His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [203]
Frank’s casualness about money jolted Dexter one night in 1964 when the two men met to have dinner at LaRue’s. Later, they climbed into Frank’s Dual Ghia and headed for the Sunset Strip to have a nightcap in the old Scandia restaurant. Then they drove back to Frank’s apartment on Doheny, where they went inside to discuss their next movie project.
“That’s when he remembered the briefcase which was on the backseat of the car,” said Dexter. “I hadn’t even noticed it, but I went out to the garage and brought it into the apartment. ‘Open it up,’ he said, and when I did, I nearly had a cardiac arrest. That damn briefcase was Filled with cash—stacks and stacks of hundred-dollar bills. I don’t know how much money a briefcase holds, but this one was filled to the top. I couldn’t believe he’d been driving around all night with that valise lying so visible on the backseat, where parking lot attendants, or anybody else for the matter, could’ve easily taken it.
“ ‘God in heaven,’ I said. ‘Someone could’ve swung with this.’
“ ‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Frank. ‘There’s more where that came from.’ ” Dexter dropped the subject.
During the filming of Von Ryan’s Express in Rome, Dexter was dismayed to see his friend spend money so recklessly. One weekend when he was bored and wanted company, Frank summoned the city’s best haberdashers to bring their most luxurious items to his villa. They spread out a dazzling array of men’s accessories—silk shirts, ties, beautiful cashmere sweaters, eighteen-carat-gold cuff links, scarves, alligator belts, handkerchiefs, and slacks. Throwing open the door, he invited everyone in—Jack Entratter, Jim Mahoney, Jilly Rizzo, Dick Bakalyan, and Dexter.
“Help yourselves, fellas. I’m gifting today,” he said.
Swarming into the room, the men grabbed the opulent items like little boys diving for baseball cards. Everyone loaded up, except for Brad Dexter. “What are you being so generous for?” he asked. “You don’t need to lay it on like this.”
“It means nothing to me, Brad. Take something. Help yourself.”
Dexter shook his head and walked out of the room.
At the age of forty-nine, Frank was still buying friendship the way he had growing up in Hoboken when he took the neighborhood boys to Geismer’s and let them use his charge account.
“I saw so much of that in Frank,” said Dexter. “It made me sad. His father, Marty, was also bothered by all the hangers-on who exploited him. I met his parents in Palm Springs and Marty and Dolly thanked me profusely for saving Frank’s life. ‘I trust you because of that,’ Marty told me the next morning when we had breakfast together. ‘I don’t trust these other bums. Why is my son always surrounded by freeloaders? Please take care of him, Brad. I feel better when you’re around him. Promise me. Like you did in the water.’ The old man really got to me, and I promised him that I’d do my best. For that reason, I always felt protective towards Frank and did my damnedest to keep him out of trouble.”
Having accepted a role in Von Ryan’s Express, Dexter had traveled to Europe with Frank for location filming in 1965. Sinatra had picked him for the part of the heroic captain, while he played the lead, Colonel Ryan, a man so feared and hated that his soldiers called him Von Ryan. Frank was making the film because Harry Kurnitz had told him the war story was more worthy of his talents than the “home movies” he’d been making with the Rat Pack.
The studio had leased an eighteen-room villa for Frank in Italy, complete with helipad. It was situated outside of Rome because he refused to come into the city.
“He was mad at the city then,” said Howard Koch. “They gave him a hell of a bad time a few years ago—1953, was it? Don’t know exactly when, but I guess he was kind of on his ass and doing a concert tour. Anyway, something went wrong, and they booed him—booed him. I guess he’s been sore ever since.”
Refusing a limousine, Frank made Twentieth Century Fox charter a helicopter each day for his personal pilot, Don Lieto, to fly him from the Villa Apia to Cortina