It has been almost four decades and it is still difficult to think about the heartache of leaving my wife and three teenage children and turning myself into authorities in January 1981. My family, education, and work ethic put me completely at odds with what would be my new surroundings, but I knew I had to adapt and survive.
I was processed at the Metropolitan Correction Center in Manhattan. My first thought was, How will I communicate with the outside world? I had a business to continue to run, and without communication, I wouldn’t be able to support my family.
The MCC was part of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. It was a temporary holding unit before inmates were sent to prison to carry out their sentence. As I mentioned, I was designated to be sent far from my family, to the harsh climate of Sandstone, Minnesota, but was allowed to stay at MCC during my appeals process.
MCC had no bars and my small cell was a room with a bed, toilet, sink, mirror and a door that locked from the outside. I was terrified. I’m surprised I didn’t jump out of my skin when I was tapped on the shoulder. A fellow inmate introduced himself on the first day.
“Walk slow, drink a lot of water and mind your own business,” he said. He went on to tell me that my laundry, bed-making responsibilities, and the waxing of my floor would all be taken care of. I didn’t know what to make of him at first but I thanked him and kept my mouth shut. Courtesy of DePalma, perhaps? I never knew for sure.
My unit at the MCC had one free phone on the floor, which could be utilized at certain times of the day for five minutes. That would never work for me and my business.
Then I saw two beautiful pay phones mounted on the wall with a Manhattan exchange, which inmates could use most of the day, provided they had enough coins.
I knew I could reach anywhere in the world with a dime.
I called my assistant, Jean Dearstine, and told her to have a Manhattan telephone number installed in Scarsdale, which the phone company was happy to do for a fee, and then install a router. That way I could place a call to my office, which in reality was the laundry room at my Scarsdale home, and Jean could route the call to whatever number I gave her, whether it was New Jersey, San Francisco, or London. I gave Jean as much money as I could afford to pay her, which was not a lot, but she was dedicated and loyal and I was extremely grateful for her help.
Less than two weeks after I arrived, on January 20, 1981, Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president of the United States. I couldn’t imagine, sitting there in prison, that very soon I would come to meet him.
Meanwhile, I was busy on those phones as much as I could be and booked tours all over the country and Europe without anyone ever knowing where I was calling from.
The most precious resource I had was my weekly allocation of a roll of dimes from the commissary. I would go through the roll in a couple of days, so I counted on family and friends to bring me dimes whenever they visited. Again, I was booking acts for Liza and Steve and Eydie.
While it was a bewildering time and my whole family was fearful, with a steady income stream we all felt a little better. Jean would move into the house and watch the kids while my wife went on the road with Liza. Micky had a pretty good idea of what to do as a road manager and she protected my interests financially, if not on the personal side. Unbeknownst to me at the time, she started an affair with one of Liza’s road musicians.
I had no contact with Sinatra, but as I had more and more successes, Rudin gave me a shot at handling some of Sinatra’s bookings out of jail. I would do the work, Jean would convey the details to Rudin, and Rudin would put the final bookings on his stationery and give it to Sinatra.
The MCC was located in the same complex that housed the U.S. attorney’s office, and I was only an elevator ride away from the office of prosecutor Ackerman. Ackerman had only one photo on the wall—a framed shot of Sinatra. I took it to be a reminder of a constant interest in bagging the bigger fish, certainly not an homage to an entertainer.
I agreed to review the tapes of the wiretaps with Ackerman, as long as he would help me with my reduction of sentence, provided I convinced him I had no information about Sinatra and Rudin that would tie them to the mob. I was always wary of Ackerman but it felt good to be trusted by him and I was happy to have something to do. One of the worst parts of doing time was just passing the hours.
Most days, working with Ackerman meant listening to the endless hours of wiretaps of the theater phones and related parties. Of particular interest was an FBI recording of DePalma running through a checklist of who collected cash from the souvenir sales from the shows Sinatra and Dean Martin did together.
At the end of the Frank and Dean engagement, DePalma had called and told me he took a bag of money and offered it to Sinatra. I had no idea how much money was in it. He told me Sinatra said, “Are you kidding me? You guys are broke. Split it up between yourselves.” Sinatra was entitled to a share but this was money that was off the books.
On a subsequent tape, DePalma was talking about splitting up the cash that Sinatra refused.
“I gave five to Mickey,” DePalma said.
“What does that mean?” Ackerman challenged. “Obviously Mickey Rudin.”
I was caught by surprise. Five thousand dollars was a minuscule amount of money for Mickey Rudin and I can’t imagine he would have taken it. On top of that, my livelihood depended on him.
“That’s Micky my wife,” I said spontaneously.
Prosecuting my wife had initially been used as a threat to intimidate me into cooperating, but she was never charged. Now that I was in jail, her involvement was over. Rudin was helping me to feed and clothe my kids. Enough was enough. I didn’t want to become embroiled in a new controversy and trial.
During these lengthy sessions with Ackerman, he realized I was very knowledgeable about box-office procedures and had figured out how scams involving the underreporting of ticket sales worked. He asked if I would explain the process in detail to some FBI agents. I agreed as long as it was a general conversation not related to specific incidents.
This became a turning point in our uneasy relationship. As time went on, the tone between us changed. Ackerman let me work out of the law library at the U.S. attorney’s office. A U.S. marshal picked me up each day at nine thirty in the morning and took me back at four o’clock in the afternoon. When I wasn’t working with Ackerman, I could use the phones in the library and conduct business, as well as have visitors. They knew I wasn’t dangerous.
I booked Steve and Eydie for eight nights at Carnegie Hall. On the morning of the first show, there was a knock on my cell door. It was an FBI agent, who informed me there was a death threat on the couple at the historic venue.
“What are your thoughts on how to handle it?” he said.
“Get Steve Lawrence on the phone,” I said. “Tell them what you plan to do and how you are going to protect them.”
Ninety percent of the tickets were already sold, so I knew they wouldn’t want to cancel the performance, if they felt safe.
“We will completely sweep the hall with metal detectors and go through the place with dogs in the afternoon. We will also have agents in the hall from the bottom floor to the top during the entire run of the show. You can rest assured nothing is going to happen.”
I waited an hour before calling Steve myself, to give him time to speak with the agent.
Steve and Eydie decided to continue on with the show and we laughed about the insanity of the FBI coming to me in jail with this problem. The FBI did exactly as promised and the performances went on without incident. It was an indication, to me at least, that Ackerman, the FBI agents, and I had developed a mutual respect for each other.
When it came time for the reduction-of-sentence hearing, in the spring of 1981, Giuliani argued for my immediate release. Judge Sweet looked to Ackerman for a response and he stayed true to his commitment. Ackerman said that I had been very cooperative, to which the judge replied, “This is the guy you wanted me to throw the book at?”
My sentence was reduced from 78 months to 36 months, which was still a three-year sentence. As for Giuliani, this was the last argument he made before going to the Department of Justice.
I was told you’re only allowed one shot at a Rule 35 sentence reduction hearing. Somehow my lawyers wrangled a second shot a few months later.
In the summer of 1981, Michael Mukasey argued my case and my sentence was reduced even further, to thirteen months. I was incredibly relieved. With time served, I was released from MCC in October and spent four months at a halfway house on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Though Ackerman had tried to bury me in the beginning, in the end he was good to me. We even stayed in touch, and one day he told me he was considering going into theatrical law. I arranged for him to have a job interview with Buddy Hackett’s law firm and he was hired. All’s well that ends well, I guess.
The halfway house was off Broadway, a town house that would sell for millions today. A small group of us lived there. It was comfortable enough and I was grateful to have some semblance of freedom. Some nights after the late news, the government employees who ran the house would tell us to go home and check back in the morning. I would go back to Scarsdale and my crumbling marriage. By now I knew that my wife was in a relationship with one of Liza’s musicians and I half-understood. I told Micky I wanted to put our family back together again, but she said she needed more time to think about it. I couldn’t give her that time. Maybe it was my ultimate fear of being rejected or maybe I was trying to let her off the hook easy after all we had been through together, but in any case we parted amicably and remained friends.
My life had been ruined by the unsavory characters I knew, and I understood that if I was ever going to rebuild my life and become successful, I had to separate myself from anyone and everyone remotely connected to the theater and my old life. I had to relocate.
While in the halfway house, I was also allowed to work at my home office in Scarsdale. I even received special permission to attend Liza’s New Year’s Eve performance at the Diplomat Hotel in Hollywood, Florida. The juxtaposition of going from a halfway house to a limo to see a client was once again startling, but I could feel my life coming back together. In the meantime, I had gone from weighing 223 pounds to 160 pounds and was in the best shape of my adult life. It was the first time I ever wore a pair of jeans and thought I looked decent.
Liza did a double take when I walked backstage. We hugged. It was one of the most important moments of my life. I was back and I felt welcomed.
“Everybody should go to jail and look as good as you do,” she said.
I told her that come February 12, the day of my release, I’d be on the road with her. Perhaps more than anyone else, Liza, Steve, and Eydie helped me rebuild my reputation and my life. They were never afraid to be seen with me, and that restored my credibility.
On February 13, 1982, I was on a plane to Florida. I wanted to live where the weather was mild and I could easily fly to New York and Los Angeles yet stay far enough away from the part of my life I wanted to put behind me.
I wasn’t sure if Florida was far enough, but it was adequate. A friend helped me secure a town house at the Inverrary resort, in Broward County. It was a popular spot, home to Jackie Gleason and the Jackie Gleason Inverrary Golf Classic. I rented there for a year and have lived in Florida ever since.
My assistant, Jean, who had been so instrumental in my life, came with me. She was in love with Gary Labriola, who had been an innocent gofer for DePalma. So I took him under my wing and made him Liza’s road manager. Jean and Gary eventually married and she told me I was the father she never had. I even walked her down the aisle.
Meanwhile, I made more money in 1982 than I ever had in my life to that point.