B009HOTHPE EBOK (25 page)

The New Frontier was run by the Detroit guys, the Flamingo was owned by Al Parvin and Paul “Red” Dorfman, an Outfit guy from the Chicago mob (and stepfather of Allen Dorfman, who owned the Stardust Casino—featured in
Casino
as the Hotel Tangiers). The Dorfmans had a big furniture company back then. He worked for the boys at the Copa—started out there as a waiter actually. From there Eddie Torres eventually went down the line to end up running the Riviera.

The fans, the help, the mobsters, the entertainers, the pit bosses, the showgirls, the waiters, the call girls, the bartenders, the cocktail waitresses, the guys who ran the casinos, the tourists—were all part of the pageant.

There was this guy Jack Entratter, who’d been a waiter and bouncer at the Copacabana, moved out to Vegas where he became the entertainment director at the Sands. Tall, good-looking guy. We used to call him slue foot, because he couldn’t walk normally—he wore these funny shoes because his feet were square. He had all kinds of problems, and they weren’t all confined to shoe problems, believe me.

All the casino managers were more or less controlled by the boys. That was pretty much the landscape. The entertainment directors came and went, but the mob or “the boys,” as they called them, stayed the same. People like Eddie Torres and Jerry Zarowitz.

B.H.H.—before Howard Hughes—was the golden era in Vegas, the early fifties through ’66. It was like a family thing then; if you were performing at the hotel, they made you feel like you were part of the family. If you left and performed somewhere else, you stayed loyal to your casino, you did it the right way.

Vegas was a community, it was a family environment—not exactly the family on
Leave It to Beaver,
or today’s family entertainment in Vegas, but a family nevertheless. If anybody got sick we’d fill in for them. It was that kind of tight situation. In those days we had entertainers like Louis Prima, Harry James, The Mills Brothers—people of that caliber. That was when the lounge business was very big.

It was a time when nobody locked their doors. Who’s going to steal anything when the mob’s running the store? Back then, in its quaintness, in its feeling of control, there was this unilateral sense of dress and behavior and calmness.… Until, that is, somebody stepped out of line and got caught and murdered, and put in a car, and dumped in the desert. Who knows how many bodies are buried out there?

You’d have guys come in who you’d read about in the papers. They were wanted for this or that crime, and they were like, “Ahhh, fuggetabawtit! It’s just an aggravation, I’ll be okay, whaddya need, let me send you some cannolis.” The next day the three guys would walk in with boxes of Italian pastries, cannolis or whatever you wanted. It’s funny, you’d watch these guys gamble, and see how meaningless money can be to some people, to where they’re losing half a million, a million, two million dollars. And the way some people played at those tables was just mind-boggling.

At the Sands there was Carl Cohen, the manager and mob’s point man, and this one little guy whose name was Charlie Kandel. We used to call him Toolie. He was a mob guy, but the sweetest man imaginable. He was always so impressed that I wrote the theme song for
The Longest Day
because, aside from being a mobster, he was also a decorated war hero. Used to show me his little parade hats and occasionally give me one of his medals. He always slept with a baseball bat next to his bed in case somebody came in and threatened him.

He would look after me. He’d meet me in a coffee shop after the show and eat coffee ice cream and tell me little bits of mob protocol: “Just don’t you ever do this or that, that’s a no-no, stay away from that.” He would always tell me, “Walk in the shadows.” He’d sit in the back of the show every night, have a coffee ice cream, and a cup of hot lemon juice before he went to bed. Everything he did, he did very meticulously, methodically, all his little routines. Maybe he had OCD—like Howard Hughes. All these guys had their eccentricities. Every time he’d eat, he’d bring his own utensils, put them under boiling hot water, clean them as if he were sterilizing them for an operation. He wouldn’t touch a knife or a fork unless he’d first cleaned them himself in boiling water.

It was at the Sands that I first met Marvin Davis, an oil guy, one of the richest in the world. One time or another he was the head of Davis Petroleum, bought Twentieth Century Fox (with his partner Marc Rich), and owned Fox Plaza, the site of the Nakatomi Plaza building in
Die Hard.
He would come in frequently to gamble at the Sands. That’s where you began; everybody started at the Sands. I made so many friends at the Sands.

*   *   *

The year 1967 wasn’t very good for blue-eyed crooners—and things only got worse for Sinatra. It’s true he’d had a number one song that year, even if it was that “Something Stupid,” recorded with his daughter Nancy. He got named chairman of the Italian-American Anti-Defamation League, an institution he wryly referred to as the “Dago NAACP.”

One of the things that bugged Sinatra was rock ’n’ roll, especially the British Invasion. At first he thought it was just a fad, like hula hoops, but by the late ’60s it was clear it wasn’t going away anytime soon. The Beatles, he said, weren’t as bad as Elvis—“at least they’re white.” He developed an irrational loathing for Barbra Streisand and any number of other things.

During this period Sinatra seemed to be constantly angry and frequently flew into rages. The problem was that Sinatra was no longer the god he had once been. Rock ’n’ roll had eclipsed his fame and notoriety, and worse, he was now considered schmaltzy and unhip by the new hip generation of the sixties. By the late 1960s Las Vegas itself had become uncool and tacky. Once the Mafia had sold Vegas to Howard Hughes the sense of danger and decadence that made it luridly attractive was gone—it was just “a Disneyland, with slot machines.”

But his big
bête noir
was the Howard Hughes organization. After Howard Hughes settled in in 1966, a new infrastructure got established. Things were becoming more and more uptight, more rules, more lists, more people running around checking on things. When Hughes took over, his people wouldn’t work with him. The mob didn’t own all the casinos anymore. When things began to change Sinatra got massively pissed off. The Hughes situation was getting intense and it impacted nobody more devastatingly than Frank. There was a new code in town—Frank never got the picture.

In 1967, Sinatra was the headliner at the Sands. He ran up $500,000 in gambling debts at the casino and then disappeared over Labor Day weekend. A few days later Frank was back with his teenage bride, Mia Farrow. Drunk and showing off, Frank grabbed one of the golf carts used by the bellhops to transport luggage and began crashing around the casino with Farrow in the passenger seat, eventually smashing into the glass entrance to the casino. It wasn’t, as has often been told, intentional, nor did he drive through it. He was just so drunk the golf cart got out of his control and the window shattered. Fortunately neither Frank nor Mia were injured in the crash. He then tried to set fire to various couches and curtains in the lobby, but was unsuccessful in getting them to catch on fire.

Then there’s the big blowup. Frank’s been performing at the Sands, say, for a week. It gets down to where they won’t give him any more markers. Markers are chips. Frank would cash them in and keep the money and not pay off the markers he owed on. The boys let Frank do that, let him have markers for, say, $50,000, and, let’s say he’d make $75,000 (meaning $50,000 would actually belong to the casino), he’d keep it all. When Hughes came in, he said, “No more of this. Give us back our fifty grand, keep your twenty-five.” That’s what started the problem between Sinatra and Hughes. So the resentment starts building up.

I’m sitting at the bar of the Sands hotel, next to the casino with Jilly Rizzo, Sinatra’s friend and bodyguard. He told me Frank was in a rotten mood. From what I understand, Sinatra’s rage about the markers situation had started a night earlier. Frank got so pissed off he called Jimmy Blue Eyes, who was the mob connection in New York, connected to the Genovese family. Vincent “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo got his name from this game that they played in New York where they’d get on each other’s shoulders and then you’d hit each other with their elbows. But because of his small size Jimmy got hit in the eyes so much they’d be black and blue. That’s how he got the name Jimmy Blue Eyes.

Now Jimmy Blue Eyes was one of the guys that got things done in Vegas. Sinatra would call him whenever he got pissed off at anybody. He was Frank’s rabbi in the closet. “The fuckin’ morons, Jimmy, you’re not gonna believe what these schmucks did to me,” blah, blah, blah. “The fuckin’ morons! You gotta fix it for me, Jimmy.” He wanted Jimmy to fix it then and there, but Jimmy said, “Frank, go to Palm Springs and relax, we’ll try and do something.” But Frank’s not going to Palm Springs to cool off. It’s Frank, King Frank, so what do you expect? Frank’s not going to chill out. Sinatra, being the personality that he was, when he got boozed or got heated, he turned into this … other guy.

Frank gets massively pissed at what he takes to be an insult to his pride. He comes back and again they won’t give him markers. He’s drinking. And when he drinks, he’s rough. Like Johnny Carson, who was off the radar when he drank. Total Jekyll-and-Hyde transformation. No matter, whatever he did, I loved him!

It’s late at night, were all in the lounge bar, and Frank’s still steaming about the night before. The next thing I know, he’s standing up on the blackjack table in the middle of the casino. And of course everybody stops playing. People’s mouths are wide open. Frank’s buddies are rushing over: “What’s up, Frank?” The pit bosses are trying to calm him down, figure out what’s the matter. And Frank’s going, “This place was sand when they built it, and it’ll be sand when I’m fucking done with it.” He’s ranting on and on, cursing. The pit bosses are telling him, “Aw, Frank, c’mon down, man, forget it.” Finally they get him off the table and into the operator’s room at the Sands. He doesn’t want them to call Carl Cohen, the manager of the Sands. This scene gets reported to Carl Cohen who is a salt-of-the-earth type of guy, always the greatest gentlemen, an individual who I never saw lose his temper. I loved the guy; he was my godfather. It’s 1:30 in the morning, but Carl is going to try and sort it out, make Frank see reason. He’s used to getting his way, Frank, people made exceptions for him even when he got nasty because Frank was Frank, you know.

They wake Carl up ’cause the management guys who worked at the casino all lived on the property, in these little villas in the back in an area called the Aqueduct. Carl comes over in the middle of the night, in his bathrobe, in a golf cart, parks behind the coffee shop adjacent to the casino. We are informed that Mr. Cohen has arrived; Jilly and I take Sinatra back to the coffee shop so that he can talk to Carl. There’s a large security guard standing next to Carl. In his tantrum Frank throws a chair at the security guard.

There’s a pot of coffee on the table. Carl is sitting there in his bathrobe, and he and Sinatra get into it. Frank is standing in front of Carl raging and Carl is reprimanding Frank about the chair incident, trying very reasonably to explain that things have changed. “It’s not our joint anymore, Frank, can’t you see that? There are rules. We can’t give you the markers anymore, we just can’t do it.”

With that, Sinatra says, “You fat Jew motherfucker.” And he pulls the tablecloth out from under the coffee and everything on the table falls onto Carl Cohen, scalding him with the boiling-hot coffee. That’s it, Carl had enough. He gets up and punches Frank Sinatra right in the mouth and knocks his caps out, they’re all over the floor. At least they were caps! They rush Sinatra out, Jilly says to me, “Paul, get him the hell outta here, the cops are going to show up.” Which they do and make a report. Meanwhile, they get a Learjet to fly Sinatra out, back to L.A. to go get his teeth done, and see Dr. Stein. The entire town applauded Cohen for what he did—Frank’s behavior had been getting more and more abusive. Frank threatened to have his legs broken, he wanted Jilly to go after him, but nobody was going after Carl. He was respected. He puts out the word to the boys he wants Carl dead. The boys’ response was, “You don’t touch him, you don’t go near him.” That’s how revered and loved Carl Cohen was.

You have to understand, the mob still ran the place, and Carl was one of the boys from Cleveland. Frank was a singer, who may have all these mob connections but he wasn’t a mob guy. He was an entertainer. A whole different category. Whatever Frank’s affiliation was with Giancana or any other mobster, it doesn’t matter. They knew you should behave properly whoever you were. You just don’t go around threatening people—especially high-ranking mob guys. If you get out of line, they put you in your place. They’re not going to let him go bully these guys up like that.

Those guys killed each other for less than that! You see what I’m saying? Mob guy or not a mob guy has nothing to do with it. It’s your
behavior,
how you conduct yourself. Like he sings in that great Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen song, “I could tell you a lot, But you gotta to be true to your code.”

*   *   *

In 2001 I had a small part in the movie
3000 Miles to Graceland,
playing a pit boss. I would take all the actors out gambling every night. What I tried to teach them was that ultimately you’re going to lose, that’s why those buildings are here, that’s why there’s a pyramid there now, a Statue of Liberty, so you need to count the cards, you need to use common sense, because luck is a very fickle lady at the tables. After all my years in Vegas I learned this stuff from the boys, the mob guys—they knew the odds were in their favor. And, if by chance, they weren’t, well, they had ways of changing the odds. Unless you count or have a system or knew how to gamble, you are not going to win, period. So I would load the table up with whoever, directors, actors, friends. I would say “Okay, let’s hit, it’s plus,” when it looked favorable. “There’s paint coming,” I’d tell them, meaning king, queen, jack. “With picture cards you’re going to win.” Guys you see in movies about the casinos like George Clooney wouldn’t last the night in a real situation because they don’t know the smell or the feel of the room.