B009HOTHPE EBOK

by Paul Anka

  Frank gets massively pissed at what he takes to be an insult to his pride. He comes back and again they won’t give him markers. He’s drinking. And when he drinks, he’s rough. Like Johnny Carson, who was off the radar when he drank. Total Jekyll-and-Hyde transformation. No matter, whatever he did, I loved him!

  It’s late at night, were all in the lounge bar, and Frank’s still steaming about the night before. The next thing I know, he’s standing up on the blackjack table in the middle of the casino. And of course everybody stops playing. People’s mouths are wide open. Frank’s buddies are rushing over: “What’s up, Frank?” The pit bosses are trying to calm him down, figure out what’s the matter. And Frank’s going, “This place was sand when they built it, and it’ll be sand when I’m fucking done with it.” He’s ranting on and on, cursing. The pit bosses are telling him, “Aw, Frank, c’mon down, man, forget it.” Finally they get him off the table and into the operator’s room at the Sands. He doesn’t want them to call Carl Cohen, the manager of the Sands. This scene gets reported to Carl Cohen who is a salt-of-the-earth type of guy, always the greatest gentlemen, an individual who I never saw lose his temper. I loved the guy; he was my godfather. It’s 1:30 in the morning, but Carl is going to try and sort it out, make Frank see reason. He’s used to getting his way, Frank, people made exceptions for him even when he got nasty because Frank was Frank, you know.

  They wake Carl up ’cause the management guys who worked at the casino all lived on the property, in these little villas in the back in an area called the Aqueduct. Carl comes over in the middle of the night, in his bathrobe, in a golf cart, parks behind the coffee shop adjacent to the casino. We are informed that Mr. Cohen has arrived; Jilly and I take Sinatra back to the coffee shop so that he can talk to Carl. There’s a large security guard standing next to Carl. In his tantrum Frank throws a chair at the security guard.

  There’s a pot of coffee on the table. Carl is sitting there in his bathrobe, and he and Sinatra get into it. Frank is standing in front of Carl raging and Carl is reprimanding Frank about the chair incident, trying very reasonably to explain that things have changed. “It’s not our joint anymore, Frank, can’t you see that? There are rules. We can’t give you the markers anymore, we just can’t do it.”

  With that, Sinatra says, “You fat Jew motherfucker.” And he pulls the tablecloth out from under the coffee and everything on the table falls onto Carl Cohen, scalding him with the boiling-hot coffee. That’s it, Carl had enough. He gets up and punches Frank Sinatra right in the mouth and knocks his caps out, they’re all over the floor. At least they were caps! They rush Sinatra out, Jilly says to me, “Paul, get him the hell outta here, the cops are going to show up.” Which they do and make a report. Meanwhile, they get a Learjet to fly Sinatra out, back to L.A. to go get his teeth done, and see Dr. Stein. The entire town applauded Cohen for what he did—Frank’s behavior had been getting more and more abusive. Frank threatened to have his legs broken, he wanted Jilly to go after him, but nobody was going after Carl. He was respected. He puts out the word to the boys he wants Carl dead. The boys’ response was, “You don’t touch him, you don’t go near him.” That’s how revered and loved Carl Cohen was.

  You have to understand, the mob still ran the place, and Carl was one of the boys from Cleveland. Frank was a singer, who may have all these mob connections but he wasn’t a mob guy. He was an entertainer. A whole different category. Whatever Frank’s affiliation was with Giancana or any other mobster, it doesn’t matter. They knew you should behave properly whoever you were. You just don’t go around threatening people—especially high-ranking mob guys. If you get out of line, they put you in your place. They’re not going to let him go bully these guys up like that.

  Those guys killed each other for less than that! You see what I’m saying? Mob guy or not a mob guy has nothing to do with it. It’s your behavior, how you conduct yourself. Like he sings in that great Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen song, “I could tell you a lot, But you gotta to be true to your code.”

  * * *

  In 2001 I had a small part in the movie 3000 Miles to Graceland, playing a pit boss. I would take all the actors out gambling every night. What I tried to teach them was that ultimately you’re going to lose, that’s why those buildings are here, that’s why there’s a pyramid there now, a Statue of Liberty, so you need to count the cards, you need to use common sense, because luck is a very fickle lady at the tables. After all my years in Vegas I learned this stuff from the boys, the mob guys—they knew the odds were in their favor. And, if by chance, they weren’t, well, they had ways of changing the odds. Unless you count or have a system or knew how to gamble, you are not going to win, period. So I would load the table up with whoever, directors, actors, friends. I would say “Okay, let’s hit, it’s plus,” when it looked favorable. “There’s paint coming,” I’d tell them, meaning king, queen, jack. “With picture cards you’re going to win.” Guys you see in movies about the casinos like George Clooney wouldn’t last the night in a real situation because they don’t know the smell or the feel of the room.

  I gambled much more in the ’70s than I do now. Today I gamble very intelligently. You’ll find me at baccarat and 21 tables, less at the craps table. I’ve sat down and gambled with guys who lost a million at the tables. On the other hand there were gamblers who laid extravagant tips. A wild media tycoon from Australia, Kerry Packer, one of the richest guys in the world asked a waitress if she had a mortgage on her house. She said yes, as a matter of fact she did. How much? $120,000. No problem. He paid it. I’ve seen him tip $100,000. His reckless gambling was legendary. In 1999, he lost $22 million at a series of London casinos. On one occasion he played $1 million at four roulette tables, lost every penny, and simply walked out without any qualms. He also won huge amounts, like the $33 million he won at the MGM Grand in Vegas. When gamblers start winning huge amounts of money, say, at blackjack, they’d bring in guys called mechanics, who would come in with a single deck and deal from the bottom or the top of a pack. Those days are gone, doesn’t exist anymore.

  In the old days with Frank I got pretty extravagant with my bets, but my gambling limit now is $100,000. We’d often tip the dealers three or four thousand because we knew they had families.

  The odds for gambling for the whole country—whether it is sports, horse racing—were set by one guy. It used to be a guy called Roxy Roxborough, who sat in the condo behind the strip, who would set the odds for everything—one guy. He’d set every football game, he’d set the odds for basketball. He introduced mathematical formulas and computer models into the megabillion-dollar sports wagering. The point is, if you’re going to be a serious gambler you need to know what you’re doing, and how to analyze the line that has been put up, to favor both sides. Do you take the dog? Now if you’re playing cards you’ve got to have a system for every game to win and that means money management, spreading to three hands, how many aces are out, how many face cards are out. If you’re losing, you change the table because there are systems in play that you are not going to beat.

  Meyer Lansky, the mob boss and financial brains, was out of Miami Beach. Miami was a great hang but there was no gambling. Except for the private card games, sports betting shenanigans that went on surreptitiously on the balcony. You had the weather, the food, the lavish hotels. Ben Novack ran the Fontainebleau for the mob when Miami was the place to be, and he was a royal pain in the ass. Ben was a nebbishy kind of guy but he was the boss of the hotel and he always wanted to hang around with us. The stars, the girls, the action that surrounded the stars. He was crazed to get in on the action but he was a drag and we never wanted him around. And he was a chiseler, to boot. He’d pay you $25,000 for performing there but then he’d charge you $15,000 for food and incidentals. Naturally you could get really pissed off at this guy.

  One day I said, “We really have to do something to stick it to this pain in the ass.” I’m a natural born prankster—it’s in my DNA—and if ever anybody
needed to be pranked it was Ben Novack. He always wanted one of the girls Frank or I had, so I got ahold of this audio porno tape, put the tape in the tape recorder in the adjoining bedroom, and turned up the sound. I called downstairs to Ben’s office. “Ben,” I said, “come on up, we got some great action going on, we’ve got a wild girl up here who’ll do absolutely anything. I know you’ll want to get in on it.” Ben always wanted our women, because we always had the best. He was always crazed to get laid, but we’d always blow him off. I put my cousin Bob Skaff in there to make noises and act as if he’s in the middle of this sex scene, so that Ben would think this was live action. Ben shows up with his Moroccan servant Boo and his Alsatian dog. I said, “Ben, get ready! Take your clothes off because when the guy in there is finished you’re next.” He sits down. He’s got his clothes off. He’s holding his hearing aid. After hearing the commotion coming from the bedroom, with his dog next to him by the chair, even the dog is panting and sniffing around, reacting to the noise.

  Ben’s hearing screams from the next room, “Oooooh, baby! Oh, do it to me!” He’s getting excited, my cousin Bob Skaff runs out of the room and says, “Ooh, man, that was out-rageous!” I say, “Ben you’re up, go get ’em, sport!” He runs into the room, holding his hearing aid remote wired to his ear, with the dog running after him. He runs over to the bed and sees the tape machine. You should have seen his face. God I love pranks. Nothing like getting even.

  The Rat Pack was a perpetual New Year’s Eve party, but there was a darker side to the group, and although I saw it, I didn’t feel obliged to follow it. I knew all their bad habits: the late nights, the drinking, the smoking, the womanizing. I decided to do what they did on stage and chose not to imitate the rest.

  After Sinatra’s scene with Carl Cohen, Frank never came back to the Sands. Caesars was the competition across the street and in solidarity with Frank we all moved over to Caesars to perform. I still had a contract at the Sands so I stayed there a bit longer until I’d fulfilled my commitment. But the truth is, after the Carl Cohen incident at the Sands, the thrill was gone.

  Caesars was the new sizzle in town, until the next wave came with my buddy Steve Wynn. Caesars Palace turned into an incredible store; everything about it was just up up up, sizzle sizzle sizzle, from the showroom to the restaurants, and that became the new hang place.

  Jay Sarno, Jerry Zarowitz, and Nate Jacobson were behind Caesars Palace. Nate had this wild idea: he wanted to create a high-rise casino. The mob guys laughed. “Dream on! You’ll never see a high-rise in Vegas.” Wrong!

  I can remember when it all started. One night in the early ’60s while I’m performing at the Sands, I met Nathan Jacobson. He was in the insurance business, and he tells me wants to own a casino, a high-rise casino. I knew him through Irv Feld; we had some investments with him. Nate, who was never a mob guy, came out to Vegas with this dream. Jerry Zarowitz and Jay Sarno, the guys who’d built Circus Circus, were also involved in the casino and had ties to mob figures. Sarno in fact had borrowed $18 million from the Teamster’s pension fund to build this hotel/casino they were planning. Caesars became the biggest real estate bang and return of money in the United States.

  They didn’t have a name yet, but Sarno figured the Roman general Julius Caesar had the right kind of monumental ring to it, so it was named Caesars. Nate used to sit with me at the Sands Hotel when I was there and show me the blueprints of this casino he was going to put up and I’d give him suggestions about how to design the showrooms, the vestibule, the look, and so on. Out of the blue he said, “We want you to come in with us to open the place, we’ll give you 5 percent.”

  I huddled with my business team and Al Rettig to discuss the matter. They said, “Nah, you don’t want to take it. It’s trouble, the kind of trouble you don’t wanna attract. If you apply for a gaming license, the government will look under your toenails. They’re all over you, and you’re so clean, Paul, you don’t wanna invite that kinda scrutiny. When the feds start looking at you you’re tainted whether you’re innocent or not—you are guilty by association. People assume, understand?” But I was kind of torn. Because I loved the environment.

  You are either on this side or on that side and I didn’t want the government poking into my business—that’s never a good idea. You don’t want the association, the implication. Let’s say you are hanging with the group of investors and half of them are connected guys; just being in that room with them you’re compromised.

  But still, Nate Jacobson kept after me with this crazy idea of his of a high-rise resort in the midst of all these flat, one-story and two-story casinos. He was laughed at in the beginning by Jack Entratter and Carl Cohen; all the Vegas old-timers were saying “You’ll never see a high-rise; people don’t want to come to Vegas and go up in elevators, for chrissake. They can get that back home.” But Nate was convinced. He was totally focused on getting this place up. He and Jay Sarno wanted to pattern it after the Fontainebleau Hotel in Florida.

  Like Nate, Jay saw the Fontainebleau and was completely taken by it. Jay lived in Atlanta and he thought that Morris Lapidus, the architect, was a genius, and the Fontainebleau was the ultimate dream palace. He went back to Atlanta and built a motel called the Cabana that in effect was a little mini Fontainebleau. The Fontainebleau was so famous it didn’t even have a sign outside—it didn’t need it, that’s how distinctive it was. It was the most romantic, idyllic place. Like Steve Wynn says, “It was one of those places that was truly better than the real world.”

  Anyway, here’s how the story continues. I’m in Italy recording, making records in Italian, making videos in Italian. Nate’s still chasing me to get involved, to the point where he tracks me down over there. He’s in a limousine with me and his decorator and we’re driving around Rome, and you know Rome, aesthetically, it’s bursting with statues, and the history and the ruins.… We’re driving through the Piazza Navona, Nate sees a bunch of old Roman statues and he’s going to his decorator, “Ah! Lookathat! I want eight of those—but with heads; I want six of those with legs; I want nine of those with arms.” He wanted literally to copy all this history and take it home with him—all of Rome. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but nobody told Nate that. Anyway, that’s what you see at Caesars—as much of Rome’s 1,000-year history that he could fit into a casino. All the statues that fit! That was Nate’s motto.

  When they finally opened Caesars in 1966, they only had $70,000 in the cage to pay money out to winners. This is a miniscule amount compared to today’s casinos where millions and millions are brought in by trucks for their bank cages to pay off the gamblers. It was a huge success, but did it make Nate and Zarowitz happy? Of course not. They were a big hit, you’d think they’d be congratulating each other, breaking open magnums of champagne, but no, it was out and out war. Nate and Zarowitz fought tooth and nail. I mean it was a never-ending feud.

  Caesars becomes the new happening place. Later on, due to Sarno and Zarowitz’s mob connections, the gambling commission makes them sell it to Clifford Perlman, who owns the Lums chain of restaurants. Soon Nate gets himself into such a pickle, the typical Vegas scenario: legitimate guy, family man, moves out to Vegas, makes money, loses money, winds up in a little gambling joint on the north shore of Lake Tahoe, Nevada.

  I’d go to visit him because he was always a good guy. One of the last times I saw him I find him at 2:00 A.M. He’s got some cute little side dish with him. You can’t gamble in your own place in Nevada, and by now it’s two in the morning and Nate had had a few, so we go to this other joint across town. I’m just being courteous and going along, ’cause he was always decent to me. He starts throwing craps, and he’s losing huge amounts, like $200,000.

  I’ll never forget this. He’s playing and he keeps losing and losing—meanwhile there’s this guitar player in the lounge, thirty yards away tops. The guy’s playing “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.” Nate’s losing, the place is almost empty, not many people around, and Nate by this time has had a
few more. “Arrgghh!” he says like some seersucker pirate, putting his glass down, saying, “You!” He looks at the guitar player. “Hey … Come over here!” He’s shouting at the guy. The kid puts down his guitar and comes over. Then he says to the pit boss in this up-all-night voice, “Aah wan him ta roll!” The pit boss figures “Aright, he’s in two hundred large, what the hell.”

  So the kid starts to roll the dice for Nate. It’s snake eyes. He rolls again and, Jesus! It’s a square pair. It’s a hot table. The kid keeps winning and Nate walks out with a hundred-grand winner. Anyway that’s the last time I saw Nate and probably the last time anybody saw the guitar player.

  God, I remember the first time I played Caesars Palace. Management called and said, “Paul, Muhammad Ali is here. He loves your music, and wants to see the show.” “Muhammad Ali? You gotta be kidding!” After the show he comes back. I got a bunch of pictures with him taken back there, he and I. He sat down on that couch with me and said, God, I love to sing that ‘Lonely Boy’ song.” He’s got that inimitable voice and he just sat there and sang it. There’s Ali, King of the World, singing my song to me in the most sincere growly voice imaginable. Goddamn!

  I’m just a lonely boy

  Lonely and blue

  I’m all alone

  With nothin’ to do

  From there he went on to do “Puppy Love,” “Diana,” “You Are My Destiny.” I was blown away by that. I got such a big kick out of that Muhammad Ali, man. The most recognized figure in the world at one time, very cool. A man I respected who was smart and funny.

  * * *

  Sammy Davis? Loveable character, very funny man. A very talented guy who had his ins and outs with Frank because, you know Frank could be pretty brutal on him. I’d watched Sammy perform up in Canada from a young age; then all of a sudden there he is sitting at a table in front of me. We had a lot of good times together. Amazing, hilarious impressionist, great singer, didn’t really read music; it was all memorized. I did a few benefits for him, and wrote “I’m Not Anyone” for him.