The Ultimate Event had proved to all of us that arena performances were the way to go from a financial standpoint, but with Sammy gone, I felt that Sinatra needed other star power to ensure we would sell out the 10,000–20,000 seat venues. It would also take some of the pressure off him.
Sinatra, Liza, and Sammy were a tough act to top. Where do you go from them and still attract people who will pay a decent price for the tickets? To me, there was one obvious choice—well, two, really. I felt that musically, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé would be a great combination with Sinatra, and I didn’t even have another choice. Steve was a singer and actor with a terrific sense of humor, and Sinatra admired him as a great entertainer. He was as easygoing as anyone I knew and truly had a gift for making people feel comfortable around him. We had golfed together and frequently socialized for years. Steve, Eydie, and their longtime associate, coordinator, and confidante, Judy Tannen, were all much more than clients. They were part of my family.
As a singer, Steve had a long career, beginning with the number one hit “Go Away Little Girl” in the 1950s. He did numerous television shows, and between him and Eydie, they won multiple Grammys and Emmys as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame in New York. For her part, Eydie was among the most musically gifted singers I knew. She was considered by many of her peers to be among the top three female singers, along with Barbra Streisand and Judy Garland. Eydie won her own Grammy for her solo recording “If He Walked into My Life,” from the Broadway hit Mame. She was fluent in Spanish and very popular in Latin counties and especially popular in South America, even though they never toured there.
That song, though, with its poignant, melancholy lyrics, took on even deeper meaning after the greatest tragedy of their lives. Years earlier, in 1986, I was on the road with Steve and Eydie and Judy Tannen for an engagement at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. Judy Tannen called my hotel room.
“You’d better come to Steve and Eydie’s room,” Judy said. “We just received a call that Michael may be dying.”
Michael was their twenty-three-year-old son. It seemed impossible. He was a wonderful young man whom I loved spending time with.
It’s hard to know what to do first in a situation like that. The parents were obviously devastated. They needed a calm head around them. Judy and I both started looking for planes. I chartered one and then Judy found a friend of Steve and Eydie’s who would send a corporate jet. We all flew back to Los Angeles, but he died of natural causes from an irregular heartbeat, before we landed. They never even had a chance to say goodbye.
We arrived at their Beverly Hills home late that night. By morning, close to a hundred friends and family members, including their other son, David, arrived at the house.
I helped with security and organizing the funeral, and for the next two weeks stayed with the family to help in whatever other ways I could. I just wanted to be there for them.
As I flew home to Florida, I stared out the window, looking at the clouds. I was haunted by the inconsolable grief these parents were enduring. It is the parents’ job to die before their child. I realized for the first time that the loss of a child is perhaps the greatest suffering a parent can experience. I thought of my own children with renewed gratitude.
I reflected on the lyrics of Eydie’s signature song, “If He Walked into My Life.” She always sang it with intense emotion. I couldn’t imagine she could ever stand on a stage as a mother who had lost a child and once again sing, “At the moment when he needed me, did I ever turn away?” or “There must have been a million things that my heart forgot to say. Would I think of one or two, if he walked into my life today?”
When I returned home, I suggested she take the song out of her show. She refused. That’s the difference between a great performer and the rest of us mere mortals. It is through their performance that they fully experience happiness, sorrow, joy, and grief. Performing that song was cathartic for Eydie. There was never a dry eye in the house.
I knew that that kind of power and authentic emotion was a perfect match for Sinatra and would translate into a win for everyone.
When Steve and Eydie’s children were young, the couple chose not to travel outside the United States, so they never built up a worldwide base of concert fans. (Their other son, David, by the way, is a successful musical composer.) Now that they were prepared to travel abroad, I was concerned about whether they would be able to sell tickets. That was my only reservation in using them for the tour, but still, it was a big one.
Both Tina Sinatra and Barbara had other concerns. I was alone, reading a newspaper in the television room of the Sinatras’ Beverly Hills home when Tina walked in.
“This thing with Steve and Eydie, are you crazy?” Tina said. “You can’t put them with my father.” She didn’t think they were good enough. She thought I was using Sinatra to prop up my other clients, when in reality I was looking to put her father with artists who I knew would support him if anything went wrong, particularly during the closing medley of the show. It was rare at this point that he didn’t screw up a lyric, but for the most part, the audience barely noticed, especially when the other artists helped cover for Sinatra. I explained my reasons and said I was confident in the choice, but within a week, when I was back home in Florida, Barbara called me and also expressed similar thoughts. She said, “I’m not sure this is right.”
“Why would you say that?” I said.
“It doesn’t compare to Liza and Sammy.”
“Nothing is going to compare to Liza and Sammy,” I said. “Steve and Eydie and Frank will be great together.”
I waited till I was backstage with Sinatra at one of his engagements to tell him about their worries. Sinatra loved them as much as I did. He had nicknamed Eydie “Loudie” for her resounding voice. They had a lot of laughs together.
“Why are you listening to everyone?” he said dismissively.
That was all I needed. I looked for a sponsor for the “Diamond Jubilee Tour” and we spoke to a lot of corporations, including the makers of Sinatra’s favorite beverage, Jack Daniel’s. Jack Daniel’s was not in the market for a million-dollar sponsorship at the time. Chivas Regal was, and was anxious to be associated with the Sinatra magic. As we were closing the deal we invited the Chivas executives to a Sinatra performance at the Sands in Atlantic City.
Sinatra often closed his shows with a toast. He would hoist his glass of Jack and say, “May you live to be a hundred and five and may the last voice you hear be mine.”
Occasionally he varied, and this night as he raised his glass to toast the audience and the Chivas executives, he said, “Jack Daniel’s killed my father but it won’t get me.” I cringed, but the Chivas executives clearly didn’t care because they closed the deal anyway. I asked the Boss to please drop Jack for the tour and stick with Chivas.
The Diamond Jubilee Tour was launched with much fanfare, on Sinatra’s seventy-fifth birthday, December 12, 1990. It was at the Brendan Byrne Arena (aka Meadowlands Arena) in East Rutherford, New Jersey, a mere ten miles from his Hoboken birthplace.
Frank Jr. was conducting and stars came from both coasts to mingle backstage and watch the master show everyone just how cool he still was. Sinatra’s old friends were there: Liza, Claudette Colbert, Roger Moore, Robert Wagner, Jill St. John, Alan King, Bob Newhart, Don Rickles, and on and on.
When it was time for Sinatra to sing “New York, New York,” he asked Liza to stand up and take a bow. “I love you,” he said as he brought her up.
“Happy Birthday, Uncle Frank. I love you so much,” she said, giving him a big hug.
He called for a microphone for her and they broke into an impromptu version of “New York, New York,” so impromptu that Liza had her purse on her shoulder during the entire performance.
There were a few flubs, but it brought the hometown audience to their feet.
The show ended with a medley. Steve and Eydie and the audience yelled “Happy birthday!”
“This is without a doubt the finest birthday celebration I think I’ve ever had in my life,” Sinatra said. “I just simply want to say I love you all dearly and I thank you for taking part in this wonderful night for me, I should never forget as long as I live. God bless you all, and good night.”
After the concert, Barbara took over the Grand Ballroom at the Waldorf-Astoria for a private, late-night dinner party for one hundred of Sinatra’s closest friends and family. Frank and Barbara sat with the children and grandchildren. Harry Connick Jr., the young singer famous for his Sinatra-esque style, was seated at the table with Maria, Steve, Eydie, Judy, and me. Steve was emceeing the festivities.
Connick walked in, took his jacket off, and hung it on the back of his chair. That’s something Sinatra never would have done, and though I doubt he could identify Connick, or even knew who he was, he noticed the jacket hung over the chair.
Halfway through the night I went over to Sinatra’s table to see if he needed anything.
“Who’s the guy that took off his jacket?” Sinatra said. He was angry.
“He’s a hot young singer with a lot of notoriety,” I said. I figured it would only agitate him further if I told him some of that notoriety had to do with being compared to him.
“Maybe someone should give him an etiquette lesson,” he said.
I never told him who it was. Sinatra was a very formal guy. I never even saw him loosen his tie. Barbara stood up and toasted her husband.
“Darling, all these years you’ve given the world beautiful, wonderful music, but you have given me the world,” Barbara said. Robert Wagner said, “Your real talent is as a friend.” Jilly, in his usual wisecracking style, said, “I never thought I would live to see the day.” He chuckled. “A lot of other people didn’t think so, either.”
Then it was Frank’s turn.
“It was six thousand to one that I’d get to be fifty years old, but seventy-five? I love it. I’ve had some fun in the past weeks and a few tears,” Sinatra said. New York celebrity gossip columnist Liz Smith, one of the few journalists he grew to like, was there and recorded much of the night in her column.
I think Sinatra turning seventy-five impacted me even more than my own seventy-fifth many years later. I looked at seventy-five as being past the three-quarter mark, since I don’t expect to live to be one hundred. But he seemed to take it all in stride and not even give it much thought. For me, watching him age was tough. Some people you just don’t expect to ever grow old. To me, Sinatra will always be timeless.