Daughter of the King

by Lansky, Sandra

  To pass the time, I started hanging out at the Hollywood Dog Track. I not only loved the greyhounds, but I also developed a fondness for the son of the recently deceased founder, a charming but married young Irishman named Billy Syms. Daddy and Billy’s father went way back. They owned a dog track in New Jersey in the thirties, another in Iowa in the forties, and I’m sure Daddy owned part of this dog track in Florida as well. While Billy and I were like family, that didn’t stop him from jumping on me. His aphrodisiac was giving me money to bet on the races with. I discovered that I loved to gamble, but I hated to lose, even with other people’s money. I was a sore loser.

  Although Billy’s wife was pregnant, he was the one who looked like he was carrying the child. He had a big stomach that kept getting bigger. Billy would get a bottle of brandy, and we’d go out to his car in the dark parking lot and make out like teenagers. Of course, I was still a teenager, so the style had a touch of logic to it. The thing about the Hollywood Dog Track that stayed in my mind was not Billy Syms, but the statue of a naked woman in the middle of the field. The model for that statue had been Jeannie Biegger, the former Orange Bowl Queen who was currently the wife of my “lover” Dean Martin.

  My other lover that winter of divorce was the comedian Dick Shawn. Dick was one more married star for me. I met him when he was headlining at the La Ronde room of the Fontainebleau. I had become friends with the two maître d’s of the showrooms of the two rival hotels, Andre at the Fontainebleau and Jacques at the Eden Roc. Jacques had been a captain at the Riviera in New Jersey, working with Marvin’s Spindletop partner Joe Marsh. The two maître d’s fought for my patronage. Having Meyer Lansky’s daughter in the house was apparently, and surprisingly to me, something to brag about. Andre was the one who set me up with Dick, taking me backstage, after which Dick took me upstairs. He was a cheapskate, unwilling to pay my cab fare home, which detracted from his otherwise witty allure and huge athletic build.

  For all my flings, I had to behave a bit like Superman, wearing very casual clothes to go out, pretending I was going shopping, and then stopping at a gas station to change into something fancy to wear to the nightclubs, and then stopping at the gas station on the way home in the early morning and change back again. When Daddy was in town, he would always do an “inspection,” knocking at my door between seven and eight in the morning to make sure I was safely in bed, alone. Cuba was keeping Daddy so busy that he didn’t have very much time to distrust me.

  The divorce came through in June 1957. Marvin didn’t even show. Daddy’s powerful criminal lawyer Joe Varon handled things, in a case of overkill. I had two witnesses, Flo Alo and a bookmaker pal of Daddy’s named Joe “Niggy” Flax, so called again because of his dark tan. Niggy ran the cabanas and all the concessions on Hollywood Beach. No wonder he was so dark; he spent his whole day in the sun. At night he took bets. Marvin was assessed lots of child support, which he never paid, and was ordered to pay Daddy a small fortune he had borrowed, which he never did.

  My disastrous marriage had no deterrent effect on my brothers. Six months after Paul married Edna Shook in Tacoma, Buddy tied the knot in Miami at a big party at a restaurant called The House of Prime Ribs. That may have sounded like a roast beef emporium. It was actually a Chinese restaurant that was renowned for its barbecued spareribs. The House of Prime Ribs was a classic part of Miami kitsch. So was the place where Buddy met his bride, Wolfie Cohen’s Rascal House, reputedly the greatest Jewish delicatessen in the world, including the Stage and the Carnegie. My future sister-in-law, Annette, was a tall and very pretty hostess at the Rascal House. She always moved Buddy to the front of the endless lines and gave him the prime red leatherette banquette. Divorced, she was raising a young son. Like Buddy, she was in her mid-twenties. And Jewish. Which mattered to no one except Grandma Yetta.

  Buddy had wanted to marry Annette when they first met in 1955. Because Daddy didn’t trust anything Buddy did, he had made him wait for nearly two years before he gave them his blessing. Daddy realized that Buddy would always need someone to look after him. Even if Annette was a fortune hunter, she probably was a better deal than all the nurses and drivers Daddy had hired over the years. Because she was a hard worker, there was a chance she could be the good influence Buddy had yet to find. Although, as usual, no Citrons showed up for the wedding, a lot of Lanskys did. Micki Marlo flew down to sing for the party. Grandma Yetta had the time of her life, gorging on pork spareribs that we told her were lamb, kosher lamb. Some Old World habits died hard.

  By late summer 1957, I was back in New York with Gary and Frances, Nappy and Maria. I was now an officially unmarried woman. I was ready to start a new life. Too bad I had absolutely no idea what kind of life I wanted. I was back to the same dilemma I faced when Marvin left me. Daddy had given me the choice of school or work. My answer turned out to be none of the above. Then what? Diet pills, alcohol, cigarettes, and sex with celebrities may have made me feel more “adult” but they didn’t lead me to any insights.

  The only consolation I had was that I was not alone in my confusion and lack of direction. With Frances, Mommy, Aunt Ruth, and other maids taking care of little Gary, I had lots of time on my hands. I became something of a barfly. One day at the cocktail lounge of the Essex House Hotel, near the St. Moritz on Central Park South, I met a very blonde young man who was literally crying in his cups. He looked like the quintessential California golden god, a forerunner of the Beach Boys. When he introduced himself, I saw I had made the right call. He was Gary Crosby, son of Bing. If I was gangland royalty, Gary Crosby was Hollywood aristocracy of the highest order.

  Who was a harder act to follow, Bing Crosby or Meyer Lansky? The difference between my brothers and me and Gary was that we knew not to try. Hollywood was the most powerful siren in America. Nobody there seemed to have a more charmed life and an inside track than Gary. A Stanford graduate who costarred in a movie with Bing when he was nine, Gary recorded a double-sided gold record with his father when he was sixteen and had appeared on The Jack Benny Show. After that, he had minor parts in a string of B-movies that no one ever saw. Worst of all, his beloved father, the Oscar-winning priest in Going My Way, had just stolen, and married, the love of Gary’s life, Kathy Grant, an ambitious Texas beauty over thirty years Bing’s junior. Daddy marrying Teddy was bad taste. What Bing Crosby had done to his son was damage, serious damage.

  Gary and I became drinking buddies but never lovers. He was too traumatized to try anything with another woman at this point. I was still holding a futile torch for Dean. We saw each other for another six months or so, but the sex-and-only-sex, fun and good as the sex was, lost its novel allure over time. I would have liked someone more soulful, like Gary, but he was coping with more pain than I could begin to handle, probably even more pain than Buddy, who at least had seemingly found a path to happiness.

  The best thing about Gary Crosby was his horror stories somehow made me feel much better about myself. Nothing I could tell him about Marvin could compare to what Bing had put him through. And compared to Bing Crosby, Daddy was a saint. For example, Gary had had a lifelong weight problem. The skinny, aquiline Bing would taunt Gary as “Bucket Butt,” then pull Gary’s pants down and whip him until he bled badly. His recurring fantasy was to kill Bing. I was glad he didn’t carry a gun, for fear he would use it on himself.

  In 1957 Daddy was fifty-five. He wasn’t a kid anymore. He was considered the elder statesman of American crime, a dubious distinction. But his imminent transformation of Havana into the Monte Carlo of the Western Hemisphere promised to give him the global respect and honor that he had long deserved, if not craved. Little did any of us know that a reversal of fortune was in the wings that would make my father the most hunted and haunted senior citizen in American history.

  CHAPTER NINE

  GIRL GONE WILD

  “My-ah, I had no i-de-ah you had such a splendid daw-tah.” The tall, peppy but elder Bostonian looked me up and down, with a keen regard that reminded me of a
judge evaluating thoroughbreds at a horse show.

  “That’s why they made him ambassador,” Daddy said to me. “He says nice things.” Daddy was unused to flattery. He didn’t want me to get a swelled head.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mister Ambassador,” I said. I had never met an ambassador before. I hoped I was calling him the right thing.

  “The ple-zhah, my de-ah, is all my-an. And you must call me Joe.” He kept looking me up and down, with a twinkle behind those round horn-rimmed glasses. I kept noticing him as well, with his florid face and fancy glasses and clothes that were even nicer than Daddy’s. Aside from Uncle Abe Zwillman, I’d never seen a man so perfectly tailored. Ambassadors, I assumed, had to dress the part. Still, those looks were leers, and, if the ambassador weren’t clearly very important and a very old friend, Daddy might have well given him the bum’s rush as a dirty old man.

  It was early fall, 1958. Daddy was up in New York from Havana, where his Riviera was a roaring success. Out on a shopping spree, I had dropped by his suite at the Warwick, unannounced, not expecting to find him in. But there he was, with the man he introduced to me as Ambassador Joseph Kennedy. Introductions and compliments aside, I could see that I had interrupted some serious business. I quickly took my leave, made a long tour of Saks and Best’s and Bonwit’s, then returned to find Daddy alone.

  “He wants his son to be president,” Daddy told me about the reason for the ambassador’s visit. Daddy explained that although Joseph Kennedy may have stepped down as ambassador to England nearly two decades ago, just at the outset of World War II, once an ambassador, always an ambassador. Daddy didn’t say much, never did. He did tell me that he and the ambassador had both been in the liquor business “way back” and that Kennedy had owned a film studio, RKO. Now Daddy called him a “banker,” which might have been what Daddy may have called himself, if pressed.

  That dirty old man, though I didn’t dare say that, was now around seventy and had led a great life, Daddy said. Most of his dreams had come true, and his biggest dream was to see his son Jack, a war hero in the Pacific and now a senator from Massachusetts, succeed President Eisenhower in the White House. I was sure Daddy would have liked to see Paul in the White House someday, too, though Paul seemed to have his head in the clouds with his passion for flying. Besides, Daddy’s career and his life with my uncles had put a ceiling on Paul’s ambitions. Getting into West Point was amazing enough. Paul was so idealistic. Politics, to him, would have seemed too much like business, Daddy’s business.

  And he would have been right. Here was one of the richest, most powerful men in America, a Harvard man, I found out, and former chairman of the SEC, coming to Daddy for help. These were early days, but presidential campaigns had to be planned long in advance. And here was Daddy, being asked to be on the ground floor. What on earth, I wondered aloud, could Daddy do for him?

  “I know a few people,” was all Daddy would say. I knew he was dissembling, as usual. This sharp-eyed, predatory Joseph Kennedy wouldn’t have been at the Warwick unless Daddy could call some key shots for him.

  “What would they do in return?” I asked my father.

  “He’s an old friend,” Daddy said.

  There didn’t have to be a deal. Daddy went on to tell me how the ambassador had lost his oldest son in a plane crash during the war. He had never gotten over that. Daddy liked doing favors. However, I would have loved to see Daddy get some respect in his life. Maybe if Jack Kennedy ran and won with Daddy’s help, he could make Daddy an ambassador himself. Ambassador to Cuba! That would have been perfect. That would have shown Estes Kefauver, who had run for vice president and lost very badly. “Come on, Daddy, won’t they do something for you?”

  “Yeah. Leave me alone.” That was his fondest wish. It would never come true.

  The Riviera opened, on schedule, in December 1957 and quickly become one of the hottest tourist destinations in the whole world. Ginger Rogers was the first headliner at the Copa Room, but Daddy said she stunk. She could dance, but, in his opinion, she couldn’t sing a note. Daddy was an armchair talent scout. Whenever we’d watch Ed Sullivan together, he was the fiercest, cruelest critic. I guess his clubs had hired enough talent that he of all people would know good from bad. Ginger Rogers may have been bad, but she was a legend, and her presence helped put the Riviera on the map.

  After Ginger, Dad had brought down people like Vic Damone, Steve Allen, Abbott and Costello, and Cantinflas, David Niven’s costar in Around the World in 80 Days. Daddy hired the Mexican comic to attract the rich Mexican gamblers who were the biggest tourist group in Cuba after the Americans. Lots of stars, people like Ava Gardner and William Holden, flew in from New York and Hollywood to gamble and to play and to mambo the night away. Why wasn’t I there? Because Daddy was, and Teddy was, and they would have been watching me like hawks. Besides, I was having too much fun, out of sight in New York City.

  I had found my first post-Marvin boyfriend, a real boyfriend and not a married fling. His name was Wynne Lassner, but everyone called him “Brownie.” I don’t know why. In his early forties, he was a theatrical manager who handled a lot of black talent, like Duke Ellington. That may have been the origin of his nickname. People had no idea how racist they would sound today. Brownie had offices in the Brill Building in Tin Pan Alley, which was the Tower of Babel of the music business. He had just gotten a divorce from the singer Eileen Barton, who’d had the biggest hit in the country in 1950 with If I Knew You Were Coming I’d Have Baked a Cake. She never followed that up, and the marriage dissolved.

  Barbara Lastfogel had fixed me up with Brownie. She was dating his roommate, the actor Paul Burke, after his divorce. We all went out together. What a foursome. Burke, a dashing New Orleanian whose father had been Jack Dempsey’s sparring partner, was the star of the NBC series Noah’s Ark, in which he played a veterinarian. The next year he was a detective on the hit ABC show The Naked City. Brownie Lassner was a real heartthrob. He looked like a young Robert Taylor, as pretty as a boy could be, and he dressed like Fred Astaire, often in black tie.

  We went to all the greatest clubs and restaurants in the city as a group, always getting the best table, Le Pavilion, the Colony, 21, Toots Shor’s, the Stork Club, El Morocco, with sunrise breakfasts at the Brasserie in the Seagram’s Building. The only places I tried to skip were Dinty Moore’s and the Copa, where the word of my presence was most likely to get back to Daddy. Then again, I had nothing to hide. Brownie may have been an older man, but he was unattached and certainly eligible.

  Not that I was looking for anything different from what I had gotten with Dean Martin and the others. The apartment Brownie and Paul were sharing overlooked the East River and was furnished like a set in a Fred and Ginger movie. I had what must have been good sex, in that I looked forward to having more of it. Brownie’s hair was luxuriant and, unlike George DeWitt’s, real. So was his enthusiasm. My affair ended when Walter Winchell wrote in his column, “Congrats to Meyer Lansky on the engagement of his daughter to Wynne Lassner.” Daddy hit the roof. He had overdosed on weddings—mine, Paul’s, Buddy’s. He wasn’t ready for another, and he didn’t think I was, either. This was one of the rare times when Walter Winchell published a retraction, and a deep apology. The biggest columnist in the world didn’t dare cross Daddy. Brownie Lassner made a graceful exit.

  Barbara Lastfogel remained my partner in crime. She was a celebrity magnet. One night we picked up Mr. Magoo himself, Jim Backus, at P. J. Clarke’s, the location of a famous scene in the alcohol addiction film The Lost Weekend. Jim lured us into a potential ménage à trois at his East Side apartment by pretending he was ill at the bar and needed our help to get home. Jim was a wild and crazy guy who regaled us with stories like the one where he was expelled from military school for riding a horse through the mess hall. When we tucked him into bed, alone, we went out into the night and couldn’t find a cab. A big fire truck finally came along. We lifted up our skirts and the firemen stopped very short and picked
us up. We rode home at dawn swinging from a ladder. Walter Winchell would have paid a fortune for that tip.

  I quickly got over Brownie. I had no shortage of handsome dates and glamorous nights on the town. Although I had given up the charade of wanting to model, I had not given up the obsession with being skinny and the equation of weight and beauty. I got deeper and deeper into diet pills. My “drugs of choice” were Dexedrine, the original diet pill, and Biphetamine, a stronger formulation that became known as the Black Beauty.

  Both were basically speed. I had no idea that, as the antidrug slogan a decade later went, speed could kill. I loved the speedy feeling. I loved staying up all night dining and dancing and having sex, and still being able to be a great and caring mom to Gary. And be as skinny as a rail, or as Tippi Hedren. The size I wanted to be was zero, and so was my self-awareness. Museums, concerts, galleries, those were all out. It was all fancy food, handsome men, hot sex. My only culture was the culture of narcissism.

  Remarkably, in spite of our divorce and the humiliating way he left me, Marvin and I were able to kiss and, if not make up, at least remain cordial. That was far better for Gary, who needed a man in his life, even a man like Marvin. On the surface, he was man enough. His big successful steak house and his high roller clientele and the gorgeous actresses he dated were better for business than going public about the gorgeous actors he went home with. One of his girlfriends at the time was Dyan Cannon, who would go on to marry Cary Grant.

  I would bring Gary, now three, to Spindletop. The waitresses would make the biggest fuss over him. Sometimes I would see Daddy’s friends there, with women who were not their wives. They looked so embarrassed, “outed” as it were, caught in the act. I’d just smile, and spare them the embarrassment of introducing Gary to them. He was the restaurant’s mascot, its pride and joy. Marvin was a very doting, beaming father. He’d show Gary off to everyone. Once he introduced him to Liberace, who was so nice that he took Gary to the circus and gave him a pet turtle. The first movie I took Gary to was The Sun Also Rises, the Hemingway bullfight film with Tyrone Power and Ava Gardner. When Gary saw the bulls enter the ring he yelled out, “Look, Mommy, cows!” and the audience cracked up.