Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [40]
The famed TV producer George Schlatter once wrote a speech for Jilly at a birthday celebration for Frank. George introduced Jilly as “the Harvard professor of elocution,” and then Jilly stood up and recited a poem by someone he called “Rudolf Kipling” before ending with “… by the living God that made yous, you’re a better man than I, Gunga Din,” adding, “Whoever the fuck that was!” Frank collapsed laughing.
Jilly was married to Honey, a woman Frank called “the Blue Jew” because she dyed all her hair blue (and I mean all). The relationship didn’t last, not least because she and Jilly used to have some knock-down, drag-out fights. Even after my early experience with Bob Oliver’s family, it took me a long time to realize that Italians like to fight and it doesn’t mean anything. At Jilly’s Saloon, he employed an irreverent Chinese cook named Howie. Late at night after a show, Frank would get on the funnel down to the basement kitchen and yell, “Howie! Send up some food.”
Howie would reply, “Fut you, Mr. Sinatra!” and Frank would shout back, “Fut you too, Howie!” Years later, Frank bought him a watch and sent it to be engraved. He told the jewelers that he wanted “Fut you, Howie!” written on the back, but they said they couldn’t possibly. “Why ever not?” Frank countered innocently. “FUT U is the name of a university.” They bought it.
Jilly would help Frank decide what food should be served at his parties and which music should be played because Jilly had a great ear. He and Frank loved all the greats, especially the old standards, but they liked a lot of modern music too. What Frank couldn’t stand was to hear himself sing because he’d always find a flaw. His attitude in the studio was record it, press it, and print it, and then he never wanted to hear it again. If anyone ever played any of his songs at a party, he’d threaten to walk out. The guests he and Jilly picked would almost always include a few comedians who opened for him at his shows, such as Tom Dreesen, who cracked me up, and Don “Bullethead” Rickles, whom Frank first met when Don’s mother, Etta, persuaded Frank’s mother, Dolly, to give her son a break. Frank went along to see Rickles perform as Dolly and Etta had asked, but he sat hidden behind a newspaper for the entire show. He and Rickles got along famously after that. Then there were the natural comics like Dean Martin and Jimmy Van Heusen, both of whom Frank had a great bond with chiefly through their shared love of humor. Dean, the man Frank called “Drunkie,” was hysterical; they were like a double act bouncing off each other. They’d find someone to pick on like Sammy Davis or James Stewart and go to work. Jimmy Stewart was adorable and would take it all in good sport as the two of them mimicked how he stammered—“Er, er, er, w-e-ell, Frank.”
He’d come right back at them with “Er, er, er, w-e-ell what do you mean? Do you think I t-t-talk like that?”
Jimmy Van Heusen knew Frank from when they’d both worked with the Tommy Dorsey band in the 1930s and used to hang out at a bar in New York called Toots Shor’s. Jimmy was christened Edward Chester Babcock, a name he knew he’d have to change if he wanted to be successful. Jimmy Stewart was his all-time hero, and he thought the billboard advertisement for Van Heusen shirts was elegant, so he made up his name using something from each. People were always after Frank to change his name in the early days because no one had ever heard of the Sicilian name Sinatra, but after experimenting with a couple of surnames, he rejected them. “My name is Frank Sinatra,” he told them, “and it’s going to stay Frank Sinatra.”
Jimmy was a sweet, sweet guy. As Chester Babcock, he used to flick through the phone book and call up complete strangers. “Hello, are you a Cock?” he’d ask. “I’m a Cock too.” He stayed in touch with one woman named Elsa Cock for years. He first found