A couple weeks later, though, Giancana took some of the air out of Frank’s sails. Giancana’s friend from Philadelphia Thomas DiBella remembered, “Giancana, having heard that Frank was going to be with the Kennedys, called Frank and said, ‘Hey, pallie, don’t forget about me.’ Frank stalled and said, ‘Well, I’ll see what I can do. But, you know, I, uh, I can’t make no promises. I mean, you know . . .’ Sam exploded at that,” said DiBella. “ ‘You already promised me, Frank,’ he said. ‘Now deliver or you’ll be sorry. You’re the one always sayin’ a deal is a deal.’ ”
According to DiBella, Frank didn’t like being threatened by Sam. He lost his temper and said, “Don’t ruin this for me. I worked hard for this honor. Now, screw you, Sam, if you’re not gonna give me a break here. Screw you, hear me? I’m not scared of you, pal. If you think I am, well, you’re an idiot. In fact, you’re a bigger idiot than you think I am.”
Sam hung up on him.
“This was not good,” recalled Thomas DiBella. “This was not good at all. Frank must’ve been crazy to have said those things to Sam.” In fact, Sinatra wasn’t the least bit intimidated by Sam Giancana or any other underworld character. In his mind, they were tough guys—but so was he. Of course, they were also dangerous. However, because he was famous, he felt invincible. Or as he liked to say, “They’re not going to take out Frank Sinatra, now are they?” So he wasn’t the least bit concerned about Giancana’s anger. In fact, he thoroughly enjoyed his White House visit on September 23, 1961, and never—at least not to anyone’s knowledge, anyway—gave Sam a second thought. Dave Powers, a presidential aide, recalled, “I still remember how he showed the White House maître d’ how to make Bloody Marys with his own fantastic special recipe. He sat on the balcony sipping his drink and looking out at the sun streaming in and the wonderful view of Washington. He turned to me and said, ‘Dave, all the work I did for Jack. Sitting here like this makes it all worthwhile.’ ”
The next day, Frank flew to Hyannis Port with Pat Lawford and Ted Kennedy on one of the Kennedys’ planes. The day after that, Frank, JFK, and a few other friends and family members went cruising for three and a half hours off Cape Cod on the Honey Fitz.
Senator George Smathers recalled, “Though everyone was having a good time, JFK was just a little cold to Sinatra. It was as if he was long past the buddy-buddy phase. Sinatra didn’t notice, or maybe didn’t care. On that cruise, he did ask Peter Lawford to talk to Bobby about laying off of Giancana. He also said he wanted Peter to arrange for him to have a meeting with Bobby. I know for a fact that Peter did later talk to Bobby, but he was told to mind his own business; Bobby was still going after Giancana, no matter what. Bobby also said he wouldn’t meet with Frank about any of it.”
When Peter told Frank that he wasn’t able to arrange a meeting for him with Bobby, he probably expected Frank to blow up. However, Sinatra just said, “Oh, well. Hey, pallie, you tried.”
If Frank seemed relieved, that’s because he was relieved. The last thing he wanted was to actually speak to Bobby about Sam Giancana. His entreatment to Peter was halfhearted. “I’m not gonna jeopardize my good relationship with the Kennedys for this punk mobster,” he told one of his close friends. “What do I look like? Do I look like some kinda moron? I don’t care if Sam’s hacked off or not.”
Thomas DiBella continues the story: “When Frank got back from the trip with the Kennedys, he lied and told Sam that he and Bobby had talked. But he never talked to Bobby on that trip. Yet Frank said, ‘Yeah, Mo [sometimes he called Giancana that], I wrote your name down, and I said, ‘This is my buddy boy. I just want you to know that,’ and he claimed Bobby nodded in recognition that he wouldn’t screw with Sam. But that was pure bullshit, and Sam somehow sensed it. His gut told him that Frank was lying.
“Then, when Sam had it checked out, he found out that Frank was confiding in certain people that, yes, it was all bullshit, that he hadn’t talked to Bobby and that he had no intention of talking to Bobby.
“Now Sam was pissed at Frank—I mean, really pissed—but he didn’t say nothing at that point. He just kept quiet. Sam wasn’t the only one with intuition, though. Frank started suspecting that Sam was ticked off with him.”
Indeed, transcripts of federal wiretaps from December 6, 1961, reflect the essence of DiBella’s memory. One day, Sam and his California associate Johnny Roselli were speaking on the telephone when Johnny told Sam that Frank had “an idea that you’re mad at him.”
“He has a guilty conscience,” Sam responded. “I never said nothing about it. But why lie to me? I haven’t got that coming.”
Johnny agreed. “If he can’t deliver,” he said, “I’d want him to tell me, ‘John, the load’s too heavy.’ ”
“That’s right,” Sam said. “At least then you know how to work. You won’t let your guard down. When he says he’s gonna do a guy a little favor, I don’t give a shit how long it takes, he’s got to do a guy a little favor!”
Over the years, accounts of Frank Sinatra’s relationship with the Kennedys have always suggested that Frank simply had no influence over Joe, Jack, and Bobby Kennedy where Sam Giancana was concerned, no matter how hard he tried. It’s true that Frank didn’t have any influence over them, but it’s also true that at least where Sam was concerned, he never tried. He may have implied that he would intervene . . . he may have promised he was going to do so . . . he may even have asked someone else, like Peter Lawford, to start a dialogue with them. However, from all available evidence, Frank backed off from truly assisting Sam Giancana with the Kennedys.
Nicholas D’Amato, a former member of the so-called Philadelphia Mafia family, observed, “Playing Sam Giancana for a sucker? If he wasn’t so talented, Sinatra never would have gotten away with it. To break a promise and then lie about it? I can’t think of anyone else who would’ve continued to breathe air after doing that to Sam.”
Thomas DiBella adds, “I once asked Sam why he let Frank get away with it and Sam said, ‘What can I do? Beat him up? Have him killed? He’s one of the most famous men in the world and I’m gonna be the one to do him in?’ So, you might say Sinatra had something on Sam and the rest of the mobsters who may have been pissed off at him. He was too famous to touch.”
By the fall of 1961, word had begun to spread once again that Frank had some sort of special relationship with the underworld. But the truth is that the mob never did much for Frank Sinatra, and Frank Sinatra never did much for the mob—not that anyone has ever been able to document, anyway—except for perhaps the occasional concert.
A couple of months after Frank’s betrayal of Sam, Sam’s associate Johnny Formosa suggested (in another FBI wiretapped conversation) that he “take out” Sinatra. Sam, even with the passing of some time, still wasn’t interested.
“Come on. Let’s show ’em,” Formosa pushed. “Let’s show those asshole Hollywood fruitcakes that they can’t get away with it as if nothing’s happened. Let’s hit Sinatra. Or I could whack out a couple of those other guys. [Peter] Lawford and [Dean] Martin. I could take [Sammy] Davis and put his other eye out.”
“No,” Giancana said. “I’ve got other plans for them.”
It turns out that the plan Sam Giancana had in mind was to have Frank Sinatra and his “pallies” open the Villa Venice, Sam’s new nightclub in Chicago.
“It was flashier than a Hollywood premiere,” said George Jacobs of the Rat Pack’s engagement at the Villa Venice, “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 grossed many tax-free millions for the Giancana outfit. Shortly after the Summit, Villa Venice, for all its elaborate new trappings set up for Mr. S.’s appearance, burned mysteriously to the ground and was never rebuilt.”
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br /> The Problem with Marilyn
At the end of August 1961, after Frank returned from his cruise with the Kennedys, he and Marilyn entertained guests on his own yacht. Prior to their leaving Frank’s home for the boat, Frank asked Jeanne Martin to help get Marilyn dressed. Apparently she was too disoriented from her medication to do so herself. Once they were on the yacht together, Frank lost patience with her. Jeanne Martin recalled, “He couldn’t wait to get her off that boat. She was giving him a hard time, taking pills and drinking. She was even talking marriage. Frank told me, ‘I swear to Christ, I’m ready to throw her right off this boat right now.’ When they got ashore, he called one of his assistants and had him escort Marilyn home.”
“Do you think you should stop seeing her?” Jeanne asked Frank. “She seems to not be doing well.”
“I don’t know what to do about her,” Frank said, seeming concerned, according to Jeanne’s memory.
“I’m surprised you have as much patience with her as you do,” Jeanne remarked.
“By now I would have cut any other dame loose,” Frank told her. “But this one—I just can’t do it.”
By the beginning of 1962, Marilyn was in so much trouble, Frank was concerned for her well-being. Jim Whiting, a good friend of Frank’s from New Jersey, related, “She refused to stop with the drugs, which, by the way, were prescribed by her doctor. It wasn’t like she was scoring them in the streets. [By this time, Frank and Marilyn were sharing the same psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson.] Worried that maybe she was a lost cause, Frank threw his hands in the air and said there wasn’t much he could do if she wouldn’t help herself. ‘She wants to kill herself,’ he said. ‘I’ve been there. I didn’t know what to do about it then, and I still don’t.’
“He was busy with The Manchurian Candidate film at the time, and that was important to him and took a lot of energy. He said it was his toughest role. I remember him saying, ‘I’m too old for this shit, all this anxiety, all this memorization.’ He said that all of those speeches in that film were driving him crazy. He couldn’t sleep at night, he said, with all those words running through his head.”
The Manchurian Candidate, directed by John Frankenheimer and based on the book by Richard Condon, with Laurence Harvey in the title role, and also Janet Leigh and Angela Lansbury, would turn out to be one of Sinatra’s finest movies. He and Harvey play soldiers who are captured by the communists during the Korean War. Brainwashed and then released, they become part of an assassination plot (orchestrated by Angela Lansbury, who plays Harvey’s mother). Frank’s excellent performance compared favorably with those he gave in From Here to Eternity and The Man with the Golden Arm.
“The movie was tough on him,” confirmed his butler, George Jacobs. “But Marilyn was taking a toll on him at the same time.”
“What do you think I can do to get a break from Marilyn?” Frank asked George, whose opinion he valued. The two were packing Sinatra’s suitcases for an upcoming trip.
“We can’t just take a break from people we care about, Mr. S.,” George said as he folded one of Frank’s shirts. “Sometimes it’s a fulltime job.”
“Yes, but Marilyn’s getting worse . . .”
“Maybe just ditch her, then?” George suggested, according to his memory of the conversation.
“Like Ava ditched me?” Frank responded. “No. I couldn’t do that to a person.”
“You’re too good-hearted, Mr. S.,” George observed.
“I’d just like to think I can do better for Marilyn than what Ava did for me,” Frank concluded. “That’s all.”
Publicity Stunt Engagement
In February 1962, Frank Sinatra surprised many of his friends, as well as the media and public, by announcing that he was going to marry twenty-six-year-old, blue-eyed dancer, singer, and actress Juliet Prowse. The two, who had met in August 1959, had been dating off and on for the past ten months. Most people were dumbfounded by the relationship; the two had never seemed to have much in common. Because Frank was also involved with other women at this time—Marilyn included—even those in his inner circle were confused by the sudden announcement.
While promoting his third memoir, Why Me?, Sammy Davis hit the nail on the head when he said he thought that part of the reason for the engagement to Juliet was Frank’s way of putting some distance between himself and Marilyn. “Marilyn was a sweetheart, but Frank had his hands full with her,” Sammy said. “Next thing I knew, I got a call from him telling me he’s involved with Juliet, and gonna marry her. And, to me, it was like my phony marriage to Loray White. I had my reasons and figured he had his. I asked him about it, and he didn’t really want to discuss it with me. So, I figured, ‘Hey, this isn’t any of my business, anyway.’ But I do think it had to do with Marilyn in some way; maybe trying to break from her a little.”12
“It was a strange and brief fling,” said Bea King of the Sinatra-Prowse union. King is a former Copa Girl who was a close friend of Juliet Prowse in 1962.
“What happened was, a dancer [Barrie Chase] walked out on the film Can-Can, which Sinatra was doing at this time with Shirley MacLaine. In came Juliet, replacing her. She was unknown at the time, originally from South Africa.
“Frank romanced her a little, got to know her. They hit it off, which was not surprising. She was beautiful. He gave her a $10,000 pearl necklace; I saw it with my own eyes, so maybe there really was something momentarily significant going on between them.
“Soon after, they were engaged. Michael Romanoff hosted an engagement party for them at his restaurant [Romanoff’s]. I was there. Frank gave her a five-carat diamond. But when I asked Juliet about Frank after the engagement party, she dismissed the whole thing, telling me, ‘Oh, don’t be silly. We’ll never marry.’ When I asked why, she said, ‘Frank’s not serious about this thing, and neither am I. This is just for fun.’ That’s exactly what she told me. ‘This is just for fun.’ ”
When Juliet invited Frank to go to South Africa to meet her parents, he decided to do it.
“He met her parents. She met his. And all for a publicity stunt?” Bea King noted years later. “But, I thought, ‘Well, this is Hollywood, isn’t it?’ I happen to know that her heart really belonged to her manager, the much younger [than Frank] Eddie Goldstone. She loved him, not Frank. Since she was unable to become a United States citizen for two more years, she became his ‘ward’ at about the same time she and Frank got engaged. Eddie was sponsoring her, making sure she was gainfully employed, that sort of thing.”
“Frank just got swept away by the whole thing,” said Dean Martin. “She was a good kid. She was young and good in the sack. It was no skin off his nose to help her out. She needed the publicity, he gave it to her. I told Frank people were thinking it wasn’t a real engagement. He laughed and said, ‘Oh, ye assholes of little faith.’ ”
“A great girl. A wonderful girl,” Frank said to reporters who tracked him down after a round of golf at the Hillcrest Country Club in Los Angeles.
“You really shook us up,” said one of the reporters, referring to the surprise of the engagement.
“I’m a little shook up myself,” he said. “I’m forty-six now. It’s time I settled down.”
When asked when the wedding would take place, Frank answered, “It probably won’t be for some time. Whenever she sets the day, that’s okay for me. I’ll let her call all the shots. That’s the way it’s done. I know she wants to have her parents come over from South Africa and I want to have them here, too. After all, she’s their only daughter. They’re wonderful people. She’s got a brother who’s a doctor. I know he’ll want to be here for the wedding, too. A wonderful guy.”
When had Frank ever been so cooperative with reporters, giving them so much detail about a relationship? It seemed a little fishy. The reporter even mentioned that Juliet was dating Eddie Goldstone, and he—Sinatra—was “linked with Marilyn Monroe.” Frank didn’t fly off the handle—which was also suspicious. Instead he said, “Juliet has been my one roman
ce. Our dates have been private. Not public.” He also added that Juliet was preparing a new Las Vegas nightclub act, to be written by his friends, songwriters Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn. He was so forthcoming; it just didn’t seem kosher.
Meanwhile, Juliet was just as chatty. “Frank doesn’t want me to work,” she told Louella Parsons. “But I do. After working this long and this hard for a career, I’d hate to give it up.” Meanwhile, Eddie Goldstone began negotiating to get her out of her contract with 20th Century–Fox and set her up with her own production company, called Pirouette Productions, and all because of the sudden publicity that the association with Sinatra had thus far generated.
When asked about Juliet’s comments, Frank told another reporter, Earl Wilson, “She’s not going to do any work. I’d rather not have it.” As for that deal with 20th Century–Fox? Frank said he expected her to “just walk away from it.”
In fact, Juliet Prowse was anything but blase about her career; she wasn’t going to “walk away” from any opportunity or give up the spotlight. In 1962, one movie studio executive said of her, “Prowse is a cocky, arrogant kid who’s been bumming around this business since she was twelve years old. Nothing is going to stand in her way.”
If the purpose of the “engagement” was to encourage people to become interested in Juliet Prowse, it worked. After she and Frank were viewed as a couple, she became a major star. The engagement lasted just a short time. Supposedly, Juliet called it off. “Talk about short engagements,” Johnny Carson said. “Frank has had longer engagements in Las Vegas.”
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