Sinatra and Sammy Remembered!

On December 11, 2010, the night before what would have been Frank Sinatra’s 95^th birthday, I was at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas for the premier of SINATRA: Dance With Me, a show conceived, choreographed and directed by the renowned classical, jazz, and contemporary dancer/choreographer, Twyla Tharp, who I interviewed in January 2008.

SINATRA: Dance With Me followed four couples, who fall in and out of love at a night club. The show, which had no dialogue, blended the original recordings of Frank Sinatra with a 17-piece orchestra and performances by 14 amazing dancers, who weaved romance and seduction into classic standards like Fly Me to the Moon, My Way, and That’s Life.

As I sat transfixed by the artists’ fluid movements and Sinatra’s famous phrasing, the Ghost of Christmas Past brought me back to Las Vegas when it was still a small, mob-style glamour-town rather than a sophisticated, cosmopolitan city.

Sinatra at Caesars Palace

This time I was in the now long-gone, iconic Circus Maximus showroom at Caesars Palace. I was just a young girl in my early twenties when I left New York City and came to the Entertainment Capitol of the World. A few weeks after I arrived, I got a job as a camera girl at Caesars Palace. Back then it was fun wearing a sexy, one-shouldered, black Roman toga and taking photographs of the people who came to see the show. The real treat was that night after night I got to watch those musical legends perform.

I was there for quite a few of Sinatra’s week-long runs. When he was at Caesars, there was electricity in the air. The showroom was always packed with high rollers and women who were dressed to the nines. The palms of the Maître d’ and the captains were greased with huge amounts of money in exchange for the best seats in the house—those coveted purple tufted booths in King’s and Queen’s Row.

The Night Tragedy Struck

I was there on January 6, 1977, a memorable day for Frank Sinatra. It was opening night and the showroom was noisy, the audience eager to see Ol’ Blue Eyes. The crowd was generous and in a partying mood so I took a lot of photos that night. Then we got word that the show was being delayed because Sinatra’s 82-year-old mother, Dolly was flying in from Palm Springs to see her son and her plane was late.

The audience ordered more drinks and waited; how long I don’t remember, but it seems like it was close to an hour before we got word that the show would go on. It was only afterward that we learned that Dolly Sinatra’s plane had crashed into a mountain approximately five minutes after taking off at 4:55 p.m. Sinatra knew his mother’s plane was missing when he got on stage. While he held out hope that she was okay and surely scared to death, he didn’t want to disappoint the people who had come to see him.

LIFE LESSON: No one, no matter how rich or famous, escapes sorrow. And money doesn’t bring us much comfort when tragedy strikes. Yet we place so much importance on amassing those things, instead of treasuring the things that make us rich beyond measure—love, friends, and good health.

Here is a video of Frank Sinatra performing in the Circus Maximus showroom at Caesars Palace in 1978. There’s a very good chance I was working that night. Those purple booths are no longer there, but the memories are.

https://youtu.be/p9Z0NlBmUbI?t=450

Sinatra’s birthday and 40 Years in Show Business

Another Sinatra date that stands out in my mind is December 12, 1979. Again, the room was abuzz with people who came to Caesars Palace to see Sinatra perform and help him celebrate his 64^th birthday and his 40^th year in show business.

Lots of celebrities were there that night, and I was called backstage to take some photos. Somehow I got up enough nerve to ask Mr. Sinatra if I could have a photo with him. It’s an old picture and in it our faces have faded, but my memories haven’t.

Over the four years that I worked at Caesars Palace, I saw many great performers such as Sammy Davis Jr., Shirley MacLaine, Diana Ross, Tom Jones, Cher, Harry Belafonte, Willie Nelson, Lena Horne and Vic Damon, Paul Anka, Liberace, Freddie Prinze, and the South Africa dancer, Juliet Prowse, who was briefly engaged to Sinatra, who said, “I was as much flattered as I was in love. He (Sinatra) was a complex person, and after a few drinks he could be very difficult.”

I had my photo taken with all of them and some of their celebrity friends and guests including Tony Bennett, Kris Kristofferson, Glen Campbell, Dean Martin, Michael Landon, Tony Orlando, and Dudley Moore. I have some great memories and stories.

Sammy Davis Jr.

The performer who touched me the most was Sammy Davis Jr, who Sinatra referred to as Ol’ Brown Eye. I had the pleasure of seeing Sammy countless times and each time he sang “What Kind of Fool Am I,” “Candy Man,” and especially “Mr. Bojangles,” I was aware that I was witnessing greatness. “Commit this moment to memory,” I would remind myself, “because one day he’ll be gone.”

I couldn’t find a video of Sammy singing “Mr. Bojangles” at Caesars Palace, but he is singing it in Germany. This is what mesmerized me each time I saw him.

When Sammy sang he exuded so much emotion. He climbed deep down into the very essence of a song and drew you right in with him. You felt his joy and his pain.

Sammy was a victim of racism throughout his life. In his 1965 best-selling autobiography, Yes I Can, he wrote how during his stint in the U.S. Army his nose was broken several times when he stood up to the taunts, and how the white soldiers ganged up on him, coated him in white paint and painted black racial slurs all over his body.

He described the stark contrast between how he was warmly greeted in showrooms and how he faced segregation in the hotels where he played. Las Vegas Strip hotels didn’t allow African American customers and entertainers of the post-war era to reside in or patronize the hotel-casinos. Black entertainers entered and exited through the kitchen, and sometimes they were lucky to get a meal at the very places where white people paid to see them perform. No dressing rooms were provided for black performers so they had to wait outside by the swimming pool between acts.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.

– Martin Luther King, Jr.

When Sammy lost his left eye in a car crash in 1954, he recovered at Frank Sinatra’s home in Palm Springs. The two had been friends since 1941 and reportedly Sinatra told Sammy, “Relax, you’re going to be bigger than ever.” Sinatra’s prophecy proved to be true. In the early 1960s he joined Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop on stage at the famed “Summit at the Sands” shows, where the group became known as the Rat Pack.

When Sammy was denied a room at the Sands, Sinatra threatened to pull the Rat Pack shows unless he got his own suite. Hotel-casino brass gave in to Sinatra’s demand, which opened the door for other black performers who’d been forced to find accommodations in boarding houses and motels in West Las Vegas.

Sammy overcame addictions to drugs, gambling, alcohol, and death threats. When he got involved with Kim Novak, who was under contract to Columbia Pictures, Harry Cohen, the head of the studio, worried about the negative publicity because of the country’s taboo against interracial sex. Reportedly Cohen called his friend, mobster Johnny Roselli, who arranged for Sammy to be kidnapped for a few hours to scare him.

Sammy may have been slight of frame, but he was a big man who stood up to bigots and bigotry. When he and Swedish actress May Britt got married in 1960, hate mail arrived at the Broadway theater where he was starring in Golden Boy. At the time, interracial marriages were against the law in 31 states. It was only in 1967 that those laws were ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.

That was the same year NBC broadcast a musical special with Nancy Sinatra Jr. entitled Movin’ With Nancy. In addition to the Emmy Award-winning musical performances, the show was notable because Nancy and Sammy greeted each other with a kiss, one of the first black-white kisses in U.S. television history.

Everyone associates the song “My Way” with Frank Sinatra, but here is Sammy Davis singing his version. He definitely lived life his way. He broke some norms and chartered new territory.

I have fond memories of those days at Caesars. I had my photo taken with Sammy several times. Here are two of my favorites. The one with me kissing him on the cheek was just after we presented him with a birthday cake. Those are nostalgic memories.

Back to the Present (which was a while ago)

In what seemed like the blink of an eye, the Ghost of Christmas Past had me back in my seat at the Wynn Hotel.  I wondered how it was possible for me to do that much reminiscing and not miss one dance step on stage. I suppose that’s the magic of time travel.

Back in present time, I, along with everyone else gave SINATRA: Dance With Me a final rousing standing ovation. I’m sure there were plenty of people there that night like me, who have their own memories.

When the show was over, Nancy and Tina Sinatra came out on the stage. Both daughters said a few words about their father. Then Nancy introduced Twyla Tharp, whose creative relationship with Frank Sinatra’s music began in 1976 with the premier of Once More Frank, a duet created for the American Ballet Theater and performed by Tharp and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

While they were still on the stage, Steve Wynn stood up from his seat in the audience and talked briefly about being 25 when he first met Sinatra and how 15 years later, in 1982 when Steve was 40 and he owned the Golden Nugget, he signed the 67 year -old crooner to a four-year contract. Steve went on to say how much their friendship meant to him.

That evening at the Wynn touched me in several ways. Artistically it was beautiful and very enjoyable, but on a deeper level it reminded me of how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go. We are no longer fighting for interracial marriages; now the battle is for gay rights. Instead of blacks being strung up or tormented by the Ku Klux Klan, young gay boys are killing themselves because of harassment and physical violence.

LIFE LESSON: We have to speak up against injustice, and discrimination. It’s not okay to hate people because of their race, their sexual orientation, their ethnicity or their religion. In God’s eyes we are all the same. It’s too bad that Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. aren’t still here to help us fight for equality. We must carry our own torch.