Last Man Standing: Tales from Tinseltown (24 page)

With the advent of rock and roll, Dean’s career as a crooner was eclipsed by his film work. He was riding high as a movie star and between 1966 and 1969, Dean starred in
perhaps his most famous role in four Matt Helm films. They were, in essence, a US version of the Bond movies, though perhaps lighter in style. A planned fifth film,
The Ravagers
, was cancelled after the murder of Dean’s co-star and friend Sharon Tate. He said he was too distraught to consider ever playing the character again. In fact, Dean had always been fiercely loyal to his co-stars, as demonstrated when 20th Century Fox fired Marilyn Monroe in
Something’s Got to Give
(1962) and then attempted to replace her with Lee Remick. Dean reminded the studio that he had contractual approval of his leading lady and point blank refused to continue without Monroe. She was re-hired, but sadly died of a drug overdose before shooting could resume. Nine hours of unseen footage remained in the vaults at Fox for decades.

I had to wait until the 1980s before I had the chance to work with Dean in
The Cannonball Run
and he became a very close friend thereafter. I’ll never forget when we were shooting in Atlanta, where the cars were all lined up before the race started, and I noticed there were two very pretty showgirls engaged in conversation with Dean. When I sidled over, I smiled and asked, ‘Have you just met the new Mrs Martin?’ Talk about the eternal flirt!

Contrary to his image as a drinker, Dean told me he’d actually endured a lot of eye surgery in recent years and had been prescribed heavy painkillers, which meant he couldn’t drink. In fact he became hooked on the pills for a time. His trademark cigarette and glass in hand was known the world over, but what wasn’t known was that the glass was filled with apple juice.

When he toured with Frank and Sammy on the ‘Rat Pack Reunion’, I occasionally visited and took in a show.
But I noticed Frank (who was first on) would always sing one of Dean’s numbers, and then Sammy came on and told one of Dean’s gags. So when Dino eventually appeared on stage and the music piped up, Frank would shout, ‘We’ve already sung that!’ So Dean would start telling a story …

‘I’ve told that one already!’ Sammy would call over. This went on for a few shows and really got under Dean’s skin, until one night, as soon as the curtain fell, he took Frank’s private plane back alone to LA and refused to ever work with Sinatra again. They only made it up a short time before Dean’s death.

I know the greatest tragedy to befall Dean, and one I don’t think he ever really recovered from, was when his son, Dean Paul Martin, died in a plane crash in 1987. So much so that, as cancer took hold of my friend in the mid-90s, he consoled his loved ones by saying we shouldn’t worry as he’d soon be reunited with his son.

His tombstone carries the title of his most well-known song: ‘Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime’.

Sammy Davis Jr was often billed as the ‘greatest living entertainer in the world’ and no wonder, as son of vaudeville star Sammy Davis Sr, he could do it all: sing, dance, act, perform stand-up comedy, play instruments and do just about anything else you’d care to throw at him.

I was working in television at Warner Bros. when I first met Sammy, and he was a real movie buff who loved nothing better than being around a film studio – whether he was working or not. When I was filming the TV series
Maverick
, he became quite a professional pistol drawer and a past master
at gun twirling. I socialized quite a lot with Sammy and realized his fascination with guns hadn’t diminished when, in the 1980s, another old pal of mine, lyricist and playwright Leslie Bricusse, threw a dinner party at his home in LA and Sammy arrived, opened his jacket and removed his revolver – handing it to the maid as you would a hat.

Sammy was a hugely funny man and a deeply religious one too. His spirituality stemmed from a near death experience in a car accident in 1954, in San Bernardino, California, as he was making a return trip from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. It was as a result of this accident that he lost his left eye. At the time, it was feared he might lose his other eye, and his friend the actor Jeff Chandler offered one of his own eyes if it would save Sammy from blindness. Thankfully it wasn’t needed, but that always struck me as a truly selfless offer. After wearing a patch for a while, Sammy was later fitted with a glass eye, which he wore for the rest of his life.

Though never one to miss an opportunity of sending himself up, Sammy once joked after overhearing someone complaining about discrimination, ‘You got it easy! I’m a short, ugly, one-eyed, black Jew. What do you think it’s like for me?’

Years later, when he was hosting the Oscars, Sammy remarked, ‘Tonight, the Academy honours both my peoples with
Fiddler on the Roof
and
Shaft
.’ Audiences around the world loved Sammy’s self-deprecating style and wit.

In 1957, Sammy famously became involved with the beautiful Kim Novak, who was then one of Columbia Studios’ prized young contract stars. Fearful of any negative press this relationship might attract – and its effect on the studio – boss Harry Cohn called mobster Johnny Roselli and asked him to persuade Sammy to end the affair. Roselli
did this by kidnapping Sammy for a few hours and eventually persuading him it was the only way of not having his one good eye ending up on the table. Sammy hastily arranged a marriage to black dancer Loray White for the following year in an attempt to put any controversy to bed, but the union only lasted fifteen months.

I was having dinner with Cubby and Dana Broccoli at the White Elephant in London in the early 1970s and Sammy was at a table across the room. Through a series of gestures he asked if we wanted to go and see a movie with him. Cubby gestured back asking what it was, and Sammy smiled, put a
finger in his mouth and then pointed at the collar line of his neck. None the wiser, we agreed and he then took us to the private cinema at the Mayfair hotel and
Deep Throat
started.

The whole cast on
The Cannonball Run
– including Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise – was incredible and the director, Hal Needham, kept several cameras running at all times, just to make sure he didn’t miss any of the comedy ad libs.

I guess we watched ten or fifteen minutes before Dana suggested we should leave. I think her decision was prompted by the leading lady, having oral sex performed on her, delivering the line: ‘Do you mind eating while I smoke?’

Cubby and I grumbled we wouldn’t have minded seeing the rest of the film, but our wives did not permit!

A little while later in Hollywood, Sammy invited us to dinner at his home and he’d had a giant screen installed in his living room to run movies. After dinner, we all settled down and waited for his projector to crank up for the promised ‘great movie’, and
Behind the Green Door
– the follow-up to
Deep Throat
– started. That was Sammy’s sense of humour!

Sammy had been friends with Cubby for years and, in fact, he was offered a part in
Diamonds Are Forever
, which, of course, was filmed in Vegas. Before the sinister assassins Mr Wint and Mr Kidd murder the smuggler Shady Tree, a scene was shot in which Sammy is seen playing roulette at the Whyte House club, and having an exchange with Bert Saxby about contract differences he has with Willard Whyte. The conversation stops when Sammy sees and recognizes James Bond, saying, ‘They ain’t never gonna get a cake big enough to put him on top of.’ Sadly, the scene ended up on the cutting-room floor as it was felt it wasn’t needed – and when watching the final running time any ‘unnecessary’ scenes are the first to go, I’m afraid.

Sammy and Frank Sinatra once (reluctantly) agreed to perform at the MGM Grand hotel in Vegas while sharing the stage with Leo the Lion between them. They were assured it would be safe, as the very old lion would be handled, with a
choke chain, by its trainer. In the middle of the number, the beast looked at Sammy and licked its lips, then leaned back on its haunches, as if it was going to leap. Sammy made the sign of the cross. Luckily nothing happened, but after the show Sammy and Frank were having drinks in the lobby and Frank said, ‘Boy, I thought that cat was going to come after you there. Hey, Smokey, didn’t you turn Jewish? Why did you make the sign of the cross?’

‘Well, babe,’ Sammy replied, ‘I didn’t think I would have time to make the Star of David!’

You would often find Sammy in Vegas playing a residency at one of the hotels. Alas, he was a big gambler and, like many entertainers on the strip, he worked there to pay back his losses.

I last saw Sammy a month before he died; he was lying in bed and music legend Quincy Jones was sitting in an armchair next to him. Comatose and full of morphine as he lay dying, Sammy had always been a tiny, thin man but there really wasn’t much of him at all that day. The throat cancer that had so tragically struck him had spread. Though when he was told that a laryngectomy would offer him the best chance of survival, Sammy replied he would rather keep his voice and face the illness than have a part of his throat removed.

After his death, Frank Sinatra paid off many of Sammy’s outstanding debts.

With Bryan Forbes and his wife, Nanette Newman, in St Mark’s Square, Venice.

CHAPTER 7

The Creative Geniuses

I
T
’
S TRUE TO SAY THAT BEHIND EVERY GOOD ACTOR STANDS A
terrific writer and a highly talented director. Bryan Forbes, or Brownie as I always called him, and I first met during our National Service sixty-odd years ago, when we were both stationed with the Combined Services Entertainment Unit in Hamburg. We became great friends, and I’m happy to say that that extended into a very happy working relationship when Bryan was head of ABPC films and, in 1970, greenlit what I have always believed is my best film,
The Man Who Haunted Himself
. He later directed me in
Sunday Lovers
and, when Cannon Films approached me to make a film for them in 1985 and I suggested the Sidney Sheldon book
The Naked Face,
they asked if I had a director in mind – without hesitation I told them to call Bryan.

Bryan’s stories of his adventures in the film business were wonderful. For example, there was the time in the late 1950s when Cubby Broccoli came to England with Alan Ladd Jr to make
The Black Knight
. It was not a promising script, but
a cast including Peter Cushing, Patricia Medina and some of the best technicians alive was assembled.