His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [202]
The night after the near tragedy, Jilly Rizzo called Brad to say that “the boss” wanted him to come to the house for dinner because George Jacobs was preparing spaghetti pomodoro, Frank’s favorite, and Patsy D’Amore, who owned the Villa Capri in Hollywood, had flown over some fresh Italian bread and prosciutto.
“Frank appeared uptight and depressed when I arrived,” said Dexter. “I didn’t realize how angry he was until we sat down to dinner and George started serving the spaghetti. Frank took one forkful and then started yelling that it was not prepared properly. George stood there quaking in his boots, not saying a word as Frank seized the platter and threw the spaghetti in his face, screaming, ‘You eat it. You eat this crap. I won’t.’ George didn’t flinch. He just peeled the spaghetti off his face and went back to the kitchen. I was so stunned by what Frank had done that I could barely speak. Finally, I said, ‘That was unkind, Frank. A very unkind thing to do.’ He yelled ‘Goddamn it. That bastard doesn’t know how to cook al dente, and that’s the only way I’ll eat it!’
“George Jacobs was a terrific guy with a great sense of humor who took care of all Sinatra’s needs. He was his valet, chauffeur, cook, bartender, social secretary; he did everything for Frank, everything. He was totally devoted to him, traveled around the world with him, and was always at his beck and call. To see him so humiliated by Frank was quite disturbing. I thought maybe Frank was suffering from the aftershock of almost drowning and just wasn’t quite himself. We were scheduled to shoot early the next morning, so I excused myself at that point and returned to the hotel, but I couldn’t help thinking what bizarre behavior that was for a man who was at death’s door twenty-four hours before. How important could a plate of spaghetti be? After what Frank went through, why wasn’t he grateful just to be alive? I asked myself that question over and over until I realized that he was unconsciously lashing out at me for putting him in the awful position of having to be grateful for his own life. He couldn’t deal with his feelings toward me, so he took it out on poor George, a black man who would never fight back and whom Frank treated like chattel or a piece of property that he owned and could discard at will.”
In the next three years, Dexter would often see that sudden searing anger overtake Frank like a violent squall, plunging him from gracious charm into malevolent cruelty. “After a while, I got so I could see it coming,” he said. “I could tell in Frank’s eyes when that horrible mood change was about to happen. There is some emotional conflict deep inside him that is triggered off by God knows what, and when it comes rushing to the surface, he explodes and hurts someone either physically or psychologically. Frank is a true manic-depressive and careens from great waves of elation to bouts of morose despair. It’s always in the depressed state that he gets ugly and vents his rage, like the time he urinated on Lee Mortimer’s grave. Afterwards, he screamed, ‘I’ll bury the bastards. I’ll bury them all.’ ”
In his manic phase, Frank seemed like the greatest Italian host since Lorenzo de Medici. He spent money lavishly, wining and dining his friends with unstinting generosity, flying them around the world in his private plane, and swamping them with expensive gifts. He tipped waitresses and hatcheck girls with handfuls of hundred-dollar bills, an act of largess that worried his lawyer, Mickey Rudin, who often counseled him to be more careful about