Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe by Anthony Summers

Author:Anthony Summers [Summers, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781453274767
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2012-11-06T05:00:00+00:00

32

SHORTLY BEFORE HER DEATH a reporter asked Sinatra how well he knew Marilyn Monroe.

‘Who?’ Sinatra replied sarcastically. ‘Miss Monroe,’ he observed, ‘reminds me of a saintly young girl I went to high school with, who later became a nun. This is a recording.’

Marilyn, told of this exchange, responded tartly, ‘Tell him to look in Who’s Who.’

Marilyn had first met Sinatra, according to photographer Milton Greene, at a dinner at Romanoff’s in 1954, when the DiMaggio marriage was collapsing. The ‘Wrong Door Raid,’ in which Sinatra helped his friend DiMaggio in his pursuit of the unfaithful Marilyn, followed within weeks.

Six years later, in 1960 — when the Miller marriage was falling apart, and just after John Kennedy’s nomination as President — Sinatra made contact with Marilyn again. In August of that year he invited the entire company of The Misfits to see him perform at the Cal-Neva Lodge, not far from the Nevada location where the movie was being made. Marilyn went, accompanied by an Arthur Miller who looked rather out of his element.

Sinatra was in the process of buying the Cal-Neva Lodge, a casino and resort complex on the wooded shores of Lake Tahoe. It sat on the heights overlooking the lake, with a swimming pool and a cluster of luxury bungalows. Advertisements called it ‘Heaven in the High Sierras,’ but it was a paradise custom-built for gangsters.

The Lodge’s gimmick was that the state line dividing California and Nevada bisected its public rooms and swimming pool. Casino activity could take place only on the Nevada side of the line, because of the laws banning gambling in California. Sinatra expanded the casino facilities, and brought in new managers. One was Paul ‘Skinny’ D’Amato of Atlantic City, one day to be described by the Chief Counsel of Congress’ Assassinations Committee as ‘a New Jersey gangster.’ His role at the Lodge, according to the same authority, was to protect the interests of Chicago Mafia chieftain, Sam Giancana.

Giancana was the ‘boss of bosses’ of the Chicago syndicate, the ruler on the throne once occupied by Al Capone. By 1960 he was master of an organized crime network reaching across huge swathes of the United States, including casinos and show-business rackets on the West Coast. With the advent of the Kennedy administration Giancana would become a prime target for prosecution. As Attorney General, Robert Kennedy took on no less a task than the destruction of the Mafia in the United States. Giancana, if cornered, would be desperate.

In 1981, in sworn testimony to the Nevada Gaming Control Board, Sinatra was to say that as of 1960 he knew Giancana only slightly, and did not realize he was a mobster. He said he never invited Giancana to the Cal-Neva Lodge, and — when he did learn he was there — issued instructions that he was to leave.

Giancana’s daughter, however, said she was present at several meetings between the two from as early as 1954, and that Sinatra always greeted Giancana ‘with an embrace of respect and friendship.’

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