His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [221]
“I know all about his goons,” said Shecky Greene. “I was appearing with Frank at the Fontainebleau at that time when he put me in Tony Rome, the movie he was making in 1967. Both of us were drinking too much in those days and neither one of us was the world’s nicest drunk. I had to get dressed standing in the grease with the busboys. I told him I couldn’t work where I had to dress in the basement. He told me to take his dressing room, which was right off the stage, of course, so I took it and was getting ready to open. Frank came down and finished dressing with me. A minute before I was to go onstage, he said, ‘Shecky, stick with me and I’ll make you the biggest star in the business.’ I looked at him and said, If being a big star means being like you, then I don’t want it.’ Frank Sinatra is not my idea of show business. George Burns, yes. Cary Grant, yes. Bob Hope, by all means, but not Frank Sinatra. I walked onstage that night and did my performance. Later, things got a little bloody.
“At four in the morning, my head was split open by Andy ‘Banjo’ Celentano, Frank’s bodyguard. Joe Fischetti came at me with a blackjack three feet long, and I broke his nose. Then he begged me on his hands and knees not to call the boys in Chicago, which is where I’m from. I’ve still got scars all over my head from that fight, and if you put a nickel in them, they will all play Sinatra’s songs. Now, I didn’t hear Frank order that beating, so I can’t swear that he did, but I can tell you what was happening during that time and you tell me. The air was volatile and violent around him all the time. We played the same audience every night, and when I was onstage, there was nothing but laughter. Yet when Frank came out, that same audience erupted and people started fighting, drawing guns, and swearing to kill one another.
“Frank had so many people sucking around him then, it was sickening. And those bodyguards would attack on command, so naturally people were frightened. Even if he doesn’t order the beatings, he allows the violence to happen by having those guys around. He wanted me to go on tour with him, but I couldn’t kiss his ass, so that was the last time we worked together.”
Even Mia grew exasperated with the rude humor of his entourage. “All they know how to do is tell dirty stories, break furniture, pinch waitresses’ asses, and bet on the horses,” she said.
One night at the Sands, Frank threw a box of cupcakes at one of his friends, splattering frosting on the expensive gown of a woman at an adjoining table. Mia was embarrassed. “Oh, Frank, you’re so childish,” she said. Momentarily stung by the rebuke, Frank scooped up two handfuls of ice cubes from the ice bucket in the middle of the table and pelted the guests around him. Again, Mia scolded him. “That’s not only childish, it’s dangerous,” she said. “You could knock someone’s eyes out.” Without a word, Frank stalked out of the room.
Normally, Mia was proud to sit at the Sands or the Fontainebleau listening to the audience rustle with excitement when her husband walked onstage.
“He rocks a room,” she said. “Nothing I could ever do in films would make me as proud as I am of him then. He gets away with the squarest lines, and he worries about his lyrics, but he’s an artist. He’s groovy, he’s kinky and—above all—he’s gentle. Nancy is writing a book about her father, and she’s calling it A Very Gentle Man. That’s him.”
Mia was ambitiously pursuing her own career soon after their wedding and she had flown to London to be in A Dandy in Aspic with Laurence Harvey, telling reporters that it was all right for Sinatra to be married to a professional actress.
“There would be no point in having a wife who stayed home and cooked his spaghetti for him,” she said. “Any number of women could have done that.” She said she would not make movies with her husband because