Working with Elvis made me rich, taught me show business, made me a player. I did not have to hustle quite as much. Once you've established yourself, you can, to some extent, let business find you. You become a beacon, a door into a better life. "Can you do for me what you did for Elvis?" In other words, people seek you out.
One afternoon, as I was reading through contracts, or whatever-I mean, who can remember?-the telephone rang.
"Hello."
"Is this Jerry Weintraub?"
"Yes."
The voice on the other end touched a sweet spot in the back of my brain. I knew it, but was not sure from where.
"Jerry, you and I need to talk business."
"Who is this?"
"Frank Sinatra."
"Oh, come on," I said. "Who is it really?"
"This is Frank Sinatra, Jerry, but I want you to call me Francis."
Now, you have to understand, for me, yes, there was Perry Como, and the Beatles, and the Four Seasons, and Elvis, but Sinatra was it. Head and shoulders above the rest. He was my idol, who I went to see when I was not working, when I was low down and in need of a pick-me-up, and when I was flying high and wanted to celebrate. I was in love with this man, or the man he was in his music, before I ever shook his hand. More than just a performer, he was a symbol. He was Vegas and the high life, the epitome of cool, but also one of us, a kid from Hoboken, who struggled on the same streets and dreamed the same dreams. He had been challenged but persisted. He was tough, too, and did not let himself get pushed around. He was Maggio in From Here to Eternity, for godsakes! In short, he was you as you dreamed you might be. By the early seventies, when I knew him, he was beyond the recklessness of youth, the ups and downs, Ava Gardner, the feud with Warner Bros. He was in the highest realm of show business. He was royalty. Then there was his music, how he wrapped himself up in each song and turned everything into an anthem. His records became the soundtrack of your life. To this day, if you look in my car, you will find only Sinatra CDs. Which is why, when the call came like that, out of the blue, I wondered if I was being hoaxed.
"Yes, Mr. Sinatra."
"Please, call me Francis."
"Okay, Francis. How can I help you?"
"I want to meet."
"Great. When?"
"Look, kid, when I say I want to meet, that means now."
"Where?"
"Go to the Santa Monica airport. My plane is waiting. It will bring you to Palm Springs."
"I would love to, Mr. Sinatra. But it's the middle of the day. I have meetings."
"Call me Francis."
"Okay, Francis."
"Now, do what I say. Go to the airport. You will be home in time for dinner."
"Yes, Francis."
I drove to Santa Monica, got on the plane.
A driver picked me up on the runway in Palm Springs. We drove through hills studded with wood and glass houses, each turned, like a flower, toward the sun. Sinatra met me at his front door, shook my hand, brought me in. He was slender and handsome, always with a half smile, always fixing a drink, his words commented on by his famously blue eyes, which, unless he was angry or depressed, and he got very depressed, seemed to be saying, "Can you believe our lives? Can you believe how much fun we're having?" Let's say he was wearing chinos, white loafers, silk socks, and a V-neck sweater-the man could dress. We talked. This was 1972. Frank had "retired" the year before. It was one of the many retirements he announced then unannounced. He went in and out of the ring more times than Muhammad Ali. The real champions are torn: They want to go out on top, leaving an image of their best selves lingering before the public, but cannot stand to stay out of the fight.
Frank tapped my knee. "Look, Jerry," he said, "I've seen what you've done with Elvis. Very impressive. I'm thinking of coming out of retirement. Do you think I can play those same kind of rooms?"
"I don't see why not."
Of course, I would not put Sinatra in the exact same rooms where Elvis was singing. These were different performers. Elvis was for the masses, for the people in the little towns between the big towns, the great crowds that filled the fields of the state fair. Sinatra was for the Italians and Jews, for the city people. He was urban. But the point remained-I could put Frank into new joints, bigger joints, the sort of arenas where crooners had never performed.
"Well, Okay," said Sinatra, "let's say that happened: Where would you start me?"
"Frank Sinatra? Well. Frank Sinatra has to open at Carnegie Hall."
I said this quickly, decisively, as if there was no other answer; a sense of certainty is what management is selling.
"Well, yes," said Sinatra. "Carnegie Hall sounds interesting."
He stood up, walked around the room, shaking the ice in his glass. "Okay, good," he said, "let's go with this."
"Go with what?"
"I want you to book a tour," said Sinatra. "I want you to handle this tour as I come out of retirement."
I got quiet, looked out the windows.
"What is it, kid?" asked Sinatra.
I said, "Look, Mr. Sinatra, I don't want you to take this the wrong way…"
"Francis, please. My name is Francis Albert Sinatra."
"Okay, Francis, I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but I have heard, just being around, talking to people, that sometimes, now and then, and again, don't take this the wrong way, you don't show up-you make the date, but don't turn up for the show."
He put down his drink, turned, and looked at me-his eyes were not humorous anymore, but icy blue. We didn't know each other, and, looking back, I suppose I was accusing him of being unprofessional. He said, "Are you crazy, coming into my house, talking to me like that? What's wrong with you?"
I said, "Look, no disrespect, Francis, but that's what I heard. And my career is just getting started. And I'm doing great. I'm a millionaire already. And I don't want to get into something I can't handle."
And he pointed his finger at me, and I'll never forget this, and said, "Here's what we're going to do. You and I, the two of us here, we're going to shake hands. And we're going to promise. I'm never going to disappoint you. And you know what, kid? You're never going to disappoint me, are you?"
I said, "No, Francis, I will never disappoint you."
And we shook hands, had another drink, and that was it. Once Frank Sinatra, excuse me, Francis, made a decision, it stayed made. He was loyal, a great man. Being accepted by Sinatra, entering his circle, that fraternity of knock-around guys, Dino, Jilly, Sammy, was one of the honors of my life. It was also one of the best possible credentials. It was Old Blue Eyes telling the guy at the desk, "Take care of him-he's one of mine."
We opened at Carnegie Hall. I had ditched my cowboy hat and jeans for a tux. I had slipped out of Elvis Country into Sinatra Land. This is another part of the job: being able to cross frontiers, move from culture to culture, making everyone believe you are a fully committed citizen of each. The curtain was called for 8:00 P.M. This was a black tie deal. Celebrities up the wazoo. Everyone was there. I'm not going to give you a list, but close your eyes and think of who was big in the 1970s: Well, they were there. I was backstage at 7:59. The house was empty. The people were in the street or in the lobby, fashionably late. You call the show for 8:00, they arrive at 8:35. New York. I'm staring through the curtain, wondering what kind of delay we're looking at, when there's a tap on my shoulder. It's Frank-excuse me, Francis-in his tux, dapper as hell.
"Jerry," he said, "it's eight P.M. Let's go."
"Yeah, but, Frank, the house is empty-no one is sitting down."
"Believe me," he said, "it will be like magic: When I start singing, they will be in their seats."
He turned, walked on stage, hit the first note, and BAM, the house was full.
On that first tour, I learned something new almost every night. Watching Sinatra work an audience of twenty thousand, take them up, bring them down, leave them in a kind of ecstatic high helped me in the movie business later on. It taught me how to structure a story: act one, act two, act three. Where did I go to school? Not to Harvard, Princeton, Stanford. I went to the school of Sinatra. I sat in his class every night. And while I was sitting there learning, I was making millions of dollars.
But the best part of working with Sinatra was not the tours, or the concerts, or even the money. It was the friendship, the camaraderie, the sense of being in it with the boys, the Chairman and the rest of the Rat Pack. When Frank was in LA, we were at Chasen's three nights a week, lighting it up, drinking and laughing. It was always a party. You knew where it started, but not where it would end. One night, we met at Chasen's and the next thing I know we're at a poker table at Frank's house in Palm Springs, playing big stakes. The game went on and on. At some point, George Hamilton came in. He was a friend of mine. He said, "Jerry, the house across from me is being sold in foreclosure. Thirty thousand. You should buy it. You won't have to rent anymore. But you have to buy it today."
"George, can't you see I'm in the middle of a game?"
"Yeah, sure, but it's a hell of a deal."
"You've seen this house?"
"Yeah, it's a beauty."
"Okay, if it's so great, buy it."
I write a check for thirty thousand, at least that's what they told me, because I forgot all about it a minute after it happened.
A few months later, Jane went to the desert to look at houses. We rented every winter. She found something she liked, then called our accountant to get money for the deposit.
"Why are you renting?" he asked her. "Jerry owns a house in Palm Springs."
She called me in a rage: "What the hell is going on? The accountant tells me you own a house in Palm Springs. How dare you! You have a girl set up down there? How dare you do this to me!"
I said, "What? No, no. That's crazy, absolute bullshit, not true. I own nothing in the desert."
I called the accountant. "What is this craziness?" I asked him. "You're telling Jane I own a house in Palm Springs? What's wrong with you?"
"But you do, Jerry."
"Do what?"
"You do own a house in Palm Springs."
"I do not. You're out of your mind."
"Jerry, you do. You bought it last season."
And when he said this, I had a fuzzy recollection of the card game, George Hamilton, and the rest. So we got the keys, went down, and checked it out. And you know what? George Hamilton was right. It was terrific, a sweet little house with a pool and a view of the hills. We stayed there for twenty years.
Wherever you went with Sinatra, you were surrounded-by fans, by politicians, by celebrities, and yes, by mobsters. A lot has been made of this, but there was nothing much to it. If you were in show business, there really was no avoiding the Mafia. They were in the music industry, operated the nightclubs. They loved Frank, but they had no real place in his life. They came around for the same reason everyone else came around: because it was fun to be around Sinatra. The fact is, as much as these guys loved Sinatra, they loved Dino more. He was their guy, big and handsome and charming as hell. When it came to Dean, women would lie down and open their legs. It wasn't even a question of, "Should I?" "Maybe it's wrong?" They just did it. It was his manner, his way. He was Peck's bad boy. The gangsters swarmed around him. He worked as a blackjack dealer in the Beverly Hills Club in Cincinnati. Dean's whole philosophy was that everybody on the other side of the table is a sucker. Whoever he was dealing to was by definition a sucker. And when he got on stage, everybody in the audience was a sucker, too. That's why he sang the way he did, cocky and nonchalant-because he was singing to the suckers. He couldn't believe people actually paid to hear him.
Most of that mob stuff was just rumor or misunderstandings. I will tell you a story:
In the late seventies, I had a great idea for a show. Sinatra performing with Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald. We would open on Broadway, then tour. We went through rehearsals, built sets, all the rest. Then, just before we were to open, word came down: The musicians are going to strike. The theater district will go dark. Did Sinatra care? Of course not. To him, it meant another night at 21. But for me, it was a disaster. I had a lot of my own money in the show. I would lose it all. I went around like a madman, meeting officials and union reps, trying to explain: Look, we're not a Broadway show. We're a concert that is opening in a theater on Broadway. There's a difference. We should get an exemption from the strike.
After twenty hours of this, I was sitting in a room outside the office of the union boss. I was spent, beat, wiped out, exhausted, undone, about to give it up. Just then, the door opens and out comes a woman, all done up, legs from here to here. She says, "Jerry? Jerry Weintraub?"
Uh-huh?
"Don't you recognize me, Jerry? I went to school with you. P.S. 70 in the Bronx."
"Oh, yeah," I say. "Of course, wow, you look fantastic!"
"I wish I could say the same about you. You're a mess. What's wrong?"
So I tell her the whole story-the show, the strike, how the show should not be part of the strike, and how a lot of the money in the show belongs to me, her friend from P.S. 70, Jerry Weintraub.
She takes me into the office of the union boss. He's not there. It's just me and her. She picks up the phone, makes a call. She gets the boss on the line. I can picture him, floating in his pool in Westchester or something, his wife and kids all around, his city-side honey suddenly ringing on the phone.
"I know you said don't call here, but I am sitting with an old friend from the Bronx, Jerry Weintraub, and what is happening to him and his show is just not fair… He needs an exemption… So I'm just gonna sign your name."
Which is how I walked out with that magic piece of paper. The next day, the story was all over the tabloids: Look what Frank Sinatra has pulled off with his mob connections.
Sinatra was not without flaws. He was a human being, after all. He had his problems and insecurities like the rest of us. You had to monitor his mood. He was usually happy Rat Pack Sinatra, but sometimes he fell into a funk. You never really knew what you were going to get. Now and then, he suffered bleak, dark, low-down moods-you had to throw him a rope and haul him back to the surface. If you really cared about him-and I loved the guy, it should be obvious-you had to be prepared, on occasion, to pull him out of the hole.
So here's a story:
One day, I was at home, early in the morning, reading the paper, when the phone rang. It was Frank. Francis. He sounded down. He was calling from Vegas. It was 9:00 A.M. there. He had a regular gig at Caesars and was staying in a suite on top of the hotel. He never went to sleep before 6:00 or 7:00 A.M., which meant he had been up all night, drinking and brooding on the roof of the hotel, where he had his own swimming pool. Could I hear all this in his voice over the phone? Yes. My job is reading people, keeping them level, and, when necessary, hip-checking them back onto the sunlit track.
"You sound terrible," I said. "What's wrong?"
"Depressed, Jerry," he said. "Depressed."
"Why? What's going on?"
"I can't do it anymore," he said. "The same thing, every day and night, going down to that same theater and singing the same songs to the same crowds, 'Fly Me to the Moon,' 'Chicago,' I just don't care."
What was Frank? Sixty? Sixty-five? No, younger. Late fifties, but he seemed old to me, a man with a lifetime behind him. It was 1974. I was a kid. It was just the beginning. I got on a plane for Vegas that afternoon, took a cab to Caesars, sat on the roof, staring at the heat shimmers dancing over the flats. Frank talked. He had a drink in one hand, a smoke in the other, double fisted, his voice full of fatigue, but his eyes sparkled. He told me how unhappy he was, bored of this whole business of night after night and song after song.
"Maybe I need a rest," he said.
"It's not a rest you need," I told him. "It's a new hill to climb."
This was Frank's nature. He was at his best when he was battling, fighting, struggling against all those fools who told him he had bitten off too much, gone too far. "You're bored," I explained. "You need a challenge."
"All right," he said, "what do you have in mind?"
"I have a great idea," I told him, "but I don't want to talk about it until I've had time to really put it together."
"No, no, what is it?" he asked. "You've got to tell me."
I said, "Look, I really do have a great idea, but I need a few days."
Of course, I did not have a great idea. I had no idea at all, but I knew that Frank needed a great idea less than he needed the prospect of a great idea, the promise of an event that would lift him out of his funk.
He said, "Tell me, Jerry. You've got to tell me."
So I started talking, improvising…
"Were going to do Madison Square Garden," I said.
"Yeah, so what?" said Frank. "We've done Madison Square Garden before. What's so great about that?"
"Now wait, Frank, hold on, let me tell you how we're going to do it…"
I kicked my voice up a notch, going into full ringmaster mode.
"… We're going to do it live, Frank! Live!"
"Yeah, so what? We're live every night. That's show business."
"Yes, but we're never live like this," I said, "on every television in America and all across the world."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah…"
And now that I had gotten the thread I was gone.
"And let's do it in the center of the Garden," I told him, "on the floor, in a boxing ring."
"A boxing ring? What are you talking about?"
"I'll tell you what I'm talking about. You're the heavyweight champion of the world, Frank. You hold every belt in the world of entertainment. The number-one singer in the world. No challengers, no one even close. So let's do it in a ring, and make it like a heavyweight title fight, and invite all the people who go to heavyweight title fights, because they're your fans. And let's get Howard Cosell to be the announcer. Yeah, wow, I can hear it!"
"Hear what, Jerry? What can you hear?"
"I can hear Howard Cosell. He's ringside, his hand over his ear, announcing it as you come down the aisle, climb through the ropes and into the ring: "Ladies and gentlemen, live from Madison Square Garden. Jerry Weintraub presents 'Sinatra, the Main Event.'
"And here's the best part," I told Frank. "No rehearsals."
"No rehearsals."
"No rehearsals. You just get there on the night of the show, and sing your songs, and do your thing, as fresh and spontaneous as can be-like a heavyweight title fight. Frank Sinatra Live!"
"The Main Event" was one of the great concert events of the age, Sinatra, in a ring in the center of his town, singing the story of his life, and this is how it began, on the roof of Caesars, Sinatra depressed and brooding, Weintraub talking and talking.
When we got to New York, Sinatra checked into a suite in the Waldorf Astoria and I went to the Garden to set this thing up. Live? In every house in America, in every nation on earth? What was I thinking? The project had grown quickly-too quickly. It started as a concert broadcast on TV, but there was now a record and a film. And we had five days to pull it off. Just like that, I had three hundred people working for me. By the second day, I was feeling pressure. By the fourth, I was in a mild panic. By the fifth, I was out of my mind. What had started as a ploy to snap Frank out of his depression had turned into a major deal-handled wrong, it could turn into a major embarrassment.
At such times, I become obsessed with details. That's where God is, so that's where I go, with my notebook and phone numbers and head full of ideas. The people, the angles, the chairs-I wanted to get everything exactly right. I hired Roone Arledge, who was then head of ABC Sports and ABC News, to produce the broadcast. I hired Don Ohlmeyer, who ended up being president of NBC, and Dick Ebersol, who later ran NBC Sports, and still does.
We built the boxing ring, arranged the seats, rehearsed the camera moves, intros, and exits, everything choreographed to a fraction of a second. Commercials were a major issue. We were supposed to break six times in the hour, and needed a system whereby Frank would know when to close out a song and when to start back in. Also, which songs would work the best as hooks, and which would work the best as lead-ins to new segments. Simply put, I needed Frank at the Garden for a rehearsal. But when I called his room at the Waldorf, there was no answer, nor a return call, day after day. Finally, on the morning of the show, a secretary answered.
"This is Jerry Weintraub," I told her. "I've got to talk to Frank."
"I'm sorry," she said. "Mr. Sinatra is not available."
"What the hell are you talking about?" I said. "We have a show tonight! At 8:00 P.M., we go live around the world."
"I'm sorry," she said "but he's indisposed."
Click.
I kept calling, but he never got on the phone.
At 2:00 P.M. a note arrived from Sinatra. It was his set list, the songs he planned to sing. It was ridiculous, absurd. I could not believe what was on there. "Crocodile Rock," "Disco Inferno."
To hell with this! I jump in a cab and head over to the Waldorf.
I went through the lobby, up the elevator, knocked on the door. I was in a panic. Clearly, Sinatra was not. He was, in fact, sitting in his bathrobe, smoking a cigarette as he read the newspaper. I went over, holding the set list.
"What is this?" I asked.
"What's what?" he said.
"These songs."
He laughed. His hair was pushed back and every part of him glittered. His funk had clearly lifted. "Forget the list," he said. "I wanted to see you, and figured that list would get you here quicker than a phone call."
"Okay, great," I said, "why did you want to see me?"
"Because you've been calling every eight minutes. What do you need, Jerry?"
"Well, I'll tell you," I said. "We have a live show in five hours, Frank. I need you to come to the Garden."
"No, Jerry, you said no rehearsal, remember? Live?"
"Yeah, I remember, but this thing has grown."
"Don't worry, Jerry."
Sinatra obviously had a plan in mind, but he was not sharing it with me.
"Well, I am worried," I said. "Can't we just do a quick run-through?"
"No, Jerry, no rehearsal. That's what you said. I will be there when the show starts. That's when you need me. Not before."
At 7:30 P.M., his limo pulled into Madison Square Garden. The streets were filled with scalpers and fans-and that special electricity only Frank could generate. He had arrived with a police escort, sirens, flashing lights. He climbed out, straightened his tux, tossed away a cigarette, took my arm, and asked, "How you doing, kid?"
"Not great," I said.
"We'll fix that in a minute," he told me. "First, remember to tell your wife, Jane, to get in the car when I start singing 'My Way.' I want to go by Patsy's and pick up some pizzas for the plane."
So that was what he was thinking about-not the show, not the commercial breaks, not the slender thread that was holding me above the flames of oblivion, but the pizzas he would eat on the way back to Palm Springs.
As we were walking to the dressing room, his entourage trailing behind us, he said, "Okay, Jerry. What's the problem?"
"We're going to commercial six times in this hour," I told him, "and this is a live show, and you don't know when to break."
"Jerry, is there a kid around here with a red jacket?" he asked.
"I'm sure we can get one," I said. "Why?"
"Have a kid in a red coat stand up ringside with a sign that says 'five minutes,' " he said. "When I see him, I will start 'My Way.' "
"Okay," I said, "but what are you going to do during the six commercial breaks?"
He said, "I'm going to sing, Jerry. That's what I am going to do. When you go to commercial, I will be singing and when you come back, I will still be singing. That's live."
He taught me about spontaneity that night-this, too, helped me as a film producer. Live, let it happen. There's never a better take than the first: Sinatra knew that in his bones.
If you watch a tape of the "Main Event," you see me and Sinatra walk out of the dressing room and down the aisle side by side. He is Muhammad Ali and I am Cus D'Amato, the trainer, the cut man, the voice in the ear, saying, "You are the champ! It's yours! Now get in there and murder the bum!" I was, in fact, as white as a sheet, shuffling as if to my own funeral. You hear Cosell going though his routine: "… Here, coming through the same tunnel that so many champions have walked before, the great man, Frank Sinatra, who has the phrasing, who has the control, who knows what losing means, who made the great comeback, and now stands still, eternally, on top of the entertainment world…" Just before we went out, when the music started Sinatra leaned over me-well, I was a lot taller than Frank, so he looked up, but it felt like he was leaning over me, you know? And he asked, "How you doing now? Better?"
"No," I said, "not better."
"What the hell's the matter with you?" he said.
"Frank"-or Francis, that's what I said-"this is going live around the world, we have not rehearsed and have no markers or breaks. It could be the end of my career."
He pinched my cheek and said, "Listen, kid. You got me into this, and I'm going to get you out."
And he went through the ropes, and the music started, and it was all Frank from there. He was a genius. He held the crowd in his hand. "The Lady Is a Tramp," "Angel Eyes," "My Kind of Town," they poured out of him like Norse sagas. When he sang "Autumn in New York," it was as if he were leaning on a bar, spilling his guts out to a late-night, Hopperesque bartender.
Who thought this could work, intimacy in an arena filled with thousands and thousands of people, but he pulled it off. He turned the Garden into a shadowy, three-in-the-morning, Second Avenue saloon. You could have heard a pin drop.
Then, just like that, when it seemed no more than a moment had passed, the kid walked the aisle in the red coat and Frank launched into "My Way." The ignition was turned in the limo, the pizzas were pulled from the ovens, the plane raced down the runway, and we were laughing and eating pepperoni as the jet climbed into the stratosphere.