His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [275]
Nancy cried.
So did the critics. With the exception of Clive Barnes in the New York Post, who pronounced the Sinatra gala gay and grand, most were repelled by what they saw.
“It looked like a cross between Dial-A-Joke and Hee Haw” said Rex Reed in the New York Daily News. “I feel America is the greatest country in the world and the greatest talents in our country should have been up there proving it. Instead, we got a parade of jerks, clowns, and no-talent mediocrities that made you look forward to the brassiere and toilet-cleaner commercials. Except for the Metropolitan Opera’s Grace Bumbry, the show had nothing to offer anyone with intelligence or a respect for quality.”
“For a celebration and cross-section of American bad taste, it was not all-inclusive, but not for lack of trying,” said Tom Shales in The Washington Post, dismissing the gala as “a tacky combination of a Hollywood awards show, a Kiwanis club talent contest, and a telethon stocked with fewer greats than near-greats and even more pure mediocrities.”
Mike Royko of the Chicago Sun-Times was stunned by the performance of Ben Vereen, whose painted-on blackface and big white lips jolted 1981 sensibilities.
“For sophistication, it would be hard to top having a shuffling, grimacing, bulging-eyed black man in bum’s clothing come out and do a minstrel routine in which he appeared to be brain-damaged,” Royko wrote. “You just don’t see that kind of sophisticated entertainment anymore—not since Stepin Fetchit died, and no other black actor came along who could so hilariously portray the dim-witted, gape-mouthed, obsequious black stereotype. It’s possible that this performance offended some black viewers, but it probably made many of the rich Republicans in the audience yearn for the days when you could get good domestic help.”
At the cocktail party before the show, Barbara Sinatra, wearing a black sequined flamenco dress, talked with her husband’s lawyer, Mickey Rudin, and Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, producer of the James Bond movies, saying that she thought politicians and actors were alike. “They’re both in a business under a lot of pressure,” she said. “Politicians need actors to help raise money. And it’s nice to be friends with somebody in office if there’s a problem in your hometown, in case you need a stoplight.”
The next day, wrapped in a new mink coat, Barbara, clutching her lawn ticket, took her designated place in front of the U.S. Capitol to watch the swearing-in ceremonies. Frank, enraged at being excluded from the chosen one hundred people given special passes by the Reagans, barged up the steps to take his place on the platform with members of the first family and select friends.
“Frank had not been invited to stand on the steps with the President and First Lady, but he bulldozed his way in anyway and took someone else’s place,” said a White House photographer. “He didn’t have an authorized ticket, but he ballsed his way through, ramming past the Secret Service and the Capitol police. No one had the nerve to stop him. No one!”
33
From the beginning, Frank’s gambling license seemed to be a sure thing, with the hearings in Las Vegas a mere formality. As early as December 8, 1980, Ned Day had written in the Las Vegas Valley Times that the license was “a lead-pipe cinch. You can tell by the pre-decision puffery which is starting to show up. …”
Variety had concurred on December 31, 1980: “Frank Sinatra’s importance as adrenaline to the entire gambling industry here will probably offset disquieting allegations about ties to organized crime in his bid to become a key employee at Caesars Palace.”
A week before the hearings, the Los Angeles