There’s a show-business legend that, abracadabra, Frank’s career started going
up like a skyrocket from that moment on. It’s a legend, nothing more. Turning
the corner was slow going for him. He still had to play in such flops as
Suddenly and find he was turned down for Mr. Roberts because Leland Hayward
thought he was too old. He still had night-club tours55 to make under old
agreements. And he still had to work out the switch to Capitol which eventually
made him a best seller on records.It took him a long time, too, to recover from
Ava. She hasn’t yet recovered from him. Holed up in Spain, she has been outcast
to most Spaniards, who don’t tolerate her flouting of their social rules.
Recently she went back to work again, talking a comeback, as so many like her
do. The proof, as always, lies in the performance they can deliver before the
cameras.Frank came near the end of the road he’d traveled with her when he
returned unexpectedly early one day to his Palm Springs house and overheard her
talking with another woman star whom she’d invited down there while he was
away. The subject they were discussing, I understand, was Frank’s love-making,
which they were downgrading. Those two would do just that. “Pack up your
clothes and get out,” Frank yelled. “I don’t want to see either of you again.”I
sat in his dressing room at Paramount in December 1956 when the Ava era finally
ended for him. A Hollywood reporter had taken her out driving one night in the
desert around Palm Springs, gotten her drunk, and recorded what she told him
over a microphone hidden in his car. The magazine story that resulted had
appeared that day. Frank sat with a copy of it in his hand, cringing silently
in his chair. Ava was quoted as complaining: “Frank double-crossed me ... made
me the heavy ... I paid many of the bills.” Even the ashes were cold after
that.That was the year he waged a busy-beaver campaign for Adlai Stevenson,
just as he had worked for Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and, four years
later, would slave for John F. Kennedy. He was in Spain, filming The Pride and
the Passion, when he was asked to assist the Democratic convention in Chicago
by singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” on opening night. Eager to oblige, he
flew for thirty-three hours through appalling transatlantic weather and reached
the convention platform at 8 p.m., a bare thirty minutes before Sam56 Rayburn,
late Speaker of the House of Representatives, was scheduled to gavel the
session to order.No more than four hundred people had filtered into their
places in the 25,000-seat auditorium when Mr. Rayburn, fortified by bourbon,
started banging away with his gavel. Frank had no choice but sing to a
virtually empty hall, while his fine old Sicilian temper flamed.During the
anthem somebody alerted Sam Rayburn to his error. He went over to Frank as soon
as he’d finished singing and put his hand on Sinatra’s sleeve to apologize.
Frank brushed him aside. “Keep your arm off my suit,” he snapped, and stormed
away.When Bill Davidson wrote the story, Frank had his attorney, Martin Gang,
file suit for $2,300,000. He was armed with a telegram from Rayburn asserting
that the incident was undiluted imagination. All Davidson had was the word of
Mitch Miller, who’d been close enough on the platform to overhear what had gone
on there. There didn’t seem to be any other witnesses.But on a visit to New
York soon after, a Hollywood press agent who was close to Davidson bumped into
a Madison Avenue advertising man whom he hadn’t seen for years. The old friend
happened to tell the press agent about a funny thing he’d seen on the platform
at the Democratic convention, which he’d attended on agency business: He’d
watched Sinatra giving Rayburn the brush-off. Needless to say, the suit was
dropped.Politics are serious business to Frank—they used to be to me until I
got tired of the game and decided to give the young ones a chance. I was doing
a bit in a picture at Las Vegas while he was there making Oceans 11, and I
wanted to talk to him. But he was always too busy. After the 1960 conventions
came and went, he was off on the island of Maui doing Devil at 4 O’Clock before
he could keep a promise to come over to my house.From Maui he sent me a letter
“giving you all the answers to the questions you would have asked me if we
actually did57 an interview.” He’s a John F. Kennedy man and I was a Robert
Taft woman; what better subject for a letter than politics, Sinatra
version?“Every four years,” he wrote, “the same question arises: Should
show-business personalities become involved in politics? Should they use their
popularity with the public to try to influence votes?“My answer has always been
‘yes.’ If the head of a big corporation can try to use his influence with his
employees, if a union head can try to use his influence with his members, if a
newspaper editor can try to use his influence with his readers, if a columnist
can try to use his influence, then an actor has a perfect right to try to use
his influence.“My own feeling is that those actors who do not agree with my
point of view are those who are afraid to stand up and be counted. They want
everybody to love them and want everybody to agree with them on everything.“I
am not sure whether they are right or whether I am right. I only know what is
right for me....”I almost tore up the letter as soon as I’d read it because of
its last paragraph: “Maybe it will make a good Sunday piece for you. If you
think so, then please don’t start to edit it. These are my thoughts, and if you
want to pass them on to your readers, let them stand as is.” I haven’t edited;
I’ve quoted, but not all five pages. Life’s too short for that, and you
probably wouldn’t read them, anyway.Though he’s proud to be a Democrat, he’s
uneasy about being called a “Clansman.” The Clan consists of the men with which
this mixed-up, lonely talent has surrounded himself—Dean Martin, Sammy Davis,
Jr., Joey Bishop, Peter Pentagon Lawford.“I hate the name of Clan,” Frank once
said.“Did you ever look the word up in a dictionary?” I said. “It means a
family group that sticks together, like the Kennedys you’re so fond of. They’re
the most clannish family in America. I don’t like Rat Pack, but there’s nothing
wrong with the name of Clan.”58What is wrong with the Clan and the Leader, as
his gang have christened Frank, is the pull they both have over young actors
who would give their back teeth to be IN. Membership dues include generally
behaving like Mongols from the court of Genghis Khan.The Clan was riding high
the night Eddie Fisher opened his night-club act at the Ambassador Hotel here,
before the Cleopatra debacle got under way. I was in New York at the time.
Frank and his henchmen took over and mashed Eddie’s performance. “This was a
disgusting display of ego,” snorted Milton Berle, sitting in an audience that
included comedians like Jerry Lewis, Danny Thomas, and Red Buttons, any one of
whom, if he’d tried, could have joined in and made the Clan look silly.
Elizabeth Taylor, on Eddie’s side that night, raged: “He may have to take it
from them, but I don’t. One day they’ll have to answer to me for this.”Steve
McQueen was one young actor I managed to extricate from the Clan. I took him
under my wing when he was driving racing cars around like an astronaut ready
for orbit. “You could kill yourself when you were single, and it was only your
concern. But you’ve got a family and responsibilities now. Think of them.”
Between his wife and myself, we got him away from overpowered automobiles.I
took to Steve as soon as I saw him in “Wanted Dead or Alive.” I liked his
arrogant walk, the don’t-give-a-damn air about him. So did Frank. When he sent
Sammy Davis, Jr., into temporary exile for indiscreet talk to a newspaper about
other Clansmen, Frank had Sammy’s part in Never So Few rewritten for Steve.
When Frank is in a movie, he becomes casting director, too.He took Steve on a
junket to New York when the picture ended, and Steve took along a big bundle of
Mexican firecrackers, which he cherishes. He hadn’t previously been any kind of
drinker, but in Frank’s crowd you drink. From the tenth floor of his hotel
Steve had a ball tossing lighted firecrackers into Central Park. When the
police ran him to earth, it took all of Frank’s influence to keep him out of
jail.59As a peace offering, Steve had a live monkey delivered to my office in
advance of his return. He wasted his time. I don’t like monkeys, so I gave it
away and summoned Steve for some Dutch-aunt lecturing when he got back. “I know
all about your trip. You were loud, boorish, and probably drunk. You have to
make up your mind whether you’ll have a big career as Steve McQueen or be one
of Frank Sinatra’s set. Think it over.”Twenty-four hours later he gave me his
answer. “I was out of line. I was flattered that Mr. Sinatra wanted me, but I’d
rather stand on my own feet.”* * * * *I sometimes wonder about the Leader. His
face lit up like a neon sign when he broke the news to me that he was going to
marry Juliet Prowse, the South African dancer to whom he was engaged for an
hour or so. “I haven’t seen that light in your eye for ten years,” I told
him.But I suspect the men around Frank went to work against Juliet. It’s easy
enough to work the trick if you’re determined and unscrupulous. A word dropped
into the conversation here and there will plant the doubts. “Do you think she
really goes for you, Frank?” “She’ll probably figure on keeping her career.”
“You should have met that family of hers—strictly nothing.” Frank was convinced
eventually that Juliet wasn’t for him.With all his talents and power, I
sometimes wonder who’s the Leader and who’s being led.60
