The Cal-Neva Lodge |
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What is known is that there was a dinner with Sam Giancana, Peter and Pat Lawford, Sinatra and Monroe. During the dinner, Monroe got uncontrollably drunk and was led to the cabin where. While she was passed out, several hookers, male and female, molested her while Sinatra and Giancana watched, with Giancana taking his turn with the actress as well. While the female prostitutes had their way with Monroe, someone snapped photographs of the entire thing and before the night was over, Sinatra then brought the film to Hollywood photographer Billy Woodfield, and gave him a roll of film to develop in his darkroom. The idea was to have solid blackmail material to shut her up. The result was a sordid scenario that foreshadowed the end of Camelot and the Rat Pack.
The next morning, Peter Lawford told Monroe that Robert Kennedy was in Los Angeles and that he didn't want to see her, speak to her or have any contact with her in the future. When she protested, someone showed her the photographs from the night before. That afternoon, she tried to commit suicide with an overdose of pills and had to have her stomach pumped.
Unfortunately for Giancana, the FBI photographed the hood playing golf with Sinatra and having drinks and dinner together in the Cal-Neva dining room. The FBI was also watching that same evening when, during a small party, Victor LaCroix Collins, the McGuire sisters' road manager, became irritated when Phyllis McGuire kept walking by his seat and punching him on the arm. "So I told her," Collins said, "you do that again and I'm going to knock you right on your butt. A half an hour later she punches me again and so I grabbed her by both arms and meant to sit her in the chair I got out of, but I swung around and missed the chair, she hit the floor. She didn't hurt herself...but Sam came charging across the room and threw a punch at me wearing a huge big diamond ring that gouged me in the left eye.
"I just saw red then and grabbed him, lifted him clean off the floor, and I was going to throw him through the plate glass door, but thought, why wreck the place? So, I decided to take him outside and break his back on the hard metal railing on the patio. I got as far as the door and then got hit on the back of the head. I don't know who hit me from behind but the back of my head was split open. It didn't knock me out but I went down with Sam underneath me, he had on a pearl gray silk suit and blood from my eye was running all over his suit. I had a hold of him by the testicles and the collar and he couldn't move, that's when Sinatra came in with his valet George. They were coming to join the party, the girls were screaming and running around like a bunch of chickens in every direction because nobody knew what was going to happen. George just stood there with the whites of his eyes rolling around and around in his black face because he knew who Sam was and nobody ever fought with Sam...Sinatra and George pulled me off of Sam, who ran out the door."
The next morning, the FBI, which had a fairly clear idea of what had happened the night before, as a well as several rolls of film of Sinatra with Giancana, filed its report, with photographs, with the State of Nevada Gambling Control Board. After reading the report, the Control Board's chairman, Ed Olson, called Sinatra at the Sands Casino in Las Vegas and asked about Giancana being on the property and Sinatra said that he saw a man who looked like Giancana and that they just waved and nodded to each other and that was all.
The newspapers got hold of the story and backed Olson into a corner, forcing him to remark that his investigation would not conclude until "certain discrepancies in the information provided by various people at Cal-Neva could be resolved." Sinatra read that and called Olson and asked him to come to the Cal-Neva for dinner "to talk about this, your statements." Olson said that he felt it was inappropriate to be seen at the Cal-Neva having dinner with Sinatra, since the singer was, technically, under investigation by Olson's office, and even if Sinatra weren't under investigation, Olson said, it would still be unacceptable for the Gaming Commissioner to be seen fraternizing with a casino owner. "But Frank kept insisting," Olson said, "and I kept refusing. The more I refused the madder he got until he seemed almost hysterical. He used the foulest language I ever heard in my life."
To calm Sinatra down, Olson agreed to meet Sinatra in Olson's office but he did't show up. An hour later he called Olson in a rage. "You listen to me Ed... .you're acting like a f***ing cop, I just want to talk to you off the record." Olson, in an attempt to take back the high ground that his position required said: "Who I am speaking to?" "This is Frank Sinatra! F-R-A-N-K, Sinatra." Olson avoided the insults and said that any meeting between them would have to be on record in the presence of witnesses. Sinatra cut him short and screamed, "Now, you listen Ed! I don't have to take this kind of shit from anybody in the country and I'm not going to take it from you people...I'm Frank Sinatra!" Sinatra went on and on, until, at one point, Olson warned Sinatra that if he didn't show up for an interview that Olson would have him subpoenaed. "You just try and find me," the singer threatened, "and if you do you can look for a big fat surprise...a big fat f***ing surprise. You remember that, now listen to me Ed, don't f*** with me. Don't f*** with me, just don't f*** with me." "Are you threatening me?" Olson asked. "No...just don't f*** with me and you can tell that to your f***ing board of directors and that f***ing commission too."
The next day two investigators came to watch the count at the Cal-Neva and Sinatra yelled across the casino to Skinny D'Amato, "Throw the dirty sons of bitches out of the house." But since the count had already started, the agents left before an incident could be started, but came back the next day, only to have D'Amato offer them $100 each "to cooperate." The agents reported the bribe to Olson, who took moves to revoke Sinatra's license.
When the news was announced that Sinatra was under investigation and would probably lose his casino license, very few people in Nevada rushed to his aid. There were a lot of people in Nevada who resented Sinatra, others despised him and very few people felt that he should have gotten a state gaming license in the first place, and the word around the capitol building in Reno, was that Sinatra needed to be taught a lesson.
The lesson they taught him was to take away his license to operate a casino or hotel in Nevada, thus forcing him to sell not only his 50% in the Cal-Neva, but also his 9% interest in the Sands, about 3.5 million dollars worth of holdings in 1963. On Sept. 11, 1963, the Nevada Gaming Control Board had recommended that Sinatra's gambling license be revoked for allowing Chicago crime boss Sam Giancana to visit the Cal-Neva Lodge at Lake Tahoe. Nevada had published a "List of Excluded Persons," who were not allowed in casinos even as customers, and Giancana was infamously on that list. Sinatra surrendered his casino license at the Cal-Neva and agreed to sell his interest in the Cal-Neva casino and in the Sands.
The Cal-Neva incident was, for the Kennedys, as Peter Lawford said, "the end of old Frankie boy as far as the family was concerned."
The sad sexual circle eventually came to a close, with everybody involved deceased -- none with a smile on his or her face. Monroe, face down on her bed. JFK and RFK, assassinated by who knows who. Giancana, gunned down in Chicago, shot once in the head and five times in the mouth. Lawford, a sad, broken alcoholic and Sinatra, robbed of his voice, dying of a final heart attack in hospital.
Nowadays, all that's left are the mountains of biographies and FBI files and a few secrets that the Cal-Neva posessed, such as the catacombs underneath the bungalows. What were they used for? No one knows.
Gambling and live shows add little to the Cal-Neva bankbook these days, but sex still perfumes the hallways. The resort's primary income now derives from weddings, sometimes as many as 12 in one day. |