The District Attorney’s report indicated Waterman still had the finger-marks on his throat where Sinatra had grabbed him. ‘There seems to be reasonable grounds for making the assumption that Sinatra was the aggressor all the way.’ The charges against Waterman were dropped: he was judged to have acted in self-defence. It was at this point that Sinatra, denying he ever laid a finger on Waterman, vowed never to set foot in Nevada again. ‘I’ve suffered enough indignities,’ he said.
But four years later, things have changed. The casino manager has been arrested for racketeering, the District Attorney has been voted out, and the new management of Caesars Palace has tempted Sinatra back with the promise of $400,000 a week, plus full-time bodyguards ‘to avoid any unpleasant incidents’.
The new Sheriff is delighted to welcome Sinatra back to Las Vegas. To celebrate his return, Caesars Palace is proud to present each member of the audience with a medallion inscribed, ‘Hail Sinatra. The Noblest Roman Has Returned’.
But what of Eli Wallach? Ever since the publication of The Godfather in 1969, and its film adaptation in 1972, Wallach and Sinatra have been linked in the public mind as bitter rivals. The scene in which a studio boss wakes up to find the severed head of his favourite racehorse lying next to him in his bed has been the inspiration of an urban myth. In the film, it is the mafia’s revenge for the studio boss’s refusal to award a starring role to one of their own singers, Johnny Fontane. The horse’s head helps him change his mind: he immediately drops the actor who has already been cast and replaces him with Fontane. Over time, word has got around that Johnny Fontane is really Frank Sinatra, and the dropped actor is really Eli Wallach. After all, twenty years ago, hadn’t Harry Cohn offered Wallach a leading role in From Here to Eternity – and hadn’t it unaccountably gone to the inexperienced Italian Frank Sinatra? Small wonder, then, that when Eli Wallach walks into the Frank Sinatra show at Caesars Palace, a frisson runs around the audience.
Halfway through his act, Sinatra stops singing, looks over to his wife in the audience and says, ‘Barbara, did Eli get here?’
‘He’s sitting right beside me!’ she replies.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ says Sinatra, ‘I’d like to introduce a friend. Our paths have often crossed, and he played a big part in my career …’
The audience stirs. They all know what he is talking about. They sense a drama about to unfurl, perhaps even a fight. Sinatra pauses, looks over towards Wallach and says, ‘… Ah, the hell with that! It’s an old story! I don’t feel like telling it!’
Perhaps the audience is disappointed by this anti-climax, but Eli Wallach finds it hilarious. ‘I fell out of my seat laughing. Every time Frank saw me after that, he’d say, “Hello, you crazy actor.” And every time he came to New York, he’d send a limo for Anne and me. We’d sit in a box at the theater. He’d look up, smile at us, and afterward we’d have a late supper at 21.’
On the other hand, it may be worth adding that the author of The Godfather, Mario Puzo, does not get off so lightly. By chance, one night in 1970, after the book has become a bestseller, but before the film has been shot, he enters Chasen’s restaurant in Beverly Hills and sees Sinatra dining there. ‘I’m going to ask Frank for his autograph,’ he tells his companion, the film’s producer Al Ruddy.
‘Forget it, Mario. He’s suing to stop the movie,’ replies Ruddy. But Puzo persists, and goes up to Sinatra’s table. Sinatra loses his temper. ‘I ought to break your legs,’ he grunts. ‘Did the FBI help you with your book?’
‘Frank is freaking out, screaming at Mario,’ Ruddy recalls thirty years later. As Puzo remembers it, Sinatra calls him ‘a pimp’, and threatens to ‘beat the hell out of me’.
‘I know what Frank was up to,’ explains Al Martino, who eventually plays the part of Johnny Fontane.* ‘You know how much Johnny Fontane was in the book? He was trying to minimise the role.’
FRANK SINATRA
DEALS WITH
DOMINICK DUNNE
The Daisy, Rodeo Drive, Los Angeles
September 1966
On a normal day, Frank Sinatra is not slow to take umbrage, nor to accompany it with the promise of revenge, a promise he enjoys keeping. ‘Make yourself comfortable, Frank! Hit somebody!’ the fearless comedian Don Rickles once greeted Sinatra as he strode into his cabaret lounge.
The TV producer Dominick Dunne has never been able to fathom why Sinatra has taken against him. ‘I wish I knew, but he took a major dislike to my wife and me.’ One moment, he was part of Sinatra’s wider circle, the next the object of abuse. ‘You’re a no-talent hack,’ Sinatra says to Dunne as he passes him at a party; whenever Sinatra sees Dunne’s wife Lenny, he tells her she married a loser. Why this change of heart? Dunne can only imagine that Sinatra bears him some sort of grudge for a TV show on which they worked together some years ago.
Sinatra’s ire appears to increase with their every encounter. Last year, Dunne was having dinner at the Bistro in Los Angeles when Sinatra, clearly drunk, abused him loudly from a neighbouring table. Sinatra then turned his venom on Lenny, before continuing around the table, going for Lauren Bacall, Maureen O’Sullivan and Swifty Lazar, in rapid succession. Finally, he grabbed the tablecloth and pulled it from beneath all their plates and glasses, threw a plate of food over Lazar, and stomped out.
This year, Sinatra has been involved in any number of fights. In June, for instance, a businessman called Frank Weissman asked him and his party in the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel if they wouldn’t mind piping down: Weissman ended the night in a coma at the emergency hospital.
Tonight, Dominick Dunne is out for dinner at the Daisy with his wife and a small group of friends after attending a wedding. He often eats here, and knows the staff. By chance, Frank Sinatra is sitting at the next table, along with his two daughters, Nancy and Tina, and his new wife, Mia Farrow, who at twenty-one years old is younger than each of them. Over the past months, Sinatra has come in for a good deal of ribbing about his child bride, which perhaps explains his bad mood. ‘Frank soaks his dentures and Mia brushes her braces …’ one of his most vocal tormentors, the comedian Jackie Mason, joked in his stage act a few months ago, ‘then she takes off her roller skates and puts them next to his cane … he peels off his toupee and she braids her hair …’
It probably wasn’t a wise move. The next day, Mason received an anonymous call telling him that if he valued his life, he should consider changing his material. When he failed to follow this advice, three shots were fired through the glass door of his Las Vegas hotel room. But the police saw no reason to pursue an investigation. ‘I knew that Sinatra owned Las Vegas when the detectives there made me the prime suspect and asked that I take a lie detector test,’ said Mason, adding, ‘I have no idea who it was who tried to shoot me. After the shots were fired, all I heard was someone singing, “Doobie, doobie, doo”.’ Over the following year, Mason will have his nose and cheekbones broken, again by a complete stranger.
But, in the meantime, we must return to Dunne and his party as they sit there enjoying their dinner. All of a sudden, Dunne feels a tap on his shoulder. He looks up. The maître d’ of the Daisy is looking down at him, ‘very nice guy called George, Italian, we all knew him, gave him Christmas presents, wonderful man’.
George says, ‘Oh, Mr Dunne, I’m so sorry about this, but Mr Sinatra made me do it.’ So saying, he leans back, clenches his fist, and hits Dunne smack in the face. ‘It wasn’t a hit to knock me out, but it was embarrassing,’ recalls Dunne. The crowded restaurant falls silent.
Dunne looks across at Sinatra, who is looking back at him with a smile on his face. Dunne and his wife leave the restaurant. As they wait for their car to be brought around by the concierge, George runs out. He is sobbing, and afraid.
‘I’m sorry, so sorry.