Mr. S (29 page)

Mia was a creative genius at starting fights that got Mr. S crazy. She’d push all his hot buttons, long hair, drugs, mysticism, rock, Vietnam, making him feel like the Ancient Mariner for being so out of it to disagree with her. “How can you
say
that?” was her favorite expression, delivered in a tone of insulting intolerance, the idea being that Mr. S was either an idiot or an animal. But Mia would find a way to bring these arguments or “discussions” around to a romantic resolution. I think what she most enjoyed was getting someone widely considered one of the planet’s coolest ladies’ men so hot and bothered over her. From where I sat, it was the most passionate relationship Mr. S ever had, including the aftermath beddings of his big rows with Ava.

Sometimes Mia could be sweet as sugar, as helpless as a lost choirgirl. And at other times she could outhooker the hookers, trying on some thousand-dollar dress, leaving it half open or unzipped, saying, “Don’t I look
ridiculous
in this?” So ridiculous that Mr. S would rip it off and have his way with her. Unless she would play hard to get, like saying, not
now,
I have to meditate, which would make Mr. S even hornier for her. Mia’s favorite outfits were the tie-dyed hippie dresses, which the classically old-fashioned Mr. S was embarrassed for her to wear in public with him. Yet she’d find see-through ones, or wear the rags in such a way as to turn Mr. S on, despite his aversion to the style. Once she got him into bed, she must have declared herself the winner, regardless of what Mr. S thought. I guess in Mia’s case, love conquered all. Still, for all his passion for her, the baby threat concerned him.

Mia had Mr. S in such sexual thrall that love might have conquered all, except for one of Mia’s fatal dancing spells. This one was with the last man on the planet that Mr. S wanted to touch his wife, and it
wasn’t someone like H. Rap Brown or Bob Dylan or Allen Ginsberg. It was worse than all of Mr. S’s folk-villains combined. It was the Antichrist himself, Robert F. Kennedy! How Mia could have made such a false step was beyond everyone. Frank Sinatra was the one guy in Hollywood who was backing Hubert Humphrey. Yet given that she knew so little of what her husband was all about, outside of the boudoir, she may well not have even known about his backstory with the Kennedys and how they had nearly destroyed him. That was history, and Mia wasn’t interested in history. She lived in the now, or somewhere in space. Wherever she was, her mind was in the wrong place when she hit the floor over and over with Bobby Kennedy at a Democratic fundraiser at the Factory, the same place Mia had done her thing, the wrong thing, with Anthony Newley. Mr. S was in New York, preparing for his new movie,
The Detective
, where he had a big role written in for Mia. Although
Rosemary
was the ultimate New York film, aside from exteriors at the Dakota, most of it was shot at Paramount, hence Mia was here and Frank was there.

Frank was way out there, when he heard the news. He didn’t even call Mia to discuss it. What could she say? Some sins were simply unpardonable. She had already refused to abandon
Rosemary,
which had gone way over schedule, and start work on
Detective.
Mr. S was forced to look for a replacement actress. Might as well replace Mia everywhere. This was strike three, four, five…And she, as the umpire would say, was outta there! What was going on in his world, Mr. S wondered. He had just learned his “son,” Sammy, was going to shoot a movie in London with Peter Lawford. It was called
Salt and Pepper,
and it was supposed to be a hip comedy. Hip my ass, Mr. S sneered. Sammy and Peter, Mia and Bobby, Jesus Fucking God. Acting as judge, jury, and high executioner, Mr. S sent Mickey Rudin to deliver divorce papers on the
Rosemary
set.

But as another baseballer said, it ain’t over til it’s over. Mr. S and
Ava had open divorce papers for years and years, and even a decade after the divorce was official, Mr. S was seriously in love with her. His greatest fantasy was that she would marry him once again. Dreams don’t die. Mr. S’s flirtations on
The Detective
with Lee Remick and Mia’s substitute, Jackie Bissett, were more retaliatory than romantic. He had no one, nothing. Besides, the 1967 Christmas holidays were approaching. The coven, Mia’s coven of Social Oldies, including Ruth Gordon herself of
Rosemary
(it
was
too close for comfort), were coming down to Palm Springs for the Christmas holidays. Mr. S was too embarrassed to spoil his own party. He had turned the compound into a resort, with a new New England-style cottage called the Christmas Tree House, which would be strung up with lights year round, plus another bungalow, a new screening room, and other amenities, including one whole cottage for his vast model train collection, which at the moment was giving him more pleasure than sex.

Mr. S had been crazy about toy trains since he was a boy, and his parents never had enough money to buy him more than a small set of Lionels. Mr. S would tell me how he’d go to the biggest toy store in Hoboken to look at the huge train display in the window, and dream. Now this was one dream he could make come true, even if the others were fading. Being married again had given Mr. S more time on his hands, which he devoted to building up his model train empire. There were Japanese Bullet Trains, French TEEs, Spanish Talgos, American Superchiefs. Mr. S would sit alone there all night, drinking Jack and playing Casey Jones. The two shadow careers he had were engineer and concierge. He had me so crazy buying the best sheets and towels and robes and toothbrushes and laundry bags that the Ritz had nothing on us. I started calling him HoJo, for Howard Johnson of the Orange Roofs and 21 Flavors. Frank Sinatra was Hollywood’s Innkeeper.

What was an inn with no guests? So he begged Mia to come back
and be his hostess, although she was devoid of all social graces and had no idea who to seat next to whom, pissing off lots of people. After two weeks and the coven had dispersed; however, so had Mia. Mr. S couldn’t take the baby rap. He went off to Miami to sing at the Fontainebleau and to shoot
Lady in Cement,
which we all said was where he wanted to put Mia, gangland style. Mia went to India to visit the then current guru. She later told me one of his followers tried to seduce her while she was in a trance. So much for prophets. Once Mia left, Mr. S did show occasional signs of life. One night when we were at a Palm Springs restaurant, Ruby’s Dunes, at a dinner with Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, the hairdresser Jay Sebring showed up at another table with a stunning, blond, six foot tall, sixteen-year-old “assistant.” Like a homing pigeon, Mr. S dumped Liz and Dick, who were bitching at each other so much they hardly noticed, and joined Sebring’s table.

Within fifteen minutes he was literally
under
it, ostensibly looking for his pen, but in reality going down on the Amazonian supermodel-to-be. I could see her giggling and loving it. This was “strangers in the night” at its ultimate. But nothing further transpired and Mr. S lapsed back into his Mia funk.

Mia eventually came back to L.A. and stayed at the mansion in Bel Air that Mr. S had redone for her. But they rarely intersected, in any way. When Mr. S’s multiple stresses combined to give him pneumonia on the
Cement
shoot, Mia did fly down to Florida, but the vibe was more that she had come to bury him than to cheer him up. She gave up after a few days and went back to California. Nobody could seem to cheer up Mr. S, even Ava, who got so pissed off that he really wasn’t dying, that when he got back to his old tricks of jealous recriminations about Ava’s recent romance with the batterer George C. Scott and excavations of ancient history about Spanish bullfighters and Italian gigolos, Ava also packed up and left. She had barely lasted twenty-four hours. For the first time since we had been
together, this man didn’t want to depend on anyone. And I guess the person he most depended upon was
me.
No matter how he lashed out at everyone who came down to his Florida bedside, Mia, Ava, even Dolly and Marty, he never once raised his voice or said one nasty word to me.

I was very worried about his health. I assumed he was indestructible, and here he was, at the mercy of the place he hated above all others, a hospital. His skin was sallow, greenish. He was too weak to insist on wearing a hairpiece. He seemed to have given up. He looked frail and old and helpless, as well as furious at himself, and the heavens, for letting him get this way. Mr. S managed to recover, but he didn’t recover his sense of humor. The minute he was strong enough to get out of bed, the tantrums resumed. Hookers were hired and fired. Rooms were trashed. Dishes were hurled against the walls of restaurants. Paintings were cut up. Even the assassination of Bobby Kennedy by Sirhan Sirhan brought him no sense of satisfaction or retribution. “It wasn’t even one of
us,
” he mumbled, staring into his increasingly frequent tumblers of Jack, as if he still belonged to the Outfit that had long cut him from its rolls that he was never really on. Through it all, however, he remained incredibly nice to me.

Any hopes for a happy ending with Mia evaporated when
Rosemary’s Baby
became the number one hit in America, blowing
The Detective
off the screen and establishing Mia as a bona fide movie star. Hers was one career that was not going to end, not even for the Chairman of the Board, as Dean had recently christened him. Mia was already looking down the road. I remember when we went together to see
Casino Royale,
the star-studded James Bond spoof, the
Austin Powers
of its day, how she raved on and on about Peter Sellers, what a genius he was, that she had met him in London and how much he liked her and he was the next Charlie Chaplin and how “heavenly cool” he was. Woody Allen was in the same film, and to my
mind much funnier than Sellers. Mia hardly noticed him. When I said how great I thought he was, she shrugged her shoulders sweetly and vaguely. “Stand-up,” she dismissed him. I saw then that Mr. S was history, one that would not repeat itself.

What I didn’t know was that I would soon be history as well. In the truly weird party that was Frank and Mia, the belle of the ball was saving the last dance for me. If I hadn’t tried to kill time in the Candy Store that jinxed night in the summer of ’68, I probably would still be working for Frank Sinatra. After all, until then, I hadn’t made one false move. When all the others had been drawn and quartered, I was the last man standing. He was making big plans with me for parties he was going to throw for the upcoming presidential campaign. The Dems were coming to Chicago, Sinatraville to most, and Mr. S was planning to be there, rolling out the red carpet. He had declared for Humphrey, and HHH had made him his point man in showbiz, which was what politics was becoming. It seemed as if happy days, JFK days, were going to be here again. And I was going to be right there with him. We had talked about it. He was going to do another inaugural. Ol’ Blue Eyes was going to be back—in power.

Right at that time, that very night, Mr. S was entrusting me with his most precious cargo, Ava Gardner. Maybe, once Mia was gone, Ava would relent on her perpetual refusal to take Mr. S back. I had fantasies of being part of one happy family, for once in my life. But it was not to be. I took that fatal turn into the Candy Store, and I took that fatal spin on the dance floor with Mia, and his enemy the press made Mr. S lose face and despise me more than he despised them. The idea that Frank Sinatra’s black valet was having a thing with his young movie star wife was the stuff tabloid dreams were made of. That kind of gossip sold millions of copies.
THE BUTLER DID IT
! The butler
didn’t
do it, but it didn’t matter. The butler was gone.

I
HAD
pretty awful withdrawal symptoms for about a year after getting the axe from Mr. S. I actually tried to call him a few times, but he refused to speak to me. I tried to console myself that I was in the same boat with many of his other dearest friends, Hank Sanicola, Jack Entratter, Peter Lawford, Lauren Bacall, Mia Farrow, but to me that boat felt like a sinking ship. After fifteen years, I had a very distinct identity as Sinatra’s valet, and I was immensely proud of it. Now I was nobody. I had some money saved. I was very well paid, and months after being fired, Mickey Rudin sent me a big check. But who wanted this kind of “fuck you” money? It came with another of Rudin’s threatening letters telling me, in gangstery legalese, never to darken Sinatra’s door again. Nigger Go Home. Yet my home was Sinatra’s home. I felt more betrayed by him than he had felt betrayed by his beloved
Kennedys. I tried my best to stop feeling sorry for myself, and I finally found that the only way to do it was to start feeling sorry for
him.

The Mr. S who fired me simply wasn’t the Mr. S who had hired me. Not even close. The Mr. S of 1953 was a boyish thirty-seven-year-old romantic dreamer who was about to perform the miracle of reconstructing the dreams that a heartless entertainment industry had shattered. Having been a teen idol and then having the idolization stop on the cusp of what was in the 1950s middle age had understandably made Sinatra hideously insecure. It also made him an incredibly nice and humble guy. He made me feel that he was lucky to have me, and as his luck got better and better, he made me feel like his lucky charm. The Mr. S of 1968, on the other hand, was on the downhill slope from the pinnacle of that heartless entertainment industry. From being a discarded teen idol, he had become a world idol, but now at fifty-two he was on the border of old age. No one despised old age, not even the “don’t trust anyone over thirty” sixties hippies, more than Mr. S, who, by that token, was coming to despise himself. He had sung and won, but he had also loved and lost. That crucial defeat in the game of life had made him one sore loser, a frustrated angry man. His days of hope were over. He wasn’t looking for lucky charms anymore. He was looking for scapegoats.

As part of my healing process, I began taking a perverse pleasure as Mr. S’s world continued to crumble around him almost the minute he locked me out of it. He and his Sicilian superstitions. If he believed in any of those witches’ tales, he should have regarded me as his good luck charm, for just about every great thing that happened to him occurred when I was there. I am sure that when the shit started to rain down on him that August, he had to be saying “Where the fuck is that goddamn Spook?” But his pride was such was that he would never be able to admit he was wrong. Having crossed the Rubicon of hatred, he couldn’t double back to the land of love.

No sooner was I gone than the
Wall Street Journal
broadsided Mr. S with a big exposé about his Mafia connections. It was ridiculous, because all those connections, like Mr. Sam, had long ago disconnected from Sinatra. When I read it, it appeared to be an anti-Humphrey hatchet job, because the Democratic convention was about to start, and Mr. S was HHH’s main man, only man, in Hollywood. Now Humphrey and his team distanced themselves from Sinatra just as the Kennedys had turned away from him. Sinatra was political poison. He had Mafia “cooties.” Mr. S may have wanted to relive his Kennedy glory days, when he could boast that he was the man who put
his
man in the White House, but the magic had vanished. To lose to
Nixon
was pretty ignominious. So was the public’s reception of
Lady in Cement
when it opened, and promptly closed, that fall. And so was Mr. S’s big return to Vegas, to his new home of Caesar’s Palace. There may have been no Carl Cohen to knock his teeth out, but Vegas itself had become so uncool, so tacky, so
Nixon
, that Frank Sinatra’s association with it was less a triumph than an admission of defeat. Once the mob had sold Vegas to Howard Hughes, the thrill was gone. The fun was the danger, the vice, the crime. It was becoming Disneyland with slot machines, and this was just the beginning.

Mr. S seemed desperate, grasping, wanting to be accepted by young audiences, and all he could get were the blue-haired package tourists on the Strip. Imagine trying to do songs like “Little Green Apples,” or trying to team up for an album with the guy from the Four Seasons. “Let’s Hang On,” could have been Mr. S’s new theme song. When I saw a picture of him in a Nehru jacket and beads, I thought it was a trick shot, but it wasn’t. And when I saw that his newest “best friend” was Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, I knew that something had gone way wrong. With his attacks on the “nattering nabobs of negativism,” Agnew was America’s favorite buffoon. His
politics made Sam Giancana look like Franklin Roosevelt by comparison. Maybe Mr. S was looking for a Giancana substitute in Agnew. If he looked at the Greek vice president as a Jack Kennedy substitute, then he was in more trouble than I thought. Yet there Spiro was, sleeping in JFK’s bed in Palm Springs. How the mighty had fallen. Sinatra finally got a hit again with “My Way,” but he sang it like an obituary for himself. I was feeling bad for Mr. S, and that felt good to me.

My gloating turned to tears in early 1969, when Marty Sinatra died of heart failure. If the biggest tragedy of Frank Sinatra’s life was his failure to win the heart of Ava Gardner, his failure to win the mind of his father couldn’t have been far behind. All the glitter, all the fame, nothing was enough to convince Marty Sinatra that his son wouldn’t have been better off going to Stevens Tech and getting a
real
job. To Marty neither the Sands, nor the Cal-Neva, nor Warner Brothers itself counted as a real firehouse. The old boxer went down in the last round, and Mr. S had never been able to make peace with him. This was a big death in the family, and I still couldn’t help but think of it as
my
family. I wanted at least to call or write Dolly with my condolences, but in light of all of Mickey Rudin’s threats, I didn’t want him to try to get me arrested as a stalker. I had to keep my own grief to myself.

I was surprised when I heard very reliable rumors that after Bill Goetz died in 1969, Mr. S had made a play for his widow Edie. It reminded me of what happened with Betty Bacall when Bogart died. Mr. S didn’t let grass grow, and, even though she was about fifty years older than Mia, and sixteen years older than Frank, Edie Goetz had been Mr. S’s dream girl since he had laid eyes on her in the 1940s. If he couldn’t have the princess of Monaco, he would have the princess of Hollywood. Apparently, Edie was horrified at the idea. Princesses like her didn’t marry commoners, and certainly not Jersey Italian
commoners. She thought he was joking. Mr. S didn’t joke about romance. She wanted to remain “just friends.” Those words were a profound insult to Mr. S. He never spoke to Edie again, either. His way.

For me, the final nail in the coffin of the Frank Sinatra I knew was his romance with Barbara Marx. We had known Barbara for years. She was a pretty Vegas showgirl, a classic California beachy, bleachy blond without an idea in her head. I’m wrong. There was one big idea, to marry a rich man. To achieve her goal, she was always trying to put herself in harm’s way. She was often at the Sands, the Racquet Club in Palm Springs, Romanoff’s in Beverly Hills. She finally found Mr. Right, or Mr. Better than Nothing, in Zeppo Marx. Zeppo was the fifth Marx Brother, which was sort of like being the fifth Beatle. If you can’t remember what he was funny for, don’t feel bad. He wasn’t supposed to be funny. He was an agent. Zeppo lived close to us near the Tamarisk Country Club fairways. Zeppo was in his sixties and sick all the time, and often at night when he had gone to sleep, Barbara would sneak out and visit Mr. S. I asked him what he saw in her. “Grace Kelly with my eyes closed,” he answered. I never thought he took her at all seriously.

After Marty Sinatra died and Edie Goetz turned him down, Mr. S began seeing Barbara Marx a lot more. She divorced old Zeppo and became Sinatra’s official main squeeze in 1972. The minute that happened, I abandoned all hopes of getting that magical call at four
A.M
.: “Hey, Spook, you wanna play some cards?” One person who broke all Mr. S’s rules and sought me out was Dolly Sinatra, when she moved to Palm Springs after Marty’s death. It was like a miracle from the blue when she called me, a long-lost friend returned. No one could have hated California more than this Jersey girl. Mr. S had bought her the house next door to his compound on Wonder Palms Drive from the Beverly Hills furrier Abe Lipsey. It was a luxurious home, but that didn’t matter to a homesick Dolly.

The only thing Dolly hated more than California was Barbara. To Dolly she was the personification of all that Dolly detested about the Golden State. We’d go for rides to old coffee shops where Mr. S wouldn’t see or hear about us. Dolly didn’t care. She wanted to shame him into taking me back, but I put my foot down. It wasn’t going to happen with Barbara there. “He’s better off with you than her,” Dolly said in her typically outspoken style. I tried to play devil’s advocate, saying that Barbara was what Frank needed at this stage of the game, the autumn of his years, a Barbie Doll type. She already had a son and was out of the kid game, and unlike Ava, unlike Mia, she wasn’t going to foul things up with the demands of a career.

I’m sure Mr. S knew about his mother’s violently negative attitude toward the woman who became his wife in 1976. Barbara’s best friend was fellow showgirl Bea Korshak. The local buzz was that Bea’s husband, Sid, Mr. S’s last tie to the Chicago mob, ordered the Chairman to do the right thing by Barbara. Frank and Barbara did double date all the time with the Korshaks, and Mr. S did enjoy the feeling of old times with the powerful
consigliere.
However, a more likely impetus for Frank to make it legal with Barbara was the unlikely marriage of his dearest bachelor buddy Jimmy Van Heusen. That Chester the serial playboy and sex addict had succumbed to monogamy in his late fifties may have been the key event that propelled an isolated Mr. S to the altar with Barbara. Dolly felt betrayed by her son, and by what she saw as his “weakness.” She refused to fly on the same plane with her new daughter-in-law. In January 1977, the separate plane that Dolly had demanded to go to a Caesar’s Palace concert crashed into the mountains on takeoff from Palm Springs. I know Mr. S blamed himself for the rest of his days. He didn’t blame Barbara, only himself. He was more than aware that his mother didn’t want him to marry Barbara and he did it anyway. No woman ever loved him like
Dolly and he knew it. That pain would never go away. The rest of his life would be anesthesia.

I can’t really blame Barbara Marx for not wanting me around. Dolly told me how any time my name came up, Barbara would badmouth me and Frank wouldn’t say a word. Barbara wanted a clean slate and a fresh start. Amen. At that point, so did I. I had gotten a few other valet positions, for Steve McQueen, George Hamilton, Bill Cosby. But my heart wasn’t in it. I could only serve one master. All the rest were anti-climactic. Instead I used my nest egg to travel, go back to New York, Europe, see the world through my own eyes instead of the Old Blue Ones. I lived as large as I could, and sometimes my paths would cross with some of my old Sinatra friends. For instance, I was at the Hotel Negresco in Nice when I ran into Prince Rainier and Princess Grace, who were there for some benefit. They spotted me first, and called me over. At first they seemed hurt that Mr. S was on the Riviera without letting them know. They had no idea that he and I weren’t together anymore. I was too embarrassed to say how he had fired me, so I mumbled something about something. They insisted I come to the palace for a meal, but I made up another excuse. I didn’t want to be dining out on Mr. S. The idea was to do Europe
my way,
though I was sorely tempted.

I let my hair grow, wore clothes Mr. S would have created a bonfire of, rode my motorcycle. I was in my early forties, but since I had missed my twenties and thirties, I was making up for it. Eventually I came back to L.A. I went on
The Dating Game
three times. On one of them I won a trip to France. I also sang on
The Gong Show,
and was a contestant on
You Bet Your Life,
when Buddy Hackett was subbing for Groucho. One of my ground rules was that I didn’t want to discuss having worked for Mr. S. Of course, the first thing Buddy did was start asking all about Sinatra. I got mad and walked off. So much for my brilliant television career.

In 1978, for the first time since the Mia incident, I ran into Frank Sinatra at Don the Beachcomber in Palm Springs. He wasn’t with Barbara or anyone I knew, just a bunch of new guys. We crossed paths at the bar, face to face. I took one look at him and broke down into tears. I couldn’t stop crying. Mr. S put his arm around me. “Forget about it, kid,” he said. “It isn’t so bad.” I guess I
couldn’t
forget about it, because the tears didn’t stop. Mr. S gave me one last squeeze and was gone. He looked older, heavier, harder. I was sad he wasn’t as sentimental about us as I was. In that split second, my life flashed before me, and my first thought, my first hope, was that Mr. S would invite me back to work. That, I suppose, answers the question, if I had it to do all over again, would I? I would then, and I probably would now. But Mr. S didn’t give me the chance.

Eventually I decided to do something I was good at, which was carpentry. If I were a carpenter and you were a lady…Oddly enough, by doing my carpentry I met a real lady, Terri Taylor, a very lovely girl from Tennessee whose father was the minister at the Westwood Presbyterian Church near UCLA. Like my second wife, Sally, she was white and fair and beautiful. Opposites attract. We had two beautiful daughters, Rachel and Jennifer, who are now getting to college age. We had a wonderful marriage for a decade, until we drifted apart and got an amicable divorce. Of my three sons by Sally, Guy, who became a film projectionist with dreams of becoming a director, died of an unexpected heart attack at thirty-seven in 1993. Gregory, the oldest, has become an accomplished artist, with shows around the country, while his baby brother Sean is still with his mother in Hawaii, earning a good living as a deep sea fisherman.