His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [70]
“Phil and Frank admired and adored Bugsy Siegel so much,” said Jo-Carroll Silvers. “When we were in Chasen’s [for dinner] and saw him, Frank and Phil would immediately stand up when he passed and, with real reverence in their voices, say, ‘Hello, Mr. Siegel. How are you.’ They were like two children seeing Santa Claus, or two little altar boys standing to pay homage to the pope. They were wide-eyed and so very impressed by this man, who was the chairman of the Mafia board then. Bugsy was handsome, charming, and very pleasant, but he also had an aura of danger about him that Frank would later cultivate. Phil and Frank were enthralled by him. They would brag about Bugsy and what he had done and how many people he had killed. Sometimes they’d argue about whether Bugsy preferred to shoot his victims or simply chop them up with axes, and although I forget which was his preference, I will always remember the awe Frank had in his voice when he talked about him. He wanted to emulate Bugsy.”
Interestingly enough, the two men shared certain similarities. Both were notorious womanizers who took flamboyant lovers but always returned home to their long-suffering wives. Both traveled with entourages, possessed ferocious tempers, and had grandiose visions of empire-building. Bugsy dreamed of a gambling metropolis in the Las Vegas desert while Frank envisioned himself the kingpin of a million-dollar resort hotel two miles outside of Las Vegas. Bugsy’s dream flourished, and the Flamingo Hotel launched Nevada as the gambling capital of the United States. Frank’s luxury resort broke ground but was never completed. In May 1946, he would announce plans to build in Hollywood the largest sports arena on the West Coast, one to rival New York’s Madison Square Garden, but construction was never started.
“Like Bugsy, Frank had a Mafia redneck mentality,” said Jo-Carroll Silvers. “He always dressed well but in a vulgar, showy way. He was not funny like Phil and Harry Crane; he liked crude practical jokes but he was not a humorous man. Like gangsters, he gave great big crude showy presents. For our wedding he gave us a huge silver coffee service. That was part of his image of himself. He was quite Sicilian without any WASP overlay. His moods were such that there was a good Frank and a bad Frank, but he was openly good and openly bad. He didn’t try to hide the dark side of himself in those days.
“He seemed to revere his mother but pay no attention whatsoever to his wife, Nancy. In the time that we were together from 1945 to 1950, I never once saw him talk to her or touch her or relate to her in any way. I knew he played around with other women because Phil had told me about the daisy-chain parties, but Nancy was still very much his wife, always quiet and in the background. I can still see her serving spaghetti to Frank and all his male cronies.”
Jo-Carroll was outraged when her husband told her what went on at the Wilshire Towers apartment that Jimmy Van Heusen and Axel Stordahl shared. “This was where all the men went during the week for their bachelor orgies,” she said. “They had a daisy chain going, and call girls were in and out of there all the time. One day Frank brought in Marlene Dietrich. Call girls were one thing, but Dietrich was something else. It was a joke to invite her, but she came because she had heard about Frank in those days.”
Sammy Cahn was one of the men sitting around that apartment playing cards when Frank announced Miss Dietrich’s arrival, and he described what happened: “ ‘Who do you think is going to walk into this room?’ Frank said, and he named the lady who will