You never get rich writing a column like this. But you do get wonderful gifts from the superstars you write about. Duke Wayne willed me the vest he wore in 31 Western movies. I treasure it to this day. He also willed me his cowboy hat. But the Smithsonian Institution had requested it. Luster Bayliss, Duke’s wardrobe man for his starring career, broke the news to me. I told Luster, “Let the Smithsonian have it.”
However, I do have a celebrated cowboy hat, the one Steve McQueen wore in the film Tom Horn.
I have to say, however, that the most unique gift I have is the porkpie straw hat that Frank Sinatra wore on several of his album covers.
It was my first trip to Europe, in 1958 when Frank Sinatra took me along to Monte Carlo where he was to perform at Princess Grace’ first gala. He had just finished making the movie High Society with Grace and Bing Crosby.
It was a smash hit and the princess’ last as Grace Kelly. It was also one of her finest.
When we arrived in Monte Carlo, Grace gave us a tour of her 900-room palace. In the den of the quarters she shared with her husband Prince Rainier of Monaco was the certificate honoring her for a duet she sang with Bing Crosby, in the movie True Love.
Sinatra turned to me and said, “Look, I’m a singer, and I never got one of those. She comes in and gets one in her first try.”
We continued with a walk through the palace. In the elevator on the way down, the late Bill Miller, Frank’s musical director, commented, “None of us told her how much we liked her house.
This broke up Sinatra who chortled, “How do you thank someone for a tour of a 900-room house?”
It was later that weekend, after Grace’s gala, that I received Frank’s treasurer hat.
Hours after the gala, I was celebrating over Dom Perignon with Frank and some of his friends in Frank’s suite at the Hotel de Paris. Frank was singing, accompanied by Noel Coward on the piano, to an audience which included Somerset Maugham, Peter Lawford and his wife Pat Kennedy and some of Frank’s musicians.
Jack Daniels got the better of Frank so I borrowed his porkpie hat and took over singing “Come Fly With Me.” By this time, I only had an audience of one listening to me, Frank himself. At the end of each chorus Frank would urge, “One more time.” I sang five encores. At the conclusion, Frank told me, “You keep the hat. You earned it.”
I’m probably the worst singer you ever heard. But Frank liked me. And that’s something.
Speaking of Frank, his closest companion over the years was the late Jilly Rizzo, his aide de camp, general factotum and one of the most colorful men either Frank or I had ever met.
Jilly died tragically a few years before Frank. He was on his way to his 75th birthday party in Rancho Mirage when, in a horrendous automobile accident, he was trapped in his car and burned to death.
He had led a storybook jet-setting life with Frank, but the years before were always shrouded in mystery. It turned out Jilly’s early life, the making of Jilly, was even more flamboyant.
His two sons, Willie and Joseph, got together a few years ago with writer Scott Allen Nollen to chronicle Jilly’s life. And it’s one of the best books I’ve read in years.
The boys ferreted out some of Jilly’s old friends from the neighborhood, guys with nicknames like Tony “O” Oppedisano and “Uncle” Frank Potenza. And some newer friends (from the last 50 years) like me and Frankie Avalon, Dennis Farina, Peter Nero and Johnny Pizza (yes, he says that’s his real name).
The book chronicles how a young Jilly, with a sixth grade education, helped his father deliver ice during the Depression. Prohibition was still the law of the land and Jilly got to know the wise guys who ran the jazz clubs, the after hours gambling joints and the gay bars where illegal booze was sold.
Then there were his years in the Army during World War II when , stationed in Australia, he taught the natives how to brew and sold the liquor to his fellow soldiers. His captain got a cut of the action.
And there was his legitimate post war jazz club on a nascent 52nd street when he gave pianist Peter Nero his first big break.
I don’t have the space to do this book justice. You’ve got to read it for yourself. It was published by a small Henderson, Nevada, outfit called Vegas Broom Press.
Instead, I’ll tell you one of my own favorite Jilly anecdotes.
My family and I went to Bophutatswana, a South African native enclave, in the 1980s a week before Frank Sinatra would arrive to appear at a new casino nightclub there.
When Jilly arrived with Frank I touted a waiter named Lazarus to him, giving him a rave review. Lazarus, along with the other hotel employees, had literally been barefoot natives in the impoverished area before the entrepreneur Sol Kerzner built the hotel.
But by the time I got there, Lazarus was one of the best waiters I’d ever met.
Jilly, who did all of Frank’s tipping, acknowledge the introduction by handing Lazarus a crisp new one-hundred dollar bill. It was most money Lazarus had ever seen in his lifetime.
Then Jilly commented, “Keep Mr.Sinatra’s coffee warm.”
Lazarus’ exuberance was overwhelming. You can bet that Frank got the same excellent service that we had. And his coffee never got cold.
Jilly once told me that Frank gave him five thousand dollars to tip waiters, etc. at each engagement, in Las Vegas, or any place else.
Don Rickles has made millions insulting everybody in Hollywood, but over the years, no one ever got miffed except Sid Luft, who was married to Judy Garland at the time.
It was early in Don’s career. He was performing at the Slate Brothers night club on La Cienega boulevard and Luft was in the audience.
Rickles nodded to Luft and said, “Laugh it up, Sid, or Judy will write you out of the will.”
Luft, who had a reputation for punching out people he didn’t like, got up and started towards the stage. But wiser souls, including Henry Slate, stopped him. Luft, to everyone’s amazement, sat down, a defeated man.
I once asked Jack Benny who was the funniest of all comedians. I figured I’d get an honest answer from him.
“Ed Wynn in his prime,” said Jack, without hesitation. “He was the funniest man alive.”
Benny added that Wynn’s popularity peaked in the “Zeigfeld Follies.”
And then he told me the story of W.C. Fields doing his famous billiards schtick, one of his favorite routines. He was getting plenty of laughs, but all in the wrong places. Fields looked under the pool table and there was Wynn making funny faces for the audience. Fields took the pool cue and smacked Wynn over the head, knocking him out.
It was violence, but got the biggest laugh of all.