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Since its opening, Danny Thomas had been, on paper, the premier celebrity spokesman for the Sands. He was the casino’s debut act, emceed the casino’s annual anniversary party, and was generally given first mention in any coverage of Sands events at which he was present. After the opening, Jack Entratter moved quickly, signing 14 of the top 18 nightclub draws to three- to five-year contracts. Entratter did not invent the nightclub residency, but in Las Vegas he perfected it. Stars worked three- or four-week stints in the Copa, with 8 p.m. and midnight shows in the relatively intimate Copa Room. They were well-paid—though Entratter tended to be tighter with the purse strings than other entertainment directors. In lieu of higher pay, he could offer the stability and prestige that came with a Sands contract.
Entratter wasn’t content to rest on his laurels; he was constantly seeking out new talent and adopting the Copa’s lineup to meet shifting tastes. Granted, he didn’t put Elvis or Carl Perkins onstage—gamblers, after all, weren’t known for their love of rock and roll—but he did phase out opera in favor of popular singers. He was the first in Las Vegas to book rising stars like Paul Anka, Nancy Ames, Buddy Greco, Corbett Monica, Frankie Randall, Lana Cantrell, and Diahann Carroll. Being invited into the Sands family was a sign that a performer had arrived.
Entratter also welcomed non-performing celebrities. This included, at various times, film stars like Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Marlene Dietrich, Kirk Douglas, David Niven, José Ferrer, Marilyn Monroe, and Jack Lemmon; baseball players from Joe DiMaggio on down; and gossip columnists such as Louella Parsons.
It wasn’t just well-known personalities who got the star treatment at the Sands. The hotel was equally eager to accommodate government and military panjandrums. In the summer of 1958, Dr. Dhia Ja’afar, the head of Reclamation and Public Improvement in Iraq, maintained headquarters at the Sands while he visited Hoover Dam. The following year, the hotel nearly hosted Marshall Konstantin Verhshinin, the commander of the Soviet Air Force. Though things had gotten enough along that Al Freeman had blocked out rooms (the marshal would have had the Governor’s Suite in the Santa Anita building, not Sinatra’s favored Presidential Suite), the visit was ultimately scrubbed.
The real star of the Sands as the 1950s turned over into the 1960s, though, was Frank Sinatra.
Officially, all celebrities affiliated with the Sands were friends, and it wasn’t uncommon for them to attend each other’s performances or even jump on stage when the occasion warranted. But, in late 1959, a group coalesced around Sinatra that, at least to the public, shared more than even the usual goodwill Sands stablemates had for each other.
Like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin was long a performer at the Copacabana in New York. Indeed, Jack Entratter billed him and Jerry Lewis after they first performed together at Skinny D’Amato’s legendary 500 Club in Atlantic City. The duo began performing at the Sands in January 1955. By October of that year, they had earned sufficient trust of the Sands management that they were permitted to engage in an outrageous stunt.
Killing time at the Sands while waiting for their plane to be ready (the duo wasn’t even performing, just stopping in for a brief vacation), Martin, native of Steubenville, Ohio, and a onetime dealer at its illegal casinos, started dealing cards playfully at an empty blackjack table. When a few gamblers sat down, Lewis flipped cards to them, with Martin peeking at Lewis’s hole card and suggesting how players finish their hand. When they still lost, he slid them silver dollars and $5 and $25 chips anyway. Martin paid players who did legitimately beat the house two to four times more than their bet. He also politely encouraged players who’d been “lucky” to give up their seats to new arrivals, who thronged the table as word got out.
After 35 minutes, Martin and Lewis had emptied the table’s chip tray. On paper, the Sands was down $74,895. But Entratter was beaming.
“That $75,000,” he told a Review-Journal reporter, “is nothing compared to the $2 million in goodwill the boys just made for the Sands. Of course, we’re glad their plane finally got here. Six hours of that would almost be financially embarrassing.”
After Martin and Lewis split in 1956, the former Dino Crocetti continued to play the Sands. Though superficially Martin and Sinatra were both Italian-American crooners of roughly the same age, they had drastically different personalities. This much was apparent to even casual fans, but Sands employees, who knew them offstage, saw it up close. Martin was generally relaxed, content with showing up when he had to, getting paid, and leaving others alone. When Dean was coming to town, everyone smiled. Business would be good, and things would go more or less according to plan. Sinatra, on the other hand, was unpredictable. He might tip the maître d’ $500 for having a piano brought into the Garden Room, or something might trigger his infamous temper.
One night, Sinatra and ten of his friends were ordering Chinese food at the Garden Room. As was his custom, Sinatra ordered chow mein with no mushrooms. Maître d’ George Levine cautioned the captain taking the order to tell the chef the noodles were for Sinatra—he would know, above all else, to not let one mushroom touch the bowl. Between the table and the kitchen, the captain forgot, or he couldn’t be bothered. Chef Su-Pong made a heaping bowl of chow mein with mushrooms. With a flourish, the captain removed the silver dome from the bowl and presented the chef’s finest to Frank.
When he saw the mushrooms, Sinatra screamed and threw the bowl over his head—it clanged off the wall, scattering noodles everywhere. Levine, despite himself, laughed. Sinatra then chased the maître d’ into the kitchen.
“You want to fight?” he demanded.
“Frank, I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
With that Sinatra laughed, hugged Levine, and returned to the table, leaving a generous tip. An apology, of course, was too much to ask for. If it wasn’t mushrooms in his noodles, it might be a hamburger that was too well-done, or a writer (Harlan Ellison, specifically) not dressed well enough.
Sinatra, though he tried to incorporate jokes into his act, didn’t have Martin’s natural comic timing or easy delivery. His idea of a good joke was to throw a cherry bomb into a friend’s toilet. He gave his friends “affectionate” nicknames: Martin was “Dago,” Joey Bishop was “Hebe,” and George Jacobs, his long-serving black valet, was “Spook.” One of his favorite gags was to duet “Me and My Shadow” with Davis walking behind him.
Martin was usually the butt of his own jokes, which endeared him in ways that Sinatra did not.
Once, for example, Martin was walking by the dealers’ break room while a baseball game was on. The dealers were watching the action on an antiquated set with rabbit ears that couldn’t quite get decent reception—the picture was snowy and intermittent. Some of the dealers who had money on the game were upset that the Dodgers’ pitcher couldn’t find the plate, throwing ball after ball.
“Whaddya expect?” Martin asked. “He can’t see the plate through all those wiggles.”
Martin went down to the porte cochere, turned to a bellhop, and said, “Let’s get a TV.” They got in a Sands station wagon and drove to a local store.
“I want a TV, one that gets baseball,” he announced when he walked in.
“They all do,” the owner replied. He wheeled out from the back the largest and most expensive set he had in stock, with an oversized antenna.
“You sure that one gets baseball?” Martin asked.
“Yeah, of course it does,” the owner replied. Martin paid. As the bellhop wrangled the set into the station wagon, the owner looked more closely.
“You’re Dean Martin, aren’t you?”
“No, no, I’m not,” Martin said as he got into the station wagon.
The next day, around 4:00 p.m., Martin walked into the dealers’ room. The dealers, now watching the game on their new set, broke into applause as Martin looked confused—hey, what did I do?
Just then, the pitcher split the plate with a fastball. Those with money on the game cheered.
“Of course he’s throwing strikes now,” Martin cracked. “He can finally see the plate.”
Laughs all around. Without missing a beat, he turned to pit boss Ed Walters.
“Eddie, what are you doing up here? Get back in the casino before someone robs the place.”
Maybe because they were so different, contrary to their public image as frequent drinking buddies, Martin and Sinatra did not socialize much offstage.
That wasn’t so for Sammy Davis, Jr., who began performing at the Sands in March 1957. Though into the 1960s his act was officially billed “The Will Mastin Trio,” his “uncle” Mastin and father usually performed only one dance number with Davis at the start of the show, with the junior member spending the next 50 minutes singing, doing impressions, and dancing. Clearly, he was the star, though his own sense of obligation to his father and Mastin kept them in the act longer than they probably should have been.
Davis felt indebted to Sinatra in ways that Martin did not. He credited Sinatra’s featuring the Will Mastin Trio at a 1947 New York concert with supercharging his career. Having confronted prejudice in both show business and the U.S. Army, Davis was grateful that Sinatra fought for him to share not just the stage, but also restaurant tables and hotel suites, with him. Despite his penchant for racially insensitive (by today’s standards) humor, Sinatra earned a reputation as one of the most racially progressive white entertainers of the 1940s and 1950s. Billy Eckstine became the first black singer to perform at New York’s Copacabana in 1950 at Sinatra’s urging. He insisted that his arranger Sy Oliver stay with him at whites-only hotels. He integrated his orchestras, and in 1956 drew kudos from the black press for his support of Nat “King” Cole after a racially motivated attack on the singer in Birmingham, Alabama. Though he joked onstage that audiences might not be able to see Davis because of his skin color, his commitment to racial justice was by all accounts sincere. The two became even closer following Sinatra’s support of Davis after the November 1954 car accident that cost him his left eye and might have ended his career.
Decades later, the union of Sinatra, Martin, and Davis, along with Joey Bishop, Peter Lawford, and a host of associates, would be known as the Rat Pack. The original Rat Pack, of which Sinatra was a member, had coalesced around Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall—Bacall in 1955 said the group looked like a pack of rats after returning from a debauch at the Sands. The Sinatra-led group was branded the Rat Pack by gossip columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, who wrote a typically negative item about Sinatra and his mates staying up drinking “like a pack of rats.” Sinatra responded by calling Kilgallen out during his act. “Lucky you only have to read her column, that you don’t have to look at her face,” he told a Sands audience. “You’d throw up.”
Sinatra himself never used the term “Rat Pack,” nor did anyone at the Sands. He preferred calling his chums “the Clan,” but Davis disliked that name due to its associations with the Ku Klux Klan. The group’s earliest performances were branded “the Summit,” in reference to the September 1959 meeting between U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev at Camp David and a planned May 1960 meeting between the pair that was canceled after the Soviets shot down Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 plane during an overflight of Soviet airspace.
With Sinatra, Davis, and Martin all under contract at the Sands, it only stood to reason that the trio would end up on stage together. That kind of star power, on one stage, in a room with fewer than 600 seats—this would be the hottest ticket in history.
What would become the stuff of legend, “the Rat Pack in Las Vegas,” started as a way for Sinatra to cross-promote his appearances at the Sands and a movie he’d taken on.
In 1958, Lawford and his wife, Pat Kennedy, bought a story about a heist orchestrated by a band of former GIs from director Gilbert Kay. It just so happened that Frank Sinatra’s Dorchester Productions owed Warner Brothers a movie, and he didn’t need much convincing. The script endured several re-writes, though much of the final film—Ocean’s 11, of course—ended up being improvised on-set.
A four-week location stint in Las Vegas started on January 18, 1960 with a three-day shoot at the Riviera. The film’s production, it was announced, was headquartered at the Sands, where Frank, Dean, Sammy, Peter, and Joey performed onstage from January 20 through February 16.
Al Freeman, who is credited with the idea of uniting the group onstage, whipped up a frenzy around the group’s appearances, promoting them as the greatest event in the history of show business.
“Star lite—star bright—which star will shine tonight?” asked a Sands advertisement.
“Every show is different—but you can count on at least two—usually five of these great stars onstage at the same time,” Freeman enthused.
“One night, we had Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis all singing into one microphone at the same time—and across the stage came Peter Lawford chased by Joey Bishop waving a big butcher knife—little ‘schticht’ like that—some even more hilarious—you’ll see any show you pick to go to the Sands these nights.”
As can be imagined, putting on two shows a night with that level of energy, when combined with Sinatra’s minimum required after-hours carousing, did not leave much in the tank for filming. For that reason, director Lewis Milestone presided over a relaxed shooting schedule, at least where the principals were concerned—generally, the starring five were on set between 3:00 and 6:00 p.m., with morning calls a rarity, outside of one 5 a.m. shoot featuring Sinatra, who worked only six days after the initial Riviera shoot, usually for less than two hours a day. That was fine for Sinatra and the others, who were more interested in having a good time than producing grand cinema. Their after- and before-hours antics earned coverage in entertainment columns across the country, raising anticipation for the film before shooting had wrapped.
But it wasn’t all wine and roses. Richard Benedict, who played robber “Curly” Steffens, was robbed of $25, taken from his hotel room while he was filming. Other stars found ways to get themselves into trouble.
One day Richard Conte, who played Anthony Bergdorf in the film, asked pit boss Ed Walters for $200 of the casino’s money to play with. Walters gave him the chips—after all, the guy was a movie star who had to be good for it. Conte was feeling important. In some of the press coverage of the movie’s production, he had sixth billing. After all, if Sinatra and Martin could take chips at will, why couldn’t he?
“You can’t give Conte $200,” Burky Gorelnik, another casino boss, told Walters. “He’ll never pay it back.”
Walters returned to the table.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but I’m going to need that $200 back.”
“Do you see $200 here?” Conte asked, looking quizzically at the table, as many of his chips were mysteriously no longer visible.
Realizing that he’d screwed up, Walters called Carl Cohen and explained the situation.
“Eddie, stay by the table and I’ll be right there,” Cohen said.
As Cohen approached the pit, everyone wanted a word. Graciously, he made his way past the well-wishers and to Conte’s table.
With a smile on his face, Cohen walked up to Conte, embraced him, and pulled Walters close.
“Richard,” Cohen said in a voice just above a whisper, “pay the $200, asshole.”
Still smiling, Cohen took a few steps away before turning around.
“Still on for golf tomorrow?”
“Of course,” Conte replied, as nonchalantly as he could.
“Great, we’ll get Cesar Romero and Buddy Lester out there, too.”
Conte returned the $200, a tight-lipped smile the whole time. Any bystander would have seen nothing amiss. That was Cohen’s art: to get results without causing anyone to lose face.
Ocean’s 11, even more than Meet Me in Las Vegas, was a feature-length advertisement for Las Vegas. Where the Cyd Charisse film had an extended sequence at a ranch, almost every frame of Ocean’s 11 is either set in a casino or features characters talking about what they’re going to do once they get to Las Vegas. The plot revolves around racketeer Spyros Acebos’ plan to simultaneously rob the Sands, Sahara, Flamingo, Riviera, and Desert Inn at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. Danny Ocean, played by Sinatra, is a former 82nd Airborne sergeant who recruits ten of his former brothers in arms (the titular 11) to put the plan into practice.
With members of the group stationed at each casino, the transmission tower supplying electricity to Las Vegas is detonated at midnight, just as revelers are singing “Auld Lange Syne.” Since the casinos’ backup generators were wired to the cashiers’ cage doors rather than the lights, the former soldiers walk in and grab bags full of cash, which they stow in dumpsters. Garbage truck driver Josh Howard (played by Sammy Davis, Jr.) picks up the cash. All looks good, but, alas, former gangster Duke Santos pieces the plan together and the Eleven, when their ingenious plan to smuggle the money out of Las Vegas and away from Santos goes up in smoke, are left with nothing for their troubles except for the thrill of having tried.
“Show me a man without a dream and I’ll show you a man that’s dead...real dead,” Davis sings as he and the rest of the cast walk past the Sands. The final shot, Davis smoking resignedly in front of the Sands marquee bearing his name along with that of Sinatra, Martin, Lawford, and Bishop, drove the point home: To live, to really live, you had to take chances. Preferably at the Sands. Try your best, but don’t expect to leave with the house’s money—or your own.
Released on August 4, 1960, Ocean’s 11 was an ode to the Las Vegas that Sinatra had, in good measure, built at the Sands. Unusual for films of its time, it had a cross-country debut, with 200 theaters opening the film simultaneously, which may have been a record.
The film’s world premiere, held of course in Las Vegas, had come the previous night. Luckily, Martin was in the middle of a stint at the Sands, and the rest of the cast flew in for the gala. At this point, Al Freeman had gotten the art of the movie launch down to a science: a cocktail party in the Emerald Room for 60 of his closest friends in the eating press; a complimentary dinner show at the Copa, with Martin assisted by his famous friends; followed by a convertible parade to Fremont Street, where Sinatra’s quintet performed for a crowd estimated at 10,000 in front of the El Portal theater. The film itself was almost secondary. Freeman even succeeded in wrapping the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign with a banner promoting the movie.
Despite the fireworks and the novel distribution strategy, the film earned tepid reviews. William Leonard of the Chicago Tribune called it “a delirious picture in full color and slightly larger than life size, with ‘name’ stars playing bit roles, the neon lights of Las Vegas flashing in the background, and cops and robbers in half-hearted flight and pursuit. Nobody wins—and nobody deserves to win.” He concluded that the show was “a comedy rather than a thriller, with an ironic finish.”
Bosley Crowther found the movie amusing but morally offensive. He was dismayed at the “surprisingly nonchalant and flippant attitude towards crime” maintained throughout Ocean’s 11 and shocked that the movie suggested there was nothing inherently wrong with taking what was not yours. The critic also felt that the script vastly underestimated the difficulty of robbing Las Vegas casinos, so it was clear that, if the movie was making a joke, he didn’t get it. Yet another Gotham critic declared that “if this picture can be parlayed and advertised and publicized into a great success of names and décor, then they’ve gotten away with real murder. If not, and the public ignores one of the truly emptiest displays on record maybe some of these many talents will be forced to go to work.”
Despite the dubious reviews the film pulled in $5.5 million in domestic box office, earning a spot as the eighth highest-grossing film of the year. Ironically, this was just about the same total that the eleven robbed from Las Vegas casinos in the movie. Ocean’s 11 success led to a series of Sinatra-led ensemble films, including Sergeants 3, Robin and the 7 Hoods, and 4 for Texas, none of which was hailed as a cinematic masterwork, each of which earned money.
As a vehicle for the Sands, Ocean’s 11 was perfect. Years later, long after Sinatra had graced its stage, when the Sands was gone, the film was a time capsule, capturing that moment when the world, it seemed, was ringside at the Copa.
***
IT WAS THROUGH FRANK Sinatra that the Sands, heretofore religiously apolitical (there were gamblers and vacationers in both parties, so why take a stand?), went all in for John F. Kennedy in 1960.
Kennedy was no stranger to Las Vegas. He first visited the town in early 1956, as a guest of Wilbur Clark of the Desert Inn. He returned that September to speak on behalf of Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, staying with Clark, as he did again for a weekend in November 1957.
Sinatra had publicly stumped for Democratic candidates since FDR. In 1955 he met Kennedy at a campaign rally, and the two became friends. When he was in Washington, Sinatra had an open invitation to stop by Kennedy’s suite at the Mayflower Hotel. Starting in the summer of 1958, Sinatra reciprocated, hosting Kennedy at his Palm Springs home. While there, he did not much discuss matters of state, instead talking about sex, having sex (chiefly with prostitutes), and doing lines of cocaine with his brother-in-law Peter Lawford, with whom Sinatra had become close friends, mostly due to the Englishman’s Kennedy connection.
When Kennedy came to Las Vegas on February 7, 1960 to speak at the Convention Center and meet potential convention delegates, Sinatra, in the midst of filming Ocean’s 11, invited him to see his show at the Copa.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Sinatra introduced his friend from the stage, “Senator John F. Kennedy, from the great state of Massachusetts, the next President of the United States!” Kennedy received a standing ovation. Sinatra even made him part of the act. As he often did, Sinatra picked up Davis and made an announcement.
“I’d like to thank the NAACP for this wonderful trophy.” This usually got laughs (and was sadly typical of Sinatra’s onstage repartee with Davis). This time, though, Sinatra deposited Davis on Kennedy’s lap.
“It’s perfectly all right with me,” Davis quipped, “as long as I’m not going to George Wallace or James Eastland.”
Sinatra introduced Kennedy to Judith Campbell, a call girl who had previously been a guest at his Palm Springs home. He had arranged for her to sit alongside Kennedy that night, at a table with Peter Lawford and Pat Kennedy. The two evidently sparked. According to Campbell, the next day they had a three-hour lunch on the patio suites 509 A and B in the Churchill Downs building, which were usually reserved for Sinatra, but for this occasion had been provided for Kennedy. The pair enjoyed Sinatra’s show that night, sitting together at Jack Entratter’s table.
Then, it was on to business. In the wee hours of February 9, Kennedy was the guest of honor at a small party in Sinatra’s suite. According to Davis, Sinatra delivered $1 million in cash to Kennedy before the presidential hopeful boarded his private plane en route to Oregon, money raised by the Sands’ owners and their friends to support Jack’s primary campaign.
The owners’ support was due to more than Jack’s youthful appeal. Reportedly, Joseph Kennedy had enjoyed good relations with the criminal underworld since Prohibition. Sinatra provided a direct connection to Sam Giancana, a conduit through which the Kennedys made an offer: Help get Jack in the White House, and he would see to it that the pressure remained off, and Cuba’s Fidel Castro deposed, reopening the nation to American business interests, including those of “the boys,” whose Havana casinos had been quite lucrative.
With this understanding, organized crime—and those tied to it—threw their support behind Kennedy whole-heartedly, delivering cash, hustling primary delegates, and applying pressure at just the right places. In lockstep with his friends from Chicago, Sinatra became Kennedy’s biggest celebrity campaigner, even recording a new rendition of his hit “High Hopes,” with lyrics by Sammy Cahn proclaiming, “Jack is on the right track.
Sinatra was able to forge an even closer link between Kennedy and the mob. Shortly after their time together at the Sands, Kennedy and Campbell began a physical relationship at New York’s Plaza hotel, one that would last for two years. Shortly after she began her tryst with Kennedy, Sinatra introduced her to Sam Giancana at Miami’s Fontainebleau hotel; she promptly began seeing him as well. She later claimed to have ferried messages between the pair. Although the veracity of that claim has been disputed, no one has questioned that Campbell was seeing both men simultaneously or that Sinatra introduced her to both.
Back at the Sands, Sinatra pulled everyone he could onto the Kennedy bandwagon, whether they liked it or not. Martin dutifully made noises in support of the candidate, though he privately thought Kennedy, at best, the lesser of two evils. Sometimes this came out in public.
“What did you say his name was again?” Martin blurted into a microphone at the Copa one night, after one of Sinatra’s lengthy tributes to Kennedy. But, with the big bosses and Sinatra equally gung-ho for JFK, work was work.
After the election, the underworld was far from pleased with Kennedy’s appointment of his brother Bobby, who had pledged to rid America of organized crime, as attorney general. Sinatra bent over backwards to placate the campaign, pressuring Sammy Davis, Jr. to delay his marriage to Swedish actress May Britt until after the election. Davis obliged, and Sinatra served as best man at the November nuptials.
As a thank-you for his public and private campaign help, Kennedy asked Sinatra to produce his inaugural gala. It seemed like the former teen idol from Hoboken was about to become a frequent guest at the Oval Office.
He didn’t. The problems started when Sinatra put together an all-star lineup of American entertainers to fete the new president the night before his inaugural, which naturally included his friend Sammy. After all, who better to serenade Washington on behalf of America than a black Jew with a Puerto Rican mother?
Joseph Kennedy disagreed, barring Davis from the event. JFK’s secretary Evelyn Lincoln called Davis with the news just three days before the scheduled performance. Sinatra himself was not assigned a seat at the actual inauguration despite his having raised $1.5 million to pay off the campaign’s debts the night before. He was incensed but could do nothing.
The final break between Sinatra and Kennedy came in March 1962, when Kennedy spurned Sinatra’s invitation to spend a weekend at his Palm Springs home, instead enjoying the hospitality of Republican Bing Crosby. Sinatra had spent thousands of dollars renovating his digs to accommodate a presidential visit and had dreams of his home becoming a “Western White House” for Kennedy. But Bobby, Jackie, and others around Jack insisted that Sinatra’s ties to mobsters made him an unacceptable host, although those mobsters believed they had put Kennedy in the White House.
Sinatra’s exile from Kennedy’s inner circle was a taste of things to come for both him and the Sands. Far from enjoying the support of a friendly administration, both would become targets of the federal government.
***
WHILE ENTRATTER, COHEN, and everyone at the Sands were thrilled with the attention Frank Sinatra brought to the hotel, it wasn’t a relationship without strain. Sinatra got into the habit of treating the Sands like his personal boarding house, promising friends and potential friends comped rooms without asking anyone at the hotel. He did not, for the most part, endear himself to the hotel’s staff, and both Entratter and Cohen came to view Sinatra as someone to be tolerated and placated. It was not just his celebrity that held them in check; he was also, probably, fronting for organized crime interests whose continued support was necessary for the Sands to remain successful.
In October 1959, frustrations hit a new level when Sinatra’s publicity agency, Rogers & Cowan of Beverly Hills, volunteered a pair of Sands rooms for a promotion around Sinatra’s upcoming single, “Talk to Me.” Freeman learned fairly late that he would be responsible for providing rooms for the winner of an essay contest and their hometown DJ. Freeman was understandably chagrined that he would be losing two rooms during what was sure to be a big weekend.
“Al, most of the brunt of the promotion is falling on Capitol Records,” Guy McElwaine of Rogers & Cowan assured Freeman. “They’re the ones supplying two hi-fi sets and paying for posters in 75 key radio markets. All we’re asking for is two rooms for two nights when Frank opens.”
“Not just rooms,” Freeman responded. “Food and beverage, too.”
“But Frank’s picking up the transportation himself,” McElwaine countered. “And you’ve gotta believe we’re going to be working overtime to promote the Sands Hotel on this campaign.”
It went without saying that Frank Sinatra at the Sands in 1959 needed no extra promotion, and after all that Freeman had done to spread the word over the previous seven years, he might be forgiven for getting upset at the intimation.
“Frank and Hank Sanicola have already approved this,” McElwaine continued, referencing Sinatra and his longtime manager. “I hope you find your way clear to approve it too.”
McElwaine then sent Freeman a follow-up memo, extending his best wishes to Jack Entratter and Freeman’s assistant, Eleanor Roth. He made sure to copy Frank. The intimation was clear: Frank wanted this, make it happen. Put that way, it was hard to say no.
Sinatra became more of a liability in the summer of 1963.
Nevada gaming regulators in the early 1960s faced pressure from two sides. First, by this point casinos—particularly those on the Las Vegas Strip—had become essential to the economic well-being of the state. From that perspective, no one wanted to look too closely at where the money to build casinos came from, or where the profits went, since, more likely than not, organized crime was involved at some point.
On the other hand, allowing mobsters to openly set up camp would invite federal scrutiny, which would be a disaster. So in June 1960, the Gaming Control Board issued the “Black Book,” an 11-name list of people who were not allowed to even set foot in Nevada casinos.
“The notoriety resulting from known hoodlums visiting Nevada gaming establishments,” the document explained, “tends to discredit not only the gaming industry but the entire state as well. In order to avoid the possibility of license revocation, your immediate cooperation is requested in preventing the presence in any licensed establishment of ... ‘persons of notorious or unsavory reputation’ including the above individuals.”
Sinatra’s friend Sam Giancana was among those named in the Black Book. There was one problem: How do you exclude an owner from his own casino?
In 1960, Frank Sinatra had bought a 49.5 percent interest in Lake Tahoe’s Cal-Neva lodge. Perhaps not coincidentally, Joseph Kennedy also owned a share in the North Shore casino through a front. Sinatra himself was almost certainly fronting for Sam Giancana. Redubbed Frank Sinatra’s Cal-Neva, the club reputedly yielded suitcases full of skimmed cash that made their way to Giancana. Certainly, Sinatra was committed to making the Cal-Neva a success. The following year, he added a new showroom, with better acoustics than the old one, which he named the Celebrity Room. He himself was a frequent performer and brought in other top stars.
Giancana was a frequent guest at the resort, including a stay that overlapped with Marilyn Monroe’s shortly before her death in the summer of 1962. In that year, events drew the attention of the Washoe County sheriff’s office, the Gaming Control Board, and even the FBI. The husband of an employee died in an automobile mishap that authorities suspected, but could not prove, was no accident. A man was shot in the casino’s entrance; the shooter fled but was eventually located in the Carson-Tahoe hospital, badly battered. He claimed to have fallen from a horse, though his doctor noted that it must have been a very, very tall horse. The casino’s direct involvement couldn’t be proven, but the delay between the time of the shooting and the first call to law enforcement, as well as the fact that the shooter was a casino employee, suggested otherwise. Further, the feds were investigating reports that women had been flown from San Francisco to Lake Tahoe to participate in prostitution at the Cal-Neva.
Meanwhile, under Robert F. Kennedy, the Justice Department was taking an active interest in Las Vegas. In the summer of 1961, Kennedy planned to assemble a federal strike force that would raid and close all of the major casinos in Las Vegas. Needless to say, this would obliterate the state’s economy, Democratic Governor Grant Sawyer’s career, and any chance the Democrats had in the state for generations. Governor Sawyer flew to Las Vegas to personally remonstrate with the attorney general, who remained aloof, although the previous summer he had begged Sawyer for his help in securing his brother’s nomination. Sawyer then went to see the president himself, who was noncommittal but apparently convinced; the raid never happened. Still, it was clear that Bobby hadn’t forgotten about Las Vegas, and would need only the smallest pretext to bring the full weight of the Justice Department down on it.
So, in the spring of 1963, Nevada regulators were concerned about Sinatra as a casino owner. As they began to consider the relicensing of the Cal-Neva, they shared their concerns with Sinatra attorney Mickey Rudin, requesting that Sinatra “take more care” in selecting the top executives of the resort. Rudin relayed that Sinatra was amenable. Indeed, he appeared to comply, by appointing an experienced hotel operator to the casino’s top spot.
As the Board later learned, the supposed manager was actually a figurehead, and the resort continued to be run by Skinny D’Amato, who, despite his many successes at his Atlantic City nightclub and reputation as a pillar of that community, raised the hackles of Nevada regulators due to the interest both the FBI and the IRS had expressed in his businesses. Having barely escaped catastrophe at the hands of Bobby Kennedy, no one in Nevada was about to stick their neck out to protect anyone the feds came after.
It just so happened that Sam Giancana was near the top of the feds’ list. The federal government had subpoenaed him to testify before a Chicago grand jury. He took the Fifth. The U.S. Attorney took the extraordinary step of offering him complete immunity from prosecution for anything he discussed; perhaps more fearful of upsetting his partners than a prison sentence, he again took the Fifth. The government began contempt proceedings against Giancana, with the FBI keeping him under 24-hour surveillance.
Giancana took the Bureau to court, arguing that their constant surveillance was an invasion of his privacy and, even worse, had thrown off his golf game. The alleged mobster won a court order stipulating that the G-men must remain at least one foursome behind Giancana as he golfed. In protest against these restrictions, the FBI turned over its surveillance of Giancana to the Cook County sheriff’s office, who lost Giancana within a few hours. It was July 1963, and no one in the federal government had any idea where the reputedly most dangerous mobster in the nation was.
Giancana, who set up shop at the Cal-Neva, did not try to keep a low profile. One night, while relaxing with Phyllis McGuire and her manager in their cabin, Giancana became enraged at a comment the manager made. He began beating the man, while McGuire slammed her high heel shoe into his head. Sinatra and his valet, George Jacobs, staying next door, heard the commotion and entered the room. Sinatra prevented Jacobs from attempting to break up the fracas, instead calling for security guards. When the dust settled, he had Jacobs drive Giancana to the Chairman’s Palm Springs home.
The manager, who had nearly lost his eye to Giancana’s diamond ring, told the authorities that both Giancana and Sinatra had issued “Mafia death threats” to him. Naturally, this only added to the files the Gaming Control Board was assembling on Giancana’s links to Sinatra.
When the Board’s agents became aware that Giancana had been at the Cal-Neva on July 30, the mobster was gone. Two days after notifying the FBI that Giancana had apparently been in Nevada, the Chicago Sun-Times ran a front-page story detailing the allegations. Despite the publicity, the investigation ground on, with Gaming Control Board chief Edward Olsen attempting to interview Sinatra in Las Vegas while his compatriots quizzed several employees at the Cal-Neva.
The Cal-Neva interview yielded nothing—D’Amato declined to talk, and no one else could shed light on Giancana’s whereabouts, past or present. Sinatra, staying at the Sands, did not take Olsen’s call, although Jack Entratter suggested Sinatra would prefer to speak at the Sands.
“That may be more convenient for him,” Olsen replied, “but it’s in the best interest of the state for him to come to my office.”
Sinatra did stop by Olsen’s office a few hours later, placidly admitted that he’d seen Giancana in passing at McGuire’s cabin. No, he hadn’t had a real conversation with him, much less seen him deliver a beating. No, he hadn’t asked him to leave.
“I see Sam a few times a year,” Sinatra said. “We play golf sometimes, and he stays with me in Palm Springs. I don’t see what’s wrong with that.”
“He’s on our list of excluded persons—don’t you see that associating with him can discredit Nevada?”
“Fine. I won’t talk to him in Nevada. But I’ll talk to whoever I want to anywhere else. I know people on all walks of life.”
“But can’t you see that...”
“This is a way of life, and a man has to lead his own life.”
“It’s not just Giancana seeing his girlfriend; your club has done many favors for him. Don’t you recognize this could jeopardize your license?”
“That’s a possibility, but you’d have to take whatever steps you want to.”
Sinatra denied that he’d witnessed a fight at McGuire’s cabin, but declined to do so under oath, at least until he’d talked with his attorney. When he left Olsen’s office, neither of them was happy.
By the end of the month, the allegations that Giancana had been at the Cal-Neva—and that the state was investigating him—became front-page news in Las Vegas. Sinatra’s accountant Newell Hancock called Olsen.
“Frank is irritated” he started, before relaying an offer for Olsen to have dinner with Sinatra at the Cal-Neva, then stay for the Sinatra/Martin double bill. Olsen declined.
A half-hour later, a woman called Olsen and asked for him to hold the line for Mr. Sinatra. Frank then personally invited Olsen to dinner.
“I just told Mr. Hancock no,” was the response.
“Why?” Sinatra asked.
Olsen replied that such a meeting would not be in the best interests of Nevada gaming.
“You’re acting like a fucking cop. I just want to talk to you off the record.”
“Why can’t you just come to my office?”
“I don’t want to deal with reporters.”
“There’ll be no reporters here unless you call them.”
“Listen, Ed, I haven’t had to take this kind of shit from anybody in the country and I’m not going to take it from you people. I want you to come up here and have dinner with me. Bring your shitheel friend, La France.” This was investigator Charles La France, who had been conducting interviews in Tahoe. Olsen then motioned for La France and Guy Farmer, a Gaming Commission employee, to pick up extensions and listen.
“It’s you and your goddamn subpoenas which have caused all this trouble. It’s all in the papers.”
“Only the Board and the people subpoenaed knew about them. We did not put them in the papers.”
“You’re a goddamn liar. I’ll bet you $50,000 they were in the papers.”
“Mr. Sinatra, I don’t have $50,000 to bet.”
“You’re not in the same class with me.”
“I certainly hope not.”
“No, just don’t fuck with me. You can tell that to your fucking Board and that fucking Commission, too.”
“Why don’t you call me back when you’re not so emotionally overwrought?” Olsen suggested.
“You asshole! You know, I have plenty of other businesses. I barely make anything from the Cal-Neva. But it means something to a lot of the little people who work there.”
“Maybe everyone would be better off if you concentrated on those enterprises and let Nevada gaming to other people.”
“I might just do that, and when I do, I’m going to tell the world what a bunch of fucking idiots run things in this state. C’mon, come up and have dinner with me. Just think about it.”
With that, Sinatra hung up the phone.
Three days later, two Gaming Control Board agents performing a routine investigation of the Cal-Neva’s count reported that D’Amato had attempted to bribe them with $100 each, placed in the crook of one of the agent’s arm. The agent threw the bills on the table.
“Aww, you can take that,” D’Amato explained, apologizing for their inconvenience earlier that week. After a great deal of back-and-forth, the agents succeeded in returning the bills to D’Amato, then fled the property, promptly reporting the matter to Olsen.
Olsen had a staff attorney draft an order calling for Sinatra’s license to be revoked. He brought it, along with supporting memoranda (including one that detailed Sinatra’s colorful phone call), to Governor Grant Sawyer’s office.
“I’m going to file a complaint against Frank Sinatra, asking for his license to be revoked,” Olsen said.
“Why?”
Olsen showed him the information, walking him through the sequence of events.
“When?”
“As soon as we work out the legal details.”
“Well, you’d better be right.”
On September 11, Olsen filed a complaint, alleging that Park Lake Enterprises, Inc., the company through which Sinatra owned the Cal-Neva, had violated several gaming regulations. It detailed Giancana’s numerous visits to the property earlier that summer, specifying how the reputed mobster was served food and drinks by casino employees, given a Cal-Neva car to drive, and generally given run of the property. Worse yet, Sinatra had refused to end his association with Giancana. Compounding that, he had in the phone conversation with Olsen “maligned and vilified the State Gaming Control Board, the Nevada Gaming Commission, and members of both Board and Commission by the use of foul and repulsive language which was venomous in the extreme.” Other counts dealt with alleged malfeasance by other Cal-Neva managers.
Nevada regulators weren’t the only ones who demanded that Sinatra cut ties with Giancana. As the drama in the Silver State unfolded, Sinatra was in the midst of negotiations with Jack Warner that would see Warner Brothers buy his label, Reprise Records. A typical studio boss of the era, Warner was used to getting his way. He would absolutely not tolerate part of the Warner family having public ties to someone like Giancana. So, he made an ultimatum: ditch your “Chicago” friends, or you’re not moving onto my lot.
Initially, Sinatra fought the complaint, hiring Harry Claiborne to defend him against the Board’s allegations. Claiborne promptly began filing motions and taking depositions.
Meanwhile, the president himself, perhaps thinking fondly of his February 1960 weekend at the Sands and the friends he’d made there, made at least a half-hearted attempt to help Sinatra. As the governor rode with him to his planned speech at the Convention Center on September 28, 1963, Kennedy had a question for Sawyer.
“What are you guys doing to my friend Frank Sinatra?”
“Well, Mr. President,” replied Sawyer, “I’ll try to take care of things here in Nevada, and I wish you luck on the national level.”
That ended the conversation.
Whether it was because Claiborne told him he had a hopeless case, because JFK’s cavalry had failed to arrive, or because of Jack Warner’s threat to nix the Reprise deal, Sinatra gave up the fight. On October 7, Claiborne’s office issued a statement in the singer’s name.
In it, Sinatra claimed that he had six months earlier made the decision to prune his business interests, liquidating his non-entertainment holdings. Though he was “surprised, hurt, and angered” by the Board’s request to revoke his license, he acknowledged that under the letter of the law, the license was a “revocable privilege.” As he was leaving the state anyway, he instructed his attorneys to announce that he was withdrawing from the gaming industry entirely.
He ended by expressing his hopes that the industry, which he had worked so hard to build up, would continue to grow and prosper.
As a result of giving up his license, Sinatra was also forced to sell his shares in the Sands. Whether he really owned those shares or was fronting for others, he was proud of his stake in the casino, of being able to call himself “an owner” of the most successful casino in Las Vegas. On his end, Giancana was livid that Sinatra had thrown everything away because he couldn’t control his temper.
“That bastard and his big mouth,” Giancana said. “All he had to do was keep quiet, apologize, let the lawyers handle everything. But no, he had to make that phone call, run that big mouth. Now we’re out of the whole place.” Giancana estimated that Sinatra’s intransigence had cost him nearly a half-million dollars.
Within days, the Gaming Commission approved of Sinatra selling his 9 percent interest in the Sands for $391,500. Sands Hotel, Inc., bought the stock, which was placed in escrow pending the transaction’s closing at the end of the year. Frank Sinatra was no longer an owner of the Sands. His controlling stake in the Cal-Neva wouldn’t be quite as easy to dispose of, as he spent the next several years trying to sell his interest in the resort, which the Gaming Commission had insisted he place in trust. He had the worst of both worlds: lingering legal and fiscal responsibilities with none of the perks of casino ownership.
“Anyone want to buy a casino on the Lake?” he would ask during his Copa performances well into 1966, garnering a chuckle from the audience.
But the story did have an amusing post-script. In early 1964, Ed Olsen accompanied friends of his from California to Sammy Davis, Jr.’s late show at the Sands. As he was leaving the showroom, his friends spied Davis, and rushed up to him, declaring how much they loved his performance.
Davis turned to the couple and said, “Give me a minute alone with your friend. We have something to talk about.” Olsen prepared for a fight.
“That little son of a bitch, he’s needed this for years,” Davis told a shocked Olsen. “I’ve been working with him for 16 years, and nobody’s ever had the guts to stand up to him.” The pair parted friends, with Davis inviting Olsen to join him and May Britt for dinner the next time he performed at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe—an invitation that Olsen appreciated but never consummated.
At the Sands, as always, life went on. But the federal government’s interest in the casino went far beyond Sinatra. Even as the Gaming Control Board labored to maintain a firewall between the Sands, a major employer in Clark County, and Sinatra’s interests in the Cal-Neva, the FBI was conducting a clandestine investigation of its own in Las Vegas.
That investigation would become public in a way that would make Ocean’s 11 look like a tightly plotted thriller.