Meeting at the Summit

The lobby was roiled with cops, cables and klieg lights. Behind the desk a harried, gray-skinned man perfunctorily took the calls: "Sands Hotel; sorry, nothing at all. Try us next month." A few feet away the fabled casino was smokyhot, jangling and thick with humanity. Outside, a neon blaze took over for the dying green-gold wisps of dusk, and Director Lewis Milestone trained his camera on the marquee billing Red Skelton and Danny Thomas in the Copa Room. A jostling passel of show-wise tourists was held back by cordons of police guards trying to explain that Red and Danny weren't really playing the Sands, but the sign was vital to a scene in a Hollywood movie. It hardly mattered that nobody listened, for by now there were almost no show-biz savants west of Hoboken who didn't know that Frank Sinatra's film, Ocean's Eleven, was being shot in Vegas, with Frank's real-life buddies, as well as himself, in leading roles: Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford.

What it all amounted to was a Meeting at the Summit, a gathering of the hard-core members of a very special gang of Hollywood rebels. Among the qualities that give the group of show-biz folk who gather around Frank Sinatra its glamor and romance is the fact that they not only like to play together, but also get a giant clout out of working together. "The Clan," as they've been dubbed by others, possess talent, charm, romance and a devil-may-care nonconformity that gives them immense popular appeal – so much so that today they sit at the very top of the Hollywood star system, with Sinatra king of the hill.

The point is not, however, that this occasion saw five very big names assembled. This has happened before; it happens frequently on location shootings of big-budget films. But this particular group, and this group alone, has cohesiveness in work, friendship, fun – and a wild iconoclasm that millions envy secretly or even unconsciously – which makes them, in the public eye, the innest in-group in the world.

The cryptic title – Ocean's Eleven – derived from the quasi-comic efforts of eleven wartime buddies, corralled by Danny Ocean (Sinatra) to rob five Vegas casinos simultaneously – with militaryprecision but no bloodletting. Besides The Big Five in leading roles, Richard Conte, Buddy Lester, Henry Silva, Clem Harvey, Norman Fell and Richard Benedict round out the unholy eleven. "It's an American scene," said director Milestone, "from an American story, by George Clayton Johnson, an American writer – but it's also like a Rene Clair comedy, with a French twisteroo at the end."

Best of all, the four-week Vegas location earlier this year had given birth to a bonanza that even Barnum could not have bought; a stellar, spectacular nightclub act. When director Milestone yelled "Cut and print it" for the last time each day, his actors scurried through the steam room and into tuxedos, as the marquee men clambered up ladders to post the proper line-up: Sinatra, Martin, Davis, Lawford, Bishop – as volatile a bundle of talents as the U.S. show scene has ever known, or in the Sinatra vernacular: "A gas of a cast." All of them had meaty parts in the picture, worked hard on scripted and directed roles all day. By show time at the Sands they were ready for relaxed ad-lib fun. Add the fact that two of them (Frank and Dean) own a chunk of the hotel itself, and it becomes clear why every night at the Sands was like New Year's Eve. Though they began their stint on a "Star-light, star-bright, which star shines tonight?" basis (continued on page 48)Meeting at the Summit (continued from page 37) (they originally planned to draw straws), they found that, as Joey Bishop put it after opening night, they were "having so much fun nobody wanted to get out of the show." Only sad-faced Joey was guaranteed to appear, but almost any night the twelve hundred receptive customers were likely to catch all five for the price normally paid for any one of them (three-dollar minimum). From time to time there were also unbilled bonuses the likes of Bob Hope, Milton Berle, Dan Dailey, Harry James, Red Skelton, Shirley MacLaine, Danny Thomas, and the Mexican comic Cantinflas, who was also on Vegas location with George Sidney's Pepe (which created such confusion that the crews of the two picture companies had to wear different-colored caps for identification).

The Sands shows were of gasping brilliance, though not a snippet of them had been rehearsed. No two performances were alike, but each of them broke the town's long-standing rule that no show run more than one hour (to get the gamblers back into the casinos). Average running-time at the Sands: one and a half hours; but on salient occasions – like Joey Bishop's birthday, Senator Kennedy's visit, or closing night with Bob Hope kibitzing – the High Pashas of the Plains spilled their low-comedy high-jinkery far into the night.

One show started like this: "Who's starring tonight?" asked the m.c. From the Bronx-brass larynx of Joey Bishop off stage came a low-keyed croak: "I dunno. Dean Martin is drunk; Sammy Davis hadda go to da temple; Peter Lawford's out campaigning for his brother-in-law."

"What's Frank doing?"

There followed a knowing snicker, and the words: "Just say somebody – somebody'll go on."

Somebody turned out to be Joey Bishop, a super-relaxed shadow of a man with no song-and-dance gifts at all, just a bored look and a rapier tongue that is usually clean and always deadly. "There is a tendency on a night like this to be a little nervous," said Joey opening night. "Please don't be."

The stand-up monolog was on. "I never drank before in my life till I worked with these guys. I was really drunk this morning. I was walking around with a snake in my hand trying to kill a stick. Dean, he hasn't opened his mouth – doesn't want to spill any.

"You see a nice family crowd here in Las Vegas – middle-aged men walking along with their daughters. But there's passion here too. A woman of eighty walked up to me at the slot machine and asked: 'Do you feel hot?'" Then Joey admonished his noisy, dinner-show audience to "please don't stop eating. If you like my act, on the way out try my jams and jellies."

The well-oiled sardines out front were patently shaken. Even a waiter dropped his tray and Joey ad-libbed: "How do you like that, the chef hit the jackÈot!" Then with a tilt of his funny triangle face, he bugged his beady eyes, pursed his lips and swung back into his monolog. "Now that I'm working with four stars I got no dressing room. I have to change with the chorus girls – it's sort of an honor system," and only a fast wink creased the skillful deadpan: "They're very nice girls though. I just spoke to one and she said, 'No.'

"It's all make-believe here in Las Vegas, including myself – an eleven-hundred-dollar tuxedo – torn underwear. I don't gamble. I lost money last night in the stamp machine . . . Sonuvagun, I never saw so much wealth in my life. I dropped a quarter in the lobby, the bellhop picked it up for me. I hadda give him a dollar tip.

"Have you seen the marquee? The way they've got my name way down on the bottom only tall dogs will know I'm working here."

Bishop rarely used blue material, e.g., "One night I was shaving and I said to my wife, 'Do you mean to sit there and tell me ...'" He netted some of his biggest chuckles at the expense of his cohorts. Happily, they loved it, and so did the audiences. "Finish eating," Joey told his guests, "the other guys are sensitive. Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin are gonna come out and tell you about some of the good work the Mafia is doing." Dean came on from stage left, Frankie from stage right, both in dinner jackets. They stopped, looked at each other questioningly, shrugged, then exited without a word. The audience broke up. It was, like so many of their wildest japes, purely a sight gag. As they went off, Joey looked after them, "Sonuvagun," he said dryly, "Italian penguins."

Or all four aces would charge on in Indian regalia, tomahawks at the ready.

Sinatra: "Summit meeting, Indian style, with popcorn. Me big chief running water."

Dean: "Me no take single drink all year – just double."

Joey: "Speak, brave."

Frank: "Me no brave, me chicken."

Joey: "Speak, brave chicken."

Frank: "Must keep it clean. Otherwise cops come. We get twenty years."

Sammy: "You call me paleface one more time, I club you with tomahawk."

When the laughter subsided, Joey announced: "Now it is my pleasure to introduce Contestant Number Two, Sammy Davis, Jr. I don't know who staged this show, but I don't think it looks right for one Jewish fellow to follow another." On came Sammy, as Joey headed for the wings. Before the applause died down Sammy swung into She's Funny that Way. Through an offstage mike Dean Martin warned him he was singing Frank's song: "Don't sing any more of The Leader's song." But Sammy kept it up, with Joey, off stage, encouraging him to "Keep singing, Sam; Dean just fell again." Sammy struggled manfully then with the lyrics as Dean's voice again came out of the wings: "Joey, where's the bathroom?" And moments later: "There's gotta be a way outta this room. Am I locked in? Whaddaya mean I need a dime to get out?"

Sammy looked done in as Frank, or "The Thin Gin" as Dino calls him, came rattling down a narrow aisle, wearing an oversized, misbuttoned three-quarter coat and a baseball cap plugging Ocean's Eleven. "Hey," he said, "how come you're singing my song? You crazy or something, singing The Leader's song?"

But Joey rescued Sam, came on with, "Frank, it's Sammy's night. He can sing any song he wants tonight. Besides, he's halfway through; let him finish." Frank relented and he and Joey, arm in arm, skipped off stage like Shirley Temple and Bojangles in The Good Ship Lolly Pop.

Sammy drove into Hey There and out of a side door leading from the wings to the Copa Room popped Dean: "Hey there, would you hold it down, please?" Joey (off stage) fired back: "Dean, close the bathroom door." He did, and for the first time we heard from low-comic Buddy Lester: "Hey, Dean, move over." Then Joey and Peter Lawford strolled nonchalantly across stage in their tux shirts, jackets, and their undershorts, carrying neatly-folded pants across theÈr forearms like waiters' linen.

The fun was always free-form and zany, and turn-abouts were common. Some nights Dean would take a crack at singing, while Sammy heckled from the John. Without fail, the Summiteers tried to break one another up with off-stage heckling and ad-libs that were often funnier than the on-stage material. When they succeeded, which was often, the audience lapped it up. In fact, the infectious happiness on stage projected on the audience with such force that the scene at the Sands might have seemed to an outsider a classic demonstration of hysteria. In such an atmosphere, every gag, every gesture, every amble across the stage by a star, had the whole place rocking with wild glee.

Sammy introduced Peter Lawford who lent the others, avered Davis, a dash of "dignity." Sammy asked, "You wanna dance with me? Do you realize I happen to be one of the greatest Jewish Mau Mau dancers?"

"I'm not prejudiced," said Peter. (continued on page 97) Meeting at the Summit(continued from page 48) "I know your kind. You'll dance with me but you won't go to school with me." Donning derbies, they did a fine buck-and-wing until Joey tried to break them up with: "You better hurry, the sons of Italy are getting restless." The warning went unheeded until Joey called to Sinatra. "Hey, Frank, look – missionaries!" Frank (off stage) asked, "How do we get him off?" and Joey said, "Tell him it's a Jewish holiday." Finally Frank strolled on, took the mike, mimicking the old days when legend had it he clung to it for support, commanded: "Get off, Sam, and take Freddie Bartholomew with you."

Dean joined Frank on stage and they sandwiched Joey Bishop between them. "Here they are, folks," Joey declaimed, "Haig and Vague." Frank thanked Joey for his herculean comedy chores, dubbing him "The Hub of the Big Wheel, The Speaker of the House,"and Joey sidled up close, kissed Frank and whispered: "You wanna get up early tomorrow and we'll look for furniture?"

Dean busted it up: "Eva Marie Saint's in the audience. She just wants to say a coupla words." Then Joey: "And now a few well-chosen words from The High Lama."

Dean: "Hi, Lama."

Joey: "Speak, exhausted one."

Frank (correcting him): "Exalted one. Why do you think I put this tuxedo on ––"

Joey: "What the hell, if ya gonna look dead, dress dead."

Frank particularly savored the quasiad-libbed ribbing he got from Joey, just as he currently digs Hollywood's sultan of insult, Don Rickles ("C'mon Frank, be yourself, hit somebody!"). Once when Joey went off stage after his monolog, Frank asked him, "How was the crowd?" Snapped Joey: "Great for me. I don't know how they'll be for you."

At last, Sinatra was on stage – raw, kinetic, ineffably primitive; and the dark house was awash with liquid rhythms. To a steady vamp, Frank charmed the audience with his casual chatter. Cracked Joey, off stage now: "What the hell kind of singer is that – the band plays and he talks." Frank sailed into Cole Porter's What Is This Thing Called Love? And Joey bit again: "Boy, if you don't know, we're all dead." Frank capitulated, tackled She's Funny That Way.

"Not much to look at, nothing to see . . ."

"You can say that again," yelled Joey. "If you stand sideways, they'll mark you absent."

"Just glad I'm living . . ."

"You wanna bet?" Joey asked.

"And happy to be . . ."

"Ohhh, he's all choked up . . ."

"I got a woman . . ."

"Broad."

"Crazy for me . . ."

"She's nuts!"

"She's funny that way."

"She's queer," cracked Joey, and so it went. Frank, whose vagrant curl of yesteryear has long been exchanged for a wavy hair piece, still satisfied his rapt fans with renderings of There's No You and his salty, souped-up version of Road to Mandalay ("There's a Chinese brÈad awaiting by that pagoda . . ."); but on Talk to Me, they had at him again: "For Chrissakes, somebody out there talk to him." Dean's voice floated out of the amplifier: "Hey, Joey, have I been on yet? I thought it was my night."

Then Dean Martin was introduced – as Contestant Number Five. Before Dean could sing, Joey and Frank rolled out a well-stocked portable bar. "Breakfast," mumbled Dean. "They asked me if I'd go on last and like a schnook I said I don't care, I'll go on last." Finally Martin found center stage, the band whammed into an intro and he scowled, turned, swung on conductor Antonio Morelli: "That's Sinatra's music. Play my music. Start where it says, 'and he staggers in.'" In his own slushy, Seconal style, Dean sung special lyrics to The Party's Over and Almost Like Being in Love ("My yellow may show up, I even may throw up, it's almost like being in love"), then stepped up to the "breakfast" bar, emptied a bottle of bourbon over a lonely ice cube lying on the bottom of a vast ice bucket. "Let's drink up and be somebody," suggested Sinatra. But Dean had a better idea. "Let's drink up and be every body." (Despite Dean's on-stage penchant for the sauce, he is actually a lighter drinker than many of his friends, often fills his glass with Coke, tea or apple cider.) The party got wilder. Sinatra went off, returned beating a bass drum reading: "Eat at Puccini" (his Beverly Hills beanery): Dean turned Frank and the drum around so the skin read: "Only three miles from Dino's" (Martin's rival Sunset Strip spot). All saluted The Leader as the band played Kwai march music. "Were you in the service?" Dean asked Joey. "No," said Joey, "I just love a parade."

With studied sloppiness, Dean Martin mumbled through his "newest album – Ballads for B-Girls." Sample lyrics: "Won't you tell her please, to go home and shave." And "I'm dancing with tears in my eyes, 'cause the girl in my arms is a boy." And "Nothing could be finer than to shack up with a minor." Sammy cuddled up to Dean, rasped: "I wish you'd come back to me, 'cause I'm lonesome." Joey spotted them, said: "Well, I guess they got 'em in every race." Dean tried vainly to keep on warbling: "You made me love you, you woke me up to do it . . ." But Frank walked across the dark stage brandishing a flashlight and Joey cried: "Sonuvagun lost another broad!" Sammy latched onto Frank's arm and Joey added: "Congratulations, Frank, you found a nice Jewish girl. How did you manage it?" Said Frank: "I told her I was a doctor." Somebody asked Joey: "You got a fairy godmother?" Joey: "No, but we got an uncle we keep a close eye on."

It was still Dean's turn but the others continued to make it difficult for him. Finally, he let out an exasperated, "I got the funniest feeling I haven't been on yet." The band drowned him out with a crescendo of tympani and trumpets signifying he'd had it.

But Dean managed to announce that since he was still "on," he'd do a few songs by Rodgers and Hart – "Roy Rogers and William S. Hart." He sang, "You made her say 'uncle' in my ante-room," muffed the lines, stopped, looked heavenward with arms outstretched and pleaded: "Don't just look down – help me!" Sinatra asked: "Just what you doin' out here, Dean?"

"Singin'."

Frank handed Joey a fin: "I lost another goddamn bet."

Sinatra introduced his pale-faced pianist, Bill Miller, as "Suntan Charley. Bill's been with me six years. We've drunk about a hundred and fifty barrels of whiskey together – hot damn, boy." And Dean introduced his accompanist: "Not only is he a fine pianist and scholar, but he's been a Communist for six years."

Ocean's Eleven Director Milestone was introduced and Joey said: "That bow you took is bigger than the part I have in the picture." Or Senator Kennedy was given a standing ovation and Dean Martin asked: "What was the last name?" Or it might have been the nightÈDanny Thomas was in the audience and Joey cracked: "You had so much faith in your nose. You wouldn't have it operated on. So now they're filming the Durante story and who's got the lead? Dean Martin." Or perhaps it was Milton Berle who took the stage and told Bishop: "You were great and no wonder, it's my material." Squelched Joey: "Timing and delivery – that's the difference." Berle wrapped the mike cord around Joey's neck and stalked off. (Said Milton later: "I've seen a lot of wild nights, but this was the greatest night I've ever seen in show business.")

Or the night of Joey's birthday: A big cake and tableload of gifts were wheeled in and The Big Four sang Happy Birthday to Joey, who read the icing on the cake: "'Happy Birthday from Ocean's Eleven'" then wondered aloud, "Does this mean my part's going to be cut?" He opened a huge box and turned to Frank: "I wanna thank you for the fountain pen."

Dean Martin squirted pop on his colleagues; Sammy Davis pushed the cake into Joey's face in a Mack Sennett finish. Joey brayed as he wiped off the mess: "You're all so smart. It's not even my birthday," then turned to his sore-handed audience: "I'm not in this show. I just couldn't get a reservation." Sinatra leaped into Martin's arms and all fell to the floor in a heap. Sammy brought down the curtain with: "Tomorrow night we might start a race riot."

• • •

The Sands stand was only one more graphic example of the stunning power, talent and close camaraderie of that mid-century phenomenon sometimes called The Clan – a name that Frank digs not at all. As he explains: "'The Clan' is afigment of someone's imagination. Naturally, people in Hollywood socialize with friends as they do in any community, but we do not gather together in childish fraternities, as some people would like to think. Life magazine coined the phrase 'The Clan' in an article, and it stuck. There is no such entity as 'The Clan' and there never has been. I am fortunate to have many friends and many circles of friends, but I do not issue membership cards."

Whatever the clique is called, it is controlled by Francis Albert Sinatra, whose cold-water-flat-to-Coldwater Canyon saga is one of the best-chronicled in show-business history. Its benchmarks are by now globally known: the status symbols (like Dual-Ghias, owned by Sinatra and Lawford); the coined lingo (clyde, bird, charley, ring-a-ding, used by almost the entire group); the fugitive fun: the compulsive, even belligerent disassociation from reality; the late poker games and the private screenings in Frank's Japanese lair; the flyers into related ventures (Frank is now in the theatrical agency business, and handles, through his right-hand man Hank Sanicola, the affairs of Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Tony Bennett, Mort Sahl, Zsa Zsa Gabor, et al.); the chartering of buses with bars, or twin-engine planes to see a buddy through an opening night or an operation; a seemingly colossal arrogance matched only by truly spontaneous generosity. They can spend loot like oil magnates. They like you, they say it with Thunderbirds. They are supremely free of the rules and almost never earthbound – even for Louella Parsons. They make records, movies, TV shows together – and each studio becomes a sort of emotional bathhouse when they are around. They hark to the wee-hour calls of their Leader, also known as The General, The Dago or The Pope, who no longer draws just locust swarms of pubescent girls but idolaters of all ages; and Frank responds. "I don't mind being accused of loving women," Frank says. "Just never accuse me of hating one."

They are what they do, this group of friends. And Frank more than any of them keeps creditably busy at doing. ("I don't want to have time to think.") They observe a conspiracy of silence about one another, keyed to Frank's defensible edict: "An entertainer has a right to his privacy that is as inviolate as any other person's." When Sammy Davis, Jr.È broke the rule and discussed Frank openly with d.j.-interviewer Jack Eigen last year, he lost his assignment in Sinatra's Never so Few and the part was rewritten for Steve McQueen. Today, Frank and Sammy are pals again, and they speak warmly of each other. Says Sam: "He's my ideal because he has in his lifetime, without any teachers, accomplished lots of things I want to accomplish. I dig him so much. He's pertinent! He connects with you here" – and he points to his heart. Frank says of Sam: "I would never want to follow him on stage."

New pal Joey feels that Frank is a genius and "I like to be around a genius once in a while." What holds the group together? Says Joey: "Respect for each other." And Shirley MacLaine, who with Frank's friends George Raft, Red Skelton and Tony Curtis is doing a cameo in Ocean's Eleven, is today's Den Mother, the successor to Lauren Bacall, who so wittily mama-ed Bogart's Rat Pack, the group of Hollywood nonconformists out of which the present gang grew. Says Shirl: "I guess I'm a self-imposed fringe member of The Clan. I never get over the fact that I'm sitting there with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin – he's the funniest man in the whole universe, and Frank's the most talented."

Dean Martin, known variously as Dino, Dago, The Jolly Neapolitan and The Admiral, is indeed the funniest of the lot. When in Vegas a reporter asked him how he stood up under the strain of acting all day, singing and clowning at night, gambling till dawn and taking care of a wife and seven kids, Dean said: "I do get some rest. Luckily, I faint a lot."

With characteristic understatement, Dean says: "We have a group that's a little different. We don't bull each other. We're actually just real, no pretense, say what you want, no airs." And Peter Lawford, who, with his millionaire wife Pat Kennedy, are loyal pals, adds: "There is one thing that is not stood for by any of the group – no phony crap. The girls in The Clan have the respect of the guys like Frank and Dean and myself because they're kind of one of the guys." Judy Garland is also held in high esteem. Frank likes her because, outside of all that talent – a prerequisite of membership – "she's got a sadness about her." And Judy says of Frank: "I always think of him as my child." To his precursor Bogart, Frank was both "an iron man" and "a kind of Don Quixote, tilting at windmills."

But for all the tight-lipped togetherness and windmills and forays into all the chimerical areas of existence, the meeting of The Clan, The Big Five, The Gang, or call them what you will, was a scene Las Vegas will never forget. The Summiteers turned away as many customers as they drew (some thirty-four thousand) and tripled business – even though Dean and Frank liked to sit in as part-time dealers at the Sands' gaming tables and let the suckers win.

Says Frank: "I'm night people is what I am." Most people also think he is as rare as a Dual-Ghia – and uncommonly ring-a-ding.