His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [200]
“Nancy put terrible pressure on her father to get Tommy in the movies,” said Chuck Moses. “Frank finally cast him in None but the Brave, which was the movie he directed in Hawaii, the first one he did under his new agreement with Warner Bros.”
That movie, a co-production of Japanese and American companies, nearly cost Frank his life on location in Hawaii. On Sunday, May 10, 1964, he invited several people to spend the day with him on the beach in front of the house he was renting in Kauai. His executive producer, Howard Koch, and his wife, Ruth, were there with Brad Dexter, a rugged, strapping actor who played the rough sergeant in the film. Dick Bakalyan, another actor, and Jilly Rizzo and his blue-haired wife, Honey, whom Frank had nicknamed the “Blue Jew’,” were also there. Murray Wolf, a song plugger, was up in the house, fifty yards away. Sensing Sinatra’s restlessness, Koch had excused himself to go back to work.
“Frank was getting itchy,” he said. “I was going back to the desk to do some rescheduling to see if we couldn’t finish [shooting] sooner.”
“It was a sun-drenched afternoon and we were all on the beach enjoying the ocean and that great tropical sun,” recalled Brad Dexter. “The waves were billowing higher and higher, though, and I noticed a treacherous riptide developing with a very strong undertow. I warned everyone to be careful in the water. Frank asked me to go to the house to bring him some wine and soda, so I went on up. While I was collecting everything in the kitchen, I heard Murray screaming hysterically from the living room that Frank was drowning. Í ran in and found Murray framed in front of the huge bay window in an emotional frenzy, pleading with me to save Frank’s life.”
Dropping the wine and soda, Dexter tore out of the house, running at full tilt down the long, winding path that led to the water’s edge. When he got there, he could barely see the bobbing heads of Frank and Ruth Koch in between the crashing waves. Everyone on the beach was paralyzed by fear and drawing away from the shoreline as Brad raced past and, in a running dive, plunged into the ocean.
Fighting his way through the waves, he reached Ruth Koch first. “Save Frank,” she said, gasping for air. “I can’t go on.” Holding her head out of the water, Dexter tried to shake the submissiveness out of her.
“Nobody’s going to die,” he said. “We’re all going to come out of this alive. C’mon, fight. C’mon. You’re going to be okay.”
He held Ruth under one arm while he swam to Frank, who was even farther out. He was already suffering from hypoxia, a lack of oxygen, and his oxygen-starved brain was impairing his vision.
“I can hear you, but I can’t see you,” he cried, his face a pare shade of blue.
“Frank was pathetic, helpless like a baby, and he kept sputtering to me, ‘I’m going to die. I’m finished. It’s all over, over. Please take care of my kids. I’m going to die. My kids. I’m going to die,’ ” said Dexter. “I tried desperately to instill in him the will to fight for his life. I kept slapping him repeatedly on the face and back with stinging blows. I pulled him up and out of the water, over and over again, but he was as limp and lifeless as a rag doll. It was like grabbing a handful of jelly. He was so soft—there was no muscle tone, no firmness to hold on to, only squishy flesh. I yelled at him to help save himself, but he kept saying, ‘I’m going to die, I’m going to die.’ I tried to get him angry enough to start fighting back by calling him a fucking lily-livered coward. A spineless, gutless shit. But he didn’t react. He seemed like he wanted to die, like he had no will to live. He just caved in.
“With one hand, I grabbed him by his ass and pulled him up and out of the water, but his body was a dead weight. Then I realized that he was unconscious, and so was Ruth. I had to fight