My Life as a Mankiewicz (14 page)

“No, no, Mr. Connery, that's not it. We have several black members. Mr. Davis is Jewish.”

Everyone forgets how shabbily the Rap Browns, Eldridge Cleavers, and Stokely Carmichaels who took over the civil rights movement during the sixties treated the African Americans who paved the way for equality. Even Martin Luther King Jr. wasn't exempt from their disapproval. Hell, he wanted laws passed by white people that gave civil rights to blacks. Those rights weren't theirs to give, they had to be
taken.
I saw their point, but the dismissal of the contributions of a Sammy Davis Jr. and yes, even a Sidney Poitier, was totally inexcusable. Sammy sold out nightclubs where black people weren't even allowed to sit down. Why didn't Sammy refuse to play them? Why didn't Willie Mays quit baseball when he couldn't stay in the same hotel as his white teammates? Why wasn't Willie Mays
angry?
Why wasn't Joe Louis
angry?
During their lives they underwent discrimination the younger generation could barely conceive of, and they prevailed. Unfortunately, when Sammy hugged Richard Nixon after receiving a national honor from him, his reputation among the militants was sealed.

It's all come full circle by now. When Sidney received his Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy not that long ago, the standing ovation was endless and deafening. Every black actor was visibly tearing up while applauding, and rightly so. Sammy's reputation was almost fully restored by Michael Jackson and others shortly before Sammy's death from cancer. He was finally being recognized and honored as he always should have been. Hell, Sammy just wanted everyone to love him. He just wanted everyone to love everyone. He meant it when he sang “I Wanna Be Me.” He just didn't know who that person was.

Frank Sinatra

Gee, no one's ever written about Frank before. I'd met him as a kid, but I first got to know him during
Movin' with Nancy.
He'd never quite forgiven Dad for not casting him as Sky Masterson in
Guys and Dolls
, but thank goodness they struck up a genuine friendship after that. Frank wanted to sing a song directly to Nancy on the show. We'd film it in a recording studio with a full orchestra. Frank, who'd started in the big band era, only sang with all the musicians right there. He had an incredible ear. He could hear the second trombone hit a tiny “clam” while thirty instruments were playing and he was singing. Sometimes even the audio engineer thought he was wrong, but when they played back the tape—there it was.

Frank wanted to sing “Younger Than Springtime” to Nancy: “It's such a pretty song and no one really sings it anymore.” Guess what? We decided on “Younger Than Springtime.” On the day of shooting I was absent-mindedly leafing through the song sheets while we waited for Frank to arrive. Something odd about some of the lyrics caught my eye: “Warmer than winds of June are the gentle lips you gave me.” And later: “Angel and lover, heaven and earth…” This was clearly a man/woman song, not a father/daughter one. I pointed it out to Jack. It sounded a bit like incest to him too. “You're right,” said Jack. “Tell Frank…”

“Hey, you're the director.
You
tell him.”

“You're
the one who found it.
You
tell him.”

Frank arrived. I showed him the problem. He agreed, then said: “You're a writer. Change the lyrics.”

“But Frank, this is Oscar Hammerstein!”

“Oscar's dead. And Dick Rodgers'll kiss my ass for singing it. Let's go.”

I made the two changes. They were serviceable, if hardly inspired. The gentle “lips” became the gentle “love,” and “Angel and lover” (forgive me) became “Sunlight and moonbeams.” He sang it beautifully, needless to say. I sat off to one side, still having misgivings about altering the words of the great Oscar Hammerstein. Frank noticed. As he was leaving, he came over to me. “Forget about it. You're Adolf Eichmann. You just followed orders.”

“Frank? Eichmann's dead.” He grinned and left.

The lyric of the song was everything to Frank. Someone (Tony Bennett, I think) once said: “Before Bing Crosby, singers sang
at
people. Bing was the first who sang
to
them. Frank was the first to actually
share
the song with them. When he sang a sad song,
you
were sad with him. When he was happy,
you
were happy too.” His phrasing was unique. Unless you know his version of a particular song by heart, it's impossible to sing along with him. He holds on to certain words longer than you would, clips off others, extends vowels until he seems to be swallowing them. He's more than a singer, he's a wonderful storyteller.

Frank was thrilled with Nancy's show and invited me and Jack down to his desert compound in Rancho Mirage numerous times. It was brilliantly planned out. Frank's actual house was too small to entertain in, ensuring his privacy. The guest houses were circular turrets, most surrounding the pool and stocked with every kind of toiletry, robe, and different size of comfortable footwear to pad around in. Across the tennis court sat the Christmas Tree House, which had earlier been built specifically for President John Kennedy. There was a helicopter pad next to it and downstairs quarters for the Secret Service. Kennedy never stayed in it. When his brother Bobby was attorney general, he warned Jack that he might be indicting some Mafia types with at least social ties to Frank. It wouldn't look good for the president to be spending the holidays there. Frank never forgave Bobby for that. But no matter. When Kennedy came out to Palm Springs for Christmas, he stayed at Bing Crosby's during the day but spent every night partying at Frank's compound. Needless to say, any social secrets he had would be safe there. The building that saw all the action was a huge, separate structure, large enough inside to screen 35 mm films. It had several different spacious seating areas, AP and UPI news tickers, and a lengthy bar with a sign over it proclaiming: “Living Well Is the Best Revenge.”

I remember one particular party. Jack and I had been drinking steadily as we scanned the assembled guests. They included Sam Giancana from Chicago, then the Mafia “boss of bosses.” Giancana was talking to “Three-Fingered” Tommy Lucchese. We later looked him up in
The Green Felt Jungle:
multiple indictments for just about everything—no convictions. Frank came by and noticed us staring at them. He leaned down, smiled, and said: “Listen, if Vic Damone could handle a lyric, they'd be at
his
house.”

He was serious about Damone and lyrics, once telling me: “Vic's got the greatest set of pipes in the world and I'm crazy about him. But he's been singing for more than twenty years and doesn't have one great song he really owns, one that's identified right away with him. He sings the song great, but he doesn't tell the story.” Another time, I was walking out of a Vegas casino bar with Frank. Barbra Streisand's hit “People” was playing over a speaker. I asked him if he'd ever sung the song. He shook his head. “Three reasons: First, it's the girl's song. She sang the hell out of it. Second, it's got a great start and a great finish but it kind of falls apart in the middle. Most important, the lyric's a fucking lie. People who need people are
not
the luckiest people in the world. People who love people are. People who are loved. But people who need people are unhappy people, trust me.”

It's difficult to describe the aura that surrounded Frank in those days. He was genuine royalty and treated as such. I remember sitting in a large booth with him and several others at Sorrentino's in Palm Springs one night. When you were with Frank, if you ordered a drink, a whole bottle was brought to the table with your own bucket of ice. An inconspicuous bodyguard made sure you weren't disturbed. That night the place was packed. The manager came over: “Frank, excuse me, but the new sheriff of Palm Springs is at the bar. He wanted to know if you'd buy him a drink.”

“Tell him to go fuck himself. Tell him I never did a favor for a cop in my life. Tell him exactly that.”

We watched as the manager went back to the bar, swallowed, then gave the plain-clothed sheriff the message. The Sheriff laughed loudly, turned, and raised his glass to Frank, who returned the gesture, then said: “I knew it. That asshole thought I was making a joke.”

Nancy called me one day and asked if I'd like to come down to hear Frank record a terrific new song. I was having lunch with my friend David Hemmings, and she said it was fine if I brought him along too. The song was “My Way,” forever after identified as Frank's anthem. Don Costa was the arranger-conductor leading a full orchestra. I can't remember whether it was the second or third take, but when it was over, Frank turned to the booth, grinned at Costa, and said: “If you don't like
that
, babe, you don't like black-eyed peas.” He left without hearing it back. He knew he'd nailed it. David and I were astounded.

Frank really loved what he did best, singing, and worked hard at it. Music
was
his life, and he was the master. The same couldn't always be said for other creative pursuits. He had the talent to be an exceptional actor. When he worked for Fred Zinnemann, Otto Preminger, John Frankenheimer, or my father, he showed it. On many other films, like
Tony Rome
or the Rat Pack movies, he was a one-take wonder. He'd say the lines, tell the director to print it, and move on, often to the frustration of other actors, who had to do their close-ups without Frank reading his lines off camera. One day Jack Haley and I got the brainstorm idea of doing a Broadway musical of
The Great Gatsby.
We wanted Burt Bacharach to write the score. There was only one perfect musical Gatsby in the world—Frank. We mentioned the possibility to him. He agreed he'd be perfect casting but said: “You know what? I'd have to show up nine times a week, week after week, month after month, and say the same fucking lines and sing the same fucking songs every night. I love you guys, but I couldn't do that. I'd break your heart.”

I saw only the good Frank, the one full of humor, hospitality, and unbelievable charity toward others. A friend of Jack's and mine, a young actor named James Stacy, was costarring in a popular TV series called
Lancer.
Jim had his leg severed in a motorcycle accident. His career was effectively over and he was facing huge medical bills, some of which would continue for decades. Jack and I decided to throw a benefit for him. The Beverly Hilton Hotel donated their ballroom and agreed to eat the charges for waiters and food. Liza Minnelli and others, including Frank, agreed to get up and sing. But Frank insisted on at least fifteen musicians. He wanted Nelson Riddle to conduct. Only the Musicians' Union refused to perform for nothing, “lowering” their fees to between $15,000 and $20,000. Frank barely knew Jim, but when he heard about it he wrote out the check.

I once asked him what other singers he listened to, if any. He mentioned several females, starting with Billie Holiday. I asked about the men. Any male singers? “Sure. A little Tony Bennett, a little Mel Tormé, and a whole lot of Nat King Cole.” The line of his that still sticks in my mind? After Judith Exner published the exposé of her affair with John Kennedy, Frank said: “Hell hath no fury like an ex-hooker with a press agent.”

The Beat of the Brass

The second musical special Jack Haley and I did together, this one for A&M Records and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. A&M stood for Alpert and Jerry Moss. The two of them met when Jerry was an independent music promotion man and Herb was playing the trumpet at weddings and bar mitzvahs, trying to pick up “extra” work in movies. They decided to join forces in a fledgling company. Each of them put a hundred dollars into a joint bank account. They wound up owning the largest, most successful independent record company in the history of music. It couldn't have happened to two nicer guys. When they finally sold the company to Polygram decades later for an absolute fortune, they still had never signed a formal contract with each other.

Indeed, “trust” was the magic quotient, the real currency at A&M. I remember my first meeting with Jerry and Herb. I was getting $15,000 to write the special, which was top dollar in those days. In fact, a fee that size for an hour-long show was customarily split between multiple writers. At that time, I was in a small personal financial hole, having run through what money I had. At the end of the meeting I somewhat embarrassedly asked them if it would be possible for me to get half my fee up front—right then, that day. Herb smiled that mischievous little grin he has: “You're not going anywhere, are you?”

I said, “No.”

He turned to Jerry: “Hell, let's give him the whole fifteen thousand.” Jerry nodded. It was the only time in my life I would ever be paid 100 percent of my salary before I'd even put a ribbon in my typewriter. That's how they did business.

At the time I worked with them, Herb and the Brass were selling more records worldwide than anyone except the Beatles. It had all started with the smash single record of “The Lonely Bull.” The combination of mariachi music filtered through jazz proved irresistible to the public. This “mariachi” music was conceived, written, and marketed by American Jews. “The Lonely Bull” was written by Sol Lake. Herb was a graduate of predominately Jewish Fairfax High School in Hollywood, and Jerry was a smart young expromotion man from the Bronx. Don Rickles used to joke: “Have you seen this new Mexican group, the Tijuana Brass? I met them last night: Herbie Alpert, Julius Wechter, Sol Lake, Ken Kaplan…they oughta be called the Tijuana Briss.”

The
Beat of the Brass
album went gold, as did every album the Tijuana Brass ever recorded. The show got great ratings, and once again we shot nonstop musical numbers on location: on deserted, crumbling Ellis Island, where Herb's parents came through at the turn of the century; at a rodeo; at the annual Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans, in which Herb was the grand marshal; and all over the country.

Herb was an extremely handsome guy. He was also naturally shy. He performed wonderfully, but at the end of almost every show, his shirt was wringing wet from the tension he felt. I remember one night, after we'd shot part of a musical number in downtown Las Vegas. Herb, Jack, and I returned to the Sands Hotel where we were staying. We walked through the casino and decided to unwind by playing a little baccarat. The table was roped off, which made it easier on Herb in terms of privacy. We started playing. Jack had the “shoe” and couldn't win a hand to save his life. I, thank God, bet against him on every hand. Herb was backing him. He was betting modestly, but soon ran out of what cash he had. He asked the guy in the high chair how he could get some more money. The man “clicked” his clicker loudly. Jack Entratter, who ran the Sands, arrived instantly. “Yes, Mr. A, what do you need?”