His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [178]
Giancana’s increasing disllusionment with Frank was obvious on December 4, 1961, when he spoke to Ghuckie English, one of his lieutenants, about money that Sinatra’s record company, Reprise, owed someone.
ENGLISH: They owe that guy $14,000 and wouldn’t pay.
GIANCANA: Why?
ENGLISH: I don’t know. What do we do?
GIANCANA: Tell him to sue the [obscenity deleted]. Do it fast, too.
FBI wiretaps picked up another of Giancana’s conversations blaspheming Frank as a liar. “If he [Kennedy] had lost this state here he would have lost the election but I figured with this guy [Sinatra] maybe we will be all right. I might have known this guy [obscenity deleted]…. Well, when a [obscenity deleted] lies to you.”
Later, when Sam and Johnny Formosa, another gangster, discussed their feelings of betrayal over Frank’s failure to “deliver” his friend, President Kennedy, and get rid of the federal agents who had marked Giancana as a target for early prosecution, they mentioned the Rat Pack.
FORMOSA: Let’s show ’em. Let’s show those asshole Hollywood fruitcakes that they can’t get away with it as if nothing’s happened. Let’s hit Sinatra. Or I could whack out a couple of those other guys. [Peter] Lawford and that [Dean] Martin, and I could take the nigger [Sammy Davis, Jr.] and put his other eye out.
GIANCANA: No … I’ve got other plans for them.
Those “other plans” became clear the following year as Sam spent thousands of dollars renovating the Villa Venice in a Chicago suburb, and transformed the syndicate-owned restaurant into a red-tasseled nightclub with seating capacity for more than eight hundred people. Sam kept the Venetian gondolas outside on the river near the entrance and added Italian music as well as shuttle-bus service to a Mafia casino known as the Quonset Hut two blocks away. There he installed two dice tables, roulette wheels, and blackjack tables, all rigged to favor the house. His scheme called for bringing into the Villa Venice top entertainers who would attract high-rolling patrons, who in turn would be charged one hundred dollars and later steered to the illegal gambling down the road.
Through wiretaps installed in the Armory Lounge in another Chicago suburb, the FBI learned that Giancana had spoken with Sinatra in New York and met with him in Los Angeles to arrange for the entertainment. Sam planned to open on October 31, 1962, with Eddie Fisher, who would be followed by Sammy Davis, Jr., Dean Martin, and Frank himself.
Everyone agreed to perform without fee, although Frank was permitted to cut an album of his performances with Dean and Sammy for his new company, Reprise Records. He hoped to sell one million copies of the album for $4.95 each, which would net him fifty cents an album, a total of $500,000. Frank sent Mo Ostin from Reprise to Chicago a week ahead of time to work out the musical arrangements, and then he insisted on a private train to transport himself and Dean Martin from Hollywood. His demands irritated Giancana, who complained bitterly to a friend in a conversation recorded by FBI wiretaps.
“That Frank, he wants more money, he wants this, he wants that, he wants more girls, he wants … I don’t need that or him. I broke my ass when I was talking to him in New York.”
FBI agents interviewed each one of the headliners at the Villa Venice, and each one admitted he was performing there as a favor. Eddie Fisher referred to his good friend, Frank Sinatra, saying, “I’m here because a friend asked me to do him a favor.” Frank, who was making $100,000 a week in Las Vegas, said he was performing free as a favor to Leo Olsen, who was the nightclub’s owner of record, a front for Sam Giancana. Sammy Davis, Jr., was a little more forthright when agents questioned