Mr. S Read Free Page A

clam shell urinals that were the restaurant’s chief conversation piece. The Luau was owned by Steve Crane, the ex of Lana Turner, who had been an ex of Frank in his early Hollywood years (who wasn’t?). But it was dead, as was the Daisy, which was owned by Jack Hansen, whose across-Rodeo boutique JAX was where Marilyn Monroe, and every other star in town, outfitted herself in the California casual look. But the Daisy was dead, too, so I ended up at the Candy Store two blocks away from Rodeo, on Canon Drive.
    The rise of Black Power notwithstanding, there weren’t many brothers who could get into the Candy Store. Jim Brown, Wilt Chamberlain, Sidney Poitier, the Candy Man himself, Sammy Davis Jr., and me. I may have been riding on Mr. S’s coattails, but who in this town wasn’t riding on someone else’s coattails? Everyone needed his or her Savior, his or her Messiah. Otherwise, they wouldn’t get into Hollywood Heaven. Mr. S played Messiah to a lot of people. At his prime, in the JFK years, he was the most powerful man in the entertainment business. Now it was starting to slip away, but no one, absolutely no one in this town, was about to show the slightest hint of disrespectfor Frank Sinatra. Hence I was one black man who would always get past the velvet rope, would always get a great table, would always get the run of the house. I also got a lot of beautiful girls in the process. Celebrity is a major aphrodisiac, but even celebrity adjacency can cast its own spell. It wasn’t as if they wanted to use me to meet Frank. Except for Mia, hip young chicks had no interest in meeting Frank Sinatra in those days. He was off the radar of coolness. But the idea of my working for him, of my being that close to him, that was what was cool. It was like working at the White House. It made folks want to meet you. It gave you a mystique.
    The Candy Store was the disco of the moment in Beverly Hills. Because it was new, it was the place to be. The owner, Gene Shacove, who was partnered with Tony Curtis, George Hamilton, and other stars who could draw a scene, was one of the two hairdressers to the stars in Beverly Hills. Gene, the inspiration for Warren Beatty in Shampoo, slept with a lot of his clients and rode a motorcycle, just as in the movie. But his biggest kick was making over these women into something they never dreamed they could be. One of his greatest makeovers was Jill St. John, who had been a rich, overweight Beverly Hills High School princess. Gene convinced her to change her last name from Oppenheimer, lose weight, get her nose done, and let him give her what became her trademark red hair. It worked like a charm. Frank was crazy about her, as were Sid Korshak, the Teamster lawyer who everyone feared as the Mafia consigliere in show business, Henry Kissinger, and Robert Wagner, with whom Jill finally settled down. The other celebrity hairdresser was Jay Sebring, who would come to the house to do Frank’s hair, or what was left of it. Frank was super-sensitive about his baldness and his wigs. It was one of the few things he couldn’t control. He would never set foot in a barber shop, so Jay would do house calls, even driving down to Palm Springs when summoned. The next summer he would be a tragic victim of the Manson family.
    There were a lot of pretty girls that night at the Candy Store. But because I was meeting Ava later, I wasn’t planning any pickup attempts. I was just hanging out at the bar, when who should come in but Mia, with her dear friend John Phillips. If the world thought Mia was in seclusion mourning her upcoming divorce from the Chairman, they would have been surprised by the gay party mood she was in that night. And if anyone symbolized the drug-rock culture, or lack thereof, that Frank Sinatra detested and feared, it was the long, greasy-haired, always stoned John Phillips, Mr. California Dreaming himself. Despite the drugs, Frank did covet Phillips’s gorgeous blond wife, Mama Michelle, which