His Way

by Kitty Kelley

  23

  WELCOME TO FRANK SINATRA’S CAL-NEVA LODGE, said the road signs leading to the casino hotel overlooking Lake Tahoe’s Crystal Bay. The border dividing California and Nevada ran right through the middle of the property, intersecting the swimming pool and pushing drinkers to the California side while gamblers stayed on the Nevada side.

  “This is the only place in America where you can walk across the lobby and get locked up for violating the Mann Act,” Frank said, greeting nightclub guests in his Celebrity Room.

  Surrounded by small bungalows or chalets on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe in the High Sierra, the Cal-Neva Lodge had undergone renovation since Frank bought into it.

  “We have obtained a loan of … $1,500,000 … for expansion of the lodge,” said Paul “Skinny” D’Amato, explaining the enlarged casino, additional hotel accommodations, and the acoustically perfect showroom that Frank had insisted be built for performers. Skinny had discussed the Cal-Neva with another mobster over a telephone that was tapped by federal agents. The FBI knew that Skinny was Sam Giancana’s man at Cal-Neva, the person placed there to keep track of the count from the drop boxes at the gambling tables, and to look out for hidden interests. And they knew also from wiretapped conversations between Sam and Johnny Roselli that Giancana was a hidden owner of the Cal-Neva.

  ROSELLI: Aren’t you going to be tied up with the Cal-Neva?

  GIANCANA: I am going to get my money out of there and I’m going to wind up with half of the joint with no money. Not going to make any difference.… That joint ain’t going to be no good because it’s a very short season.

  The Cal-Neva was open only from June through the Labor Day weekend in September, but the owners wanted to make it a year-round operation. FBI reports suggested that Giancana had tried to borrow three million dollars from the Teamsters Central States pension fund for the purpose, but Jimmy Hoffa had turned him down.

  This enraged the Mafia don, who complained bitterly to a friend. “Once I got $1,750,000 from him in two days. Now all this heat comes on and I can’t even get a favor out of him now. I can’t do nothing for myself; Ten years ago I can get all the fucking money I want from the guy, and now they won’t settle for anything.”

  Frank packed the Celebrity Room with performers like Eddie Fisher, Vic Damone, Red Skelton, Victor Borge, Lena Home, Dean Martin, Joe E. Lewis, and Juliet Prowse to draw high-rolling summer crowds, while Trini Lopez and Buddy Greco played the Cabaret Lounge.

  Nevada records show that as of August 15, 1961, Frank owned thirty-six and six tenths percent of the Cal-Neva; as of May 15, 1962, his interest rose to fifty percent. The other two owners of record were Hank Sanicola, who owned thirty-three and one third percent, and Sanford Waterman, who owned sixteen and two thirds percent.

  “Frank loved owning that place,” said Chuck Moses. “He was always arranging parties, chartering planes, and flying up groups like Lucille Ball, Richard Crenna, and Marilyn Monroe. There were two crap tables there, and all those celebrities would get lucky and win, so he really took a loss.”

  “Frank was a most convivial host,” said San Francisco columnist Herb Caen. “He was great fun and sort of nice to people—except every now and then when he’d flip out. Some guy would come over with his girl and say, ‘Frank, I want you to meet my girl.’ He’d do one of his mood turns and snarl at the guy: ‘You want me to meet your girl? What does your girl want? Does she want to meet me? Can’t she speak for herself? Who are you to do her talking? Is she deaf and dumb, this girl of yours? Can’t she speak up? Speak up, girl, speak up. Hey, girl, ya want to meet me? Ya want to meet me?’ By that time the couple were in complete shock, and the rest of us were so embarrassed we didn’t speak. Later, we’d say, ‘For Christ sake, Frank, what’s the big deal?’ He’d say, ‘I don’t know. I can’t help it. They’re just so goddamn dumb.’

  “Most of the time, though, he was great fun. I saw him a lot at Cal-Neva when Sam Giancana was there. In fact, I met Giancana through Frank. He was a typical hood—didn’t say much. He wore a hat at the lake and sat in his little bungalow, receiving people. He and Frank were obviously good friends.”

  The mere presence of Sam Giancana at Cal-Neva was illegal in Nevada, because he topped the Gaming Control Board Black Book list of men not permitted on the premises of any casino in the state.

  “In order to avoid the possibility of license revocation for unsuitable manner of operation, your immediate cooperation is requested in preventing the presence in any licensed establishment of all persons of notorious or unsavory reputation,” the board’s orders declared.

  “This was always of great concern to Hank,” said one of Sanicola’s business associates. “He agreed’ to go into Cal-Neva with Frank only on the condition that Giancana stay away. Hank put in $300,000 of his own money and didn’t want to lose his investment. He knew if Sam was around, the place would be turned into a garage. But Sam was as big a ham as Frank and he started coming around a lot, which made Hank real nervous because there were always a lot of federal agents swarming around Giancana. One night he had to take Sam out the back way because of the agents. Hank kept telling Frank that there was going to be trouble because Giancana was always hanging around, but Frank told him that he was a worrier. ‘Not to worry,’ he’d say. ‘Not to worry.’ ”

  During the summer of 1962 Sanicola had had his hands full with federal agents investigating a prostitution ring at Cal-Neva that used women flown in from San Francisco. The operation was conducted openly from the main registration desk of the lodge.

  Then there was the attempted murder of an employee, shot on the front steps of the lodge. A few weeks after that, Marilyn Monroe tried to commit suicide there, but she managed to contact the Cal-Neva operator in time to be rushed to the hospital to have her stomach pumped. (A few days later, in Los Angeles, she died of another overdose.)

  The most worrisome event had taken place the night after the lodge opened, on June 30, 1962, when Deputy Sheriff Richard E. Anderson had come to pick up his wife, Toni, a cocktail waitress working the late shift. Anderson was aware that his wife, a brunette beauty, had been known to the staff as one of Sinatra’s girlfriends before her marriage. Although she and Anderson had been married for three months, he still resented the proprietary way Frank acted toward Toni and warned him to keep away from her. As Anderson stood talking to the dishwashers late that night in the Cal-Neva kitchen, Frank entered and asked him what he was doing there. Anderson said that he was waiting for his wife. Frank tried to throw him out, and a few minutes later the two men started fighting. Anderson punched Frank so hard he was unable to perform for the rest of the week.

  “The next day everyone was talking about the fight and the way Frank threatened Anderson. Everyone knew about Frank’s temper, but no one paid any attention until a couple of weeks later …” said Bethel Van Tassel, a former newspaper columnist.

  At 10:26 P.M. on the night of July 17, 1962, Dick Anderson and his wife were driving on Highway 28 not far from the Cal-Neva. They were on the way to the Crystal Bay Club for dinner after a day spent working on the house they were building. Coming toward them at high speed was a late-model maroon convertible with California license plates. The Andersons’ car went off the road and smashed into a tree. Dick Anderson was killed instantly. His wife was thrown from the car and suffered multiple fractures. The occupants of the maroon convertible never stopped, and the deputy sheriff investigating the crash could not determine the cause of the accident.

  “We have not found any reason why Anderson should have lost control of his car or driven off the road as he did,” he said, adding that Anderson might have been blinded by the bright lights of the oncoming car or deliberately forced off the road.

  “It’s still a mystery,” said Dick Anderson’s mother, Louise, twenty-four years later. “An FBI man and some people in the community thought that Frank Sinatra had something to do with the accident. That’s something they didn’t prove or didn’t try to prove.

&nb
sp; “After the dispute, my son told me that Sinatra went to the sheriff in Reno and told him to just can my son, to suspend him—to get rid of him. When Dick was killed, he was under suspension. The sheriffs office still gave him a military funeral, but he was under suspension on account of Sinatra. My husband and I still think that Frank Sinatra had something to do with Dick’s death, either directly or indirectly … I just never went into it … because I thought, well, Sinatra is very powerful … Richard had four children and I didn’t want anything to happen to them or to us, so we just dropped it. Now I’m seventy-nine years old and I don’t care what happens to [my husband] or to me. I don’t think they would ever come after us.”

  “There were a number of circumstances that led to suspicions that actually the automobile accident wasn’t an accident,” said Ed Olsen, Chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission, in 1972 in his oral history at the University of Nevada. “But on the other hand, there was never anything concrete or provable; the matter was ultimately dismissed … even though there were reports from both law enforcements that [Toni Anderson] had told conflicting stories about her relationship with some of the Sinatra people and indicated there might have been something else to the accident than an accident. But as I say, there was never anything proven.”

  Toni Anderson told her friends she was frightened, and she did not return to her job.

  By 1963, FBI agents had Sam Giancana under constant surveillance, which is why Frank’s name was mentioned so frequently in FBI reports. The two men were frequently together by this time, spending Easter in Palm Springs, vacationing in Hawaii in May, traveling to New York in Jyne, playing golf at Lake Tahoe in July. Sam came to know the FBI agents following him by name—Bill Roemer, Marshall Rutland, Ralph Hill—and railed at them at-every turn.

  “Why don’t you fucks investigate the Communists,” he would scream. “I’m not going to take this sitting down. I’m going to light a fire under you guys, and don’t forget that.”

  In July 1963, Giancana became so exasperated, he sent one of his Mafia lieutenants, Charles “Chuckie” English, with a message for Bill Roemer, who was standing outside the Armory Lounge in a Chicago suburb. “If Bobby Kennedy wants to talk to Sam, he knows who to go through,” English told the agent.

  “Who?” said Roemer. “Frank Sinatra?”

  “You said it, I didn’t,” said English.

  Giancana had given up on Frank’s influence with the Kennedys to rid him of the FBI’s surveillance. Over federally tapped phones, he discussed Sinatra’s political impotence with associate John D’Arco:

  GIANCANA: He [Sinatra] can’t get change for a quarter.

  D’ARCO: Sinatra can’t?

  GIANCANA: That’s right. Well, they [the Kennedys] got the whip in their office, and that’s it, and they got the money behind them, so they are going to knock us guys out of the book and make us defenseless. They figure if you’ve got the money, you got the power. If you don’t have the money, you don’t have the power.

  Giancana sued in U.S. District Court in Chicago to enjoin the Bureau from harassment, claiming the FBI was depriving him of his constitutional rights to privacy. The court ruled in favor of the gangster, fined the FBI five hundred dollars, and ordered the agents to reduce their surveillance by parking at least one block from Giancana’s home and remaining one hole behind him on the golf course. But this did not stop the agents from following him to New York City in June 1963, when he, Phyllis McGuire, Frank, and Ava Gardner went to New Jersey for dinner with Frank’s parents. Although Frank and Ava had been divorced for eight years, Frank still saw her frequently.

  “We had a great time,” said Phyllis McGuire. “We took Dolly and Marty a bottle of Crown Royal in a purple felt bag. Ava was so fascinated with it that she couldn’t wait until we got there to have a shot, which she chased with beer. She was adorable, and Dolly loved her. There was nothing Mama Sinatra wanted more than to get Frank and Ava back together again.”

  But Frank and Ava couldn’t reach a reconciliation. Frank’s Mafia friendships still irritated her. “Ava didn’t like those types of people at all,” said Phyllis. “She hated the image. It wasn’t just Sam, either. Frank had others around him all the time, and when Ava found out that Johnny Formosa had stayed with him in Palm Springs, she really gave him hell.”

  The next night, the McGuire Sisters appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. After the telecast, Giancana took everyone out to celebrate.

  “We went to Trader Vic’s, which was closed because it was Sunday,” said Victor LaCroix Collins, the McGuire Sisters’ road manager. “But Sam knocked on the door and another dago opened it and said, ‘We’re closed.’ Sam said, ‘Yeah, well you just opened,’ and, by God, they opened. We had a real drunken brawl in there. It was the McGuire Sisters; Sam; the musical conductor, Tony Riposo; Frank; and Ava Gardner, who is the most foul-mouthed woman I ever met. The two of them [Frank and Ava] got into the worst fight you ever saw … the names they called each other! She called him a bastard and said he was nothing but a stupid frigging Wop. Even though we were all feeling real good and half drunk by then, everyone looked at one another when she said this and then looked at her, but she just kept on like none of us were there.… Frank kept telling her to shut up.… Then they stormed out and the rest of us went to Phyllis’s apartment on Park Avenue. A little while later Sinatra showed up with Sammy Cahn. It was raining to beat the devil, and so Sinatra started bending everyone’s umbrella, thinking that was real funny. Or else he was still mad at Ava.”

  Ava had been staying with Frank at his apartment in New York City, and he was doing all he could to please her. Jilly Rizzo, Frank’s close friend and bodyguard and the owner of July’s, Frank’s favorite New York bar, was doing all he could to help Sinatra please her. He enlisted Mike Hellerman to run down to Mulberry Street with him to get the littleneck clams that Frank wanted to serve her. When Frank asked where he could take Ava to dinner without drawing a crowd of reporters and photographers, Jilly recommended the HawaiiKai, saying no one would expect to see him there.

  “The following day, Jilly and I went up to Sinatra’s apartment,” said Mike Hellerman. “He was as happy a guy as I’ve ever seen. We were all sitting there on the couch, talking, when the doorbell rang. Suddenly, Ava walked out of another room all dressed, carrying a suitcase, and headed straight for the door. She opened it, turned, and gave a little wave, saying good-bye to Frank. Then She walked out. None of us knew what to do. We were so embarrassed for Frank. We were flabbergasted. Frank was stunned. Jilly told me later that the guy at the door [waiting for her] was a Spanish airline pilot.”

  Ava had had enough of Sam Giancana and, according to Victor LaCroix Collins, Sam had had enough of her. “Sam didn’t like her at all,” said Collins. “He always said that she was a crazy bitch. I only met her that one time, but I’d met Frank before, when Sam and the girls and I spent Easter with Sinatra and his former wife, Nancy, in Palm Springs. That was in April of 1963, and it was another drunk. Sam sent him Easter lilies, which I remember because I had to sign the card for him as Dr. Goldberg—he’d never sign his name to anything—and we had a big fight about how to spell Sinatra’s name. We spent the day sitting in Frank’s den watching him listening to his own music I helped Nancy make cold meatball sandwiches in the kitchen.”

  “It wasn’t that memorable a weekend,” said Phyllis McGuire. “Frank is one of the most insecure people I’ve ever met in my life. He’s so damn boring. His stories haven’t varied in the last twenty years. He talks about when his father brought him the horse in this little bar in Jersey … and after the horse is in the bar, his father couldn’t get the horse back out. And how much he loved his father when really all the time it was his mother that he feared. His mother dressed him like Little Lord Fauntleroy. Martin Sinatra was a fabulous man, but he was quiet and sweet. Frank’s mother was the ballsy one. The boss of that whole family.”

  During that weekend, Nancy Sinatra took Phyllis into Frank’s bedroom and pointed t
o the photograph of Ava Gardner next to the bed. Then she pointed to the pictures of Nancy, Jr., Tina, and Frank, Jr., sitting on the bureau. “Ava couldn’t do that for him,” she said, looking at her children’s photographs. “Despite all the women he’s had, I’m the only one who gave him children.”

  Walking to the bureau, Nancy opened her jewelry box to show Phyllis all the pearls that Frank had given her through the years. Holding up strands of chokers and long ropes and delicate necklaces, she cited the occasion for each gift. “He got these for me when we were in New York and these I got because …”

  Phyllis listened with sympathy as Nancy displayed her pearls. “It was so pathetic,” she said, “but Nancy is a very sweet lady and has handled herself very well, considering. It’s no secret that the dream that keeps her alive is of Frank returning to her someday. It’s so sad, so very sad.”

  The McGuire Sisters were scheduled to perform at Cal-Neva the week of July 27, 1963. Sam accompanied Phyllis to Lake Tahoe and stayed with her in Chalet Fifty. During the day, FBI agents photographed Giancana and Frank playing golf on the South Shore. In the evening, the two men met in Chalet Fifty for drinks and had dinner together in the Cal-Neva dining room. Victor LaCroix Collins joined the girls and Sam for drinks in the chalet, but soon became irritated with Phyllis, who playfully punched him in the arm every time she passed his chair.

  “The dame’s got quite a blow on her, and my arm was getting sore,” he said. “So I told her, ‘You do that again and I’m going to knock you right on your butt.’ A half hour later, she punches me again, and so I grabbed her by both arms and meant to sit her in the chair I got out of, but I swung her around and she missed the chair and hit the floor. She didn’t hurt herself … but Sam came charging over from across the room and threw a punch at me wearing a huge big diamond ring that gouged me in the left eyebrow. I just saw red then and grabbed him, lifted him clean off the floor, and was going to throw him through the plate glass door, but thought, ‘Why wreck the place?’ So I decided to take him outside and break his back on the hard metal railing on the patio. I got as far as the door and then got hit on the back of the head. I don’t know who hit me from behind, but the back of my head was split open. It didn’t knock me out, but I went down and Sam was underneath me. He had on a pearl-gray silk suit, and the blood from my eyebrow was running all over his suit. I had a hold of him by the testicles and the collar and he couldn’t move. That’s when Sinatra came in with his valet, George, the colored boy. They were coming down to join the party.