His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [152]
In February 1958, TV Guide described the show as “one of the biggest and most expensive disappointments of the current season,” and by March Frank was starting to say that he was too busy with movie commitments to continue the series. It was dropped after twenty-six weeks, and the post mortems blamed his arrogance.
“Mr. Sinatra, the artist whose best we have tasted and enjoyed, was simply making a fast buck,” wrote Harriet Van Home in the New York World Telegram. “He didn’t just walk through his show, he shambled, shrugged, and could [not] have cared less.”
“It would be charitable to suggest that the shows were unrehearsed,” wrote Paul Molloy in the Chicago Sun-Times. “It would also be an indictment of sloppy performance. For I couldn’t escape the feeling that Sinatra’s thinking was something like: ‘Let’s give the peasants out there a few songs and jokes and get this nuisance over with.’ There is effrontery about this attitude that has no place in show business.”
Jack Donohue, Frank’s director, said he was temperamentally unsuited to a medium that demanded careful rehearsals. “There are quite a few performers who have no business on television each week, and Sinatra is one of them,” he said. “I just feel that nobody—Frank included—can race through three shows a week. He hates to rehearse, and he was always late for rehearsal. He’d show up late and say, ‘What do I do, Jack?’ and I’d tell him we had a run-through, then a dress rehearsal, and he’d say, ‘Oh, no! Do we have to do this twice?’ So I’d say: ‘No, Frank, you don’t have to, but the rest of the cast does. Maybe you know your lines, but the rest of the cast doesn’t, so we’re going to do this my way.’ I have actually played his part in the run-through and dress rehearsal, and the first time Frankie had a whack at it was when we were on the air.”
Although the series was canceled, ABC recouped some of its investment the following year when Frank hosted four one-hour specials, but he was never again able to make his mark in television. “I hate the fric-frac of it all,” he said. “I’ll do a special now and then but no more of this series crap. Lucy [Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy] can have it.”
He threw himself into a killing pace of movie-making (Some Came Running, Kings Go Forth, A Hole in the Head, and (Never So Few) and nightclub appearances (the Fontainebleau in Miami, the Copa in New York, the Chez Paree in Chicago, and the Sands in Las Vegas). All of Frank’s work catapulted him to number one among the ten biggest money-making movie stars in 1958, who included Glenn Ford, Elizabeth Taylor, Brigitte Bardot, Jerry Lewis, Rock Hudson, William Holden, James Stewart, Yul Brynner, and Marlon Brando.
Yet his attitude toward work—especially his unwillingness to rehearse—irritated people. Director Billy Wilder, a good friend of Frank’s, refused to work with him, saying: “I’m afraid he would run after the first take—‘Bye-bye, kid, that’s it. I’m going, I’ve got to see a chick.’ That would drive me crazy.” Asked if Sinatra was unprofessional, Wilder said, “I think this: if, instead of involving himself in all those enterprises, nineteen television shows and records by the ton and four movies all at once and producing things and political things and all those broads—his talent on film would be stupendous. That would be the only word. Stupendous. He could make us all, all the actors that is, look like faggots.”
Shirley MacLaine, who had been given her part by Sinatra in Some Came Running, agreed. “His potential is fantastic. The only thing … The thing is, I wish he would work harder at what he’s doing. I don’t think that when you polish something you can help but improve it. He won’t polish. He feels polishing might make him stagnant. He doesn’t even like to rehearse.… Some people say he behaves the way he does because he isn’t sure of himself, or because he hates himself. With this man, it’s nothing as simple as that. Maybe it’s something like this: he won’t extend himself all the way because he’s such a perfectionist.… What