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  First and foremost, to my mother and father, for the foundation that they gave me on which I have built this life and profession.

  And to Anne, Alexandra, Amanda, Alicia, Anthea, Amelia, Lisa, and Ethan

  Acknowledgments

  I have many people to thank for their encouragement and guidance in the writing of this book:

  My entire family, daughters, their wonderful mother Anne, my son Ethan, my beautiful and wonderful girlfriend, Lisa, and my sister Mariam.

  Stuart Silfen, my friend and attorney for many years, for introducing me to Steve Cohen, our illustrious leader at St. Martin’s, who got this ball rolling. And to Elizabeth Beier, whose energy, professionalism, smarts, and enthusiasm spurred me on and kept me focused. Also, the amazing Michelle Richter, John Karle, Laura Clark, Sally Richardson, Matthew Shear, Steve Snider, Lauren Harms, Kathryn Parise, and Eric C. Meyer.

  David Dalton, for all the hours and patience. And my friend Tony Lofaro, of the newspaper Ottawa Citizen, for his support and contribution.

  My staff for their day-to-day involvement and perseverance: Julie Zhu, Nancy Callihan, and Craig Woods.

  Skip Bronson and especially Howard Stern—who, because of one of the greatest moments I had being interviewed by one of the best interviewers—and his fans and his listeners who called in to encourage me to write a book. Thank you Howard!

  Annie Leibovitz, the great one, for her talent, her generosity, and her sharing. Thank you for that beautiful photograph.

  And last but not least, to my fans, who for years have been requesting what you are about to read.

  Contents

  Photo of Paul Anka

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  1. Ottawa

  2. Teen Idol

  3. Lonely Boy

  4. Globetrotter

  5. Painted Words

  6. Vegas

  7. Michael Jackson, Liz Taylor, a Jewel Heist, Kinky Brits, Tennis at Midnight … And Then I Get Pregnant

  8. Vegas Redux

  9. If Donald Trumps Who Wynns?

  10. The Bellini Episodes

  11. Moving On

  12. And Now for My Encore

  About the Author

  Photographs

  Index

  Copyright

  Introduction

  As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. To me, being a gangster was better than being president of the United States.… To me, it meant being somebody in a neighborhood that was full of nobodies. They weren’t like anybody else.… I was the luckiest kid in the world. I could go anywhere. I could do anything. I knew everybody and everybody knew me … I was part of something. And I belonged. I was treated like a grown up. I was living a fantasy.

  That’s Henry Hill’s rap at the beginning of Goodfellas, but it might as well have been me—not that I ever wanted to be a gangster, I just wanted to be part of a cool scene. My own fantasy was hanging out with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. I wanted to be those guys. I wanted to live that life.

  Vegas was a kind of adult Magic Kingdom, where everybody goes by the code, there’s lots of money and girls and champagne and great performers, and everybody is impeccably dressed. We were America’s contribution to civilization. Outside of politics and megacorporations, we’re a hedonistic culture that, let’s be serious, is the way we represent ourselves to the world. That was Vegas in the sixties; pure high-gangster style.

  It was another world, a dream world, the Sh-Boom Sh-Boom Room where everything is mellow and cool, where life could be a dream, sweetheart. The soft pink glow from the little lamp on your table, hot chicks, champagne on ice. Torch-song paradise. It’s my version of the American Dream: the gold-plated pink Cadillac, the sharkskin suit handmade in Hong Kong, the $300 Italian shoes.

  Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr.—they were little gods in black tie and patent leather shoes. They didn’t talk like other people, they didn’t behave like other people, they didn’t have to play by the rules the way other people had to, the normal day-to-day regulations didn’t apply to them. As Henry Hill says, “I mean, they did whatever they wanted. They double-parked in front of a hydrant, and nobody ever gave them a ticket. In summer, when they played cards all night, nobody ever called the cops.”

  Vegas was the Rat Pack’s Camelot, and Vegas, let’s face it, was a hell of a lot more fun than Camelot. That’s why JFK hung out with Sinatra at the Sands. To a lot of us teen idols Sinatra was a god—he was revered and respected. Then this new revolution started happening—“funny music” he called it—in other words, rock ’n’ roll. But Sinatra was such a legend, he’d been a big star since the ’40s—so it didn’t really affect him the way it did other crooners. In a way, rock ’n’ roll enshrined him. We all looked up to this Sinatra Rat Pack because in the beginning that’s all there was—that and us.

  Eventually Frank and the rest of the Rat Pack adopted me. I got little jewels of wisdom about performing and behavior from them. From watching the rehearsals in the Copa Room in the Sands Hotel I learned about style, and an insider’s insights about how to present yourself on stage. It was like going to the college of cool. Frank was a perfectionist in everything he did and I guess that I’m that way, too.

  There were the spectacular showgirl acts called production shows at the Stardust, the Lido, and the Copa Room. The showgirls would often open the show at the Copa sands. Shirley Ornstein (who later came to play a small part in my life) was an eighteen-year-old Copa showgirl until she caught the eye of Burt Bacharach. Barbara Sinatra, Frank’s last wife, started out as a showgirl at the Copa, too. These shows were big-production numbers with lots of elaborate sets and costumes, the showgirls with their big feathers like erotically plumed birds in skimpy g-strings and long sequin-studded gloves. The orchestra striking up, the curtain is pulled back to reveal a secret world. Then backstage, a little tawdry, cramped, and sweaty with showgirls and performers putting on their makeup, getting their hair done, pressing their clothes, and the support groups hovering: the makeup girl with the powder puff, the costumier with clothes on a hanger, the hairdresser, the agents, the stage manager, the MC. All the stars, all of us had to play for two to four weeks, two shows a night. If you didn’t like it, you didn’t get the job. It was very tough on the voice but nobody cared—anyway you had no choice.

  Vegas in those days was the kind of place you never wanted to leave. You wanted to live there forever. That’s the way I felt when I first walked into the Copa Room at the Sands Hotel in 1959. Vegas in the old days was very theatrical. Every night was a spectacle. You’d go from the showroom—packed with out-of-towners there to see the big stars, comedians, and showgirls—into the casino. When the showroom emptied, all the people poured out into the casinos. It was not uncommon to see Dean, Sinatra, and Sammy taking over from the dealers and handing out cards to the guests, visiting stars from L.A., high rollers, and so on. There weren’t tourists in Vegas in those days the way there are today—it was an exclusive, elite group of people and the gaming areas were small.

  You’d see some movie star look at his cards and say, “Hit me,” but Frank or Dean would tell them, “Aw, in your position? You don’t wanna hit.” There was that kind of playfulness going on. We’d deal a table, give them winners—there was a lot of frolicking
about it. It was loose and had its own cinematic kind of touch to it. It was the place to be. The people were elegant, and there were real movie stars there, European royalty, and then Kennedy and other politicians would secretly come in. You knew you were on this happening roll. It was the only place in the country with something like that going on. It’s not like today with the boy bands and the generic yeah-yeah rock groups. It was cool, so it was cool to be around it. And elegant—very different from what you see today in Vegas, with the mobs of tourists in madras shorts and trainers.

  And then there were “the boys”—or whatever you want to call them. They came in all shapes and sizes. In most cases they talked very low key, they were nattily dressed, always wore tailored shirts, expensive suits, and they walked with that kind of authority you would if you owned Las Vegas. The mob had run Vegas since the beginning. The mob-type guys that were running the casinos were everywhere then, but they didn’t look like the gangsters you see in the movies. They were businessmen and behaved like gentlemen—unless you were skimming, pocketing markers, or committing other no-nos. Those were the kind of no-nos that could get your legs broken or your head cracked open—outside the city limits, that is. Who knew how many bodies were buried out there in the desert. Even when Howard Hughes took over he still needed the mob and their guys to operate the casinos.

  When the guests had gone to bed a whole unseen underworld emerged. The connected guys would relax, get casual, but be out of the sight of the public. When the showroom emptied the owners would clear, say, twenty tables, create a space, and they’d all sit down and play gin. They’d take off their jackets, loosen their ties, sit there under a little work light playing gin at some ridiculous level, like a dollar a point. You’d play cards all night with the boys, then you’d walk across the street, hang out with another crowd at breakfast. You have to remember there were only five hotels there back then—and beyond the strip just desert and sagebrush.

  By and large the mob understood the perception the public had of them, but they were businessmen. You’ve got to remember that once you establish a place like Vegas, you’re not operating out of back rooms in New Jersey or a grungy office in the meat district in New York, dealing with backdoor deliveries of merchandise.

  Vegas was a classy place, and these guys believed in dressing up. Everybody dressed. Frank and the boys dressed to the nines. When you ran into connected guys they weren’t these scary characters. They were very gracious; women were magnetically attracted to them. There wasn’t anything they wouldn’t do for you. Comp your room, give you complimentary markers … It was a much looser situation. Whereas today you pay for everything—unless you’re a high roller, then you do get comped and are given all kinds of extravagant gifts like white fur coats and other stuff.

  Early in the ’60s, you’d see a classic mob guy like Johnny Roselli in the lounge. I’d sit with him at the bar after my show and he’d say things to me like, “Keep your nose clean, Paul, be a gentlemen, blah blah, blah,” giving me advice you’d expect to hear from an uncle of yours at Thanksgiving. Funny, because “Handsome Johnny” Roselli was a mobster, connected with the Chicago outfit involved in the CIA plot to assassinate Fidel Castro.

  But socially he was a dapper kind of a guy, an essential character on account of his knowledge about what went on at every level. Because of his looks he moved easily in the Hollywood scene in California, and because of his links with the mob they eventually moved him out to Vegas.

  Roselli hit Vegas in 1957. He was a very charming and well-dressed guy. We all knew he was monitoring everything for Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello. He helped with the loans with the teamsters—the Riviera Hotel was constructed with their cash. By the mid-1960s Roselli & Co. had already figured out what to do before Howard Hughes arrived and started to buy all the mob casinos—and in most cases he overpaid for them. They were trying to clean up the town, trying to lose the mob image, but Roselli stayed on.

  Roselli was a major presence in Vegas until around 1966 when word had it he was extorting from the key casinos and Ralph Lamb the sheriff started looking at him. That led to the confrontation between Lamb and Roselli at a coffee shop. Lamb put Roselli in handcuffs and shoved him into the backseat of a squad car. His decline started at that point. In 1969, he was convicted for rigging a card game in Los Angeles. The rest of the story is public knowledge. In 1976, a fisherman found his body floating in Dumfoundling Bay, Florida, in a 55-gallon steel drum with his legs cut off and a pink washcloth stuffed in his mouth. That is when the mob shipped out their new enforcer from Chicago: Anthony Spilotro—and things started to get really wild, about which more to come later.

  I’d be sitting around the Sands, hanging out with all those guys or lounging in the steam room with a whole other pocket of people—Sinatra, Gregory Peck, Don Rickles. Today it’s hard for people to get an idea of how incredible Vegas was in those days, the kind of intensity that existed there. The sense of fashion, the sense of klieg-light visibility the casinos stimulated. You walked in, you were already on stage. You were ready for your close-up every time you went through those doors.

  I don’t think there’s ever been anything quite like Vegas in its golden era. Today, Vegas is this huge Disneyland for grown-ups where you get all of this stuff thrown at you: spectacles (with no real heart and soul, none of the real magic of what Vegas was back then), a few square blocks of glitter and glamour like a glitzy oasis in the desert with sand everywhere, and no high-rises. The type of people that run the casinos today are a different kind of animal altogether. Today it’s all corporate, which means lawyers and contracts and fine print.

  And eventually, I made it into the innest in crowd there ever was: the Rat Pack. I got to hang around with singers who hung around with gangsters, politicians, movie stars, a who’s-who of people. I got to live the life. It was a high wild life—something I’d only dreamed of back in Ottawa.

  One

  OTTAWA

  Upstairs in our house in Ottawa we had huge storm windows with wooden flaps. Underneath the flaps there were three small holes the size of a silver dollar. You couldn’t just prop open the window or you’d freeze to death, it was so damn cold. I’d jam a pencil through these little holes to hold open the flaps so I could look outside. I used to sit there at my window and the snow would be falling, snowflakes swirling outside in the wind, the windows all frosted—it was so beautiful, with all that magic snow and the whole smell of winter and I was snug and warm in my room. And then, I don’t know why, an unexpected thought would pass through me: “I can’t stay here, one day I have to get out of here.”

  The odd thing was I had a great life—my sister Mariam, my brother Andy, my father Andrew and mother Camy, my relatives, everybody in my family were all close and loving. We weren’t rich, but we were a tight, comfortable, and happy family. But for some reason I felt like an outsider. Everyone I knew was going about their lives and they were happy, focusing on school, on sports, on their friends, on their hobbies. They were content with their lives. On the surface I did all the things other kids did at school. But I loved hockey the most. I loved hockey. I drew, made model airplanes, had a stamp collection. I was very athletic and I was always very busy; I would go out as much as I could. But at some point it became claustrophobic. Something was missing and I didn’t know what it was.

  Everybody loves the idea of small town life, happy families, people sitting on their porches in the evening, neighbors strolling past and chatting—like in the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life. But then there are the exceptions, and I was one of the exceptions.

  There was no media blitz like there is today, no twenty-four-hour news cycle or hundreds of channels. In 1954, for instance, there was maybe six hours of television a day. This was before the version of American Bandstand that featured Dick Clark. He didn’t come on the scene until 1956. And we’re not even in the USA, we’re in Canada! The only word to describe that was “provincial.” Ottawa was the epitome of provincial. All I knew was I h
ad this thing inside me—there really wasn’t any model for me to follow like today with talent shows and American Idol. However you’d describe what motivated me, I felt like the first kid in the world to try and do it.

  People in show business come from all kinds of backgrounds; quite a few come out of poverty-stricken or dysfunctional families. If you’re from an abusive family where your parents are always fighting and they beat you and there’s no money or your parents are drug addicts, of course you want to get away from that. But that wasn’t the case with me. When I had these thoughts about leaving, I’d ask myself, “Why are you doing this? What is your problem?” I didn’t know.

  When I was twelve, I had all the energy and desire in the world but I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know if I wanted to be a lawyer, join the circus, discover a miracle vaccine, or be in show business. I don’t know where my drive came from, but from an early age I felt I had something inside of me that needed to be expressed. Many people grow up believing they’re talented at something, that they have a gift—but it’s not just being good at something that makes the difference, it’s the urge to be the best at it. I could never pinpoint where that came from, but I know I always had it. It was just so far out of most people’s range of thinking that it was scary, this desire to embark on some out-of-control journey.

  For me it was never the unknown that was scary—it was the predictable. That’s what I found oppressive. Ottawa was a small town—relatively speaking—and in any case it had the same conventional, old-fashioned values as any little town would have, and like all small towns it had small expectations. You were expected to grow up and take over the family business. It was assumed, for instance, that I’d go on to run my dad’s restaurant—that’s what people thought was a good thing back then. Today anything is possible. There are so many alternatives that kids can dream about—you want to be a sportscaster, you want to be a Web designer, a venture capitalist. Ambitions of that sort didn’t exist back then except in rare instances. Expectations were limited; there were fewer things to aspire to. The big difference today is that kids walk around saying, “I want to be famous.” As a kid in those days you might daydream about being a famous baseball player or a movie star, but nobody took these fantasies too seriously. My ambition was particularly odd given the time and place I came from. Now everybody wants to be famous, but they don’t necessarily know what they want to be famous for.