Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [64]
George Schlatter always said Frank had a cast-iron stomach and liver, and he was probably right. Ever since I’d first met him, I’d realized that Frank expected his cohorts to stay up with him all night and keep him and Mr. Daniels company. George was one of the “lucky” ones, taken along for the ride. When Frank and George were together, they were like children playing and causing mayhem. Eventually, though, Frank’s late nights began to be dreaded even by George. Once, George told the barman to fill up a bottle of vodka with water so that he wouldn’t get too drunk. When Frank found out, he was furious and made sure that never happened again. Another time we were in Gstaad, Switzerland, visiting Roger Moore and his wife, Luisa, and staying in an apartment above George and his wife, Jolene. No matter how late we got back from a restaurant or club, Frank wanted to party. If George folded and went to bed, Frank would pound on the floor of our apartment to wake him up or telephone his room and yell, “Get up here, Crazy!” One night George crawled out of the elevator in his pajamas wearing a hard hat and waving a flag.
Our friends often formed a private pact to stay up with him in shifts over several days, so that no one person had to carouse with him night after night in what he called the American Olympic Drinking Team. Frank was eagle-eyed at spotting anyone trying to make a subtle escape and had all sorts of tricks up his sleeve for those who slipped off to bed at what he considered a premature hour. One night in Florida in the middle of a tour, Tom Dreesen went to his hotel bedroom, hoping for an early night. Not long after he’d climbed into bed, there was a pounding on his door. It was a six-foot-two bellman who said, “Mr. Sinatra would like you to join him at the bar.” Tom attempted to bribe the messenger with a twenty-dollar bill to tell Frank he couldn’t be found. The bellman replied, “Mr. Sinatra gave me a hundred dollars to tell you he wants you to come down to the bar.” Tom groaned and said, “Couldn’t you just tell him no one answered the door?” To which the bellman replied, “Mr. Sinatra said you’d resist and that if I had to drag you down to the bar, he’d give me an extra hundred.” Tom and Frank stayed up until dawn. There was no beating him.
Fortunately I had a healthy constitution and could match Frank drink for drink and still know what I was doing by the time I went to bed. I also learned from his trick of never emptying his glass. Frank always said he hated women who couldn’t hold their drink, who wore too much makeup or heavy perfume. He claimed to be allergic to perfume, and the only one he could stomach was Fracas, a scent by the Parisian perfumier Robert Piguet. Frank also disliked women who smoked—he thought smoking was “unfeminine.” Well, I passed on the first three counts, but I did smoke, which was something he made me give up fairly early on.
Unlike Frank, who’d have a couple of drags on a cigarette and then throw it away, I used to smoke mine to the end. When he asked me to give it up, I said, “Well then, why don’t you quit too?” He not only chain-smoked cigarettes but enjoyed cigars and the occasional pipe—a throwback to his admiration for Bing Crosby, I always thought. Frank told me flatly, “I can’t quit, I don’t want to quit, and I’m not going to quit, but you have to.” It was a challenge for me, and when I was weaning myself off the cigarettes, I’d sit at the bar next to someone who smoked and say, “You light it and put it there and when I see him looking the