Jerry Weintraub - When I Stop Talking You

Uh-huh?

"Don't you recognize me, Jerry? I went to school with you. P.S. 70 in the Bronx."

"Oh, yeah," I say. "Of course, wow, you look fantastic!"

"I wish I could say the same about you. You're a mess. What's wrong?"

So I tell her the whole story-the show, the strike, how the show should not be part of the strike, and how a lot of the money in the show belongs to me, her friend from P.S. 70, Jerry Weintraub.

She takes me into the office of the union boss. He's not there. It's just me and her. She picks up the phone, makes a call. She gets the boss on the line. I can picture him, floating in his pool in Westchester or something, his wife and kids all around, his city-side honey suddenly ringing on the phone.

"I know you said don't call here, but I am sitting with an old friend from the Bronx, Jerry Weintraub, and what is happening to him and his show is just not fair… He needs an exemption… So I'm just gonna sign your name."

Which is how I walked out with that magic piece of paper. The next day, the story was all over the tabloids: Look what Frank Sinatra has pulled off with his mob connections.

Sinatra was not without flaws. He was a human being, after all. He had his problems and insecurities like the rest of us. You had to monitor his mood. He was usually happy Rat Pack Sinatra, but sometimes he fell into a funk. You never really knew what you were going to get. Now and then, he suffered bleak, dark, low-down moods-you had to throw him a rope and haul him back to the surface. If you really cared about him-and I loved the guy, it should be obvious-you had to be prepared, on occasion, to pull him out of the hole.

So here's a story:

One day, I was at home, early in the morning, reading the paper, when the phone rang. It was Frank. Francis. He sounded down. He was calling from Vegas. It was 9:00 A.M. there. He had a regular gig at Caesars and was staying in a suite on top of the hotel. He never went to sleep before 6:00 or 7:00 A.M., which meant he had been up all night, drinking and brooding on the roof of the hotel, where he had his own swimming pool. Could I hear all this in his voice over the phone? Yes. My job is reading people, keeping them level, and, when necessary, hip-checking them back onto the sunlit track.

"You sound terrible," I said. "What's wrong?"

"Depressed, Jerry," he said. "Depressed."

"Why? What's going on?"

"I can't do it anymore," he said. "The same thing, every day and night, going down to that same theater and singing the same songs to the same crowds, 'Fly Me to the Moon,' 'Chicago,' I just don't care."

What was Frank? Sixty? Sixty-five? No, younger. Late fifties, but he seemed old to me, a man with a lifetime behind him. It was 1974. I was a kid. It was just the beginning. I got on a plane for Vegas that afternoon, took a cab to Caesars, sat on the roof, staring at the heat shimmers dancing over the flats. Frank talked. He had a drink in one hand, a smoke in the other, double fisted, his voice full of fatigue, but his eyes sparkled. He told me how unhappy he was, bored of this whole business of night after night and song after song.

"Maybe I need a rest," he said.

"It's not a rest you need," I told him. "It's a new hill to climb."

This was Frank's nature. He was at his best when he was battling, fighting, struggling against all those fools who told him he had bitten off too much, gone too far. "You're bored," I explained. "You need a challenge."

"All right," he said, "what do you have in mind?"

"I have a great idea," I told him, "but I don't want to talk about it until I've had time to really put it together."

"No, no, what is it?" he asked. "You've got to tell me."

I said, "Look, I really do have a great idea, but I need a few days."

Of course, I did not have a great idea. I had no idea at all, but I knew that Frank needed a great idea less than he needed the prospect of a great idea, the promise of an event that would lift him out of his funk.

He said, "Tell me, Jerry. You've got to tell me."

So I started talking, improvising…

"Were going to do Madison Square Garden," I said.

"Yeah, so what?" said Frank. "We've done Madison Square Garden before. What's so great about that?"

"Now wait, Frank, hold on, let me tell you how we're going to do it…"

I kicked my voice up a notch, going into full ringmaster mode.

"… We're going to do it live, Frank! Live!"

"Yeah, so what? We're live every night. That's show business."

"Yes, but we're never live like this," I said, "on every television in America and all across the world."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah…"

And now that I had gotten the thread I was gone.

"And let's do it in the center of the Garden," I told him, "on the floor, in a boxing ring."

"A boxing ring? What are you talking about?"

"I'll tell you what I'm talking about. You're the heavyweight champion of the world, Frank. You hold every belt in the world of entertainment. The number-one singer in the world. No challengers, no one even close. So let's do it in a ring, and make it like a heavyweight title fight, and invite all the people who go to heavyweight title fights, because they're your fans. And let's get Howard Cosell to be the announcer. Yeah, wow, I can hear it!"

"Hear what, Jerry? What can you hear?"

"I can hear Howard Cosell. He's ringside, his hand over his ear, announcing it as you come down the aisle, climb through the ropes and into the ring: "Ladies and gentlemen, live from Madison Square Garden. Jerry Weintraub presents 'Sinatra, the Main Event.'

"And here's the best part," I told Frank. "No rehearsals."

"No rehearsals."

"No rehearsals. You just get there on the night of the show, and sing your songs, and do your thing, as fresh and spontaneous as can be-like a heavyweight title fight. Frank Sinatra Live!"

"The Main Event" was one of the great concert events of the age, Sinatra, in a ring in the center of his town, singing the story of his life, and this is how it began, on the roof of Caesars, Sinatra depressed and brooding, Weintraub talking and talking.

When we got to New York, Sinatra checked into a suite in the Waldorf Astoria and I went to the Garden to set this thing up. Live? In every house in America, in every nation on earth? What was I thinking? The project had grown quickly-too quickly. It started as a concert broadcast on TV, but there was now a record and a film. And we had five days to pull it off. Just like that, I had three hundred people working for me. By the second day, I was feeling pressure. By the fourth, I was in a mild panic. By the fifth, I was out of my mind. What had started as a ploy to snap Frank out of his depression had turned into a major deal-handled wrong, it could turn into a major embarrassment.

At such times, I become obsessed with details. That's where God is, so that's where I go, with my notebook and phone numbers and head full of ideas. The people, the angles, the chairs-I wanted to get everything exactly right. I hired Roone Arledge, who was then head of ABC Sports and ABC News, to produce the broadcast. I hired Don Ohlmeyer, who ended up being president of NBC, and Dick Ebersol, who later ran NBC Sports, and still does.

We built the boxing ring, arranged the seats, rehearsed the camera moves, intros, and exits, everything choreographed to a fraction of a second. Commercials were a major issue. We were supposed to break six times in the hour, and needed a system whereby Frank would know when to close out a song and when to start back in. Also, which songs would work the best as hooks, and which would work the best as lead-ins to new segments. Simply put, I needed Frank at the Garden for a rehearsal. But when I called his room at the Waldorf, there was no answer, nor a return call, day after day. Finally, on the morning of the show, a secretary answered.