Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [186]
Ginny Simms, a former band singer with Kay Kyser and now a wannabe movie star, was Mayer’s mistress.
Frank’s remark got a big laugh at the table. He could be funny when he wasn’t trying too hard, though, as with Dolly, his jokes usually had a stiletto concealed—or not concealed—about them. In this case, the blade was double-edged: Simms, while vivacious and appealing, was no beauty. To put a finer point on it, she was a bit horse faced.
The remark got back to Mayer.
Frank made the long trudge into the inner sanctum. The old man was ominously calm. He was even smiling a little.
“So,” he said. “I hear you been making jokes about my lady friend.”
Frank winced. “I wish I could take that back, Louis. I’m so sorry. I wish I’d never said anything so stupid.”
“That’s not a very nice thing to do,” Mayer said. “I want you to leave, and I don’t ever want you to come back again.”
That had been in February. Mayer had been genuinely offended by Frank’s remark, but he was also a businessman. The gaffe had given him a perfect pretext to unload damaged goods. By the end of April, MCA was finished working out the severance: Sinatra would receive a final payment of $85,000. Greg Bautzer instantly called MGM and slapped a restraining order on the check until Nancy and Frank settled the separate-maintenance suit.
Meanwhile, Frank was doing big business at the Copa, thanks to the cognoscenti, who, heedless of his troubles, continued to roll in night after night. But every dime he made, and then some, was going straight out the door. He went to MCA’s chairman, Jules Stein, for a loan; Stein all but laughed in his face. Those “unlimited important personal appearances, radio and TV offers” mentioned in the press release were in fact extremely limited: Frank Sinatra was a drug on the market.
Not to mention a king-sized pain in the ass. He treated everyone at the agency like a servant, including his chief representatives, Lew Wasserman in Hollywood and Sonny Werblin in New York. MCA might have stood for this behavior if he’d been bringing in money. As it was, Sinatra’s agents had effectively cut him loose: by 1950, they were no longer working actively on his behalf.
Worse, he was losing what was most precious to him: his voice. Many years later, Mitch Miller recalled:
Listen, Sinatra had a marvelous voice, but it was very fragile. There were certain guys like Gordon MacRae who could stay up all night and drink and sing the next day—he could sing underwater. But if Frank didn’t get enough sleep or if he drank a lot the night before, it would show up. And Frank was a guy—call it ego or what you want—he liked to suffer out loud, to be dramatic. There were plenty of people, big entertainers, who had a wild life or had big problems, but they kept it quiet. Frank had to do his suffering in public, so everyone could see it. And this was a time he was having trouble with Ava, she was in Spain, and it showed in his work. He would come in to record, and he couldn’t get through a number without his voice cracking.
Every time Frank’s voice went, Miller would have to start the session over again, racking up studio fees and musicians’ overtime. (Which, as per Sinatra’s unique contract with Columbia, were the label’s responsibility.) But thanks to the new technology of tape recording, Miller was able to come up with a simple fix:
I can say this now: I could have been kicked out of the musicians’ union because tracking was not allowed. There were a lot of musicians