That Old Black Magic: Louis Prima, Keely Smith, and the Golden Age of Las Vegas (25 page)

There were more whispers about an affair that she was supposedly having with Sinatra, and Keely did nothing to dispel them.

The Primas’ marital problems earning attention along the Strip raise the question of whether their love story was always a sham, another showbiz prop to make an act seem better.

Everything Keely said and did from the time she met Louis through the 1950s testifies to her genuinely being in love with him. She would learn that at times it had been an obsessive, unhealthy love that cost her some of herself. Years later, she said in an interview about her husband, “He had me so brainwashed over who I was. I believed everything he said.” Still, her declarations of love sounded sincere.

It could have been a different story with Louis. Undoubtedly, he was attracted to Keely’s talent. The way audiences related to her meant, first, that when they were a twosome he could keep his career going when it was otherwise draining away, and, second, that his second (or third) act as a performer could be an even bigger success. For someone so obsessed with his career and his popularity, Louis had to appreciate and probably love what Keely brought to their union.

The sexual attraction between them was not faked in the act, so that was an important part of the relationship. Probably Louis, as was his pattern, wanted more variety, and because Keely was beautiful and special in many respects, it took him quite a bit longer to revert to his tomcat ways. So what about love? Maybe Prima showed how he felt the best way he knew—by singing and dancing with his wife night after night and playing pretty for the people.

It was business as usual onstage for “The Wildest” as the couple dismissed the occasional query from the press about their marriage. During an appearance on
The Ed Sullivan Show
that fall of 1960, Louis and Keely’s performance was so well received that the audience, messing with the host’s schedule, demanded an encore. They came back out onstage and sang “I’m Confessin’ That I Love You.”

Back in Las Vegas, produced by what was now called Keelou Productions, was another extravaganza ready for the Desert Inn in December 1960. The new act conceived by Louis was “The Frantic Forties.”

This wouldn’t seem like much of a stretch, considering that Prima had played a significant role in the entertainment of the 1940s, but that was fine with him. He was giving the audiences what they wanted by playing the nostalgia card. Back came the Donn Arden Dancers and Carlton Hayes and His Orchestra, who had been part of the first Desert Inn production. The new year, with a friend and Las Vegas fan installed as president, looked very promising—professionally, at least.

The year 1961 was going to be an especially important one for the world as well as for Louis and Keely. Adolf Eichmann would be tried in Jerusalem for war crimes. Yuri Gagarin would become the first human to orbit the earth, and a month later, in May, Alan Shepard would become the first American to do it. There would be the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion. Gary Cooper would die, as would Ty Cobb, who was a member of the first class of Baseball Hall of Famers in 1933. Pope John XXIII would issue a ban on birth control a year after the pill was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. And both the United States and the Soviet Union would renew nuclear testing (bringing mushroom clouds back to Nevada), coinciding with a series of confrontations in Berlin.

And it all began with the inauguration of a new president. For his pal Jack Kennedy, the party that night at the Washington Armory was going to be the biggest one that Frank ever threw. Sinatra wanted only the best in everything, especially the performers, and of course he wanted Louis Prima and Keely Smith to be there. And of course they would say yes and leave Las Vegas on the train and bring their act east. Sinatra wanted public credit for his devotion and loyalty to the cause of ushering in a new and hip administration. The payback was arranged: Frank would produce a show for the inauguration like nothing Washington, D.C., had ever seen before, and the president would attend as the guest of honor.

Old Blue Eyes did his part. He cajoled and persuaded and called in markers, and in a few cases he ordered A-list entertainers to be there or else they wouldn’t be as welcome in Las Vegas or Hollywood as before. Ella Fitzgerald flew in from Australia, Shirley MacLaine from Japan, Gene Kelly from Switzerland, Sidney Poitier from France, and predictably there was a large contingent from Las Vegas, ready to remind the Kennedys how cash had flowed into the campaign’s coffers throughout 1960.

Louis, sometimes with Keely, had participated in Democratic fundraisers during the 1960 campaign. He wasn’t necessarily political, but JFK was certainly more favored in Las Vegas entertainment circles than Richard Nixon, and, more important, Sinatra was his biggest backer. Being closer to the Chairman of the Board, Louis knew, could only be good for business—the hell with the rumors about his wife and Sinatra.

The night of January 20, 1961, there was a furious snowstorm in Washington, D.C., but the show went ahead anyway. Among those in attendance from Las Vegas was Howard Hughes, who sat in one of the four inaugural boxes that his company had bought for ten thousand dollars each.

The time came when Joey Bishop introduced Louis and Keely, promising that Sam Butera and the Witnesses “won’t take the Fifth.” Their performance had people wearing tuxedos and gowns dancing in the aisles. Afterward, Sinatra presented Louis and Keely along with other performers a silver cigarette box. If the event had included a visit to the White House, of the performers only Prima would have had the distinction of being the guest of both FDR (in 1944) and JFK.

But everything was about to change between Sinatra and the Kennedys. The first problem was the mixture of black and white skin. Many reports over the years have maintained that Sammy Davis Jr. did not attend the inaugural gala because Washington (not to mention Southern politicians and their constituents) was still not ready for black and white performers sharing the same stage even though people like Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, and others had appeared on television shows hosted by white performers. As recently as 1958, when Perry Como accidentally touched Horne’s arm while performing a song on his TV show, the network was flooded with angry letters and telegrams.

However, during the gala Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, and Ella Fitzgerald were among the African Americans who took to the stage. The fact is that Davis was exiled because during the year of the election he had married May Britt, a white actress. Peter Lawford was given the unpleasant task of calling Davis and essentially overriding, on behalf of his brother-in-law the president, Sinatra’s invitation to Davis to perform.

Even with Davis’s absence and despite Sinatra’s helplessness, the gala and the dinner at the Hilton where the new president came to greet Sinatra’s guests comprised the peak moment of glory for the singer in his relationship with the Kennedys.

Then it collapsed. The end of the relationship began as soon as a few hours after the dinner ended. Somebody said something to Sinatra, perhaps that he had been disinvited to fly to Palm Beach in the morning with other celebrities to visit with Joseph Kennedy at the patriarch’s estate. When the time came to leave, he and Juliet Prowse, his steady girlfriend at the time, stayed in their suite, and Sinatra told those departing that he had to return to Los Angeles.

The rift became wider when Kennedy appointed his brother Bobby as attorney general. Bobby announced that one of his targets would be organized crime, and that inevitably meant going after Sam Giancana. The short-fused mob kingpin believed that he had been double-crossed. Sinatra knew that any further friendliness with the Kennedy clan would be a death sentence. The Hoboken-born Sinatra was not going to be allowed in Camelot. It was one thing for JFK to party off the radar screen in Las Vegas with associates of organized crime, but it was another to be president and have high-profile friends with mob connections.

According to Tony Curtis, “Frank’s relationship with Sam Giancana was the reason that Jack Kennedy had been forced to cut Frank off as a friend after he got elected president. J. Edgar Hoover knew all about Frank’s mob friends, so he told Kennedy to keep Frank at arm’s length, which Kennedy did. That was very hurtful to Frank, who had been an important campaigner for Kennedy, and Frank never forgave Jack for turning his back on him.”

Curtis wrote that “Frank took his anger out on Peter Lawford. Once Jack Kennedy severed his ties to Frank, Frank turned right around and cut Peter Lawford out of his life completely. It was as if Peter no longer existed.”

Though Sinatra, Martin, and Davis would continue to perform together on stages and TV shows for another thirty-plus years, the popularity of the Rat Pack began to wane as their arrogance increased and their showmanship declined, and that signaled another change in Las Vegas. In May 1961, Eddie Fisher, being paid twenty-five thousand a week, had an engagement at the Desert Inn that was a big comeback for him. His marriage to Elizabeth Taylor and her personal and professional demands had damaged his career. Not knowing that he was soon to be replaced by Richard Burton during the filming of
Cleopatra,
Fisher returned to Vegas to revive that career.

The successful Desert Inn engagement—sandwiched in between runs of “The Wildest” there—led to a series of shows at the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles. It was his first appearance there in seven years, when Debbie Reynolds had been his date. This time, Taylor was. Among the famous faces in the audience were John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Kirk Douglas, Groucho Marx, and Yul Brynner. Also, Frank Sinatra was there “with the entire Rat Pack. Now they make movies about them and write books about them, but we had to live with them. There were people who wrote that my opening night at the Cocoanut Grove was the beginning of the end of the Rat Pack,” according to Fisher.

“They started heckling me the moment I walked out on stage. They were all drunk. When I started singing ‘That Face’ to Elizabeth, Dean yelled out, ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t be working. I’d be home with her.’ That’s the clean version that was reported. And Dean was my friend. Eventually they took over the stage.”

Feeling helpless to stem the Rat Pack tide, Fisher took a seat and became a member of the audience. Sinatra and his pals, fueled by alcohol and ego, let themselves go, with the result being a torrent of racial and ethnic insults, vulgar limericks, imitations of some of the celebs in the audience, and slurring their way through several songs. “At times they had been clever and funny, but most of the people in this audience had seen their act many times before,” Fisher wrote. “These celebrities had come to see Eddie Fisher sing love songs to Elizabeth Taylor, not a drunken fraternity party, and they started booing them.”

The Rat Pack had one more big event in them. Sinatra and company were filming a movie in Utah that would be released as
Sergeants 3.
Because of the distance, they would not show up at the Sands every night as they did during the shooting of
Ocean’s Eleven.
But the hotel let word get around that something special could happen there on June 7, which was Dean Martin’s forty-fourth birthday. On that night over two thousand people tried to squeeze into the Sands showroom, and most had to be turned away. Among those who made it in were Marilyn Monroe and, apparently not holding a grudge after the Cocoanut Grove experience, Eddie Fisher and Elizabeth Taylor.

Sure enough, Sinatra emerged and sang and smoked his way through a dozen songs. Martin was there too, and, called to the stage to serenade him, using lyrics written by Sammy Cahn, were Fisher, Lawford, Bishop, and Vic Damone. A birthday cake resembling a bottle of J&B Scotch that was five feet tall was brought out. Martin threw a slice at Sammy Davis Jr., who threw it back, and a food fight broke out.

The fighting between Louis and Keely involved more than food, and it quickly intensified. It became harder for Keely to be onstage with her husband, and she suffered frequent bouts of stress-related illness. In March, Louis and Sam and the Witnesses traveled to Miami, where a lucrative gig at the Fontainebleau Hotel awaited them. Keely, instead of joining them, went to Los Angeles. Louis began the engagement without her. Inevitably there came questions from the press.

At first he told the
New York Post
that he had been booked at the hotel as a single act and Keely was not involved. He claimed that Dean Martin was supposed to do the engagement, but when he had to drop out for another commitment, Louis filled in. Next, Louis told reporters that Keely had a staph infection and was being treated by a Los Angeles specialist. “We’re in harmony,” he insisted.

But innuendos about them splitting up persisted, so Keely flew to Miami and finished the gig with Louis. One night, while she was onstage, Louis stopped the show to shout at a columnist in the audience who had printed the word
divorce
that it was “ridiculous” to print such lies. He vowed that they would return to the Desert Inn—and the three-million-dollar contract—“as Mr. and Mrs. Prima.”

They did, but that Louis and Keely were barely still together was a common topic of conversation in Las Vegas. When not onstage, Keely continued to keep to herself and her daughters. This was not unusual, but she now had even more reason not to be exposed to the public. She began to think that she wanted out of a marriage that was suddenly in freefall before her health was shot entirely.

“I told him I could not handle any of this,” she revealed to Garry Boulard in a 1986 interview. “And I said I wanted a divorce. He wanted a divorce too, but then he turned around and said he wanted to stay together. I was so hurt and my stomach was in knots and I just didn’t want to be involved with it anymore.”

But Keely did stick with it. One reason had to be her daughters, but another was that ever since Louis had hired her in Virginia Beach in 1948, she had been his personally and professionally—and content to be so for most of that time. Now, with the solo albums and TV appearances, her star shone as brightly as her husband’s, but it was beyond her imagination to know what to do with herself in her own solar system. As she had said like a mantra in the few interviews she had done over the years, “I’m nothing without Louis Prima.” Thus they continued their frolicking at the Desert Inn and at clubs around the country.