Frank & Charli

by Frank Yandolino

  After more than four hours of continued eating, drinking, exchanging gifts, dancing, talking, and Santa, I was sure it was time to go home. But no, the next surprise I will forever remember. Just after midnight, when I thought it must be about time to go home, Aunt Millie, such a great host, comes out and says, “Let’s eat!” She really enjoyed feeding and making her family comfortable and happy. She loved my Frank and always called him Jun, short for Junior. Aunt Millie’s little son Henry was also named Junior after his father, Uncle Henry.

  After the announcement of “Let’s eat!” I learned firsthand how after midnight, now Christmas Day, you are allowed to eat meat according to their Catholic religion. So out comes a parade of fresh ham, turkey, chicken, meatballs, Italian parsley and cheese, sweet fennel, hot sausage, and of course beef braciole with hardboiled egg, provolone, and pine nuts inside. All accompanied by salads, cakes, cookies, candy, nuts, and fruit. And more wine. I was not sure I would ever get this opportunity again, so I ate everything. Again! We left at about four in the morning. Aunt Millie made everything look so easy and she made me feel so comfortable, and all of her family was the nicest people I had ever known. I loved them then and still love every minute I spend with them.

  I say this was the night Frank and I decided to get married, but to this day we argue over how we agreed to do it or who said what. Whatever the case, that Christmas was a special night. The whole family connection must have made these two hippies very romantic.

  After several months of serious dating Charli was spending most of her time at my apartment and before I knew it my Afghan woman had moved in. We were now living together.

  As far as I recall, the way Charli and I decided to get married was quite simple:

  “Charli,” I said. “I paid off all your credit cards. Now I’m paying all the bills. If we get married, I could claim you and deduct all expenses on my taxes.” And she agreed. I like keeping things simple.

  As I recall I never really proposed.

  In Charli’s Words

  According to my recollections of that night, after our Christmas dinner at Aunt Millie’s Frank said it: “Let’s get married.” He swears he didn’t, but he did. Well, maybe he didn’t say it per se, but I knew that’s what he was insinuating with his actions. Either way, we decided to do it. Frank was such a hippie, but his family instincts and morals were really ingrained in him. The taxes played a role, I’m sure, but I know that deep down he’ll admit that marriage was important to him. Besides, in those days getting married was really uncool, and now Frank had an excuse. So just like that, we borrowed his mother’s car the next morning, drove to Baltimore, Maryland, where we learned we could get married in Elkton, and off we went.

  When Frank and I arrived in Elkton, a small, lazy little town with no visible life, no one even walking around, we stopped at a phone booth on the street to look through a phone book for a place to get married. After we tore out the wedding chapel section I closed my eyes and blindly moved my finger across the pages before stopping and opening my eyes. My finger was pointing at The Little Wedding Chapel. We agreed it was the perfect place. I asked Frank to stop at the drugstore to buy us a ring, where we picked a thin one—two for eighteen dollars.

  The Little Wedding Chapel was presided over by the Reverend Ruby Davis. We naturally opted for the cheapest, simplest, shortest, two-ring, standing ceremony. That option meant the two of us stood at the little altar, no kneeling (normally a wedding tradition). The reverend clicked a switch on a tape player and the wedding music came on, dum, dum, de dum. It lasted a few seconds and then shut off. He said something like, “Do you both take each other in sickness and in health, till death do you part?” Frank answered, “And even after.” He knows just what to say. Reverend Davis ended with, “You are now married and joined together forever.” Off we went to the reception across the street at the luncheonette. We sat at the counter. Frank ordered two grilled cheese sandwiches and a chocolate shake. He looked at me and asked, “Are you happy now?” I was. And so was he.

  We drove home, now to our apartment, made dinner, and that was that, the best wedding ever. No stress, no cold feet, just two young kids in love. Frank bought me a spaghetti strainer and a hardboiled egg holder. I cherished them both, and still have them in my kitchen cabinets today.

  Some men complain about married life, lamenting the loss of their bachelor pad. I must admit it was a bit of a change in philosophy and lifestyle for me, a new chapter in my free spirit counter-culture evolution. I had to adapt my habits to a one-woman existence. But Charli was worth it.

  She had no problem adjusting, as long as my past girlfriends stopped showing up at my door and stopped calling all hours of the day. Not long after she moved in, we were in bed when the phone rang. Charli picked it up.

  In Charli’s Words

  Hello? Oh, hi Marsha, this is Charli. You would like to speak to Frank? Marsha, you should know Frank and I just got married. I don’t think you should call here anymore. Oh, you want to hear it from him? In that case, good-bye, Marsha.

  Charli can’t help it. Women smell other women’s intentions, like cats and dogs. I never did hear from Marsha again.

  With Charli, it was just a better layer of life laid over mine, a new emotional complexity that fit like a broken-in pair of leather Mexican huarache sandals.

  This has become a phrase of ours, when we want to say do it simple: “Two rings standing.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Dali

  One sunny summer afternoon in 1971, I was walking up Fifth Avenue. Ahead in the distance, I noticed two people standing out as hazy silhouettes among the crowded New York sidewalk, slowly emerging from the glaring sun behind them. As they got closer, images from my days at Parsons became clear. I realized who they were. But could it be? Yes. It was Salvador Dali and his wife, Gala, and they were heading right for me.

  He strutted like a bird, dressed in black, carrying a walking stick. She looked like a European cat, also dressed in black.

  Before we reached each other, forces were at work. A connection was being made through the air, something pre-evolutionary. We were both sending out signals like radar.

  That’s when Dali and I danced. I tried to avoid walking right into him. So did he. Dali went left, I went right, I went left, he went right. Like post-modern ballerinas, we swayed left and right over and over again. Dali couldn’t take it anymore. He put his hand out, two inches from my face.

  “Stop!” Dali shouted in a distinctive voice, his strong accent so deep that it resonated from one end of the street to the other. It shocked the shit out of me. I’m sure people watched us as they passed. They may have seen his hand, still in front of my face, as if regally presenting himself, adorned with a big colorfully jeweled ring on his finger while holding an equally bejeweled silver-handled cane in the other hand. Dali captured my focus with such force that everyone else disappeared.

  His hand remained inches from my nose. I didn’t know what to do. My first thought was, Should I steal that big, jeweled ring and run? Or was I supposed to kiss his hand? I lost track of how much time had passed. Finally, I shook his hand like a wet noodle.

  “Are you an artist?” he asked, although it sounded more like a command coming from him.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. What is your name?”

  “Frank Yandolino.”

  Then, he repeated it, as if tasting a fine wine.

  “Yan Doo Linoo … give me your phone number.”

  Once I did, he stepped aside, granting me passage, saying nothing else. Gala never spoke. She just looked right through me. I could feel it even though she was wearing dark sunglasses. We continued on our journeys down Fifth Avenue, neither of us looking back. Brief as it was, that chance meeting led to an amazing friendship. For me this became more like grabbing a giant beach ball.

  I believe that Dali, in that split second, knew that art had always been the center of my life. As I walked away, my mind took in our short conversation, one
that by all accounts should have been our only conversation. It transported me back to a time when I made my first dollar as an artist.

  In 1963 my mother was working as an assistant to a dentist. One of the patients that came to the office was Tatyana Grossman and her husband, the Bohemian painter and sculptor Maurice Grossman. Mom got me a part-time job at their world-famous lithography studio on a small estate in West Islip, Long Island. During the week I studied at Parsons, and on weekends I was a stone grinder at the studio. After each printing, the image etched into the Bavarian limestone had to be worn off by taking two stones and grinding them together in a circular motion with aluminum oxide and water until the old image vanished and the artist had a new surface upon which to create.

  Another job I performed for the Grossmans taught me much of what I know about color. I mixed ink for some of the world-famous artists of the day, such as Jim Dine, whose works included Toothbrushes and White Teeth, along with Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg, Robert Motherwell, Helen Frankenthaler, and Barnett Newman. Suddenly, I was hanging out with the painter Larry Rivers as he played trumpet at the Five Spot Jazz Club in the Bowery, in New York City. I actually ground the stone and helped mix the ink for Rivers’s famous “French Money,” which hangs on the wall at the New York Museum of Modern Art.

  One night, while sitting at Tatyana’s kitchen table eating a lavish homecooked Russian meal, listening to whichever great artist was there that weekend talk about their creations, I realized something: they always spoke about art, and what it meant to be an artist. A direction, as clear as the yellow brick road, opened up in front of me.

  The time I spent at the Grossmans, ingesting the culture, art, the history, and the great artists I was working with, was a rare and special opportunity. If that ball hadn’t been grabbed I don’t know what would have happened.

  I became someone with direction and a title. I was an artist.

  Out of the Army, my life as a true artist continued. I went to work for one of my professors at Parsons, Richard A. Steinberg, in his studio at Carnegie Hall. I was responsible for location and studio sessions, and some printing. I took on this opportunity for almost no pay. One thing led to another, then another. Balls of opportunity were ready to be grabbed, and I had no intention of letting them go. I began to feel that I could take care of my assignments on my own, without more experienced people there to guide me. And it was a good thing that I could work on my own, since soon after taking the position, I often found myself up all night taking nude pictures of new aspiring models. The girls would pay me to get them high, take their pictures, and have sex. Sure beat the Army.

  During one slow period, I sat alone in that giant studio with its high ceilings and oppressive emptiness. Richard came by to see how things were going. When he walked in, the phone rang for the first time that day. I reached for it and he slapped my hand.

  “What the hell was that?”

  In response, he grabbed the receiver, answering the phone. “Who’s this?” he impatiently asked. “Hold on, hold on.”

  Richard put the phone down, holding a hand in the air, counting off with his fingers.

  One … two … three. I had a momentary flashback from my Army days and instinctively reached for my gas mask. Richard ignored me and picked up the phone.

  “Hold on one more minute, I’m in the middle of a shoot.” Richard held a hand over the receiver and looked me in the eye. “Don’t ever let them know you’re not busy.”

  He returned to the phone call.

  “Hey Massina, what can I do for you?” He paused. “A quick black-and-white shot? No, I can’t, I’m set up for a color spread.” Pause. “I can do black and white but I’ll have to charge you for color.”

  That’s when I learned Richard’s lesson: lie. More specifically, don’t ever let them know you’re not busy or that you’re down-and-out. And then charge more.

  I learned a similar lesson a few years later in 1973 from the world-champion boxer Rocky Graziano. He and my father were long-time neighborhood friends from the Lower East Side of New York, 9th Street and Second Avenue. I went to lunch with the two of them at PJ Clarke’s on Third Avenue. They were reminiscing, telling folklore stories, when Rocky offered some very profound advice.

  “Remember, kid, never show your sparring partner all your punches. One day, he may become your opponent.”

  I thought of Richard when Rocky said that. It is a concept I practice all the time. You might think that in the world of an artist, such a harsh reality does not apply. But art, like any other business, is a shark tank.

  Sitting at lunch with Rocky and his view on life reminded me of Moreton Binn. At that time, I had been promoted to art director by seizing an opportunity with his agency. When he entered my life, Moreton was a whirlwind of hype and energy. After joining his agency, MPA, working as salesman looking to secure clients, he made me an offer.

  “If you work on my prospective clients for free, and bill that time to your real accounts, and those new clients sign on with me, I’ll make sure you’re the art director.”

  I went to work like my hands were on fire. Soon enough, his scheme paid off. I was art director and he was president of the agency. This was a boon for me beyond just the money. I now had copywriters who would correct my dyslexia-inspired misspelled headlines.

  Moreton was a genius. One day, he walked into my office. “Come with me, Frank.”

  We went to the merchandise premium show at the Coliseum at Columbus Circle. Upon entering, he headed straight for the first booth, a sunglass company, and spoke to the man that looked to be in charge.

  “If you give me one hundred pairs of sunglasses, I will put your company product and name in a full two-page spread in Look magazine.”

  On to the next booth.

  “If you give me your motorbike, I will place a full-page ad for you in Look magazine.”

  On and on we went, hitting every booth in the place. By the time he’d hit every vendor, he had twenty-five different piles of products. These manufacturers could never afford getting an ad in a major national magazine themselves. I had no idea what Moreton was going to do with all that merchandise, nor how he’d get all those ads to run, until we got back to the office, where he immediately called his biggest account, Pine Sol.

  “You should do a sweepstakes.” When they stalled, he gave them the hard sell, ending with his true brilliance. “I lined up all the merchandise for the winners. All you have to do is run a full two-page ad in Look magazine.”

  It worked. I designed the two-page sweepstakes ad. Pine Sol gave away thousands of dollars of product, in return getting tens of thousands of people who saw the ad to try Pine Sol. And all the vendors got a portion of the ad, based on the value of their product. On top of that, I watched as Moreton kept one of every item for himself.

  “That’s how you barter.”

  Moreton went on to head up Atwood Richards, one of the largest barter agencies in the world. I visited him there years later. He was trading razors for brassieres and mayonnaise.

  As art director, I was a big deal. I grew my ponytail and beard, wore tie-dyed T-shirts, and drove my motorcycle to work. I was known to smoke some grass in my office while surrounded by day-glow psychedelic images. Music posters covered my wall. The other people working at the agency were afraid to come into my office. Luckily, my clients and Moreton loved my work, although the head of the agency made me keep my door closed. I hung a sign up on it that read:

  If you see Chicken Little around me, shoot him.

  During those agency days I developed a campaign concept to launch a popular East Coast product to new markets in the Midwest.

  HEBREW NATIONAL … IS NOT A JEWISH BANK …

  IT’S THE FABULOUS FRANK.

  For Eldridge and Co., a New York stock and bond house, I designed a full back-page ad in the New York Times featuring a beautiful blonde dressed in a sexy black dress. If you looked closely you could see the pearl necklace she was holding was broken and pearls
falling to the ground.

  GENTLEMEN PREFER … BONDS

  The second ad for Eldridge featured a very young girl with arms folded under her very large breasts. It read:

  MY BONDS … BELONG TO DADDY

  It was about that time when I was turned onto a new project. My new client was the National Parks Commission, whose business was to run the government’s summer vacation parks and camping grounds programs. Andrew (Andy) Wallcrest was head of the Parks Commission, which is controlled by the US government’s Department of the Interior.

  Smokey the Bear, who had been the commission’s mascot and spokesperson, was no longer going to be the image that would represent the Interior Department’s ecology efforts, which was becoming a hot subject in politics. Wanting to be more contemporary and reach a broader market, they came up with a new character—a cowboy named Johnny Horizon, who wore a cowboy hat and was a very chiseled, American, sly-looking man, with a handkerchief around his neck and a very big, toothy smile, although to me it looked more like a shit-eating grin. He was modern, hip, and intended to stand for more than just putting out forest fires; he was meant to promote ecology.

  The ball was in my reach so I grabbed it. I took the opportunity to discuss a related idea with some friends in the advertising business and then was introduced to Mary Wells of the Wells Rich Green advertising agency. We became partners and agreed to pitch a television cartoon series based on Johnny Horizon, an ecological series with episodes about what you can do to save the planet. We took weekly trips to Washington, DC, and had meetings with Andy and other heads of various departments within the Interior Department. Funny thing about all of this is that none of the meetings were ever in offices; we would meet there just to formally say hello and then leave immediately. Most conversations were actually done on street corners and in restaurants where they couldn’t be detected. The reason for all this was the paranoia that was raging through DC following Watergate. Everybody in Washington feared they were about to lose their jobs.