Free Mr. S by George Jacobs

Hollywood who, like Swifty Lazar, lacked confidence in the resurgence and staying power of Frank Sinatra. The bottom line, and producers believe in nothing except the bottom line, was that Sam Spiegel could not get his dark tale of labor unrest in the New York docks financed with Sinatra carrying the film. So, for all his declarations of Sinatra’s uniqueness, he found another actor who could do even better justice to Terry Malloy, the ultimate justice of getting him to the screen. That actor, who would become Sinatra’s continuing nemesis, was Marlon Brando. Brando had originally refused to work with the Waterfront director Elia Kazan, because he hated Kazan for being a stool pigeon, a name namer in the Communist witch-hunt of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. That’s why Spiegel came to Sinatra, telling him “you’re better than Brando.” Spiegel totally snowed Frank, put him under his ether. And then, when he was finally able to put Brando under that same ether, getting him to forgive Kazan, he stabbed Frank in the back.
    I had never seen Frank Sinatra pissed off before; he had seemed so sweet and downtrodden the whole time I had known him I didn’t know he had this venom in him. (Man, did I underestimate that one.) Sam Spiegel had spoiled Sinatra’s Oscar party before the party had begun. He was ruining his comeback. Worst of all, he had lied to Frank. He had made a promise and he had broken it, and, as Frank told me, fighting back the tears, where he had come from that was the worst thing a man could do. Frank really beat up on himself for getting suckered by Spiegel. He’d talk about how Spiegel had done prison time for writing bad checks and other frauds in England andhad been deported for his crimes. He should have known, and he felt stupid. I was about the only one he could complain to at that point. Bogart loved Spiegel, because he had helped him win the Oscar. Lazar loved Spiegel, because he wanted to sell him things. Romanoff loved Spiegel, because he was pretty much the same guy himself, and Spiegel was one of his best customers. So there was nowhere Frank could go with his rage. All Frank could do was rant to me and look for the next best part that the buzz from Eternity could help him get.
    Mr. S and I spent our first month or so getting to know each other. I was pretty awkward at first. I’d shine every pair of shoes twice, and press his pants and coats three times, just to be sure they were 100 percent right. I was much more compulsive than I had had to be in the Navy. I wanted so much to please him, I know I overdid it. Once I was hovering so close to him over dinner that he said to me, “Who do you think you are, Ted Lewis?” He was referring to the guy who sang “Me and My Shadow,” and it gave both of us a big laugh and was helpful in breaking the ice. So was a time when he had some people coming over for drinks and hors d’oeuvres and I spilled something on my shirt so he gave me one of his. We were just about the same exact size, so his stuff all fit me. The only problem was the initials on the shirts. One of the guests, a Broadway music type, began giving me a hard time about the shirt. “What’s your name?” George. “Then what are those FS initials for?” the wise guy kept sticking it to me. “Fast service,” I improvised, and Sinatra broke out laughing. “He’s a bullet, George is,” he said. “Don’t mess with him.” That got his respect.
    We bonded still further on his first sleepover conquest during my watch. She was a pretty starlet from the studios whom neither he nor anyone else ever saw again, but he had me put on a candlelit spread as if he were entertaining a princess. I had to go to Parisian Florist in Hollywood, the best in town, to get roses, to Jurgensen’s fancy grocery shop in Beverly Hills for the best champagne and chocolate, to Monaco’s Italian deli for prosciutto, plus a long trip downtown to Bullock’s Wilshire, the top department store