His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [225]
The employee, who asked that his letter be published without his name, stated that there were many more Sinatra tantrums that were even more brutish than those recounted.
Frank had his defenders. Among them was Hank Green-spun, publisher of the Las Vegas Sun, who had chastised the Nevada Gaming Board for revoking Frank’s license in 1963. This time, Greenspun defended Frank’s actions on the front page of his newspaper: “Not everybody in the world of theatricals can be Ronald Reagan or Shirley Temple … [Sinatra’s] value to Las Vegas is legendary, for every night he performs here is New Year’s Eve. So should he be condemned for celebrating a Happy New Year even if the calendar doesn’t justify the occasion?”
Frank’s former wife, Nancy, chimed in, saying that he was justified in wreaking mayhem on the Sands and its employees.
“I don’t blame him,” she said. “What else could he do when they shut off his credit in the hotel that he practically built up from the ground.”
Pointing out that Frank could have been prosecuted for disorderly conduct, assault and battery, and malicious destruction of property, D.A. George Franklin said that Frank’s conduct was reprehensible.
“You don’t go running around a hotel screaming four-letter words and breaking windows,” he said. “He did nothing but a disservice to this community by that kind of behavior.”
But the district attorney could not prosecute because no one would press charges.
Frank blamed his friend of thirty years—“Where was Jack Entratter when Carl Cohen tried to kill me?”—and walked out on the rest of his engagement.
Carl Cohen became famous in Las Vegas when posters of Frank with his teeth knocked out sprang up around town with the captions: “Hooray for Carl Cohen,” and “Elect Carl Cohen Mayor.”
27
Shortly after Governor Pat Brown’s defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1966, Frank made an overture to the Vice-President of the United States, Hubert H. Humphrey.
“It was in the Waldorf [Astoria] Towers, where the Vice-President and his wife were staying at the time,” said Norman Sherman, Humphrey’s press secretary. “The phone rang, and someone said that Frank Sinatra would like to make a courtesy visit as an admirer of Mr. Humphrey. The Vice-President agreed to see him, so Frank stopped by on a Sunday afternoon with Mia, who was quite kittenish and curled up on the couch beside him, but didn’t say a word. She just listened as Sinatra and Humphrey reminisced about the big bands in the 1930s in South Dakota. Hubert was a nut on boxing and knew all sorts of trivia about who weighed what and which contender won what crown, so they shared that as well. There was an instantaneous bonding between them, an immediate good feeling that led to a nice friendship. Humphrey thought highly of Frank, but then he thought highly of everyone. And let’s face it, friends were not that easy to come by then, especially in the entertainment industry, which was so violently opposed to President Johnson’s Vietnam policies.”
The cheery politician from Minnesota enthusiastically supported the United States involvement in Vietnam. Frank, in turn, supported Humphrey and became a hawk on the war as well, while his flower-child wife stood with the doves, who deplored the bombing and bloodshed. Mia could not understand her husband’s zest for napalm and defoliation, and neither could his liberal friends, who were appalled by his support of the Johnson-Humphrey ticket. Opposing Vietnam, they supported Senator Eugene J. McCarthy, an eloquent antiwar candidate.
The war in Vietnam would continue to haunt Frank for many years, causing dissension at the Academy Awards in 1975, when he was sharing the honors as master of ceremonies. When producer Bert Schneider won an Oscar