His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [228]
“He was real upset,” recalled Al Algiro, who worked as an extra. “I remember Pat Henry messed up his lines real bad, and after three takes Frank got so mad he went over and slapped Pat in the face a few times and told him to shape up. Also, when Lainie Kazan played her scenes too close to his lips, he got pissed off and said, ‘Are we supposed to kiss in this scene?’ That was a real putdown for Frank to say in front of everyone. This was Lainie’s big chance at a movie career, and she was trying so hard.”
Refusing to do more than one take and ripping out handfuls of the script to save time, Frank treated the director, Gordon Douglas, like a lackey who was on the film simply to accommodate him. At Frank’s insistence, Douglas scheduled his scenes so that he never had to come to work before noon; the sets were pre-lit, and his double plotted every move so that by the time Frank arrived, he could complete action on one set and proceed to the next without delay. The film was finished within six weeks and the post-production details fell to Michael Viner, the twenty-one-year-old assistant to the producer.
“At the end of the film, there were a couple of problems involving Sinatra,” he said.” One night, he was so mad at the scriptwriter, he ripped a fire ax out of its casing and chopped down the door to his room, which cost us a few hundred dollars. Then there was a prostitute who complained that Frank and his pals had not treated her quite right. She said that after an all-night party, Frank had invited her to stay for breakfast and called for an order of ham and eggs, which he then ate off her chest with a knife and fork. She threatened to sue Twentieth Century Fox because of that incident, but we settled before it got to court.”
Bolstered by hormone shots of testosterone regularly administered by a nurse, Frank indulged himself sexually with a variety of women and most were thrilled to be in his company.
“I was just a little twenty-six-year-old secretary from Chicago when I met him at the Fontainebleau,” said Nancy Seidman. “He invited me to spend the weekend with him, which was incredible, even though he came down with pneumonia, and was very, very sick. He ran a temperature of 104 degrees, and I stayed up and took care of him, changing his pajamas, which would get soaked every few hours from his fever.… Mia Farrow kept calling the suite, but Frank wouldn’t take her calls. Then Eddie Fisher came in to ask if he should marry Connie Stevens.… Jilly was there all the time.… People were so reverential … I was very taken with the whole scene. It was quite exciting. …”
Hearing that Frank was ill, Mia flew to Florida to be by his side, but she left a few days later, looking wan and pathetic. Frank then summoned Ava Gardner, who arrived with a maid, a secretary, and twenty-nine pieces of luggage. She stayed only briefly. “During the night there was one of those wild parties, and a piano got pushed out of an upstairs window,” she said. “That was too much for me. Next day, I left.” Dolly and Marty Sinatra arrived a few days later.
“All I need is for Nancy, Sr., to arrive, and all the people close to me will have checked in,” Frank said.
“The Mia thing was hard,” said Nancy, Jr. “I don’t care who you are, or what age you are, you suffer through something like that just like everybody else.”
“If we could make it through Mia, I guess we can endure anything,” said Frank, Jr.
Gathering his family around him, Frank tried to ease his anguish, but the impending divorce disturbed him. He offered Mia generous alimony, but she refused any kind of financial settlement, saying all she wanted was his friendship. She kept the jewelry he had given her and the forty-eight place settings of silver, but she moved out of the home in Bel-Air, taking only her clothes and her stuffed animals from the bedroom.
“When I got married, all that sudden money I never used at all, you know? It wasn’t my money, after all,” she said. “That was his money. We kept separate