His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [78]
At two A.M., Jack Keller’s phone rang. It was an Associated Press reporter asking where Frank was.
“He’s in Palm Springs,” replied Keller, who had left him there hours before.
“No, you’re wrong,” said the reporter. “He’s in town, and he just hit a guy on Sunset Boulevard who’s still rolling down the street.”
“I just left him in Palm Springs,” insisted Keller.
“Well, I know it was him,” said the reporter. “He just hit a guy by the name of Lee Mortimer.”
Before Keller died in 1975, he left tape-recorded reminiscences in which he told his version about what happened that night.
“After the AP guy called, the UP called and so did the downtown papers. Finally I just turned the phone off. Just about that time, a timid little knock comes on my door, and who’s standing there but Frank.
“ ‘Jeez, I think we’re in trouble,’ he said.
“ ‘You bet your ass we’re in trouble and we better get out of here before the reporters start showing up,’ I said.”
Both of them jumped into Frank’s car and headed for Bobby Burns’s house to decide what to do. At three A.M., Keller came up with the solution.
“There’s only one thing to do,” he said. “It’s the only way to get out of this thing. Otherwise, you’re going to have every newspaper in America against you, because regardless of what they think of this guy Mortimer, they resent anyone of their number being manhandled by an actor. So, Frank, you’ve got to pick up the phone and call all the papers and say, ‘This is Frank Sinatra’ and listen to their questions. Then you’ve got to tell each one of them that when you walked out of Ciro’s, Mortimer and this Chinese dame were standing there and you heard him say to her, ‘There’s that little dago bastard now!’
“This is a slur on your nationality, and no one in their right mind would expect you to take this in good grace. Knowing your temper, the press will go along with you and be more or less on your side. It’s the only thing you can do to come out of this looking good.”
Frank seized on the suggestion and started making calls, the first of them to Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper.
“Hedda, this is Frank Sinatra,” he said. “I hate to wake you up. But I’ve been in a little fracas, and I wanted you to know the truth of what happened. Lee Mortimer has been poking at me in print for two and a half years. I saw him tonight at Ciro’s, and he called me a name reflecting both on my race and my ancestry. I had no way of hitting back at him except with my fist. So this time I let him have it.”
The next day the papers reported that Frank had floored Mortimer with one punch because he had called him a dago. Outraged by the reports, Mortimer denied the charge. “I was standing on the steps outside the restaurant when I was hit without warning,” he said. He promptly swore out a warrant for Frank’s arrest, charging him with assault and battery. Conviction carried a maximum fine of one thousand dollars or six months in jail, or both. He also sued Frank for twenty-five thousand dollars in damages.
Arrested the next day during a radio rehearsal, Frank sailed into the courtroom smiling and proclaiming his innocence. “I plead not guilty and wish a jury trial sometime late next month,” he said. The sheriff revoked his gun permit, and the judge set bail at five hundred dollars.
The next day Mortimer reported that he had received two anonymous phone calls threatening him unless he dropped his charges.
“The first voice was guttural,” he said. “After asking my name, the