Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [129]
Playing the Copa was a career maker; banishment could have the opposite effect. But Silvers wasn’t a solo. He was a top banana, and a top banana needed a stooge. Could Frank help him out? Phil didn’t have to mention the beautiful music the two of them had made together playing exactly those roles on last year’s USO tour—the tour that, thanks largely to Phil, had rescued Frank’s reputation among thousands of GIs. On the other hand, you couldn’t call in favors with Sinatra. When the comic pleaded, again and again, for the singer to step into the breach, Frank was glum. He hated being put on the spot; he hated not being able to be magnanimous. “I’d come in, but I can’t leave the picture,” he said.
It wasn’t as if he hadn’t left it plenty of times already, but that was just the problem. It was one thing to displease Dickie Whorf and Jimmy Durante and Kathryn Grayson; it was something else to displease L. B. Mayer. Now that Sinatra was back on the Coast, the Chief had called him in to his office, to discuss many things, including Frank’s absences.
Going to Mayer’s office was like being summoned by the principal, and then some. It could mean a lecture on any subject at all. First Frank had to face the boss’s assistant Ida Koverman, a former secretary to Herbert Hoover and a formidable presence in her own right. Ida would welcome Sinatra briskly, send him into an antechamber, and close the door behind him. There was a moment of claustrophobic panic—then Ida pushed a button that opened the door to Mayer’s office, revealing a long, long room, the little mogul behind his huge desk at the other end. The desk was on a platform, so that the Chief loomed above all visitors: from his side of the desk, Frank could see LB’s feet, not quite reaching the ground.
His tone with Frank this time was warm and fatherly. But the message was clear: behave. We are a family. Families pull together.
Then Labor Day weekend came. The cast and crew were given both Monday and Tuesday off for the holiday. Frank paced, then decided.
MGM production memo for Wednesday, September 4, 1946:
Sinatra telephoned in to say he was ill but we were later informed that he had left for New York without permission.
Phil Silvers played the Copa dinner show solo on Thursday the fifth. He told jokes, made fun of the waiters, sang a few songs; the clink of tableware and the buzz of conversation were louder than the laughs. A waiter dropped a tray in the middle of a song. Silvers exited to polite applause. He sat in his dressing room, his bald dome still glistening with flop sweat. Like many comics, he was a gloomy, fearful man. This was what it came down to, he thought. You blew off the gig and got banned, or you just plain blew it and didn’t get asked back.
Then there was a bustle outside, and the door popped open. It was Frank, grinning like a cat with a mouthful of canaries.
They sprang into action for the 10:00 p.m. show. Sinatra sat, as unobtrusively as possible, at a ringside table. Silvers marched out, reenergized, to the first few bars of “Fine and Dandy” and beamed at the audience.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the world-famous Copacabana,” he said. “And speaking of famous—turn on the house lights a minute, will ya? If there’s anybody here tonight who’s famous, I want to introduce them.”
Up came the lights, the crowd clamoring at the sight of Sinatra. Silvers stared at the singer without comment. “Okay, turn down the lights,” the comic said.
Full of confidence, he started his routine. Then he touched his tie and Frank rose and joined him. The place went nuts, the audience jumping to its feet. Silvers and Sinatra did the USO routine all over again: singing lessons for Frank, Phil pinching Sinatra’s cheek, even a sharp slap or two when the stupid pupil just couldn’t get it right.
The crowd ate it up. They stood again when Sinatra sat back down without bowing, yielding the floor to Silvers. At the end, Phil beckoned him back, and they took their bows together. Then the comic administered a killer.
“May