His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [226]
Backstage, Bob Hope and Frank sputtered with indignation. Together they hastily scribbled a statement, which Frank later revised and read, disavowing all responsibility for the reference and apologizing that it had taken place.
Hearing Frank’s disclaimer, Shirley MacLaine, also one of the evening’s hosts, exploded. Accosting him backstage, she demanded to know who sanctioned such a statement on behalf of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Jolted by this attack from a former lover and member of his Rat Pack, Frank disavowed any responsibility.
“Bob and Howard (Koch) made me do it,” he said. “They handed me this piece of paper, and I read it.”
After the ceremony, Bert Schneider said, “As a member of the Academy’s Board of Governors, I resent Frank Sinatra taking this as an Academy point of view. He’s a gutsy guy. Why didn’t he come out and say he helped write it and it was his own point of view?”
But at the height of the controversy over the Vietnam War, Frank did not have a point of view that he could articulate sensibly. He took his directions from the politicians he supported. In 1968 he called Vice-President Humphrey’s office in Washington and spoke to his administrative assistant, William Connell.
“There is a great deal of misunderstanding and confusion about the Vietnam situation,” he said. “People are asking me questions that I cannot answer. I don’t think the questions they ask are being answered in a way that they can accept.”
He went on to say that he didn’t know how to respond to the administration’s critics. Connell suggested sending the critical questions to Humphrey in a letter so that the Vice-President could provide him with some useful answers.
Instead, Frank sent a letter to several hundred people, saying that he was writing “at the special request of Vice-President Hubert Humphrey.” He asked for a brief outline of “those points of our country’s present policy in Vietnam you find most puzzling and confusing and about which you have not as yet found satisfactory or clear-cut answers.” He assured everyone that he would transmit their questions to the Vice-President and that “he, in turn, will forward the compilation to President Johnson.”
Days later, Mr. Johnson was horrified to read in the New York Post that Frank Sinatra, “at White House request,” was canvasing intellectuals on what measures to take in Vietnam. He summoned his national security advisor, Walt Rostow, and then called the Vice-President, who called Connell, who then wrote an apologetic memo to Bill Moyers: “Sinatra was trying to be helpful. He wants to help the President and the Vice-President, and he can be especially helpful in raising money for the party. He just got carried away by a casual conversation.”
The debate over Vietnam seemed to exacerbate the differences between Frank and Mia: He drank Jack Daniels; she smoked marijuana. He got drunk; she got stoned. He gave her diamonds; she wore wooden love beads. He enjoyed nights out at July’s; she liked disco dancing at the Daisy. He relished boxing; she studied transcendental meditation. He liked eating Italian; she picked at yogurt and bean sprouts. He gambled; she did needlepoint. He thrived in Las Vegas; she flourished in India with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
The final rupture in the marriage came in the fall of 1967 when Frank, who was in New York, called Mia in California to say that she was to start work with him in The Detective. She said she couldn’t because she was still working on Rosemary’s Baby. Frank ordered her to walk off the set and report to work with him. She refused. He then called Bob Evans at Paramount and demanded her release, but Evans said the director, Roman Polanski, needed her for another month. Frank insisted that his wife be released at once, but Evans