One on One

This evening, he has been enjoying one or two drinks – a few at the Lebanese Embassy, followed by a few more at a mayoral reception at Shoreditch Town Hall – when he is called to the phone. It is Milton Shulman, from Rediffusion Television, with the news that President Kennedy has been shot. Will Brown come and appear on a special Kennedy Assassination edition of the current-affairs programme This Week? Realising he is already the worse for wear, Brown’s wife attempts to dissuade him.

‘George, you mustn’t.’

‘I must!’ he replies.

Minutes later, Brown is driven from Shoreditch to the TV studios in Kingsway. He is a little early, so he helps himself to a couple more drinks in the green room. Before long, he is joined by two of the other guests – the historian Professor Sir Denis Brogan and John Crosby of the New York Times. Over another glass or two, he begins to hold forth about his close friendship with the late President and the future of the United States of America.

A third guest now puts his head round the door. It is the actor Eli Wallach, still clearly upset by the news of the assassination. Wallach is introduced to Brown, who tells him how much he admires his work. Wallach accepts Brown’s compliments gracefully, but he is an unassuming man, so tries to steer the conversation away from himself.

Brown misinterprets his modesty. ‘Why are American actors so conceited?’ he asks loudly, adding, ‘Someone like you always carries a newspaper sticking out of his pocket with his name in the headlines!’ Wallach attempts to defend himself, saying that, on the contrary, he is always bumping into people who can’t put a name to his face.

‘Have you ever been in a play by Ted Willis?’ asks Brown, randomly.

‘No,’ replies Wallach. ‘Who’s Ted Willis?’

‘You’ve never heard of Ted Willis?!’ exclaims Brown, as though this is further proof of Wallach’s vanity.

Wallach moves away, and finds himself a place on a sofa, but Brown follows him, sits down nearby, and continues to make noisy remarks about the conceit of American actors. Suddenly, Wallach loses his temper, rises from the sofa, points at the deputy leader of the Labour Party, and yells, ‘I didn’t come here to be insulted! Is this bastard interviewing me on the programme? If so, I’m leaving now!’

Brown is in no mood to be conciliatory. He repeats his remark about the conceit of American actors. Wallach then takes off his jacket and says, ‘Come outside! Come outside and I’ll knock you off your can!’

Brown tells Wallach to shut up and sit down. Wallach rushes forward and is about to strike when Milton Shulman leaps between the two men, pushing Wallach back on the sofa. At this point, in comes Carl Foreman, the director of The Guns of Navarone, who imagines the dispute is between Wallach and Shulman, and attempts to intervene. Meanwhile, Shulman is trying to placate Wallach. ‘He’s not going to interview you! He’s one of the guests!’

‘I don’t care who he is,’ says Wallach. ‘I’ll still knock the shit out of him!’ By now, Brown has been reduced to silence. The time has come to go downstairs to the studio, always a sobering moment. Brown goes over to Wallach. ‘Brother, brother,’ he says, ‘I don’t think we should go into the studio this way … Let’s shake hands.’ They shake hands awkwardly. Wallach goes through the door first. As he advances along the corridor, Brown shouts after him, ‘And now you’ll know who Ted Willis is!’

The live broadcast begins. The urbane interviewer, Kenneth Harris, turns first to Brown. ‘I know you met President Kennedy once or twice,’ he says. ‘Did you get to know him as a man?’

A look of intense irritation flashes across Brown’s face. ‘Now, you’re talking about a man who was a very great friend of mine!’ he barks. Tears welling in his eyes, he embarks on a slurred and rambling monologue, ‘a compound’, in his biographer’s view, ‘of maudlin sentimentality, name-dropping and aggression’ about ‘Jack’ (‘who I was very near to’), ‘Jackie’ and their children. Brown’s colleague Richard Crossman is watching the programme at home. ‘At the first moment I saw that he was pissed and he was pretty awful. He jumped up and down and claimed a very intimate relationship with Kennedy.’

In fact, the records show that Brown’s acquaintance with Kennedy extended to three brief official meetings: on July 9th 1962, from 5.15 p.m. to 6.08 p.m.; on June 14th 1963, from 11 a.m. to 11.55 a.m.; and between 5.30 p.m. and 5.40 p.m. on October 24th 1963. Nevertheless, in his autobiography he feels able to boast: ‘Jack Kennedy was one of the two Presidents of the United States whom it has been my privilege to know well. I came to love and admire him …’ Who knows what the President thought of Brown? His initial briefing note on him from the American Embassy in London advises that ‘certain character defects such as irascibility, impulsiveness and heavy drinking have left his future position in the Party in doubt’.

Brown’s television appearance, and a subsequent, widely disseminated, report in the New York Times of his set-to with Eli Wallach, prompt many complaints from the general public, to all of which Brown dispatches the same printed reply: ‘Thank you very much for your letter, and may I say how sorry I am that you felt that you had to write in those terms.’

Two months after the assassination, on January 23rd 1964, Brown finally gets down to writing a letter of condolence to Jackie Kennedy. ‘You may remember vaguely that we caught sight of each other when your husband was showing my daughter around the garden as late as last October,’ he begins, ‘and we exchanged greetings across the garden when you were in the room upstairs.’

ELI WALLACH

IS WELCOMED BY

FRANK SINATRA

Caesars Palace, Las Vegas

February 1974

The most belligerent people are sometimes unexpectedly warm-hearted. Even Frank Sinatra can disappoint onlookers who have been spoiling for a fight. Or is this just another example of his cruelty?

Ten years after his unfortunate contretemps with George Brown, Eli Wallach flies into Las Vegas. As he comes down the steps of the plane, he sees a huge billboard featuring two blue eyes. The caption states simply, ‘HE’S HERE’.

Ol’ Blue Eyes is back in Las Vegas, even though he promised four years ago never to return following a very public fight with the casino manager of Caesars Palace.

At that time, Sinatra had been under surveillance by the IRS. Their agents had noticed that he was cashing in his winnings at blackjack without paying for the chips – an easy way to pocket money tax-free. Leaned on by the IRS, the casino manager, Sanford Waterman, had confronted Sinatra, telling him, ‘You don’t get chips until I see your cash.’

Sinatra had called Waterman a kike; in turn, Waterman had called Sinatra a bitch guinea. Things had gone from bad to worse: Sinatra grabbed Waterman by the throat; Waterman pulled out a pistol and placed it between Sinatra’s eyeballs; Sinatra laughed, called Waterman a crazy hebe and exited, declaring that he would never work at Caesars again. In the end, Waterman had been arrested for pulling a gun.

The next day, Waterman told the District Attorney he had heard Sinatra say, ‘The mob will take care of you.’ This caused the Sheriff to say, ‘I’m tired of Sinatra intimidating waiters, waitresses, and starting fires and throwing pies. He gets away with too much. He’s through picking on little people in this town. Why the owners of the hotels put up with this is what I plan to find out.’

The District Attorney’s report indicated Waterman still had the finger-marks on his throat where Sinatra had grabbed him. ‘There seems to be reasonable grounds for making the assumption that Sinatra was the aggressor all the way.’ The charges against Waterman were dropped: he was judged to have acted in self-defence. It was at this point that Sinatra, denying he ever laid a finger on Waterman, vowed never to set foot in Nevada again. ‘I’ve suffered enough indignities,’ he said.

But four years later, things have changed. The casino manager has been arrested for racketeering, the District Attorney has been voted out, and the new management of Caesars Palace has tempted Sinatra back with the promise of $400,000 a week, plus full-time bodyguards ‘to avoid any unpleasant incidents’.

The new Sheriff is delighted to welcome Sinatra back to Las Vegas. To celebrate his return, Caesars Palace is proud to present each member of the audience with a medallion inscribed, ‘Hail Sinatra. The Noblest Roman Has Returned’.

But what of Eli Wallach? Ever since the publication of The Godfather in 1969, and its film adaptation in 1972, Wallach and Sinatra have been linked in the public mind as bitter rivals. The scene in which a studio boss wakes up to find the severed head of his favourite racehorse lying next to him in his bed has been the inspiration of an urban myth. In the film, it is the mafia’s revenge for the studio boss’s refusal to award a starring role to one of their own singers, Johnny Fontane. The horse’s head helps him change his mind: he immediately drops the actor who has already been cast and replaces him with Fontane. Over time, word has got around that Johnny Fontane is really Frank Sinatra, and the dropped actor is really Eli Wallach. After all, twenty years ago, hadn’t Harry Cohn offered Wallach a leading role in From Here to Eternity – and hadn’t it unaccountably gone to the inexperienced Italian Frank Sinatra? Small wonder, then, that when Eli Wallach walks into the Frank Sinatra show at Caesars Palace, a frisson runs around the audience.

Halfway through his act, Sinatra stops singing, looks over to his wife in the audience and says, ‘Barbara, did Eli get here?’

‘He’s sitting right beside me!’ she replies.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ says Sinatra, ‘I’d like to introduce a friend. Our paths have often crossed, and he played a big part in my career …’

The audience stirs. They all know what he is talking about. They sense a drama about to unfurl, perhaps even a fight. Sinatra pauses, looks over towards Wallach and says, ‘… Ah, the hell with that! It’s an old story! I don’t feel like telling it!’

Perhaps the audience is disappointed by this anti-climax, but Eli Wallach finds it hilarious. ‘I fell out of my seat laughing. Every time Frank saw me after that, he’d say, “Hello, you crazy actor.” And every time he came to New York, he’d send a limo for Anne and me. We’d sit in a box at the theater. He’d look up, smile at us, and afterward we’d have a late supper at 21.’

On the other hand, it may be worth adding that the author of The Godfather, Mario Puzo, does not get off so lightly. By chance, one night in 1970, after the book has become a bestseller, but before the film has been shot, he enters Chasen’s restaurant in Beverly Hills and sees Sinatra dining there. ‘I’m going to ask Frank for his autograph,’ he tells his companion, the film’s producer Al Ruddy.

‘Forget it, Mario. He’s suing to stop the movie,’ replies Ruddy. But Puzo persists, and goes up to Sinatra’s table. Sinatra loses his temper. ‘I ought to break your legs,’ he grunts. ‘Did the FBI help you with your book?’

‘Frank is freaking out, screaming at Mario,’ Ruddy recalls thirty years later. As Puzo remembers it, Sinatra calls him ‘a pimp’, and threatens to ‘beat the hell out of me’.

‘I know what Frank was up to,’ explains Al Martino, who eventually plays the part of Johnny Fontane.

‘You know how much Johnny Fontane was in the book? He was trying to minimise the role.’

FRANK SINATRA

DEALS WITH

DOMINICK DUNNE

The Daisy, Rodeo Drive, Los Angeles

September 1966

On a normal day, Frank Sinatra is not slow to take umbrage, nor to accompany it with the promise of revenge, a promise he enjoys keeping. ‘Make yourself comfortable, Frank! Hit somebody!’ the fearless comedian Don Rickles once greeted Sinatra as he strode into his cabaret lounge.

The TV producer Dominick Dunne has never been able to fathom why Sinatra has taken against him. ‘I wish I knew, but he took a major dislike to my wife and me.’ One moment, he was part of Sinatra’s wider circle, the next the object of abuse. ‘You’re a no-talent hack,’ Sinatra says to Dunne as he passes him at a party; whenever Sinatra sees Dunne’s wife Lenny, he tells her she married a loser. Why this change of heart? Dunne can only imagine that Sinatra bears him some sort of grudge for a TV show on which they worked together some years ago.