His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [201]
“I caught a glimpse of the beach far in the distance and saw four heads in the ocean coming towards us. I don’t remember how long it took for them to reach us, but the time seemed endless. Someone later said that it was forty-five minutes. It seemed like forever until those lifeguards reached us with their surfboards and lashed Frank and Ruth on top with ropes to hold them in position. Then they slowly reversed their course and paddled them back to land, leaving me to fend for myself. I rolled over to float, and to try to regain the strength I needed to swim back, but I was nearly done for. All I wanted to do was sleep, but I fought that deep fatigue, knowing that if I gave in to it, I’d be finished forever, and for what? For two people who wanted to die? Who had given up trying to save their own lives and could[n’t] have cared less about mine? That thought inflamed me, and I swam like a crazy man with an extravagant passion to live, defying the waves to take me under. By some miracle that I don’t understand to this day, I reached the beach before the life-saving party. I hit the shore and ran down to the point where Frank and Ruth were still in the ocean. I went in to help carry them out. Both were unconscious.
“I stretched Frank out on the sand and gave him artificial respiration. Once he started vomiting the water out of his lungs, I turned him over to the lifeguards, July Rizzo ran up to me and shouted, ‘You’re a hero, Brad. You’re a hero. Without you, Frank would be dead.’ ”
Dexter walked back to his hotel room and passed out for a few hours. When he returned to Sinatra’s house, it was overrun with people—newspaper reporters, photographers, island officials, friends, members of the cast and crew, and representatives of the Red Cross. The first news bulletins that flashed worldwide reported that Frank had drowned. When Dexter walked into the room, Sinatra was sitting in an easy chair, talking to his daughter, Nancy, who was on Oahu, the main island, with Tommy for the weekend. Frank, in his bathrobe and slippers, was trying to comfort her and assure her that he was alive and well.
“He looked up at me when I entered the room and I observed that he was still in a state of shock,” Dexter said. “His eyes were bloodshot, and he had the expression of a felled ox. When our eyes locked, it seemed that he didn’t know what to say. He was embarrassed. He hung up the telephone and said, ‘My family thanks you.’ It was such a strange remark, almost as if I had put him in the uncomfortable position of having to thank me for saving his life. He never thanked me then or later, and I realize now that my rescue efforts probably severed the friendship right then and there by depriving him of the big-benefactor role which is the one he liked to play with his friends. The Chinese say when you save a life it belongs to you forever. Frank would have much preferred performing the grand dramatic gesture himself and saved my life so that I would be the one who owed him and would be indebted to him for life, not vice versa. I didn’t see the love-hate relationship all that clearly at the time, but it certainly became obvious later on.”
Although Frank never thanked Brad Dexter, he drew him closer, bringing him into his immediate circle of friends, and giving him a place of honor alongside the writer, Harry Kurnitz, whom he idolized. Frank seemed to turn to the rugged actor for protection, much as a small boy relies on his strong brother; he confided in him and for a while the two men seemed inseparable. Frank affectionately nicknamed him “Serb” because the actor was Yugoslav and spoke Serbo-Croatian. Frank told him that he was haunted by terrible nightmares of the drowning, and admitted his fear of going