Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [216]
The groundbreaking architect Wayne McAllister had designed the place to a 1950s-modern fare-thee-well, with pink stucco walls, fieldstone pilasters, jutting roofs, and, around back, the first kidney-shaped pool in town. The inn’s crowning glory was a three-story, glass-cupolaed structure, the tallest in Vegas in 1951, built to look like an airport control tower. Behind the picture windows, the Skyroom lounge, with little lights faired into the ceiling to simulate desert stars, offered dining, dancing, and an unobstructed vista of the Las Vegas valley in all its sand-and-sagebrush splendor. The entertainment might have been Hollywood, but the clientele was strictly string tie: southwestern oilmen, cattle ranchers, and their ladies. Even if the DI’s 450-seat Painted Desert Room could draw some top acts, nobody mistook it for the Copa.
Sinatra was the top of the bill: after him came the comedian-magician Jay Marshall, also known as “The Funny Bunny Man”; Ruby Ring, “Dancer Extra-Ordinary”; and the Arden-Fletcher Dancers. The Singing MC was Gene Griffin, and the orchestra was led by Carlton Hayes.
If Frank closed his eyes, he could remember the Major Bowes Number Five tour unit.
Sinatra’s shows sold out. He ran Carlton Hayes and his musicians through their paces, belting out “My Blue Heaven,” “Come Rain or Come Shine,” and “That Old Black Magic,” singing his heart out and working hard to make his audience—never mind that they weren’t café society—feel he was singing to them alone. He worked a little too hard for Ava’s taste. Sitting ringside with Axel Stordahl and his new wife, June Hutton, “Ava was chatting away happily,” Stordahl recalled, “and then suddenly she said, ‘Let’s get out of this trap.’ She thought Frank was looking at a girl in the audience a little longer than necessary. They ended up throwing books and lamps at each other after the show, and Frank walked out in the middle of the night.”
Jealousy, of course, was their aphrodisiac. Rosemary Clooney, who was working at the Thunderbird while Sinatra played the Desert Inn, remembered how Ava would come in to catch part of her act (perhaps having just walked out on Frank), telling Clooney afterward how much she loved the singer’s rendition of the Gershwins’ “They Can’t Take That Away from Me”: “Every time I get a chance, I’m going to come down here and listen to you sing it, even though the old man doesn’t like it much.” Clooney finally figured out why: Artie Shaw had had a hit with it.2
Jimmy Van Heusen flew up from L.A. for the whole Desert Inn stand—because Frank expected him, and because he loved to fly, loved the desert, and loved the whores who, even in Vegas’s early days, could be found there in such great numbers and variety. In between shows, Chester took to wandering the inn’s halls, looking for fresh talent. One night he was drawn into the Skyroom by the sound of a tasty jazz trio playing his own “Polka Dots and Moonbeams.”
It wasn’t just his own music that Chester was admiring but the way it was being played. The man at the baby grand—cadaverously pale and thin, with a thick head of straight greasy hair, pointed shoulders, and long, spidery fingers darting over the keys—had a hauntingly spare technique, with rich sonorities tossed off like afterthoughts. And, amazingly, he swung.
During the break, Chester went up and introduced himself: “I like the way you play.”
“I like the way you write,” the piano player replied.
His name was Bill Miller, and as Van Heusen squinted in vague recognition, Miller reminded him that he had worked the big bands for a long time, playing for Red Norvo and Charlie Barnet until the mid-1940s.
“Sinatra’s my pal, God help me,” Van Heusen said. “I’m in Vegas to cheerlead—and get laid, of course.”
Frank with his greatest accompanist, Bill Miller, early fifties. (photo credit 28.2)
Miller grew animated—for him. “Speaking of getting laid,” he said. “In the summer of 1940 I was working with Barnet