His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [181]
Peter pleaded with Bobby to reconsider, but the attorney general was adamant, saying that under no circumstances could the President of the United States stay at the home of a man who also played host to Sam Giancana and other hoodlums. Peter then appealed directly to the President, who agreed with his brother.
“I can’t stay there … while Bobby’s handling [the Giancana] investigation,” said the President. “See if you can’t Find me someplace else.”
“It fell to me to break the news to Frank, and I was frankly scared,” said Lawford, who winced when he recalled the situation twenty years later. “When I rang the President, I said that Frank expected him to stay at the Sinatra compound, and anything less than his presence there was going to be tough for Charley here to explain. It had been kind of a running joke with all of us in the family that Frank was building up his Palm Springs house for just such a trip by the President, adding cottages for Jack and the Secret Service, putting in twenty-five extra phone lines, installing enough cable to accommodate teletype facilities, plus a switchboard, and building a heliport. He even erected a flagpole for the Presidential flag after he saw the one flying over the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport. Now, no one asked Frank to do any of this, but he really expected his place to be the President’s Western White House. When Jack called me, he said that as President he just couldn’t stay at Frank’s and sleep in the same bed that Giancana or any other hood slept in. ‘You can handle it, Petah,’ he said to me. We’ll take care of the Frank situation when we get to it.’ I made a few calls, but in the end it was Chris Dumphy, a big Republican from Florida, who arranged everything at Bing Crosby’s house for him. The Secret Service stayed next door at Jimmy Van Heusen’s, and Frank didn’t speak to him for weeks over that one, but I was the one who really took the brunt of it. He felt that I was responsible for setting Jack up to stay at Bing’s—Bing Crosby, of all people—the other singer and a Republican to boot. Well, Frank never forgave me. He cut me off like that—just like that!”
Frank could not believe what Lawford told him: that the President was coming to Palm Springs and would stay at Bing Crosby’s because Bobby didn’t want him to stay with Frank. Unable to appeal to Ambassador Kennedy, who had been struck mute with a stroke a few months before, Frank called the attorney general in Washington. Bobby explained that it was impossible for the President to stay at his house because of the disreputable people who had been his houseguests.
“Frank was livid,” said Peter. “He called Bobby every name in the book, and then rang me up and reamed me out again. He was quite unreasonable, irrational, really. George Jacobs told me later that when he got off the phone, he went outside with a sledgehammer and started chopping up the concrete landing pad of his heliport. He was in a frenzy.
“When Jack got out here for that weekend [March 24–26, 1962], he asked me how Frank had taken it. I said, ‘Not very well,’ which was a mild understatement. The President said, ‘I’ll call him and smooth it over.’ So he did. After the conversation, Jack said, ‘He’s pretty upset, but I told him not to blame you because you didn’t have anything to do with it. It was simply a matter of security. The Secret Service thought Crosby’s place afforded better security.’ That’s the excuse we used—security—and we blamed it all on the Secret Service. We’d worked it out beforehand, but Frank didn’t buy that for a minute, and, with a couple of exceptions, he never spoke to me again. He cut me out of all the movies we were set to make together—Robin and the 7 Hoods; 4 for Texas—and turned Dean and Sammy and Joey against me as well.”
Lawford was so distraught about Frank’s reaction that he sent his personal manager, Milt Ebbins, to talk to him.
“Frank was terribly hurt, and Peter was the culprit. Frank blamed him for getting Crosby’s house,” said Ebbins. “I made a special trip to his office, I’ll never forget it, on Sunset Boulevard.