by Kitty Kelley
“It figures,” Peter Lawford said.
Steve Allen wrote an open letter to Frank, saying he could not understand how a lifelong liberal could suddenly begin supporting a conservative like Ronald Reagan, who in 1962 had said of America’s blacks, “In their own country, they’re eating each other for lunch.” Allen listed the governor’s reactionary positions on prison reform, medical care for the aged, farm labor, hunger, the generation gap, taxes, campus unrest, political integrity, antiwar demonstrators, education, consumer interests, capital punishment, and mental health, begging Frank to set aside his “Sicilian vengeance” and return to the Democratic fold.
“They say your hatred of Senator Bob Kennedy was so great—because he kept you away from the confidence of his brother, the president—that you have waited a long time to get revenge and would not even be denied by the senator’s assassination. The word is, Frank, that all you can do now that Bobby is gone is ‘get even’ with his man, Jesse Unruh, and the Kennedy-McCarthy types who work for him,” wrote Allen. “Only a few thousand people may read this letter, Frank. I offer you access to a few million if you’d like to visit my TV show and explain your position.”
Frank did not respond, but he hastened to reassure the world of his political affiliation, saying, “I’m an Italian Democrat all the way. On that score, I could never change.”
To prove his point, he said that he was supporting Edmund “Jerry” Brown, Jr., for secretary of state in California, John Tunney, another California Democrat, for the senate against George Murphy, the MGM song-and-dance man, and Susan Marx, widow of Harpo Marx, who was running for the state assembly. He then urged all Democrats to campaign against Nixon.
“He’s running the country into the ground,” said Frank. “He scares me. I wouldn’t be surprised if they dump him in 1972. Whatever the situation, the Democrats have got to get together and beat Nixon in 1972.”
But he confounded party loyalists by endorsing Republican John Lindsay for mayor of New York City and contributing ten thousand dollars in New York to Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s reelection campaign. Yet he also gave $1,500 to New York Republican Congressman Seymour Halpern, $500 to Kenny O’Donnell, JFK’s appointments secretary who was running for governor of Massachusetts, and $500 to George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama.
Unbeknownst to Frank, an IRS investigation was under way at Caesars Palace into the relationship between the entertainment industry and the Mafia. Frank was among the targets of IRS surveillance.
On Sunday, September 6, 1970, during the graveyard shift, the IRS undercover agent working in the cashier’s cage in Caesars watched as one of Sinatra’s entourage came to the window with a pile of black chips and walked away with some $7,500 in cash. The undercover agent had been watching Frank carefully for weeks, because Frank had vast sums of money in markers (IOUs to the hotel) that were not being deducted from his salary or paid back by winnings.
“About an hour later, the same guy comes back to the window with some more black chips and cashes them in,” said the agent. “That’s when we knew that Sinatra was using us for petty cash. Whatever he was winning off the marker, he was putting into his pocket, and whenever he ran out of money to bet, he just signed another marker for ten grand.… It was a way for him to get some easy money.… We were concerned about his paying his back markers … Sinatra told people that he didn’t have to pay his markers. He said that when he performed at Caesars and then sat down to gamble, he attracted enough big money around him so that the casino made out and profited enough so that they didn’t need to collect from him.”
When the undercover agent got a call at around five A.M. from the blackjack pit saying that Frank had signed another marker, he called Sanford Waterman, the casino manager, who got dressed and came downstairs. After being told what was happening, the manager, who had been part owner of the Gal-Neva with Sinatra in 1963, stood quietly in a corner and waited for the man to approach the cage again. When he did, Waterman nodded, giving his approval to cash in Sinatra’s chips, and then went to the blackjack pit to confront Frank.
“Sandy walked up to him and said, ‘I want ten thousand dollars, in markers,’ ” recalled the agent.
“ ‘What’s the matter? My money isn’t good here?’ said Frank.
“ ‘Yeah, your money is good as long as you’ve got money. You don’t get chips until I see your cash.’
“That’s when the trouble started and Frank called Waterman a kike and Sandy called him a son of a bitch guinea. They went back and forth like that in front of a big crowd of people, including three security guards, until Sandy whipped out his pistol and popped it between Sinatra’s eyeballs.… Sinatra laughed and called him a crazy Hebe. … He said he’d never work at Caesars again and walked out.… Frank had carte blanche at Caesars—complete run of the casino—but it’s getting heavy when you have built up so much in markers and maybe fifty percent of it is petty cash in your pocket. This must have been going on for a long period of time, because Waterman got pretty excited about it.”
The next day District Attorney George Franklin said he was going to call Frank for “a little talk” to ask him about his ties to the Mafia.
“One remark he supposedly made to Waterman as he was going out the door was, ‘The mob will take care of you,’ ” said Franklin. “I want to ask him about who owned the nightclubs where he sang in the early days, who started him on his way, and his friendships with the underworld.”
Sheriff Ralph Lamb was outraged. “Waterman was booked [for pulling a gun]. If Sinatra comes back to town Tuesday, he’s coming downtown to get a work card, and if he gives me any trouble, he’s going to jail. I’m tired of him intimidating waiters, waitresses, and starting fires and throwing pies. He gets away with too much. He’s through picking on little people in this town. Why the owners of the hotels put up with this is what I plan to find out.”
The next day, the charge against Waterman was dropped.
“My reports indicated Waterman still had fingermarks on his throat where Sinatra grabbed him,” said the district attorney. “There seems to be reasonable grounds for making the assumption that Sinatra was the aggressor all the way.”
Immediately, Jim Mahoney, Frank’s press agent, started phoning reporters.
“I think it ironic that a gun was pulled on Sinatra and when all is said and done, he appears to be the heavy,” Mahoney said. “A man was accused of a crime, whether true or not. Frank kept quiet like a gentleman. So everybody’s taking potshots at him. Frank isn’t running for office. The guys in Las Vegas are.”
The continuing international press coverage of the incident finally forced Frank two weeks later to defend himself.
“There was no such argument about credit or for how much I was going to play,” he said. “As matter of fact, I just sat down at the blackjack table and hadn’t even placed a bet, since the dealer was shuffling the cards. At that point Waterman came over and said to the dealer: ‘Don’t deal to this man.’ I got up and said, ‘Put your name on the marquee and I’ll come to see what kind of business you do’ and I walked away. … As for his injuries, I never touched him … and as for the remarks attributed to me relative to the mob, they’re strictly out of a comic strip.
“If the public officials who seek newspaper exposure by harassing me and other entertainers don’t get off my back, it is of little moment to me if I ever play Las Vegas again,” he said.
He said he was through with the gambling capital. “I’ll never set foot in the whole state of Nevada again,” he said. “I have no intentions of going back—now or ever. I’ve suffered enough indignities.”
When reporters asked him about the incident, Governor Ronald Reagan rallied to Frank’s defense.
“Why don’t you fellows ask me about the good things he’s done, like Richmond, Indiana,” he said, referring to the benefit Frank and Jerry Lewis had staged to educate the nine children of former police chief Don A. Mitrione, who had been kidnapped
and slain in Uruguay by Tupamaro leftist guerrillas.
The next month, Frank began campaigning in earnest for Reagan, performing at fund-raisers in Los Angeles and San Francisco, mesmerizing $125-a-plate audiences with the silky ballads and love songs he used to sing in Las Vegas. Reagan, obviously grateful for such support, jumped onstage to express his thanks.
“Most people believe that politics is a game of quid pro quo,” he said. “But I want to assure you that following Frank’s endorsement of me, it is only sheerest coincidence that there is going to be a freeway run right though the lobby of Caesars Palace.”
29
Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew, who called a Nisei reporter a “fat Jap,” and referred to Poles as “Polacks,” was frequently greeted by placards that said: APOLOGIZE NOW, SPIRO, IT WILL SAVE TIME LATER.
Despite Agnew’s racial slurs, Frank was his biggest supporter, especially when he took on The New York Times and The Washington Post, referring to them as “the eastern liberal establishment press.”
He concurred with Agnew’s opinion that “some newspapers dispose of their garbage by printing it.”
He relished Agnew’s sesquipedalian labeling of Democrats as “nattering nabobs of negativism,” “pusillanimous pussyfooters,” “vicars of vacillation,” and “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.” Frank cheered him as he denounced “radical liberals” as “solons of sellout” and “pampered prodigies.” Frank applauded his “politics of polarization” and hailed him for assailing the administration’s critics as “an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.”
Frank agreed with Agnew about “the disease of our times” being an artificial and masochistic sophistication, and said that was what concerned him most about American life.
“It’s the amorality,” said Frank. “And so much restlessness. I guess we just got used to a way of life in my age bracket. Things are confusing a lot of Americans. Take the protestations, called for or uncalled for. I’m not against protestations, if they’re for a cause. But I don’t like rebellion without a cause. It’s frightening.”
He felt secure and comfortable with Agnew, who decried student protestors, antiwar demonstrators, flag burners, rioters, draft dodgers, narcotics, and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).
Vic Gold, Agnew’s press secretary, commented on the shared politics of the two men. “After Frank and the Vice-President became friends, Shirley MacLaine, who was one of the radical liberals the Vice-President was talking about, was quoted as saying, ‘I wonder what Frank Sinatra and Spiro Agnew talk about,’ ” he said. “Frank heard that and said, ‘Tell her: We talk about you, dear. We talk about you.’ ”
“There was instant chemistry—personally and politically—between Sinatra and Agnew,” said Peter Malatesta, special assistant to the Vice-President and a nephew of Bob Hope, “and because of that we started spending a lot of time with Frank in Palm Springs. He treated the Vice-President like royalty, even named the guest house he had built for JFK after him and filled ‘Agnew House’ with specially mono-grammed matches and stationery.
“Life on the Sinatra compound was full of excitement and luxury. Every night was a party, with regulars that included the Ronald Reagans, Roz Russell and Freddie Brisson, Jimmy Van Heusen, the Milton Berles, the Bennett Cerfs, Dr. Michael DeBakey, Jilly Rizzo, and Barbara and Zeppo Marx. Of course, after Frank and Barbara started dating, we didn’t see much of Zeppo, which kind of upset Mrs. Agnew, who saw Barbara slipping out one morning and realized that she had been sleeping over. Judy Agnew thought Zeppo was a great friend of Frank’s and that was quite unsettling to her. I mentioned to him that the Veep’s wife was a little undone by the Barbara business, but Frank just shrugged and said he couldn’t let her go home at night because a coyote might get her!
“His setup in Palm Springs was perfect. There was enough security to satisfy the Secret Service and enough luxury to satisfy everybody else. Every bedroom had two bathrooms so that husbands didn’t have to share with wives, and each had medicine cabinets perfectly stocked at all times. There were also ‘his’ and ‘her’ closets in the bedroom, each with a new pair of slippers arid a bathrobe. The guest suites all had a hotline to the full-service kitchen on the compound, which provided twenty-four-hour service, and yet if you wanted privacy, you could use the Pullman kitchen in the bedroom that was fully stocked with food and liquor.
“Life with Frank was sweet, which is why the Vice-President made eighteen trips to Palm Springs in a year and a half. The Agnews spent Easter, Thanksgiving, and New Year’s there, and after Frank’s retirement, things really started to swing!”
Frank’s March 1971 announcement of his retirement came after a year of dwindling record sales and miserable movie reviews. On his album of Rod McKuen songs A Man Alone, Frank had sung splendidly, but his recitation of McKuen’s mawkish poetry might have contributed to the meager 63,500 copies sold, which compared poorly with his previous average of 150,000. When he listened to his voice on his next album, Watertown, even he was chagrined. Some critics felt it was too progressive for his traditional audience, but not enough so to attract the children of Woodstock. The album sold only 35,000 copies. Sinatra & Company, released in 1971, showed Frank trying to stay contemporary, attempting to adapt his very personal style to the shifting mores of music by singing some of the hits of John Denver and Peter, Paul and Mary. For the man widely described as the greatest popular singer of the twentieth century, the album sold poorly.
The box office returns on Dirty Dingus Magee were even more disappointing. Playing a frontier rascal in his fifty-fifth movie, Frank was crucified by the critics, who charged him with crude double entendres and witless burlesquing, suggesting that perhaps his time as a leading man had passed.
“What we’re supposed to find so funny is merely disgusting,” said the Los Angeles Times.
“Sinatra, who proved his acting abilities in such pictures as From Here to Eternity and Man with the Golden Arm, merely lends his presence here and not too much of that,” said Arthur Knight in Saturday Review.
Describing the movie as a shabby piece of goods masquerading as a Western, Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times said Frank had not made a good movie since The Manchurian Candidate in 1962. He held him responsible for the failure of Dirty Dingus Magee, saying, “I lean toward blaming Sinatra, who’s notorious for not really caring about his movies. If a shot doesn’t work, he doesn’t like to try it again; he might be late getting back to Vegas. What’s more, the ideal Sinatra role requires him to be in no more than a fourth of the scenes, getting him lots of loot and top billing while his supporting cast does the work.”
After the clash with Sanford Waterman at Caesars Palace, there was no Vegas to return to, for Frank had vowed never to set foot in Nevada again. At fifty-five, he enjoyed good health, except for persistent pain following surgery on his right hand for a condition known as Dupuytren’s contracture, a shortening or distortion of muscular tissue in the palm, which made two of his fingers bend inward like claws.
“He isn’t really sick or doddering or dying from an incurable ailment,” said Nancy, Jr. “He’s very much alive and well and kicking … but he says it’s the end of an era, and he’s right. His kind of show business era has ended. So he’s going to take it easy and enjoy himself.”
After publicly announcing his retirement in a letter printed by syndicated columnist Suzy (Aileen Mehle), his favorite reporter and occasional date, Frank carefully orchestrated his farewell performance for June 13, 1971, at the Motion Picture and Television Relief Fund benefit at the Los Angeles Music Center. He chose songs to represent periods in his life, and mirrored the moods of a generation that remembered the big band sounds of Tommy Dorsey and the swooning at the Paramount.
“Here’s the way it started,” he said, slipping into “All or Nothing at All,” his first hit record after leaving Tommy Dorsey and going on his own.
“That was the beginning,” he told t
he audience, which included Vice-President and Mrs. Agnew, Governor and Mrs. Reagan, and Presidential Advisor Henry Kissinger. He sang “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” and “I’ll Never Smile Again,” and “Nancy,” and “Fly Me to the Moon,” and “The Lady Is a Tramp,” and “Ol’ Man River.” He sang with power, giving each lyric exquisite phrasing, each word melodic shading, and the audience came roaring to its feet four times to give him a standing ovation. Then he sang his signature song, “My Way,” belting out the words so closely associated with his life. Then, with dramatic flourish, he announced that having built his career on saloon songs, he would end it the same way. The stagelights went dark, with only a pin spot picking out his profile in silhouette as he started singing “Angel Eyes.” He lit a cigarette and let the smoke envelop him. As he sang the last line, he strolled offstage into the darkness, refusing to do an encore.
He had made fifty-five films, more than one hundred albums, and some two thousand recordings.
But Frank’s announced retirement was not convincing to everyone.
“He’ll be back with a whole series of comebacks,” said Sammy Davis, Jr.
“No, no, he’s serious,” said Nancy Sinatra, Jr.
“I think he’ll be back,” said Bing Crosby.
“No way,” said Frank. “After thirty-five years in show business, I think I’ve had it … I’m tired. I’m through and I’m not kidding. It’s over.”
His family shared the farewell performance with him: his mother, his first wife, Nancy, Nancy, Jr., with husband, Hugh Lambert, and Frank’s youngest and most beautiful child, Tina, now twenty-three, with her fiancé, Robert Wagner (a relationship that Wagner ended in 1972).
Following the performance, Frank attended a party in his honor at the home of Rosalind Russell, then flew with the Agnews to Palm Springs.
“What a touching night that was,” recalled Peter Malatesta. “The Vice-President and his wife went to bed while I sat up with Frank all night drinking Stolichnaya and listening to him talk about the old days and his tough childhood. He talked about politics and told me how crude Lyndon Johnson was, lying nude around the White House getting massages in the middle of the night. That was the night Frank told me he had worked for the CIA under Johnson. I was stunned when he said that, but I didn’t ask any questions and he didn’t offer any explanations.”