His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [212]
On June 8, 1966, Frank took nine persons, including three women and Dean Martin, Jilly Rizzo, and Richard Conte to the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel to celebrate Dean’s forty-ninth birthday. Shortly after midnight, Frederick R. Weisman, fifty-four, president of Hunt’s Foods and brother-in-law of multimillionaire philanthropist Norton Simon, walked in with Franklin H. Fox, a businessman from Boston. The two men had come from a rehearsal dinner at Chasen’s for the wedding of their two children and wanted to toast the future as prospective fathers-in-law. Walking past Sinatra’s table, they sat in a booth nearby and ordered drinks.
Conversation was difficult for them because of the noise from the Sinatra table, so after a few minutes, Weisman leaned over and asked Frank and his party to keep it down, adding that their remarks were offensive to the women in the room. Frank looked at the man with contempt. “You’re out of line, buddy,” he said, turning back to his raucous table.
Franklin Fox watched Sinatra look closely at the man who had dared to criticize him, and heard him make an anti-Semitic remark, adding, “I don’t think you ought to be sitting there with your glasses on talking to me like that.”
Weisman rose to object to Sinatra’s slur, holding up his hand to ward off any possible blows, but Frank was on his way out. It seemed as though he had dismissed the incident, but a few minutes later he stormed back to the Weisman table.
“He came back to vent his anger, and Fred stood up,” said Franklin Fox. “My efforts were simply to keep Sinatra away from him, and I did that by sidearming him. I was standing in front of Fred when Sinatra threw the telephone.… Dean Martin was trying to get him out of there, and the next thing I knew Fred was lying on the ground, and Sinatra and his party had walked out. I was trying to help Fred on the floor.… When we weren’t able to revive him, we called an ambulance and he was carried out of the room on a stretcher.”
Still unconscious twenty-four hours later, Weisman was taken to the intensive care unit of Mt. Sinai Hospital, where he was in critical condition for forty-eight hours and not expected to live. On Saturday, June 11, he underwent cranial surgery to correct the effects of a skull fracture. By the next day, he started showing signs of regaining consciousness, but there was damage from the blow, which caused what his doctors called “retrograde amnesia.”
Awaiting Weisman’s recovery, the police investigating the brawl were having trouble locating the rest of the principals.
“Sinatra has been in hiding,” said Police Chief Clinton H. Anderson, “but we’ll get him. We want to find out the cause of the fight and the physical condition of Weisman at the time.”
Frank telephoned the Beverly Hills police from his home in Palm Springs and said that the fight was all Weisman’s fault. “This man said, ‘You talk too fucking loud, and you have a bunch of loud-mouthed friends,’ ” said Frank. “I thought he was kidding; then I realized he wasn’t. … He hit me, and at once another man jumped between us. The top of the cocktail table at which I was sitting was broken from its base as Weisman fell across the table and then to the floor. I at no time saw anyone hit him and I certainly did not. I looked behind me, and as I left, I saw a man on the floor.”
Dean Martin, who had gone to Lake Tahoe, verified Frank’s story by phone.
“Martin had nothing to say, as you might expect,” said the chief. “He said he didn’t see anything.”
A year later, Dean admitted to Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, “The cops came. We said we didn’t know who did it and walked out. But we did, yeah.”
In Palm Springs, Frank was worried as he waited to see if Weisman would live or die. Mia had flown to be with him, as had Jack Entratter and his wife, and together the four of them kept a death watch.
“That’s the only time I think I ever saw that man scared,” said Corinne Entratter. “For two weeks, we all sat there staring at each other.