Easy Street (the Hard Way): A Memoir (28 page)

Somewhere around April during season two Sammy called and said, “Hey man, I don’t know if you’ve read about it yet, but me and the fellas are going back out on the road together one mo time. It’s gonna be called, ‘Frank, Dean, and Sammy Together Again.’ And we’re hittin’ about thirty states.”
Wow! That is gonna rock
, I was thinking. Then he said, “The weird news is, you’re never gonna guess where we’re rehearsing.” He proceeded to tell me that of the two sound stages that were at Desilu where we shot our show, the one we were not using to shoot the
Beast
was gonna be turned into a rehearsal stage for the tour and that their two rehearsal days were gonna be my last shooting day of season two, followed by my first day of freedom. “Ya gotta come by, man. It’s gonna be very groovy!”

So I got to work really early to shoot what was to be the last day of season two. And the amazingly brilliant Margaret Beserra, the makeup artist responsible for transforming me for three years, and I were in my trailer, into about hour three of the four-hour dealio. Someone knocked at the door, and before we had a chance to say come in, we heard, “Hey man, is the Perl about?” Margaret hit the fuckin’ floor. That’s right: she looked up, saw Sam, and her legs literally went out from under her. We managed to get Margaret back on her feet. Sam gave us both hugs and kisses like only Sam could and told me to come see him and the boys when I got a break.

We worked like slaves that last day. We hadta get a lot of filming in, and we hadta finish that day, no matter how many hours it took. It turned out we worked twenty-three hours that day before they wrapped us. They didn’t wrap us till around 7:30 the following morning. And because my shoot day was so work intensive, all I had a
chance to do was sneak over to the other stage for five minutes, hang out in the shadows in back so as not to be seen, check out this stage they had built to accommodate the three greatest entertainers
of all time
, see the seventy-five-piece orchestra that had been assembled and surrounded the stage, see hundreds of people scurrying around doing whatever to make this into a giant event, and then close my slacked jaw and go back to work.

Anyway, I then ran home, took a shower, changed clothes, and came straight back to the studio because I was gonna spend the whole day hanging out, watching these guys rehearse. Sure enough, I came in and George Schlatter, the guy who produced
Laugh-In
, was there with a TV crew. He was filming the rehearsal because they were gonna do a big behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of
Frank, Dean, and Sammy Together Again
, so there were probably forty people from that alone. Then Sammy had an entourage. He had his own orchestra leader named George Rhodes. He had his own costume people and his own makeup people. And he had this guy who was his personal assistant named Jolly Brown. And then Frank had an entourage of probably about forty or fifty people, not including the orchestra. The leader of Frank’s whole clan was a guy named Jilly Rizzo, who was famous for his restaurant in New York called Jilly’s. He and Frank had been partners in the joint, but then Frank made him sell out so Jilly could spend all his time just running Frank’s life for him. He was Frank’s best pal; they came up together. Coupla goombahs from the ol’ days. So there was Jilly for Frank, and there was Jolly for Sammy. And I’m with one of my best buds, David Schwartz, who to this day I lovingly call Jelly.

Dean Martin showed up in just a Cadillac. All he had was a driver. He had no fucking band leader, no makeup artist, no entourage—just Dean and a guy sitting in his Cadillac, waiting for him to fucking say, “Okay, we’re out of here.” He didn’t talk to anybody or engage with anybody, but for reasons one might not expect. Dino was
the
most beloved guy in all of showbiz. He was the coolest, the funniest, the kindest, and the smoothest, just purely loved by one and all. But by this time he had already lost his son to a plane crash—his favorite son,
the kid who hung the moon for him—and from the time he lost that kid and forever onward, Dean’s fire went out. He was basically sleepwalking through life; it was a well-known fact. So he was not part of the falderal; he was just like, “Okay, let me come in here, spend a couple of hours rehearsing with the boys, and get the fuck out of here.” He stopped playing golf and stopped hanging out. He stopped partying. He was a shell of a man by that time. The loss crippled him, just stopped him in his tracks, which spoke volumes about the facade of Dean Martin and the real Dean Martin. You know, the guy who seemed to not care, who seemed to have a laissez-faire attitude about everything, who seemed to always be drunk was actually the most loving, caring, wonderful, beautiful, generous man to come down the pike in showbiz.

Strangely enough, to this day I’m more fascinated by Dean than any of them because the older I got, the more I realized the qualities that he was able to maintain through all those periods in his career were truly what separates the men from the boys. And it is said he died richer than any of them because nobody ever let him pay for anything ‘cuz he was so fucking loved. Unfortunately, I never got a chance to even get a glimpse of a window into where Dean was at that point. Just as well. All he wanted was to be left alone.

But for the rest of the day I was watching these armies that surrounded Sammy and Frank as well as this army that was shooting, with George Schlatter involved, all running around. So I walked over to the buffet table, got a little bite to eat, and tried like hell to be unobtrusive. I was standing off to the side, and all of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sammy Davis Jr. with a hanger over his shoulder, and he was kind of dancing up to me. Like he was doing a little dance number up to me, and he was singing some little ditty. “This is for you, my friend, the Perl!” He handed me a crew jacket that said on the back, “Frank, Dean, and Sammy Together Again,” and on the front of it, on the left-hand lapel breast of the jacket, it said, “The Perl”—P-E-R-L.
He even found out how I spell my nickname. I have that jacket, presented to me by Sammy Davis Jr., to this very day.

So I was hanging out, watching this thing like a kid in a candy store. Dino only stuck around for a couple of hours. They did a few of the numbers that they were all gonna do together in the medley, and then he got in his car and split. Sammy ultimately split too, so it was then three to four o’clock in the afternoon, and Frank started rehearsing by himself, just him and the seventy-five-piece orchestra. He wanted it that way. He wanted all the shit to die down; he wanted all of the hangers-on to split. And he waited for there to be as much peace and quiet as there possibly could be, considering the surroundings.

He sat on that stage, on a stool, and worked with the orchestra. He sang as quietly as I’ve ever seen him sing. He was just basically marking time, but he was working on every single note of every single song he was going to sing. And these are songs that he had been singing for forty, fifty years, arrangements that I’d heard from the days of my pop’s Victrola. But any time anybody in the orchestra played a note he didn’t like or he thought was too loud, too soft, or came in a half beat too soon or a half beat too late, he would stop. He’d say, “Okay, let’s go back sixteen bars,” and he ran this fucking thing, this rehearsal like Michelangelo would run a sculpting session on the Pietà. It was the most eye-opening of things to see.

I was standing there—pretty much by that time the crowd had died way down—and I guess my mouth was down to my knees. Out of the corner of my eye I saw some guy standing next to me, starting to look at me, but I didn’t pay him any attention because I was just mesmerized by Frank. I could not take my eyes off of him. I could not believe his work ethic, his aesthetic, how much control he had of every nuance, every moment, every song. I just couldn’t believe it. It was like an acting lesson. It was like watching the guy who made everything look easy be the guy who never took anything for granted, never finesse anything, never kind of just halfway do anything. He was involved with every minute of every single song. I was standing in a pool of my own God-only-knows-what. But I continued to see this guy out of
the corner of my eye, and I was hoping,
Shit, whoever the fuck this guy is, I hope he goes away, because I’m in my own private Idaho over here. I’m mesmerized. I’m having a religious moment
.

Sure enough, I heard this guy say, “Holy fuck,” and I turn to look at him. It’s Jilly Rizzo.

He was looking at me, and I looked at him and said, “Hey?”

He said, “Holy fuck!”

“What happened?” I asked.

He said, “You’re that fucking guy.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re that fucking guy, right? You’re that fucking Beast guy. You’re that fucking Beast guy on fucking television—Hey Frank!” And he started yelling at Frank, who was in the middle of singing “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning.” He did not want to be disturbed, and Jilly was yelling, “Hey Frank, look who this is! It’s that fuckin’ guy! That fuckin’ Beast guy!”

I was telling him, “I don’t think he wants to be disturbed right now.”

And of course, Frank was so used to this shit that he completely ignored it, but Jilly started saying, “Holy shit, it’s that fuckin’ Beast guy from television. You know how much we love you?” He took his arm and wrapped it around my head like the Italians do when they go, “This kid is beautiful. I love this kid!” He was pinching my cheek like I’m some fucking guy from Hoboken he grew up with. He said, “Ah, I love this guy. Does Frank know you’re here?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, “but I really don’t think we should disturb him right now.”

“Fuck that,” Jilly said, “Frank! C’mere! You gotta meet this fucking guy. It’s the fucking Beast.”

Eventually I got Jilly to calm down. He and I were kinda standing there, chit-chatting, getting to know each other, and at the end of that song Frank came down off the stage and went through three or four people, passing words with his orchestra leader, his driver, and then he finally got over to me and Jilly. Jilly said to him, “You know who this is, right?”

Frank asked, “How you doin’?”

“This is that fuckin’ Beast guy.” Jilly said. “What’s your name again?”

“Ron.”

He said, “This is that Beast guy—Ron.”

“Hey, how you doin’?” Frank asked again.

“I’m doing really great, Mr. Sinatra,” I said. “Really great.”

Jilly then asked, “Have you guys met?”

“No, not yet,” I said. “This is a huge honor for me.”

And then Frank asked, “Hey, how ya doin’?”

So I said, “I’m doing really fine. How are you doing?”

“I’m doin’ okay,” he said. “How are you doin’?” This conversation went on like this for about three more minutes, and all he says to me about eighty times is, “Hey, how you doin’?”

I told him, “You have any idea what my dad would do if he knew I was standing here right now with you!”

“So how you doin’?” he said.

I told him, “You know, ‘In the Wee Small Hours’ is the greatest album ever recorded in any genre, by any artist in the history of music.”

He said, “So, how you doin’?”

After about sixty, seventy times of this, I realized I’m not gonna get anywhere. I’m not good at conversations to begin with, and then standing in front of me and my dad’s number-one icon. I finally said, “Well, it’s just a thrill to meet you. I’m here because of Sammy. I became kind of friends with Sammy. I don’t want to take up any of your time—I know you guys are putting together this thing. You must have a million different things to do. So I just wanted to tell you, man, thanks for letting me hang. You’re fucking beautiful. What an honor.”

“So, how you doin’?” he asked.

“I gotta go, Mr. Sinatra,” I told him. “I gotta go.”

But that wasn’t gonna be the last time I saw Frank. Every year the family and I went back to our apartment in New York City during Christmas and summer breaks. The next year we just packed everybody up and got on a plane. My wife preferred about twelve suitcases, and that’s if you’re gonna stay less than two weeks. There’s fourteen
if it’s longer. So I get to my pad in New York. Got the kids, the wife, and a moving van full of suitcases finally up to the door of the apartment, with sweat coming down my forehead, when I hear the phone inside ringing and ringing. So I finally put down my suitcases and say, “Hello!”

I heard, “Perl, Sam.” Now, I never told Sammy I had a place in New York, much less gave him the phone number to it.

I said, “Sam! You okay?”

“I’m a little beat, man,” he said. “I’m gonna take a little nap ’cuz we got a show tonight. By the way, what are you and your bride doing at eight o’clock this evening?”

“We’re free,” I told him. “Why?”

“You’re gonna have two tickets waiting for you. Hot seats on the aisle, eight o’clock, Radio City. I’m taking a nap now, so I gotta go.”

I turned to Opal and said, “Unpack quick and put something nice on. We just got invited to Frank, Dean, and Sam Together Again at Radio City Music Hall by fucking Sammy fuckin’ Davis fuckin’ Jr.” She unpacked and got herself all dolled up. By this time, by the way, Dean had left the tour, so it was Frank, Sammy, and Liza Minnelli. We showed up at Radio City Music Hall and told them my name. We got escorted to the tenth row, right on the aisle, center. The whole first act was Sammy, then the beginning of the second act was Liza, and then the second half of the second act was Frank. And then there was a medley with all three of them. Anyway, Sammy did over an hour. I had already seen him live now, four, five, six times, so I was used to being dazzled. But on this particular night, in New York City, in Radio City Music Hall, in what he probably knew was gonna be the last time the Rat Pack roared, he was magic, and he did like an hour and ten minutes. He was mesmerizing.