fusco of the old Capone mob, Meyer Lansky, Abner “Longy” Zwiliman, Anthony “Joe Batters” Accardo, Gerardo Catena, acting boss of the Genovese family in New York, and Abraham Teitelbaum, a former attorney far the Capone mob who frequently stated: “Alphonse Capone was one of the most honorable men I ever met.”
Years after he fled the U.S. and went into exile in Israel, Doc Stacher admitted that the mob had offered Frank a share in the Sands so that he would draw the high rollers.
“I was the man who built the Sands,” Stacher said in 1979. “To make sure we’d get enough top-level investors, we brought George Raft into the deal and sold Frank Sinatra a nine percent stake in the hotel. Frank was flattered to be invited, but the object was to get him to perform there, because there’s no bigger draw in Las Vegas. When Frankie was performing, the hotel really filled up.”
For the next thirteen years, Frank would reign supreme at the Sands, eventually becoming vice-president of the corporation and earning over $100,000 a week when he performed. His drawing power was such that he could do no wrong in the eyes of the Mafia owners. When they gave him three thousand dollars a night to gamble with, he often went through the money in twenty minutes, but they extended credit, frequently allowing him to play no-limit games, and sometimes even ignoring his markers. They built a three-bedroom suite on the ground floor for him because they knew he was afraid of heights—he always booked hotel suites on low floors—and they installed a private swimming pool for him protected by a stone wall. Later, he insisted they put in a health club with a sauna and steam bath as well. They ordered the Italian breads, prosciutto, and provolone that he loved flown in from New York.
Frank performed in the Copa Room and opened his show by saying, “Welcome to my room.” Because he filled the house, the casino was his kingdom. If a room service waiter brought him a hamburger that was too well done, there was a good chance that it would be thrown against the wall, and the chef fired. If he didn’t like the color of a telephone, he tore it out of the wall. Bellboys were kept on duty just to take care of his early morning requests for pizza or blueberry pie. He “comped” all of his friends with free food and free drinks for days at a time, and expected each of them to perform at the Sands exclusively. If they didn’t, they were no longer his friends, as Judy Garland found out when she accepted a Las Vegas engagement at another hotel.
“My playing the New Frontier was strictly a business deal,” she said, “but Frank took it as a personal rebuff. His attitude since then, to be polite
, has been pretty repulsive.”
Frank made movies at the Sands, recorded albums, sponsored boxing matches, threw glamorous opening night parties, and made it the place to go to on the Las Vegas strip. He frequently flew in Hollywood celebrities, and crowds jammed the casino just in hope of seeing a star having a drink or placing a few bets. Hank Greenspun, publisher of the Las Vegas Sun, wrote a front page editorial saying that when Frank Sinatra was in town, it was the economic equivalent of three conventions.
“I’m very grateful to Frank because he made my husband a great deal of money,” said Corinne Entratter, wife of the president of the Sands. “Of course, my husband made Frank even more, and for a while, everyone benefited from having Sinatra at the Sands. It was after they started making so much money they didn’t know what to do with it that they had problems. In the beginning, everyone pulled together; afterwards, they wanted to kill each other.
“Everyone made more money when Frank played the strip, especially cab drivers and hookers,” she said. “Frank loved hookers, and used them a great deal. He preferred them because he didn’t have to deal with them emotionally. And he always paid them well.”
Over the years, prostitutes became a staple in Sinatra’s life, and not just in Las Vegas. “I remember when Frank and the Rat Pack were doing 4 For Texas … and a whole gang of prostitutes—well, they were call girls, they weren’t actually prostitutes—were shipped up there to the boondocks … they were also going to act as girls sitting at a bar in the movie, and the man in charge, an older gentleman, very moral and proper, who had to handle arrangements was so upset,” said Lor-Ann Land, a secretary on the film. “He had to pay them more than scale and he didn’t know how to figure it all out. How to designate what they were really being paid for. …”
Frank was one of the pioneer entertainers in Las Vegas, along with Jimmy Durante, Joe E. Lewis, Sophie Tucker, Ted Lewis, Tommy Dorsey, Danny Thomas, Tony Martin, Nat King Cole, “Fat Jack” Leonard, and the Will Mastin Trio featuring Sammy Davis, Jr. Of them all, Frank became the star most identified with Las Vegas over the years.
Las Vegas was an open city in the 1950s—open to mobsters, to gamblers, to hookers. No legal apparatus had been established to prevent owners from “skimming” the take: understating the gross receipts from gambling, then reporting as revenue only what was left. There was no law limiting the amount or size of cash transactions, and no requirement that they be reported to the Internal Revenue Service. This made casinos perfect places for criminals to hide or launder illegal money. There were no cameras in the counting rooms in those days. Casino directors regularly took money off the top of the nightly take, and after pocketing their own share, dispatched Mafia couriers, who delivered illegal millions in skimmed money to the real owners—the participating syndicate bosses, who expected a share of the skim in return for their initial investment. Owning a piece of a casino meant that you owned part of a money forest where you simply shook the trees and watched thousand-dollar bills fall like leaves. As Meyer Lansky said, “The only man who wins in the casino is the guy who owns the place.”
Conceived and built by the Mafia, Las Vegas remains a town where the mob feels comfortable and where hoodlums are welcomed with open arms.
“You’ll find the mob people get the finest suite of rooms—rooms that might cost three hundred bucks a day—and invitations to the best shows in town, and we never pick up a tab because it’s all on the house,” said Vinnie Teresa of the New England Mafia. “I don’t know how many times I got telegrams inviting me to the biggest hotel in Las Vegas because Frank Sinatra or Sammy Davis was in town that week. All the mob would show up for their shows. ‘Come on down and be our guest… we have a suite of rooms reserved for you,’ one of the hotel’s bosses would say. Why? They want you because you’re a gambler and because suckers love to see tough guys just like they like to see big-name entertainers. They love to walk into a casino or a card room, spot you, and whisper in someone’s ear: ‘Hey, Joe, do you know who that guy is? That’s Vinnie Teresa from the New England mob.’ If a place gets the name that mob people come in regularly, suckers will flock there just to gape at mob people like they were movie stars and to get next to a table to watch how you gamble.… Before you know it, they’re into the game themselves, and they’re dropping a bundle.”
Frank had begun going to Las Vegas with his gangster friends shortly after he moved to the West Coast, sometimes dropping thousands of dollars at the tables. Gambling was second nature to him. He had grown up with a mother who had her own bookie and frequently woke up the neighbors by playing boccie (an Italian bowling game) outside their windows with truck drivers, challenging them to five-dollar throws. Accustomed to his father’s regular poker games, Frank became familiar with betting on all sports, especially boxing and horse racing. His Uncle Gus ran numbers in Hoboken and was arrested several times for possession of lottery slips; his Uncle Babe was arrested more than twenty times for crimes like usury and loan-sharking, often lending money to gamblers at illegal interest rates.
Frank had an affinity with the men who ran Las Vegas; he felt at home in their nocturnal environment, and gambled with abandon. One evening, he lost over fifty thousand dollars at baccarat. He first played this fast, big-money card game in the south of France and was so enthralled by the action that he insisted the Sands start its own baccarat game in 1959.
“I’ve seen Frank go up to the baccarat table with ten thousand dollars, sit down, put the bundle on the table, ride it up to thirty thousand, lose it, and walk away from the table with a shrug,” said vibraphonist Red Norvo.
Away from Las Vegas, Frank continued to gamble by telephone, calling in his roulette bets. He chose roulette, he said, “because you can’t shoot craps by phone.”
“Frank destroys money,” said Joe DiMaggio.
“He’ll bet on anything,” said Al Algiro.
Frank’s good fortune held throughout 1954. He was named the most popular male vocalist in the year-end Downbeat poll, an honor he had not received since 1947. The magazine also selected him as the Top Pop Records Personality of the year, and Metronome christened him Singer of the Year for his best-selling single, “Young at Heart,” and his album, Swing Easy.
Feeling the need to chronicle his comeback, Frank placed a full-page ad in Billboard at the end of the year enumerating the various awards he had received, the films he had in release (Suddenly and Young at Heart), the film he was shooting (Not as a Stranger), and the film he was scheduled to start (Guys and Dolls). He signed the ad, “Busy, busy, busy—Frank.”
But his string of good luck was broken at two A.M. the morning of December 9, 1954, as he was leaving the Crescendo on Sunset Boulevard with Texas oilman Bob Neal, model Cindy Hayes, and Judy Garland. After hearing Mel Tormé sing, the foursome sneaked out of the nightclub hiding drinks under their coats. As they walked into the foyer, Jim Byron yelled to Bob Neal. Byron, who was Mel Tormé’s publicist, was in a telephone booth calling his answering service for messages. Not recognizing Judy Garland, who was six months pregnant, he asked Neal who the woman was because he wanted to tell the Hollywood columnists that Frank Sinatra and his friends had stopped by to hear his client. Neal told him and returned to the group, telling Frank what Byron wanted.
In a rage, Frank lunged at the telephone booth, shouting, “Get out of there, you bastard. Get out of there. What business is it of yours who we’re with? You fucking parasite. You’re nothing but a leech. You’re a newspaperman, I hate cops and I hate reporters. Get out of there right now and take off your fucking glasses.”
Shaken by the outburst, Byron stumbled out of the telephone booth. Frank continued to berate him as he made his way to the parking lot.
“Why don’t you go out and make a decent living and not suck off other people?” Frank screamed. “You leech.”
“And who are you, Frank? You’re dependent on other people. You’re dependent on the press and the public.”
“I am not,” yelled Frank. “I hav
e talent and I am dependent only on myself.”
Frank slammed his left fist into the side of Byron’s face, and the publicist retaliated with a few kicks and one flailing blow to the nose that caused Frank to yell, “He hit me, he hit me!” Parking lot attendants separated them.
The next day, despite eyewitness accounts, Frank gave another version of the events: “He was trying to make it seem an illicit date or something, and anybody who thinks that has got to be a pretty sick guy. Especially when Judy was six months pregnant. I told him I resented his calling Judy a ‘broad’ and I added if he didn’t know who Judy Garland was, he must have been living under a rock. I went back to Byron and told him to take his glasses off. Then suddenly two guys held my arms and Byron tried to knee me. He succeeded in denting my shin bone and clawing my hand. I couldn’t do anything because I was held by two men. I broke loose. It ended when I gave him a left hook and dumped him on his fanny. Then I got scared. It was obvious he didn’t know how to defend himself, and I didn’t want any trouble. It ended there.”
“I didn’t get really mad at him until an hour or so later, when I emerged from the daze to contemplate his I’ve got talent, ‘I’ve got talent,’ ” said Jim Byron. “If show business talent allows you to do this, then I suppose the talent of an atomic scientist who had perfected a new bomb would permit him to blow up the world.
“I never sued him even though the public and press were in sympathy with me. The police were sufficiently mad at Frank for his ‘I hate cops’ to call me and offer me protection if necessary. It wasn’t necessary. I wasn’t going ahead with anything.”
Frank’s behavior appalled journalists, many of whom recounted his fistfights with Lee Mortimer in 1947 and photographer Eddie Schisser in Houston in 1950, his threats to kill reporters in Mexico City, and the automobile incident with Bill Eccles at the Los Angeles airport. Some remembered that in 1949 at parking meter executive Donald Duncan’s Palm Springs home, Frank slugged the bartender, Jack Wintermeyer, for not giving him the extra dry martini he had requested. Wintermeyer was taken to a hospital and treated for a gash on his forehead but he, too, refused to press charges after holding a “peace meeting” with Frank.