by Tapper, Jake
The Power and the Glitter: The Hollywood-Washington Connection, by Ronald Brownstein. New York: Pantheon, 1990.
Rat Pack Confidential, by Shawn Levy. London: Fourth Estate, 2002. (The Formosa and Giancana transcript is taken from this book.)
Robert Kennedy and His Times, by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. New York: Ballantine, 1978.
Sammy: An Autobiography, by Sammy Davis Jr. and Jane and Burt Boyar. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000.
Sinatra: All or Nothing at All, documentary film by Alex Gibney, produced by Alcon Television Group, Jigsaw Productions, and the Kennedy/Marshall Company, 2015.
Sinatra: Behind the Legend, by J. Randy Taraborrelli. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2015.
Sinatra and the Jack Pack: The Extraordinary Friendship between Frank Sinatra and John F. Kennedy—Why They Bonded and What Went Wrong, by Michael Sheridan with David Harvey. New York: Skyhorse, 2016.
Sinatra: The Chairman, by James Kaplan. New York: Doubleday, 2015. (The Giancana and Rosselli transcripts are taken from this book.)
Sinatra: The Photographs, by Andrew Howick with a foreword by Barbara Sinatra. New York: Abrams, 2015.
Sinatra on Sinatra, compiled by Guy Yarwood. London: W. H. Allen, 1982.
Tell It to Louella!, by Louella Parsons. New York: Putnam, 1961.
Tippi: A Memoir, by Tippi Hedren. New York: William Morrow, 2016.
What Have They Built You to Do?: The Manchurian Candidate and Cold War America, by Mathew Frye Jacobson and Gaspar González. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.
Why Me? The Sammy Davis, Jr. Story, by Sammy Davis, Jr. and Jane and Burt Boyar. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1989.
Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr., by Sammy Davis, Jr. and Jane and Burt Boyar. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1965.
Some other sources include:
Automobile information was offered by David Burge as well as Joe Sheppard in the Daily Mail online, “Drive Me to the Moon! One of Five Vintage Italian Cars Given to Members of Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack Emerges for Sale for £300,000,” August 13, 2017.
Description of the Tombs came from description of visitation from James Rhem et al., Plaintiffs, v. Benjamin J. Malcolm, Commissioner of Correction for the City of New York, et al., Defendants. No. 70 Civ. 3962. United States District Court, S. D. New York. January 7, 1974.
Palm Springs was described in Explorer’s Guide: Palm Springs and Desert Resorts, by Christopher Paul Baker, Explorer’s Great Destinations 2008. Sinatra’s Rancho Mirage compound was covered in Architectural Digest in December 1998 and Palm Springs Life on November 6, 2014.
Information about the Daisy (yes, I know it was actually founded in 1962, after this book takes place) from martinostimemachine.blogspot.com. As a general note, I took liberties with events that occurred in 1961–1962. “Boys Night Out,” which members of the Rat Pack sing in December 1961 within these pages, wasn’t released by Sinatra until March 1962. I similarly played with the release dates of Lolita, the Jimmy Dean song “PT-109,” and so on.
Information about and attitude of John Wayne drawn from a 1974 BBC interview with him and from two UPI stories, “Sinatra Blasted for Writer Choice,” March 1960, and “Sinatra vs. ‘Big John,’” May 1960.
Dialogue from the Rat Pack show re-created in the book is largely drawn from a 1963 concert, Live at the Sands, with additional information from Mary Manning, “Rat Pack Reveled in Vegas; Revered by the World,” in Las Vegas Sun, May 15, 2008.
The relationship between Ambassador Kennedy and Gloria Swanson is detailed in The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys: An American Saga, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. New York: St. Martin’s, 1991.
The January 1962 Los Angeles snowstorm was written about in “Freak Southland Storm Brings Snow, Sleet, Hail,” Los Angeles Times, January 22, 1962.
The death of attorney Jerry Giesler was covered by the Associated Press, “$800k Estate Left by Giesler,” January 20, 1962.
Some of the early days of Scientology were covered in “‘Have You Ever Been a Boo-Hoo?’,” by James Phelan, Saturday Evening Post, March 21, 1964.
“Project Celebrity” information was taken from “Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard Offered Rewards for Celebrity Recruits in 1955,” by Kirsten Acuna, Business Insider, July 19, 2012.
Shirley MacLaine talked about some of the difficulties filming The Trouble with Harry here: https://talkfilmsociety.com/columns/beginners-guide-to-alfred-hitchcock-the-trouble-with-harry-1955.
The police poster at the LAPD headquarters was described by Alan Nicholls in News of the Day, Age, August 22, 1961. The police bulletin came from https://www.scpr.org/programs/offramp/2017/03/03/55421/la-city-archive-the-lapd-s-police-bulletin-opens-w/. The death of Officer Riegel is from Valley Times, July 3, 1961, https://www.odmp.org/officer/11267-policeman-sidney-riegel.
John Frankenheimer discussed some of his experiences filming The Manchurian Candidate for the Criterion Collection.
Some details about filming The Birds came from Mark Mancini, “10 Fascinating Facts About The Birds,” Mental Floss, January 4, 2018, and from https://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Cinemafantastique_(1980)_The_Making_of_Alfred_Hitchcock%27s_The_Birds. Some dialogue attributed to LeGrue was actually said by bird trainer Ray Berwick in “The Making of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds,” by Kyle B. Counts and Steve Rubin in Cinemafantastique (Fall 1980).
Some of the dialogue and descriptions about filming The Manchurian Candidate in New York came from Don Ross, “Frank Sinatra: ‘Decent, Wholesome and Nice Boy,’” New York Herald Tribune, February 21, 1962; UPI, “Actor Laurence Harvey Is Helped from the Freezing Waters,” February 8, 1962; Earl Wilson, “Midnight Earl,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, February 9, 1962.
The description of Toots Shor’s restaurant came from John Bainbridge, “Toots’s World; Part II—Friendship,” The New Yorker, November 18, 1950, as well as https://www.tipsontables.com/toots.html. Details of the Psycho shower scene were relayed by Will Hodgkinson, “Secrets of the Psycho Shower,” The Guardian, March 29, 2010; Oliver Lunn, “10 Things You (Probably) Never Knew About the Shower Scene in Psycho,” BFI, December 11, 2017; and Bernard Weinraub, “‘Psycho’ in Janet Leigh’s Psyche,” New York Times, May 1, 1995.
Lolita actually premiered June 13, 1962, at Loew’s State and Murray Hill Theaters in New York. Kate Cameron wrote about it in “‘Lolita’ On Screen…for Adults Only,” New York Daily News, June 10, 1962. Some of the Kubrick dialogue was taken from an unpublished interview with the director by novelist and screenwriter Terry Southern; see http://www.archiviokubrick.it/english/words/interviews/1962southern.html.
Operation Northwoods was described in the National Security Archive at the George Washington University at https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//news/20010430/northwoods.pdf. Other operations described in the book come from various sources, including a memo by Brigadier General William Craig to Brigadier General Edward Lansdale as reprinted in Letters of Note: Possible Actions to Provoke, Harass, or Disrupt Cuba, August 23, 2011; http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/08/possible-actions-to-provoke-harass-or.html.
Lawford actually delivered the news to Sinatra that President Kennedy wouldn’t be staying with him by phone. His thoughts in this novel are taken from his interview with Kitty Kelley for His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra. The party at Bing’s house was taken from Kelley’s book, as well as Bill Adler’s Sinatra: The Man and the Myth (New York: New American Library, 1987) and Donald Spoto’s Marilyn Monroe: The Biography (New York: HarperCollins, 1993).
Disneyland was described in “Your First Visit to Disneyland,” Long Beach Independent-Press-Telegram, July 15, 1955. A great map of the park in that era can be found at https://disneyavenue.wordpress.com/2015/04/10/disneyland-map-evolution-1955-2015/. Christopher Klein wrote about “Disneyland’s Disastrous Opening Day” at https://www.history.com/news/disneylands-disastrous-opening-day-60-years-ago. Other thoughts are from Kathy Merlock Jackson and Mark West, Disneyland and
Culture: Essays on Parks and Their Influence. London: McFarland Books, 2011.
Details about Le Havre during World War II came from Andrew Knapp, “The Destruction and Liberation of Le Havre in Modern Memory,” War in History 14 (November 2007).
Details about the Hollywood sign came from https://hollywoodsign.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Hollywood-Sign-Brochure-FINAL_102918.pdf; Rob Owen, “Hooray for the Hollywood Sign Hike,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 2016; “Groups Rally to Preserve Historic ‘Hollywood’ Sign,” Van Nuys News, January 18, 1973.
Dirty fighting in World War II is described in https://www.scribd.com/doc/33564438/Dirty-Fighting-World-War-2-hand-to-hand-combat-manual.
“The Ugly, Violent Clearing of Chavez Ravine Before It Was Home to the Dodgers” can be read at https://laist.com/2018/10/17/dodger_stadium_chavez_ravine_battle.php.
The sad story of Marilyn Monroe is detailed by James Spada, “The Man Who Kept Marilyn’s Secrets,” Vanity Fair, May 1991, and James Patterson, The House of Kennedy. New York: Little, Brown, 2020. Lawford’s introduction of Monroe at the JFK birthday taken verbatim from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHt1_HXN8LI. Additional details about the Kennedy birthday party were gleaned from press accounts at the time in May 1962, including “Good Time Had by All at Million Dollar Party,” by Milt Freudenheim, Chicago Daily News Service; and “Kennedy Bridges a Gap,” by Mary McGrory, Washington Star.
Arthur Krim’s house was detailed at http://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-j-harper-poor-mansion-no-33-east.html.
But again, let me underline, this is a work of fiction. My editors are insisting that I tell you I completely invented the song “The Devil May Dance,” because they’re worried some of the eager Googlers among you might drive yourselves to the brink trying to find it. Don’t look for it; it’s not real. Neither is the “Cubana” song from the scene on Tom Sawyer’s Island, nor the snippet of the Sinatra song Lawford and Charlie hear on their way to Sinatra’s compound.
I had great help in writing this book, from the support of my boss, Jeff Zucker, to wonderful edits suggested by dear friends John Berman, Matt Klam, Damon Lindelof, Geoff Shandler, and my little brother, Professor Aaron Hahn Tapper. After making excellent edits and suggestions to much of the first draft, my first editor, Reagan Arthur, left for another publishing house and I was lucky enough to have the talented Judy Clain come and steer the ship through rough seas and to port—I am so grateful to her and her team, including Helen O’Hare and Miya Kumangai and the whole gang at Little, Brown and, of course, Michael Pietsch of Hachette Book Group, who has been publishing my books for more than twenty years now. My lawyer Bob Barnett was a stalwart supporter as always; my agent Jay Sures was supportive while helping The Hellfire Club find a home in Hollywood. Most important, of course, I thank my loving parents, my best friend/wife, Jennifer, and my creative, beautiful, amazing children, Alice and Jack, to whom this book is dedicated.
About the Author
CNN anchor and chief Washington correspondent Jake Tapper joined the network in January 2013. Tapper anchors a weekday program, The Lead with Jake Tapper, which debuted in March 2013 and expanded from one to two hours in April 2021. He has hosted CNN’s Sunday-morning show State of the Union since June 2015. In April 2021, Tapper also became the lead anchor for CNN for Washington, DC, events. His nonfiction book The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor and his first novel, The Hellfire Club, were both New York Times bestsellers. He lives in Washington with his wife, daughter, and son.
Also by Jake Tapper
The Hellfire Club
The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor
Down and Dirty: The Plot to Steal the Presidency
Body Slam: The Jesse Ventura Story