Mr. S by George Jacobs

Author:George Jacobs
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2003-08-25T04:00:00+00:00

6

Flirting with Disaster

MR. S’s philosophy was that bad things only happened to good people. If someone was bad enough, he somehow had a natural immunity to disaster, at least in this lifetime, which is the only one Mr. S could count on. There was no day of reckoning for the bad guys. The meek would inherit nothing, and Sam Spiegel and Lew Wasserman would live forever. Thus it was a terrible shock to Mr. S’s system when the baddest guy of all, the guy who had taken all the marbles, his way, was felled by a massive stroke on the golf course in Palm Beach. It was 1961. Old Joe would live another eight years, but he would never speak again. Mr. Ambassador had become a vegetable. Mr. S found out from Peter Lawford by phone. He was shocked, as I said, but he wasn’t sad. He was just amazed, for he thought Joe Kennedy was beyond the long arm of God. He called the president with his condolences, sent flowers to the hospital in Palm Beach, but he didn’t go to visit. Yet in time, a short time, he would come to regret the incapacity of Joe Kennedy. Without the dictatorial restraint of his father, little Bobby, “the weasel” as Mr. S contemptuously referred to him, was now free to unleash the rabid contempt he had for Mr. S.

Bobby wasn’t the only Kennedy who didn’t approve of Frank Sinatra. Jackie couldn’t stand him. She hated him without really knowing him, refusing to visit Palm Springs out of hand, though I’m sure Jack was relieved, so he could have his fun. Jack hardly ever mentioned Jackie to me, except in regard to big family gatherings. She was pretty much a ceremonial figure to him. Jackie’s dislike of Frank may have been on account of her natural suspicions that Mr. S was leading her husband down the primrose path to perdition. Or it may have been that she believed that her own sister, Lee Radziwill, had fallen prey to the crooner’s charms during the campaign. Mr. S did flirt with Lee; he might have nailed her just to get prissy Jackie’s pedigreed goat, but I’m not sure if anything transpired. Sinatra was outraged by what he regarded as Jackie’s anti-Italian (specifically poor Jersey Italian) prejudice, and he had a big thing against prejudice. “I’d like to fuck that bitch,” he’d say whenever he’d see her on TV. Given Sinatra’s innate courtliness to women, that was as nasty a comment as he could make. He’d have never said that about any woman he liked.

Jackie felt Mr. S was beneath her dignity and that of the White House; Bobby felt Mr. S was beneath the dignity of the country. Jackie’s repulsion was that of an uptight socialite; Bobby’s was that of a holier-than-thou crusader. Bobby was out to get Mr. S in a big way. He saw Frank as Al Capone, all sex and crime, and he saw himself as Cotton Mather, all fire and brimstone.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.