Posted on: October 14, 2024, 08:04h.
Last updated on: October 14, 2024, 10:09h.
Carl Cohen, the 250-lb. vice president of the Sands Hotel, delivered a roundhouse punch to Frank Sinatra’s mouth on Sept. 11, 1967. That punch was well-deserved, but it didn’t knock his teeth out.
Two days earlier, the Sands, upon orders from new owner Howard Hughes, cut off the crooner’s casino credit and informed him he could no longer gamble unless he paid back the $200K that he already owed ($1.9 million today).
The world’s most famous pair of blue eyes turned fiery red.
Sinatra not only canceled his remaining engagements at the Sands’ Copa Room — where the Rat Pack had performed together since 1959 — he trashed his hotel penthouse, attempting but failing to set fire to the curtains with his Zippo lighter.
The scene he caused in the casino included driving an electric baggage cart through a plate-glass window and standing atop a blackjack table and screaming, according to witness Paul Anka: “This place was sand when they built it and it’ll be sand when I’m fucking done with it!”
Although he was a gifted singer and a generous philanthropist, the Chairman of the Board was also a hothead. (People are complex.)
The Whole Tooth
After his meltdown, Sinatra flew back to Palm Springs and entered into a three-year contract to entertain exclusively at Caesars Palace. But he wasn’t done with the Sands.
On the following Monday, he paid his final visit ever to the casino resort at 5:45 a.m. He demanded a personal audience with Cohen, who was enjoying breakfast in the Sands’ Garden Room restaurant.
According to witnesses, Sinatra subjected Cohen to a stream of verbal unpleasantries, including an anti-Semitic slur, then upended his table, spilling a full pot of steaming coffee onto Cohen’s lap.
That’s what triggered the punch.
“Singer Tony Bennett left his heart in San Francisco and Frank Sinatra left his teeth — at least two of them — in Las Vegas,” the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper reported the next morning.
It was a clever lead, but they weren’t really Sinatra’s teeth, just the caps affixed to them. Sinatra flew his personal dentist of 24 years, Dr. Abe Weinstein, and his assistant from New York City to LA the next morning to recast and reglue them on.
This is one inaccuracy the newspaper can be forgiven, however, since two distinctly tooth-looking objects were left on the floor following the fracas.
Cohen wasn’t fired for throwing the punch, as the action was deemed justified by the casino’s owners, and neither party filed charges.
That’s Strife
To the surprise of no one, a change in venue didn’t lead to a corresponding change in Sinatra’s temperament.
On Sept. 6, 1970, Sinatra demanded credit to play $16K a hand at baccarat ($129K today). The limit at Caesars Palace was $2,000 back then ($16K today) and had already been extended, just for Sinatra, to $8,000 ($64K today).
When denied his request, Sinatra flew into another rage that caused another scene.
He threw casino chips and attacked another casino vice president. He squeezed Sanford Waterman’s throat so tightly, United Press International (UPI) reported, it left marks.
But Waterman chose a different response. Instead of knocking out Sinatra’s caps, he threatened to blast a new one into him. Waterman pulled a 0.38-caliber revolver from his waistband and waved it around.
Before huffing out of the building, witnesses say, Sinatra told Waterman: “The mob will take care of you.”
Waterman was arrested and booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon. But the charge didn’t stick, as both the sheriff’s department and district attorney figured that Sinatra had instigated the incident.
In fact, the incident so incensed local sheriff Ralph Lamb, he issued an icy threat to Sinatra.
If (he) comes back to town Tuesday, he’s coming downtown to get a work card, and if he gives me any trouble, he’s going to jail,” Lamb told a UPI reporter. “I’m tired of him intimidating waiters, waitresses, starting fires … He gets away with too much. He’s through picking on the little people in this town.
“Why the owners of the hotels put up with this, I plan to find out.”
It was too late to save Waterman’s job, however, as Caesars Palace fired him immediately after his arrest.
And Lamb never got the pleasure of throwing Sinatra in jail. Ol’ Blue Eyes canceled the remaining three weeks of his engagement at Caesars Palace’s Circus Maximus theater. His spokesperson at the time blamed it on “exhaustion and a recent surgery for tendonitis on his hand.” The rep also promised that his client would make up the dates a month later.
Both statements were false, as Sinatra went into retirement for the next four years.
The new book, “Mafia Takedown” by former FBI agent Mike Campi, details the probable impetus for Sinatra’s retirement. It was a meeting he was summoned to by “Fat Tony” Salerno in East Harlem. The Genevese crime family boss was sick of his famous friend making headlines by throwing his weight, and his mafia connections, around Las Vegas.
Salerno planned to put an end to it by putting an end to Sinatra.
Once the singer realized what was about to happen, according to Campi, he “cried like a baby” and begged for his life.
“Fat Tony, it seems, took pity on him,” Campi wrote. “Sinatra was reprimanded, and committed not to violate his relationship” with the Genovese family again, or he wouldn’t be spared again.
In 1974, Sinatra returned to Caesars Palace as though the 1970 incident had never occurred. And, he continued performing in Las Vegas until his final gig on Oct. 19, 1994, at the MGM Grand without throwing another conniption fit.
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