B009HOTHPE EBOK (27 page)

Sammy was a very cool cat. Could do anything, even impressions, and he was passionate about everything he did, even when the stuff he got into got very funky. He was the hippest, coolest cat that was. I watched him from the light booth at the Gatineau nightclub, across the river, in Quebec, where I used to go to do my amateur contests—like the time I took my mother’s car.

*   *   *

As I said, my agent in New York was Buddy Howe at General Artists Corporation. Howe was a very conservative-type guy, a dancer prior to that, and was married to Jean Carroll, who became a popular comedienne on television and in clubs. Well dressed, a shirt-and-tie type of guy, glasses, grayish hair, very calm in the way that he spoke—in other words unlike the cigar-smoking agent stereotype. An honest face, a very trusting guy. He came into my life early, before Irv Feld became my manager. When my crooner career began it became necessary to adapt the kind of songs I’d been singing to more of a Vegas-type format. We also had to add other nightclub type material, knowing we needed to gear my act to a more sophisticated audience. This involved creating a new song set and a new way of performing those songs.

The guy who did all the bookings for Buddy Howe at GAC’s Vegas office was Jim Murray, who only booked Vegas. What was unique about GAC was that they had representation out there in Vegas, whereas most of the other agencies didn’t. They just did their business from New York or L.A. Jim Murray was an Italian-type guy: tall, good looking, he exuded a lot of confidence. A real fast talker, well-dressed: the suit, the shirt, the tie, and the casual look that went with Vegas when he had to. He’d started out as an office boy at MCA way back in ’43, and then became an agent, the only agent that lived in Las Vegas, as a matter of fact. Did twenty years with MCA, which was the Lew Wasserman–Jules Stein setup, a very conservatively dressed bunch. Their mantra was “Dress British; speak Yiddish.” Lew Wasserman and Jules Stein were the pillars of what Hollywood is today. They controlled everything in the industry. I hooked up with Jim Murray in the ’60s, around that time Buddy Howe had been my main agent in New York.

Jim was assigned to Vegas, and he was what all the agents were supposed to be when they moved there: nongamblers. The talent agencies never wanted their agents to get into bad habits, so they chose guys who never went to race tracks or played cards. Jim was perfect for that.

They didn’t choose these guys
because
they didn’t gamble, they just “encouraged” them, shall we say, not to gamble. “You don’t wanna gamble, I’ll just say it like that, and you can take it any way you want. But if you do,
dah dah dah.
” The reason they didn’t want them to get involved with gambling was because that’s where all the funny business went on with the mob.

Jim was that type of agent, loved to drink, a golfer. And the women! The biggest problem with Vegas, at that time, was that it was a very small community. And the crooked noses all knew each other; they were buddies, they talked with each other all the time. And they were honest—at least with each other. If they wanted to be dishonest or when they wanted to skim a little off the top, it was up to them, because they were very tight with each other.

For instance, if Jim was making a deal for Andy Williams or me and wanted a hotel, and if you tried to negotiate with another hotel, to make a move to another casino, to get more money for your client by the time you’d get to the next hotel, they already knew what you were up to, so they’d say what the fuck are you talking about? You already went to—whoever!—for the same price. They already knew everything.

Jim was aggressive and feisty, the way agents were back then. There was a guy who worked with him—we’ll call him Larry—who was kind of a rogue agent; and was typical in the way of all the stories you heard about these guys. Very flashy, quick moving, five-sevenish—the typical show business type. Once you got into business you could easily get into a lot of trouble because there was temptation everywhere: women, gambling, booze, drugs. Hey, you were in Sin City.

Larry lived about five blocks from Jim. One day this Larry said to Jim, “I have no money and I need new tires.” Jim was an open guy with a big heart, but he was careful with his money, so he said, “Well, I don’t know what you’re going to do. I can’t lend you any money because I don’t know yet what you’re gonna do.”

But Larry was the kind of guy who wouldn’t take no for an answer. He went to the gas station where he knew the owner very well and got four new sets of tires for his car, and left the car parked in the lot where Jim parked his car.

Jim sees the tires. “Larry, where’d you get the tires?”

“Hope you don’t mind I charged them to you, but don’t worry I’ll pay you back!”

So what does Jim do? He had the car brought back to the gas station and had the tires taken off!

Another time this kid Larry, who was representing everybody but being this flashy get-in-trouble type guy, he started up with a hooker at one of the big casino hotels. Remember, he’s an agent representing talent. Larry screws the hooker and when she wants to get paid, he tells her to go fuck herself. The hooker called security and all the security guys got after him. There weren’t any cell phones back then but they had these beepers, that’s how they contacted each other. The hookers, everybody was in touch. It was about two o’clock in the morning when Larry told the hooker to beat it. She told security what had happened and where this guy was in the hotel, asking security to get over there. They stripped him down bare nude, Larry all the while spinning this story claiming that the hooker had stolen $100 from him, and that was why he called her a fucking whore. That shows you the alliance between the waiters, the owners, the hookers, and the security guys. They were all this little fraternity, and if you didn’t play the game right or were hard to work with, you were in trouble.

Larry was the kind of guy who would walk in a dressing room and take over. He was the show. The opposite, in fact, of your average agent behavior. The agents all used to come backstage and grease you. They’d see the show, come back, and kiss your ass. Let’s say Kenny Rogers was in his dressing room, he’d be watching, say, the news, Larry would walk right in and change the channel to
Wheel of Fortune
or whatever he wanted to. And Kenny would look up outraged and say who the fuck is this guy?
Chutzpah!

*   *   *

Segregation went on well into the sixties in Vegas, and it was a time when a lot of my friends—whether it was Sammy, Lena Horne, or any of the other black acts—could work but couldn’t stay in the same big hotels we did. The black attractions basically stayed at the Moulin Rouge.

I remember once when Jim Murray was handling the amazing torch singer Della Reese. She was performing at one of the hotels, I think the Flamingo, and she’s sitting by the pool but because she was black they didn’t want her there. And Morris Lansburg, who was the owner of the Flamingo, went to Jimmy and said: “What’s purple gums doing there? Get her out of the pool. They’re gonna empty the pool and the guests are gonna check out of the hotel.”

Whenever the agents would try and get reservations for someone, like, say, Lionel Hampton, at any of the big hotels they wouldn’t let him stay there. Whenever they tried it, the management just refused. Even Harry Belafonte, if you can believe it, wasn’t allowed to play on the public golf courses.

Desegregation may have started in the fifties and become the law of the land in the sixties, but the change happened slowly in Vegas and other places around the country, too, believe me. Sinatra finally put his foot down somewhere in the early 1960s and that all changed.

*   *   *

Dean Martin. I have to tell you about what a good guy he was. He got up and played golf every day, did his show, went to his room. He wasn’t a drunk the way everybody thinks—that was an act. He was a laid-back cat who played a loud, goofy lush.

He didn’t really hang out and for that reason I knew Dean less well than I did Sammy and Frank. He was kind of a loner, even with Sinatra whom everybody worshipped. Dean followed his own drumbeat right down to the end. On their last tour together Frank tried to push him around to go out and what have you, but Dean got on the plane and went home. He’s the kind of guy who wanted his little bowl of pasta, watch a Western, go to bed, get up, and go play golf.

He was a naturally funny man, and the humor came out of him effortlessly, especially in the steam room when we were all in there together. He would do funny shtick, like when we’d all get our massages. Neil Lepo ran the health club, would pour oil on Dean and as they’d rub him from his waist up he had a way of sliding off onto the floor, as if they’d poured so much oil on him he just slipped off like an eel. That kind of physical shtick. Frank adored him. The drinking bit was really a prop item for Dean; he wasn’t the lush, it was often just apple juice. Frank and Sammy were the bigger drinkers. With Dean it was mostly for show. He didn’t even drink to calm himself down. He’d come off stage and sit in a little tent and watch cowboy movies on TV or go upstairs to his room and watch more TV. A truly great stylist, the loveable lush character he created was so seamless and flawless no one outside the inner circle ever guessed it was an act. As a singer, Dean emulated Donald Mills, the lead singer of The Mills Brothers. It may seem odd, but Frank and Dean at one point were doing the Bing Crosby thing along with the whole look, the hat and the pipe and all of that.

Bing was squeaky clean and wholesome, which these guys definitely weren’t. But this was all before the Sinatra Rat Pack came into being. The Rat Pack was originally put together by Humphrey Bogart and Betty Bacall. They came up with the name when they all started hanging together. Sinatra, Dean, and Sammy idolized Humphrey Bogart. Prior to that they all took after Crosby.

Perry Como was different; he had his own thing going. Como was a barber originally, used to cut hair, and then he evolved into singing and had his own show but he was always a separate entity. Even Nat King Cole, whom we all admired, didn’t partake of the Rat Pack shenanigans. He was unto himself, a very classy kind of a guy, always with the cigarette holder, and dressed to the Ts.

The lounges out there were big. There were shows every night, you saw all the great performers, all the comics, all the tall leggy blondes in fishnet stockings and feathers you’d ever want to see. You’d go see Shecky Greene, Louis Prima, and Keely Smith at the Sahara. Don Rickles, Vic Damone, great talents. It was fantastic. Some of the lounge shows were better than any of the shows in the main showrooms, or anywhere. You’d make the rounds, going from one show to another, and it was great fun.

Frank was tied up with the mob to the degree where he did favors for them. He liked the thrill of being involved with gangsters. Jules Podell, the owner of the Copa, told me that he acted as a bag man for the Mafia a number of times but they eventually stopped using him because he always got caught. One time in New York he was going through customs carrying a briefcase with $3 million in cash in it. Customs opened it up and saw all this money. They started questioning him. He tried to bluff it out, still, what could he do, he’d been caught red-handed. But once the crowd saw who it was in the line ahead of them, they began pushing and shoving, the place was mobbed and getting out of control and they had to let him go. Now that’s the point you get
too
involved with the mob, and they come back at you and start to ask
you
for favors.

I learned a lot from hanging around with songwriters Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen—that experience really broadened my craft. Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn wrote
Ring-a-Ding-Ding!
Sinatra’s 1961 album—no ballads, just up-tempo swing—specifically for (and about) Frank. A
ring-a-ding
was someone who has dazzle and sizzle—that was Frank all right, but it might just as well have been applied to Van Heusen who was a flashy dandyish type of person. He’d been born Edward Chester Babcock but had adopted the Van Heusen name from the famous shirt manufacturer. Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn—they wrote many of the great Sinatra classics: “Come Fly with Me,” “Call Me Irresponsible,” “My Kind of Town,” “The Look of Love,” “Swinging on a Star.” The Sands was the hot spot of the world at that point. Beginning in the ’60s, that’s where everybody met or wanted to be and not everybody could get in. When you’re hanging out with that crowd you know you’re sitting on top of the world. And being accepted into this exclusive club had always been my focus—they were my idols, the biggest influence on my life.

Sammy Cahn was a truly great lyricist; he was like my adopted brother, father—everything. I didn’t know Van Heusen as well. Jimmy was the playboy type, a real party guy, always after the women. He lined up all the women for Frank. Jimmy lived large, he flew airplanes, and every night was party, party, drink, drink, drink. With Jimmy, it was just fun, fun, fun. He was the guy that Sinatra wanted to be. He traveled with Frank, and when Sinatra needed to get introduced to women, Jimmy was the guy that did it. Van Heusen was that singular animal and nighttime creature, piano player, an all-around wild guy.

You were around the best professionals in the business, and life was good. The real inner sanctum was the health club. Everything went on there. We all had our own robes with nicknames on them that Frank gave us. Sammy Davis was Smokey the Bear, I was the Kid, Dino was Dago, Vic Damone was the Voice.

After the shows we would all meet up there. That’s where the kibitzing went on in the early hours of the morning, and the food was great, the girls were hot, tiptoeing into the steam room giggling. That’s where the fun was. We’d be sitting around talking, bullshitting, and all of a sudden a couple of showgirls come in, and they’re naked, too. Frank would have women of the night brought in now and then. They would come in, take their clothes off, these beautiful women, standing there stark naked. There were little rooms, massage rooms, and what have you, off the main steam room and that’s where you’d go if you wanted to have sex with them. There were no gang bangs or any stuff like that going on with Frank around. He didn’t go for any of that; he would just disappear into one of the little rooms. Jay Sebring would be giving us hair cuts at 3
A.M.
Sadly, he later got killed at Sharon Tate’s house the night of the murders by the Manson family.