His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [80]
“Frank Sinatra, looking rather flea-bitten as the priest, acts properly humble or perhaps ashamed,” said Time.
Frank took the bad reviews out on RKO and struck back when the studio required him to appear at the film’s premiere in San Francisco.
“Frank did not want to go, but the producer, Jesse Lasky, pleaded with him to do it as a personal favor, so he agreed, but not with good grace,” recalled Jack Keller. “Jimmy Van Heusen, Bobby Burns, and I went with him. We checked into the biggest suite in the Fairmont Hotel, with rooms covering half a floor. As we walked into Frank’s suite, he went right to the phone and called room service. ‘Send up eighty-eight Manhattans,’ he said.
“Pretty soon all these carts came jangling up the hallway with waiters ready to serve the eighty-eight Manhattans. ‘Where do you want them, sir?’ Frank points to the entry hall. ‘Just put them over there in the corner.’
“Well, Jesus, after three days the goddamn Manhattans were still sitting in the entry hall untouched.”
At four A.M., Frank, who had insomnia, ordered a piano sent to his suite, which required waking the manager of the piano store and paying a truck driver triple wages to deliver it. The next night, Frank took a party of twenty people to four nightclubs and then back to his suite until seven A.M.
“Then Frank comes to me around nine A.M. and says, ‘Let’s go shopping.’ I asked what we were going to buy and he said, ‘What the hell’s the difference? We’ll think of something.’ So we went to the best men’s store in San Francisco. Frank asked me my size, walked over to the counter, and picked out eight cashmere sweaters in different colors. ‘Just keep those,’ he said. Then he went to the tie counter, where the best ties were selling for fifteen dollars a shot; he picked out two dozen for me. Then socks and shirts, totaling twelve hundred dollars’ worth of clothes. He did the same for Van Heusen and Burns. He told the store to send them to the Fairmont and put them on his bill.
“The premiere went off beautifully, and Frank charmed everyone. The next morning, he wanted to fly directly to Palm Springs with Van Heusen while Bobby and I returned to Los Angeles, but the fog was so thick, you couldn’t see out the windows. Frank was furious. How dare they do this to him! He had me call the airport but, of course, no planes were flying. He was irate. Then he turned to Van Heusen, who is a licensed pilot, and said, ‘Charter a goddamn plane.’
“Van Heusen looked at him. ‘Are you crazy? If the commercials aren’t flying, who the hell is going to rent me a plane?’
“ ‘Don’t argue with me,’ yelled Frank. ‘Get me a plane and let’s get the hell out of here.’
“Van Heusen sat down and called every charter service. They all laughed at him. After an hour he said, ‘Frank, there’s no way out of here.’
“ ‘Don’t tell me there’s no way out of here,’ roared Frank. ‘We’ll drive to Palm Springs.’
“We thought he was kidding, but he called Mario, the San Francisco chauffeur who drove him around whenever he was in town, and told him to get his ass over to the hotel. He then called the Blue Fox restaurant. ‘Get your ass down to your goddamn kitchen,’ he told the owner, ‘and fix me up a great big picnic hamper with cold fried chicken, wine, cherry tomatoes—the works—and have it ready in an hour.’
“We tried to talk him out of it, but you could never talk Frank out of anything. He and Van Heusen left, and Burns and I waved them off as they headed for Palm Springs. We flew out in two hours, when the fog had lifted, and were in Los Angeles by three o’clock that afternoon. We didn’t hear from Frank for almost a week. They had gotten hit by a blizzard and had to seek refuge in a farmhouse for three days. Every single thing on that trip was charged to RKO, and the limousine