impossibly perky to be sexy. He thought Olivia de Havilland in Not as a Stranger was sheer class, but she was involved with director John Huston, who was Bogart’s dear friend, which made Olivia untouchable. Nevertheless, Sinatra’s frustrated attraction to her led him to perform some adolescent pranks to attract her attention. Robert Mitchum, their costar, was legendary for his imperturbability. Every day at lunch, he would engross himself in the newspaper and not speak to anyone. One day, when I was with Mr. S at the studio, in front of Olivia, Sinatra sneaked up on Mitchum and set the paper he was reading on fire. Mitchum barely noticed until his fingers were singed. Then he jumped halfway across the table. Mr. S thought this stunt was much more impressive than his role, and bragged to everyone how he had “gotten” Mitchum. He never “got” Olivia, though, who was amazed at how childish Sinatra could be.
Maybe for Mr. S, life did begin at forty, for this was about the time he started sending me down to Tijuana on cherry bomb runs. I would go south of the border and bring back entire trunkloads ofexplosives and fireworks, which he would set off in his friends’ shoes, in their toilets, under their beds, whenever and wherever they would least expect it. “The Hoboken Bomber strikes again!” he would exult with as much glee as if he had connected with one of the many girls of his fevered dreams.
Mr. S’s problem, if you could call it a problem, was that he was like a hyperkinetic kid. Today they’d give him Ritalin. He couldn’t sit still, and he couldn’t be alone. Thus he always needed a girl, and she didn’t have to be famous. First he’d go for his leading lady. If she wasn’t free, he’d try some famous ex, like Lana Turner, whom he’d dated in the forties, for old times. Then he’d work his way down the food chain, starting with the starlets, then the hookers, and, if all else failed, he’d call Peggy Lee, who lived down the block. The name of the game was Dialing for Pussy, and Mr. S played it every night, except when he was “in training” for an album. Then he was a monk. Movies didn’t count. He’d astonish his costars by showing up on the set at seven A.M . straight from some all-nighter, dressed in his tux, his tie undone, and his whisker stubble starting to show, duck into makeup, and come out an hour later fresh as a daisy and in perfect control of his part. Just don’t ask him to do a second take.
Mr. S got his one-take philosophy of acting from Boris Karloff. Boris Karloff? Frankenstein? Yes. Sinatra had been a huge Karloff fan as a kid in Hoboken and was deeply honored to have “the Mummy” as his friend. In the thespian department, Mr. S put Karloff up there with the Barrymores. The only stars in Hollywood he may have admired as much were Bogart and Fred Astaire. He had met the horror icon on a studio lot in the late forties and had been bowled over by what an English gentleman he was. Karloff’s real name was William Henry Pratt and his two great passions in life were cricket and gardening, not torture and murder. Whenever Karloff came over to visit Sinatra and to mentor him on roles he was considering byhaving Mr. S read lines for him to see how they sounded, he’d bring the most beautiful bouquets of freshly picked flowers. Mr. S never suggested this act of hospitality was a “fag thing,” as he would have if any other male had made the same gesture. Karloff’s acting philosophy, in a nutshell, was simple: “Say your lines. Hit your mark. Get out.” But Sinatra embraced this as the oracle of a legend and took it to heart. No multiple takes for him. In time, he became considered an efficient, naturalistic, often excellent actor. Whenever he was praised and asked how he learned to act, he didn’t say Lee Strasberg or Stella Adler or Stanislavsky, but gave all the credit to Old Frankenstein.
I was never in the bedroom with Frank and his ladies, but I heard from a lot of
Maybe for Mr. S, life did begin at forty, for this was about the time he started sending me down to Tijuana on cherry bomb runs. I would go south of the border and bring back entire trunkloads ofexplosives and fireworks, which he would set off in his friends’ shoes, in their toilets, under their beds, whenever and wherever they would least expect it. “The Hoboken Bomber strikes again!” he would exult with as much glee as if he had connected with one of the many girls of his fevered dreams.
Mr. S’s problem, if you could call it a problem, was that he was like a hyperkinetic kid. Today they’d give him Ritalin. He couldn’t sit still, and he couldn’t be alone. Thus he always needed a girl, and she didn’t have to be famous. First he’d go for his leading lady. If she wasn’t free, he’d try some famous ex, like Lana Turner, whom he’d dated in the forties, for old times. Then he’d work his way down the food chain, starting with the starlets, then the hookers, and, if all else failed, he’d call Peggy Lee, who lived down the block. The name of the game was Dialing for Pussy, and Mr. S played it every night, except when he was “in training” for an album. Then he was a monk. Movies didn’t count. He’d astonish his costars by showing up on the set at seven A.M . straight from some all-nighter, dressed in his tux, his tie undone, and his whisker stubble starting to show, duck into makeup, and come out an hour later fresh as a daisy and in perfect control of his part. Just don’t ask him to do a second take.
Mr. S got his one-take philosophy of acting from Boris Karloff. Boris Karloff? Frankenstein? Yes. Sinatra had been a huge Karloff fan as a kid in Hoboken and was deeply honored to have “the Mummy” as his friend. In the thespian department, Mr. S put Karloff up there with the Barrymores. The only stars in Hollywood he may have admired as much were Bogart and Fred Astaire. He had met the horror icon on a studio lot in the late forties and had been bowled over by what an English gentleman he was. Karloff’s real name was William Henry Pratt and his two great passions in life were cricket and gardening, not torture and murder. Whenever Karloff came over to visit Sinatra and to mentor him on roles he was considering byhaving Mr. S read lines for him to see how they sounded, he’d bring the most beautiful bouquets of freshly picked flowers. Mr. S never suggested this act of hospitality was a “fag thing,” as he would have if any other male had made the same gesture. Karloff’s acting philosophy, in a nutshell, was simple: “Say your lines. Hit your mark. Get out.” But Sinatra embraced this as the oracle of a legend and took it to heart. No multiple takes for him. In time, he became considered an efficient, naturalistic, often excellent actor. Whenever he was praised and asked how he learned to act, he didn’t say Lee Strasberg or Stella Adler or Stanislavsky, but gave all the credit to Old Frankenstein.
I was never in the bedroom with Frank and his ladies, but I heard from a lot of
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