Mr. S (5 page)

A year or so later, when he moved into the apartment complex, I knew Lazar wanted me to give him the swerve, to avoid him, but how could I? Here was a man in pain. Sometimes I would see him wandering on Beverly Glen, down to Mapleton Park, head down, all alone. Where were all those screaming teenagers now that he needed them, I’d think to myself. Where was
anybody
? If I ever made eye contact, I’d smile at him, and no matter how down he looked, he’d always pull it together and smile back. I’m not sure he remembered the cigarette incident. He was just a naturally nice guy. “Everybody’s nice when they’re down and desperate,” was Lazar’s take on the situation. “Losers have the
time
to be nice.”

Lazar may have been the worst cynic in the world. Actually most of
his friends were nicer than he would give them credit for being. My favorite was Humphrey Bogart. The world-famous tough guy was the softest touch in the world. The first time I met him was one night outside of Romanoff’s. Lazar was down the block having drinks and would be coming to Romanoff’s for dinner. I, of course, was there to wait. Then Bogart came up. He had seen me with Lazar, knew the Rolls. “Come on, kid, we’re gonna get you something decent to eat,” he said out of the blue. And he took me into Romanoff’s, sat down with me and ordered me a fabulous dinner, which we were in the middle of eating when Lazar finally came in. You should have seen the look on his face! And it got even worse when Bogart stuck him with the check. Bogart loved playing jokes like that on Lazar, he loved giving him the needle. And nothing needled Lazar more than the nickname “Swifty,” which Bogart gave to him. He wanted to be perceived as an English aristocrat, and Bogart rechristened him as who he really was, a sharpie hustler. Yet just because Bogart had Lazar’s number didn’t mean he didn’t like the guy. Bogart was the best friend Swifty had.

Humphrey Bogart and Betty Bacall (Lauren’s real name was Betty Perske) were Lazar’s favorite couple, the most glamorous star marriage in the business. They lived a few blocks away from his apartment in Holmby Hills, near the Goetzes, which thus stamped the area as
the
place to live in Lotusland. Also nearby was another Lazar intimate, the great director Billy Wilder, who was extremely nasty and unforgiving and never once said hello to me or thanked me when I’d bring him a drink or a cigarette. He always made me feel like hired help, but Lazar told me that he acted that way to everyone. Another member of this group was a depressed screenplay-rewrite guy, one of the original script doctors, named Harry Kurnitz, a Lazar client, who everyone said was a comedic genius but always seemed to be whining about not having a girl. And there was the debonair
David Niven and his Scandinavian wife. Niven was so smooth, so slick, he never seemed real to me, but because he was Central Casting British, Lazar had to be around him. Niven was exactly what Lazar wanted to be.

Lazar and these people seemed to be the “youth group” at the frequent parties held at Ira and Lenore Gershwin’s house, where there was, as might be expected, fabulous Broadway music being played or sung by people like Judy Garland or Oscar Levant or Kitty Carlisle, many of whom were, or would become, Lazar clients. This crew, who never liked to go to sleep, would continue the evening at the Bogart house, where they would drink until two or three in the morning. They would be joined by Mike Romanoff after he closed his restaurant for the night. Romanoff was a phony prince, an ex-jailbird and the biggest bullshit artist in the world, and because his lies were so outrageous, he somehow got away with it. Lazar thought he was the greatest man on earth. He admitted that his own lies were nothing compared to Romanoff’s, hence his deep respect for him. I could see why an agent would admire the con man, though I never saw why Bogart embraced him as well, maybe because Romanoff would always bring great wines, and salmon and foie gras that he hadn’t sold at the restaurant. I guess he did tell great stories, even if none of them were true. Other late nighters at the Bogarts were the genuinely clever writers (and actress) Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, as well as the incredibly nice Spencer Tracy, who came most of the time without Katharine Hepburn, so she wouldn’t get on his case about his heavy boozing. This became the core of what got to be known as the Holmby Hills Rat Pack, which, five years later after Bogart died, was taken over by Frank Sinatra and his own crew.

It was only when Frank started being considered for the Maggio role in
From Here to Eternity
in the fall of 1952 that he simultaneously began being invited to the Gershwin parties, and, later, those of
the Goetzes. When your stock starts going up in the business, your social stock will rise as well. Even though they were apparently at war with each other most of their brief marriage, which had taken place in late 1951, Ava wanted to have children with Frank, but only if he had a career that could support them. Consequently, she began her own campaign with her friend Joan Cohn, the beautiful, longsuffering wife of the ogre who ran Columbia Pictures, Harry Cohn, the guy who invented sexual harassment, to get Frank the supposedly classy, serious role that might restart his dead career. The casting process seemed to go on for months, and whether or not Sinatra got the part became everybody’s favorite cocktail party bet. Lazar bet against Frank, though to his face, he’d tell him that he would get this big shot or that to put a word in with Harry. He didn’t do a thing. I’d hear him talking about how ridiculous it was for Sinatra, whom he called a nonactor, to try to compete for the part with the front-runner for it, the “real” Broadway actor Eli Wallach. The only thing Sinatra had, Lazar would say, was that he was Italian, as was the character, and he was a loser, as was the character.

Nevertheless, Ava, and good sense, prevailed. Frank got the part. Of course Lazar began low-rating this as well, saying it was only a
supporting
role, and it was no big deal, and, besides, he doubted that the movie would be a hit. Yet Lazar hedged his bets. He sent Frank congratulatory champagne and flowers, and began inviting him to join his parties and those at the Bogarts’. “Maybe we can get him to sing,” he’d justify his neighbor’s presence. The minute he got cast, Frank Sinatra was a changed man. The gloom lifted. He was all smiles. He walked differently. Even though shooting wouldn’t start in Hawaii for six months, all of a sudden he had a future again. He could hold his head up.

Frank Sinatra loved hanging out at the Bogarts’. That may have been the best perk of all of being back in the film game. A lot of times
I’d play late-night bartender, so I could see the pack in action. Sinatra was like a starstruck kid, in awe of Bogart, and watching his every move. With all the people around, it was hard to be alone with Bogart, but Sinatra tended to shadow him, following him into the kitchen or out into the garden, hanging on everything he said. Sinatra saw Bogart as his mentor, though I doubt that he ever told Bogart that. Bogart would have laughed at him. Be your
own
mentor, kid, or you’ll never get anywhere, he’d probably have said. This time Bogart was wrong. Sinatra learned his lessons with straight A’s. The two men had a lot of natural attributes in common. They were about the same size, short and skinny, and both men were losing their hair, though Bogart’s was in much deeper retreat than his younger fan’s. Bogart had fabulous clothes, cashmere jackets, Italian shirts, and velvet slippers, and a certain cool and grace in the way he’d smoke, in the way he’d put away the Jack Daniel’s, eventually a trademark taste Sinatra acquired from Bogart. Bogart had an effortless physical grace, which Sinatra only had when he sang. Otherwise, Sinatra was tense and jumpy, and remarkably insecure for someone used to playing to screaming fans. That they had stopped screaming was probably what made him this way. The Jack Daniel’s definitely helped loosen him up. I noticed that he was much more “on” around Bogart than he was when I saw him at other gatherings.

Even though he played the tough guy in films, and had a tough-guy growl in his voice, Bogart was really an East Coast aristocrat-type with a top background and a polish he got at prep school at the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. His father was one of the leading surgeons in Manhattan; his mother was a well-known illustrator. They were accomplished, as well as pillars of society. It was an unusual background for a movie star, most of whom came out of nowhere, or from Hoboken. But that pedigree was just one
part of the whole Bogart mystique. Another was his enormous talent and success (he had won the Oscar that year for
The African Queen
), and the third part of what made Bogart Bogart was his fabulous wife, Betty. Even though she was a head taller than him and looked like a sleek, tawny lioness, and had this deep sophisticated voice, Betty was just a young girl from the Bronx, as in awe of the whole scene as Frank was. Bogart was in his fifties, Betty was in her early twenties, and when he called her “kid,” he meant it. Frank was about thirty-seven at this time, but around his idol he seemed like a kid, too.

Sinatra never showed up with Ava, or with any other woman. Everyone knew that Ava was his woman, and that she was hurting him terribly by not loving him the same way he loved her. No one would even mention her, or say, “Frank, how’s Ava?” She was off limits. Once, somebody put on a new Sinatra record, “I’m a Fool to Want You,” without realizing it was his own personal torch song to Ava. There was an interminable silence until the song was over. No one even dared to compliment Frank on it. I think it was Ruth Gordon who broke the ice by suggesting they all play charades.

By and large, this first Rat Pack was a pretty tame lot. It would be hard to imagine Frank, Dean, and Sammy, in their latter incarnation of the Rat Pack, playing charades. The Bogart pack was like a civilized, witty New York cocktail party, an Algonquin Round Table kind of experience. There was a lot of drinking, not just Jack Daniel’s, but martinis, mixed drinks, champagne, and no one ever got really drunk, except for Judy Garland on a few occasions. When Judy got plastered, the worst she would do was get up and start belting show tunes like “You Can’t Get a Man with a Gun,” and everyone would join in. I never had to drive guests home who couldn’t make it on their own. The discussions at these parties would usually revolve
around the movies, how bad they were, who was screwing whom, both at the studios and offscreen. Everyone was great friends, but they were all very concerned with who was making the most money and who was getting the best parts. They were united in their hatred of the studio moguls like the Warners, the Cohns, the Goldwyns. There was a great divide between these artists and the money that they seemed to covet even more than their art. All in all, the Bogart evenings were models of decorum, dialogue, and taste. It would get a whole lot raunchier in the years to come when Frank would take control.

The taking of that control was beginning to happen bit by bit before my eyes, especially after Frank returned from Hawaii from shooting
Eternity.
He seemed to know, six months before the movie was released, that this was a winner. He also recorded what would become his first hit record in years, “Young at Heart,” on his new contract with Capitol. It was a nice way to say “Fuck you!” to Columbia Records, which had dropped him the year before. He even had a nice way to say “Fuck you!” to Swifty Lazar, who was sucking up to him more and more with each bit of proof that Frank was going to be that rare person to beat the Hollywood curse, and, like Jesus and the South, rise again. Once when Lazar and I were in New York, Frank, the great practical jokester, enlisted Harry Kurnitz to get the landlady to give them the key to Lazar’s apartment. They came in during the middle of the night with a contractor and bricked up the wall to the closet that contained all of Lazar’s beloved English clothes, and then painted the whole thing to make it look like one big wall. Lazar went crazy when he came back. If there had been
Candid Camera
back then, this would have been the perfect stunt, just to see the look on Lazar’s face. On other occasions when Lazar was getting ready to go to some fancy party, Frank would sneak in and steal some vital element of his outfit, like a cummerbund, or one of his cuff links, or the
shoes he had me set out for him to wear. The crazier he would drive Lazar, the better I knew he was doing in his life.

In the winter of 1953, Lazar sent me over to the Goldwyn Studio to drop a script off for Billy Wilder, who was working there at the time. Wilder took the script from me as if I weren’t there, and, as usual, did not say thanks. It was a treat, then, to run into Frank Sinatra on the lot. Instead of waving hello, he charged right over to me with something important to say. “George,” he greeted me with a big handshake and a bear hug. “I want you to go see my secretary. She’s got an important message for you. Go there right now. Right now.” He shook my hand again and he was off. I had no idea what that message could be, but I sure was curious. So I found my way to this little office on the lot, and I met Gloria Lovell, a plain schoolteachery woman in her thirties who was in the middle of signing Sinatra’s name to a pile of glossy photographs that were being sent to fans. “Oh, hello, George,” she trilled, as if she had known me all my life. Then she handed me a thick envelope. “Open it,” she insisted. It was a set of keys. “Welcome aboard,” she said. Aboard what, I asked her, totally confused. “You’re starting today,” she said. Starting where? “At Mr. Sinatra’s. He wants you to go there now. It may be a bit of a mess. He really needs you.” But what about Mr. Lazar? I sputtered. “He’ll manage,” she replied with a slight grin. What can I say to him, I continued in a near panic. I didn’t want to be blackballed, to see my brilliant career ended before it began. I was terrified of incurring the wrath of Swifty Lazar, who had grown to depend on me. It’s been three years, I tried to explain. I can’t just pick up and…“Mr. Sinatra will take care of Mr. Lazar,” Gloria Lovell stated with schoolmarmish authority. “You just worry about Mr. S. You’re working for him now.” It took a bit longer for it to settle in, but soon I understood that I had absolutely no choice in this stunning turn of events. Frank Sinatra had stuck the ultimate needle into the little man he loved to needle. It
was almost as if Sinatra somehow knew how little faith Lazar had had in him and wanted to show him once and for all who was the real boss. Whatever it was, my life was about to be turned upside down, and I was about to embark upon the wild ride of the century. Frank Sinatra had just made me an offer I could not refuse.