Frank_ The Voice Part 14

Full of confidence, he started his routine. Then he touched his tie and Frank rose and joined him. The place went nuts, the audience jumping to its feet. Silvers and Sinatra did the USO routine all over again: singing lessons for Frank, Phil pinching Sinatra's cheek, even a sharp slap or two when the stupid pupil just couldn't get it right.

The crowd ate it up. They stood again when Sinatra sat back down without bowing, yielding the floor to Silvers. At the end, Phil beckoned him back, and they took their bows together. Then the comic administered a killer.

"May I take a bow for Rags?" he said.

The place went dead quiet. Even Podell teared up. Sinatra stared at the floor. Fortunately, a Variety Variety reporter was there to witness the whole thing. SINATRA'S STOOGERY FOR PHIL SILVERS NY NITERY PREEM AN INSPIRED EVENT, the headline read the next morning. The accompanying story said, "That appreciative gesture by Sinatra understandably sets him in a niche all his own in the big, sentimental heart of show business." reporter was there to witness the whole thing. SINATRA'S STOOGERY FOR PHIL SILVERS NY NITERY PREEM AN INSPIRED EVENT, the headline read the next morning. The accompanying story said, "That appreciative gesture by Sinatra understandably sets him in a niche all his own in the big, sentimental heart of show business."

The reaction of the sentimental but businesslike Louis B. Mayer is unrecorded.

On Tuesday the tenth, Sinatra was back in L.A., wrung out by the trip. Whorf was doing his best to shoot the movie around him, but at a certain point the director could do nothing without his star. It turned out Whorf would have to wait a while longer. The studio's production memo for that day reads: Bobby Burns [now Sinatra's manager-another theft from Dorsey] phoned 9/10 and said Sinatra arrived from New York that morning, but was tired and would not report, that he would broadcast [his radio show] on Wednesday and report on Thursday.

A couple of days later even the production memos were beginning to sound exasperated: Called Sinatra for rehearsal but didn't report. He had an appointment to rehea.r.s.e with [the ch.o.r.eographer] Jack Donohue at 10:30 a.m. but didn't come in. Publicity Department also had made appointment with him to shoot magazine cover still. He finally arrived on lot at 2:20 p.m., shot the poster still, and then went to Stage 10 and ran through number once with Mr. Donohue. Sinatra said it was a "cinch," said he had an appointment and had to leave, which he did, without further rehearsing, at 2:45 p.m.

On the twenty-third, a Monday, Sinatra could barely pull himself out of bed: Sinatra only worked part of day. He worked from 11:22 a.m. to 12:05, when dismissed for lunch. He was called back to rehea.r.s.e at 1:05, but he did not report.

It wasn't just that he was ambivalent about filmmaking: there was trouble at home. The ever-present low-level hostilities between Frank and Nancy had escalated into open warfare. It didn't matter how much he tried to justify that nightclub picture of him and Lana-yes, they worked on the same lot; yes, Mayer liked his valuable properties to be seen together, et cetera, et cetera. But there was no getting around that giddy look on his face, his tight clasp of her hand. They looked like two honeymooners. In apparent acknowledgment of her guilt, Turner had curtailed her friendly visits to Nancy.

Nancy had other complaints. Frank had just bought Dolly and Marty a new house in Weehawken for $22,000. Out of pocket, cash, and without consulting Nancy, who tried hard to control the family purse strings. Furious, Nancy opened her doors, wide, to her own family. At any given hour of the day, three generations of Barbatos were present, nieces and nephews draped all over the place; aunts, uncles, and cousins chatting in the kitchen. Frank, who had done his best to look as though he lived there, now no longer saw the need. He and his wife weren't speaking: What was the point?

On Sat.u.r.day night, October 5, he went to a party hosted by Sonja Henie: Lana was there. She and Frank danced together "many times," a subsequent newspaper account reported. He failed to go home that night.

The next day he phoned Nancy and told her he wanted a separation. A divorce? she asked.

He wanted his freedom, he told her. He didn't want a divorce. He was going to find an apartment. She slammed down the phone.

A half hour later, having done her best to compose herself, she called Evans at home. Evans's wife answered, then handed the telephone to her husband. The moment Nancy heard George's voice, she broke down sobbing.

As soon as he understood that the inevitable had finally happened, the publicist went into crisis mode. He could sit on the story for a little while, but just a little while. If he didn't shape the narrative, it would spill out raw or exaggerated into public. First, however, Evans attempted a desperation play: he called Frank and tried to talk some sense into him.

Frank, of course, wasn't having any. He had made up his mind.

So the press would have to be informed. The timing couldn't have been worse: the papers would be all over the story first thing Monday morning. Evans phoned the gatekeepers, Lolly Parsons and Hedda Hopper, and read them both the same script. "It's just a family squabble," he said. "The case of a Hollywood career, plus a man-and-wife fight. There's no talk of divorce. I think they'll make up in a few days. Frankie has a few days off so he's gone to a desert resort for a little privacy. This is the first public battle they've ever had, and I don't think it's serious. He will be back in three days to work on his current movie."

MGM production memo for Monday, October 7: He did not report. He was called to rehea.r.s.e but because Durante was not available, Sinatra said he would not come in as he didn't see any point in rehearsing by himself. Mr. Donohue felt that he could have used Sinatra's services to good advantage, but Sinatra said he would not be in.

The desert resort was Palm Springs.

For centuries desert was all it was, home to the Agua Caliente band of the Cahuilla Indian tribe, a scattering of adobe buildings on the edge of the southern Mojave, in a bone-dry, sun-shattered valley surrounded by dead stony mountains. The springs themselves were hot-as though more heat were needed in the G.o.dforsaken place-and the palms around them not plentiful, but the waters were reputed to have healing properties. Crazy white people trickled out from the city looking for relief from their big-city ailments, and then the movie people began to come.

It was an ideal retreat from Hollywood: just 120 miles away, but in those days of two-lane blacktop, the drive took at least three hours. Tijuana was fun for whoring and horse racing; the Springs was for lying low, for basking like a lizard on a rock in the healing desert sun. Tan was good in those days. The big hotels, the Desert Inn and El Mirador, opened not long after World War I; the little resorts, with names like Wonder Palms and Lone Palm, cropped up in the 1920s and 1930s: cl.u.s.ters of Mission-style bungalows around crystalline blue pools, in the shade of the signature trees. Labor was cheap. People wouldn't bother you, the staffs were discreet, agents and publicists and columnists and spouses were far away, at the other end of a long-distance phone line.

Jimmy Van Heusen discovered the Springs in 1940, when he flew his s.h.i.+ny-skinned Lus...o...b..-Silvaire to Los Angeles to go to work at Paramount, writing songs with Johnny Burke for Bing Crosby. Crossing the southwest desert as he entered California, he decided he'd better fuel up for his final approach-he wasn't quite sure where the Van Nuys airport was. He touched down at a primitive airstrip in the midst of the sand.

In the late summer of 1940 the Palm Springs airport was nothing but a couple of adobe huts and a few fuel drums, and the incredible heat s.h.i.+mmered off the tarmac, yet the minute Van Heusen stepped out of his plane, he was happy. He had suffered all his life from sinus trouble; suddenly he could really breathe. He fell in love with the desert and told all his friends, including Sinatra.

The place grew fas.h.i.+onable, as a secret shared among the rich and well-known. Fancy restaurants were a necessity, so a few opened up: the Palm House, the Doll House, Trav Rogers's Mink and Manure Club. You could get a superb steak for $2.50 or a lobster flown in on ice from Maine for $3. Then came the nightclubs. Even when you were lying low, entertainment was required. The first, and for a long time the best, was called Chi Chi. Dining, dancing, and big-time entertainment in the Starlite Room.

Frank thought the Springs was the perfect place to hide out: Lana had a little place down there. But Frank craved action and company, and so they went to Chi Chi.

During one fox-trot, Frank felt a tap on the shoulder. He turned and saw Howard Hughes, recently recovered from a near-fatal plane crash, dancing with his date, Ava Gardner, soon to divorce Artie Shaw. Sinatra and Hughes, who knew of each other only through their celebrity, nodded politely; Lana and Ava squealed and hugged. Until very recently Gardner had been a B player at Metro, best known for having been married to Mickey Rooney and Shaw. But in August, she'd finally had a breakthrough role, starring opposite Burt Lancaster in an adaptation of a Hemingway story called The Killers The Killers. The part put Ava on the map, and led to a friends.h.i.+p with Lana, who was nothing if not status conscious.

The two had much in common (besides very brief marriages to Artie Shaw), including hardscrabble backgrounds and fathers who'd died young. And an earthy sense of humor. They liked to drink c.o.c.ktails and giggle together. Ava liked s.e.x a good deal, as young ladies then, even young ladies who acted in the movies, were not supposed to. Lana, on the other hand, was a materialist. She quickly turned clinical while under the influence, comparing her lovers' respective endowments with the cold eye of a practiced anatomist.

Much information was conveyed in the mischievous glances the two actresses now exchanged.

Smiling obliviously, Hughes suggested to Sinatra that the two couples change partners. Lana's look suggested that Ava would be getting the better part of the bargain. Then Ava found herself in Frank's arms. The band struck up "Dancing in the Dark."

She had been drinking steadily over the course of the night-Hughes bored her-and she was in a saucy mood. Liquor, and success, and the desert emboldened her: she was considerably less demure than the young woman Frank had encountered before.

She looked straight into his eyes: she didn't usually dance with married men. He liked the challenge, and he liked the way she felt in his arms. In her heels she was as tall as he, maybe slightly taller, lean but curvy, fleshy in just the right places.

Except when she was married to them? The plural was pointed.

She smiled, sideways-with one plural p.r.o.noun he'd won the exchange-and put her head on his shoulder.

How about that, he thought.

Then the song was over, and she was back in Hughes's arms.

Frank and Lana were seen together, as they wanted to be. It was inevitable, a game of cat and mouse. He and Lana Turner had gone to Palm Springs and danced at Chi Chi, among other celebrities, and their presence had been duly noted and reported. Evans read about them within hours. As did Louis B. Mayer.

On Wednesday night, Frank was back in Hollywood to do his radio show, and Mayer was with him, to present Sinatra with an award from Modern Screen Modern Screen magazine as the Most Popular Star of 1946-along with a $10,000 bronze bust of the singer by the sculptor Jo Davidson. Before the mikes went on, however, the fatherly hand came down heavily on his shoulder. magazine as the Most Popular Star of 1946-along with a $10,000 bronze bust of the singer by the sculptor Jo Davidson. Before the mikes went on, however, the fatherly hand came down heavily on his shoulder.

Mayer glared at him. What was all this?

Frank shrugged. It was just a personal matter.

Mayer had to disagree. Where he and Lana were concerned, it was very much a professional matter. He must have Frank's word that he would sort this out quickly.

Frank nodded.

Then the mikes went on.

"Let me welcome you to the MGM family," Mayer told him. He didn't have to emphasize the last word.

"I'm proud to be in that family, sir," Sinatra said.

The studio chief gave him a look that would have done Benny Goodman proud.

The MGM conduct police went into overdrive, piling the pressure on Frank and especially on Lana, the more vulnerable of the pair. Turner's morals clause, unlike Sinatra's, was in full effect, and where Mayer was concerned, Lana Turner's morals were always suspect. "The only thing you're interested in," the studio chief had once told her in an office meeting, "is this." He pointed at his groin.

It would certainly have appeared that way. Turner was never a proponent of monogamy, serial or otherwise. Even as she was carrying on with Sinatra, she was also conducting a torrid affair with the also married Tyrone Power. Yet Turner appears not to have been a mere s.e.x addict. In later, more contemplative years she wrote that s.e.x itself had never been that interesting to her. What seems to have been much more compelling was company, and action, and drama. Turner was a deeply needy woman, in love with the idea of being a movie star. She was an actress playing herself, her daughter wrote in her memoir; she was unable to step out of character. Private life and public life were all of a piece.

The solemn injunctions of Louis B. Mayer held extraordinary power for her. And soon Lana was tearfully reading from a new script. "I am not in love with Frank, and he is not in love with me," she told Louella Parsons. "I have never in my life broken up a home...I just can't take these accusations."

Parsons played the good cop-"I think Frank has done his best to be a good family man and still remain the glamorous figure he's been in the public eye," she wrote in her column-and Hedda Hopper, the bad. Hopper took Sinatra to task in print and in person, warning him when she encountered him at a reception "that he was public property, and that part of that public property was Nancy and his children."

Sinatra didn't scare easily; normally, he would have shrugged off the admonition. But pressure was coming from all sides: after publicly (and somewhat contradictorily) musing, "You know, Frank has had a lot of career for one man, and he hasn't had much time for home life. I think they'll get it straightened out," the relentless Evans even sent Manie out to L.A. to try to reason with him.

And on October 23, Frank caved. The occasion was Phil Silvers's opening at Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom's nightclub on Beverly Boulevard, and this time Sinatra's stooge act was in dead earnest.

He attended the opening as a friend, and also to contribute to Silvers's show in much the same way he had in New York. But this time the fix was in: Nancy was present, all dolled up and sitting at Jule Styne's table. Midway through the show, Rosenbloom-a former prizefighter who had turned to playing tough guys in the movies-asked Sinatra for a song.

Frank rose and asked the band to play "Going Home."

A very odd selection, given that the lugubrious spiritual was best known at the time for having been played at Franklin Roosevelt's funeral. But it was the t.i.tle, not the song, that was the point: when Sinatra was through, Silvers-who after all had written the words to the song about Nancy-grabbed Frank in a bear hug and steered him over to his wife's table. Through tears, Frank asked Nancy (she was also crying) how the kids were. Fine, she told him. They missed their daddy. He had to clench his teeth to keep from bawling.

You could've heard a pin drop in Slapsie Maxie's. Then Frank asked his wife to dance, and the place went nuts.

Frank and Nancy didn't go home that night. She wanted to see his apartment, to feel its illicit thrill-and to make it her own. And so at the end of an evening of dancing at Slapsie Maxie's, they got in a cab and rode to Sunset Tower and went up to his penthouse and made a baby.

Despite the reconciliation, he continued to do exactly what he wanted. It Happened in Brooklyn It Happened in Brooklyn was limping to a close amid further delays by the star; Sinatra and the director were barely speaking. was limping to a close amid further delays by the star; Sinatra and the director were barely speaking.

One of the problems was the rate at which Frank kept on recording that fall. He was privately gratified to hear that d.i.c.k Haymes's sales were beginning to drop. That was what happened, he thought, when you didn't keep pus.h.i.+ng in all directions. There was a radio show Sinatra badly wanted to do in early November, George Burns and Gracie Allen's, and so he informed Whorf that he, Frank, needed to wrap up his work on the picture before then. Whorf refused. And so, as the MGM production memo for November 7 notes tersely, Sinatra "left at 2:30 to appear on Burns & Allen broadcast."

The camel's back was stressed to full curvature. Mayer called a conference with his production executives, then fired off a telegram to the recalcitrant star: NO CONSENT WAS GIVEN BY US TO SUCH A RADIO APPEARANCE AND YOUR PARTIc.i.p.aTION IN SUCH BROADCAST WAS IN VIOLATION OF YOUR OBLIGATION AND AGREEMENT UNDER YOUR CONTRACT WITH US...THESE INCIDENTS ARE THE CULMINATION OF A LONG SERIES OF VIOLATIONS OF YOUR CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS TO US.

The studio chief was sufficiently upset to have the story leaked to MGM's unofficial mouthpiece Louella Parsons, who wrote in her column of November 14: I won't be surprised if Frank Sinatra and MGM part company permanently. Frankie has been a very difficult boy on the lot, and I have a feeling MGM won't put up with it. Louis B. Mayer, who has a faculty for getting along with MGM actors, talked with Frankie, I hear, but that hasn't done very much good. The Voice's chief pout was caused when he was refused the rights to a song he sang in It Happened in Brooklyn It Happened in Brooklyn. I have always liked Frankie, but I think right now he needs a good talking to.

The song-"Time After Time"-was just one of many issues. Sinatra didn't call Evans; he didn't call Keller. He called Western Union and fired off a wire to Parsons: SUGGEST YOU READ THIS TELEGRAM WITH YOUR ARTICLE IN YOUR OTHER HAND. I'LL BEGIN BY SAYING THAT IF YOU CARE TO MAKE A BET I'LL BE GLAD TO TAKE YOUR MONEY THAT M-G-M AND FRANK SINATRA DO NOT PART COMPANY, PERMANENTLY OR OTHERWISE.SECONDLY, FRANKIE HAS NOT BEEN A VERY DIFFICULT BOY ON THE LOT. FRANKIE HAS ONLY BEEN HEARD FROM WHEN IT CONCERNS THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE PICTURE WHICH YOU WILL FIND HAPPENS IN MOST PICTURES WHERE YOU USE HUMAN BEINGS...LAST, BUT NOT LEAST, IN THE FUTURE I'LL APPRECIATE YOUR NOT WASTING YOUR BREATH ON ANY LECTURES BECAUSE WHEN I FEEL I NEED ONE I'LL SEEK ADVICE FROM SOMEONE WHO EITHER WRITES OR TELLS THE TRUTH. YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION TO PRINT THIS IF YOU SO DESIRE AND CLEAR UP A GREAT INJUSTICE!

When the Los Angeles Daily News Daily News columnist Erskine Johnson had the nerve to chide Sinatra for his temperamental behavior, he got a telegram, too: columnist Erskine Johnson had the nerve to chide Sinatra for his temperamental behavior, he got a telegram, too: JUST CONTINUE TO PRINT LIES ABOUT ME, AND MY TEMPER-NOT MY TEMPERAMENT-WILL SEE THAT YOU GET A BELT IN YOUR VICIOUS AND STUPID MOUTH.

On hearing that Johnson weighed two hundred pounds and was eager to mix it up with him, Sinatra decided not to press the issue any further.

Only a year earlier, Frank had been the press's hero, the humanitarian in chief, the n.o.ble and reasonable star of The House I Live In The House I Live In. Now, much to the chagrin of his handlers, the Hollywood Women's Press Club voted him Least Cooperative Star, in a landslide vote. Suddenly he was a bad boy again. And seemingly eager to prove it at every opportunity.

First, however, there was a certain amount of penance to do. He was a married man: it appeared he was going to have to pay some attention to that part of his life. Frank was returning to the Wedgwood Room at the Waldorf after Thanksgiving, and so he decided to take Nancy and the children with him. It was his idea.

And that wasn't all. He bought Nancy a glorious pearl necklace, three strands, at Tiffany, and presented it to her before they went out for a family dinner at the Stork Club. She opened the big light blue box-bigger than the box the diamond bracelet had been in-with glistening eyes; she put the necklace on immediately. Evans made certain a photographer was at the restaurant to record the occasion: pretty mommy and handsome daddy, all dressed up, in between their adorable little boy and girl with identical fat cheeks and floppy bows at their necks.

Daddy was busy. He had rehearsals, business at Columbia and elsewhere, three packed shows a night at the Wedgwood (about which the joke was, If they could wedge any more paying customers in, they would). His schedule was so jammed that he barely got to see Nancy and the kids. Time was so tight that a recording session had to be scheduled for a Sunday, an unprecedented event.

George Avakian remembers the day well: December 15, 1946. Avakian, twenty-seven at the time, was a junior producer at Columbia; his boss, Manie Sacks, had asked him to come in to supervise the second half of the session, which would consist of two numbers Sinatra wanted to record with the Page Cavanaugh Trio, a jazz combo. Sacks himself supervised the first half, as he did with all Sinatra's important-that is, commercial-recording sessions. The first two songs were Irving Berlin's "Always" and something called "I Want to Thank Your Folks," a contemporary tune that Sacks felt had selling potential. Axel Stordahl arranged, and conducted the thirty-five-piece orchestra.

"Always" is fine: Sinatra is in good voice, and it would be hard for him not to do a good job on the great standard. At the same time, there's something slightly stilted and airless about his rendition: he's articulating beautifully, yet doesn't convey the song's pa.s.sion. The problem is compounded on "I Want to Thank Your Folks," which, with its unexceptional tune and dreary lyrics ("I want to thank your folks for making you as sweet as you are/How else can I express how I feel, confess and reveal my love?"), against the sound of a sappily tinkling celeste, is the kind of schmaltz that gives 1940s music a bad name.

The recording session changes dramatically once the cla.s.sical musicians have packed up their instruments, put on their scarves and overcoats, and bustled out of Liederkranz Hall. Axel and Manie have also left the building. Now that Frank is alone with the jazz guys (the trio's guitarist was the great Al Viola, who would continue playing for Sinatra for many years), the atmosphere s.h.i.+fts. With "Always" and "I Want to Thank Your Folks," Avakian recalls, Frank "was relatively tense because they were ballads. The other two songs were just pleasant throwaways. He's taking a drink and singing the song without worrying about it."

The results show. "That's How Much I Love You" and "You Can Take My Word for It, Baby" are hardly cla.s.sics, but Sinatra's singing on the two jazz numbers is relaxed and good-humored and completely charming. He was especially relaxed at a one-off session he did two days later, a glorious recording of "Sweet Lorraine" with the Metronome All-Stars, including Johnny Hodges, Coleman Hawkins, Harry Carney, Charlie Shavers, Lawrence Brown, Nat "King" Cole, and, lo and behold, Buddy Rich. Many serious music commentators, George Avakian among them, have a.s.serted that Sinatra never truly swings. They should redirect their attention to this "Sweet Lorraine." Maybe it all depended on the context.2 Avakian, who produced records for many musical giants, from Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington to Miles Davis, disliked Sinatra from the moment he first saw the singer get off the elevator at Columbia's Seventh Avenue offices, flanked by four bodyguards.3 "He used to call me 'kid' because he didn't know my name," Avakian said. "He gave off the feeling that, 'Listen, I'm a big man and you're unimportant, and I'm putting up with your presence.'" On the first Sinatra recording sessions the producer witnessed, "everybody was sort of like, 'Oh, Sinatra is very tough-you have to be careful. Don't cross him; don't argue with him.'" "He used to call me 'kid' because he didn't know my name," Avakian said. "He gave off the feeling that, 'Listen, I'm a big man and you're unimportant, and I'm putting up with your presence.'" On the first Sinatra recording sessions the producer witnessed, "everybody was sort of like, 'Oh, Sinatra is very tough-you have to be careful. Don't cross him; don't argue with him.'"

Yet to Avakian's surprise, Sinatra was loose and easy on the two trio numbers the young producer supervised. "He did them very quickly, two takes of each one," Avakian recalled. "I thought, 'Gee, if only he could do this all the time, he's somebody I could enjoy working with.'"

Frank couldn't do it all the time, of course. He was simply too important a personage to let his hair down (even while he still had it in abundance). He knew exactly how miraculous a singer he was, but he also knew how delicate his voice was-and how fickle public regard. He was protecting his position as America's most important ballad singer, and the effort made him tense.

Frank's entire life seemed to be based on the building and the release of tension. When the release came in the form of singing, it was gorgeous; when it took the form of fury, it was terrible. But release was important and constantly needed. "Hard work and extended play, I mean after hours, never hurt Frank," George Evans said, not entirely accurately. "But emotional tension absolutely destroyed him. You could always tell when he was troubled. He came down with a bad throat. Germs were never the cause unless there are guilt germs."

To some degree, this was wishful thinking on Evans's part. Guilt, with Sinatra, was as transitory as his other emotions. His mercurial nature, as we have seen, was part of his finely tuned temperament. And as his fame allowed ever-greater self-indulgence, there were times he could simply shrug off guilt and go on to the next thing. He was often in beautiful voice that late autumn in Manhattan. He was working hard and spending as much time with his family as he could. He opened the Wedgwood gig with a smile, holding a cup of coffee and singing "The Coffee Song," a cute Bob Hilliard and d.i.c.k Miles novelty number he'd recorded in July.4 But then, unpredictably, the tension would return. He was less graceful with nightclub hecklers than he'd been before. "You must be glad the war is over-now you can get parts for your head!" he shouted at one. Another time he walked off the floor in the middle of a song. Something was eating him. In early December he issued an edict barring fans under twenty-one from his radio broadcasts. The public outcry was noisier than anything he'd had to endure in the studio. Frank quickly reversed his decision. He often seemed whipsawed at the end of that year. It wasn't just the rising pressures of fame: he was also secretly making time in his busy schedule for Lana Turner, whose similarly busy schedule, as fate would have it, had brought her to New York City.

Bugsy Siegel, the jaunty sociopath, was uncharacteristically nervous. He was millions of dollars in the hole for cost overruns (and skimming) on the still-unfinished Flamingo Hotel, and the men who had fronted him the money, Meyer Lansky among them, were not patient people. These men already suspected Siegel of stealing from them, but if the Flamingo's opening, scheduled for the day after Christmas, was a success, promising rivers of revenue, all might be forgiven. The key to a big event, then as now, was stars. If major Hollywood talent came to the desert, the public would follow.

Bugsy knew everyone in Hollywood, and the week before Christmas he flew to L.A. to call in some chits. He had extended friends.h.i.+p, protection, and business help to some very important people, and now he needed their help back. He called on the biggest names in his address book: Sinatra, Lana Turner, Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, and Jimmy Durante, among others. The response was not enthusiastic.

Worse, December 26 was cold and rainy and the airports in Los Angeles and Vegas were socked in. The Flamingo opening was a gloomy, under-attended event: the stars, to put it mildly, did not turn out. Gable, Hepburn, Tracy, Cooper, and Dietrich all came up with excuses-a mother was very sick, an ankle had been sprained, a cold had been caught. Durante and George Raft, always friendly where the Boys were concerned, somehow made their way to the desert, as did Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Xavier Cugat, and George Jessel. It wasn't enough. "There can rarely have been a more cheerless scene," wrote Otto Friedrich in City of Nets City of Nets, "than the newly opened casino at the half-empty and half-finished Flamingo, standing alone in the Nevada desert on the night after Christmas." Cheerless, and snakebit: though Raft compliantly lost $75,000 at the c.r.a.p tables, the Flamingo's gaming coffers were $200,000 in the red after its first night of operation.

Maybe Siegel stole that, too. It didn't matter: his fate was sealed. The process had begun four days earlier, at the great conference of American mafiosi at the Hotel Nacional in Havana, organized by the plush hotel's co-owner Meyer Lansky (his silent partner, the Cuban president Fulgencio Batista) and presided over by Salvatore Lucania, a.k.a. Charles "Lucky" Luciano.5 Luciano had been released from prison in return for protecting New York City's docks during World War II, but had had to accept permanent deportation to Italy; now he was back in the Western Hemisphere, hoping to set up a permanent base of operations just ninety miles from Florida. Lucky Luciano had a mesmerizingly cold face, with pitted cheeks, a piercing gaze, and a strangely beautiful mouth-up-curved at the corners, and with a sensual lower lip-that was virtually the double of Sinatra's. Every important gangster in the United States had convened in Havana to offer Luciano fealty and thick envelopes of cash-every important gangster except for Benny Siegel, who hadn't even been told about the conference. The message was clear. Meyer Lansky, who perhaps felt remiss at having urged Vegas on Siegel in the first place, argued with uncharacteristic pa.s.sion that Benny should live, that he might still turn the Flamingo around and be of value, but few at the conference listened. Luciano had been released from prison in return for protecting New York City's docks during World War II, but had had to accept permanent deportation to Italy; now he was back in the Western Hemisphere, hoping to set up a permanent base of operations just ninety miles from Florida. Lucky Luciano had a mesmerizingly cold face, with pitted cheeks, a piercing gaze, and a strangely beautiful mouth-up-curved at the corners, and with a sensual lower lip-that was virtually the double of Sinatra's. Every important gangster in the United States had convened in Havana to offer Luciano fealty and thick envelopes of cash-every important gangster except for Benny Siegel, who hadn't even been told about the conference. The message was clear. Meyer Lansky, who perhaps felt remiss at having urged Vegas on Siegel in the first place, argued with uncharacteristic pa.s.sion that Benny should live, that he might still turn the Flamingo around and be of value, but few at the conference listened.

Sinatra was conspicuously absent from the Flamingo's opening ceremonies. Whatever Frank may have told Benny, the real reasons for his failure to show were complicated. As for the other absentees, maybe, as is so often the case with stars, the herd instinct had kicked in. And maybe, as has been rumored, William Randolph Hearst, who was so close to Louis B. Mayer, had put the kibosh on the event for MGM stars because Hearst suspected his mistress Marion Davies had slept with the handsome gangster. As for Frank: maybe Charlie Fischetti's warning about Ben Siegel still echoed in his head.

It was Frank's New Year's Eve party to welcome in 1947. There was a stirring in the big living room as a latecomer arrived: the twenty-three-year-old Peter Lawford, das.h.i.+ng in his well-tailored tux. Handsome as he was, though, it was his date who was drawing all the stares. Dark haired, with dazzlingly high cheekbones, a white fur stole on her wide shoulders, she walked with the easy grace of a tigress; Ava Gardner was on the prowl. Until recently a n.o.body in Hollywood, Ava entered the room with confidence born of success and buoyed by alcohol. The Killers The Killers had put her on the A-list; Mayer himself had told her the world was her oyster. She had just turned twenty-four the week before, and she was ready for adventure. had put her on the A-list; Mayer himself had told her the world was her oyster. She had just turned twenty-four the week before, and she was ready for adventure.

She was more tired than ever of Howard Hughes. She still grudgingly accepted his gifts-the fur she was wearing; a Cadillac convertible. What was harder to take were the spies sent to monitor her comings and goings. It would have been annoying enough if she'd been his only girlfriend, but she happened to know that Hughes was also keeping tabs on Linda Darnell, Jean Peters, and Jane Russell. The man was insufferable. Lawford, on the other hand, was fun, and charmingly irreverent, and a girl couldn't just sit at home on New Year's Eve.

It wasn't just that she didn't want to be alone, nor was it simply that this was the the party that night. She had to admit that she was increasingly curious about the man she kept running into everywhere. She was intrigued by how persistently gentlemanly he was, unlike almost every other male she encountered-and unlike his reputation. And while she knew he was married, and the father of two small children, and she had a strict policy against seeing married men, she was intrigued. All the more so when Lawford took her over to introduce her (he thought) to Sinatra, and she and Frank exchanged an amused glance. Over his shoulder, a few yards away, stood the wife, mousy cute, smiling at another couple. Ava looked at her for a second, then back at Frank, who was still grinning at her. No contest. She felt like a thief inside a bank vault. party that night. She had to admit that she was increasingly curious about the man she kept running into everywhere. She was intrigued by how persistently gentlemanly he was, unlike almost every other male she encountered-and unlike his reputation. And while she knew he was married, and the father of two small children, and she had a strict policy against seeing married men, she was intrigued. All the more so when Lawford took her over to introduce her (he thought) to Sinatra, and she and Frank exchanged an amused glance. Over his shoulder, a few yards away, stood the wife, mousy cute, smiling at another couple. Ava looked at her for a second, then back at Frank, who was still grinning at her. No contest. She felt like a thief inside a bank vault.

Durante, Lawford, Sinatra. February 1947. (photo credit 19.2) (photo credit 19.2) But the night was still young. From Sinatra's, she would have Lawford take her to a party at Mel Torme's, and then home. By three-thirty the Englishman was done for the night, and she was still raring to go. She would wind up the evening gunning her dark green Cadillac convertible up the Coast Highway with the smitten twenty-one-year-old Torme at her side, as her long hair blew in the wind and the sky turned baby pink in the East. She was quite sure it was going to be a spectacular year.

20.

Louella Parsons and Frank sign autographs for servicemen at the Hollywood Canteen, August 1943. (photo credit 20.1) (photo credit 20.1) Well, Frankie and I have buried the hatchet deep," Louella Parsons wrote in her column of January 27, 1947. "He promised me he would not carry a gun, feed me poison, or otherwise harm a hair of my defenseless head if I would have luncheon with him. So I went. Frankie Sinatra, that is, and he will leave for Miami in two weeks. He then will go on to Cuba and possibly to South America, and won't return until MGM is ready to start The Kissing Bandit The Kissing Bandit, his next picture."

Whether the part about carrying a gun was eerily prescient or merely a case of Louella's making it her business to know absolutely everything, three days later the Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times photographed Frank being fingerprinted by Deputy Sheriff Robert Rogers as he applied for a permit to carry a pistol. photographed Frank being fingerprinted by Deputy Sheriff Robert Rogers as he applied for a permit to carry a pistol.

The gun may have been a Walther, as has sometimes been reported, or it may have been a Beretta. Sinatra later told Hedda Hopper he "wanted Nancy to have some protection in case of an emergency. So I bought a little gun for the house." (With what he was up to lately, Nancy would have been the last person in whose hands he'd want a gun.) Or maybe, as he told another reporter, he needed the sidearm "to protect personal funds."

Whose personal funds is another question. It seems unlikely Frank meant his own. He had already begun the habit of having someone in his retinue carry his wad of crisp new twenties and hundreds, but even if he kept the money in his own pocket, a couple of thousand bucks was scarcely worth protecting with a gun. Whatever he meant to use the weapon for, it was a symbol, and not a good one, of what Frank Sinatra was in the process of becoming.