His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [239]
Sheriff Ralph Lamb was outraged. “Waterman was booked [for pulling a gun]. If Sinatra comes back to town Tuesday, he’s coming downtown to get a work card, and if he gives me any trouble, he’s going to jail. I’m tired of him intimidating waiters, waitresses, and starting fires and throwing pies. He gets away with too much. He’s through picking on little people in this town. Why the owners of the hotels put up with this is what I plan to find out.”
The next day, the charge against Waterman was dropped.
“My reports indicated Waterman still had fingermarks on his throat where Sinatra grabbed him,” said the district attorney. “There seems to be reasonable grounds for making the assumption that Sinatra was the aggressor all the way.”
Immediately, Jim Mahoney, Frank’s press agent, started phoning reporters.
“I think it ironic that a gun was pulled on Sinatra and when all is said and done, he appears to be the heavy,” Mahoney said. “A man was accused of a crime, whether true or not. Frank kept quiet like a gentleman. So everybody’s taking potshots at him. Frank isn’t running for office. The guys in Las Vegas are.”
The continuing international press coverage of the incident finally forced Frank two weeks later to defend himself.
“There was no such argument about credit or for how much I was going to play,” he said. “As matter of fact, I just sat down at the blackjack table and hadn’t even placed a bet, since the dealer was shuffling the cards. At that point Waterman came over and said to the dealer: ‘Don’t deal to this man.’ I got up and said, ‘Put your name on the marquee and I’ll come to see what kind of business you do’ and I walked away. … As for his injuries, I never touched him … and as for the remarks attributed to me relative to the mob, they’re strictly out of a comic strip.
“If the public officials who seek newspaper exposure by harassing me and other entertainers don’t get off my back, it is of little moment to me if I ever play Las Vegas again,” he said.
He said he was through with the gambling capital. “I’ll never set foot in the whole state of Nevada again,” he said. “I have no intentions of going back—now or ever. I’ve suffered enough indignities.”
When reporters asked him about the incident, Governor Ronald Reagan rallied to Frank’s defense.
“Why don’t you fellows ask me about the good things he’s done, like Richmond, Indiana,” he said, referring to the benefit Frank and Jerry Lewis had staged to educate the nine children of former police chief Don A. Mitrione, who had been kidnapped and slain in Uruguay by Tupamaro leftist guerrillas.
The next month, Frank began campaigning in earnest for Reagan, performing at fund-raisers in Los Angeles and San Francisco, mesmerizing $125-a-plate audiences with the silky ballads and love songs he used to sing in Las Vegas. Reagan, obviously grateful for such support, jumped onstage to express his thanks.
“Most people believe that politics is a game of quid pro quo,” he said. “But I want to assure you that following Frank’s endorsement of me, it is only sheerest coincidence that there is going to be a freeway run right though the lobby of Caesars Palace.”
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Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew, who called a Nisei reporter a “fat Jap,” and referred to Poles as “Polacks,” was frequently greeted by placards that said: APOLOGIZE NOW, SPIRO, IT WILL SAVE TIME LATER.
Despite Agnew’s racial slurs, Frank was his biggest supporter, especially when he took on The New York Times and The Washington Post, referring to them as “the eastern liberal establishment press.”
He concurred with Agnew’s opinion that “some newspapers dispose of their garbage by printing it.”
He relished Agnew’s sesquipedalian labeling of Democrats as “nattering nabobs of negativism,” “pusillanimous pussyfooters,” “vicars of vacillation,” and “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.” Frank cheered him as he denounced “radical liberals” as “solons