DRIVEN stir-crazy after being cooped up in his Miami hotel suite, Frank Sinatra suggested to his publicist Jim Mahoney they “find some action”.
It was 4pm on a Sunday afternoon, Jim said — where would they find action?
Frank smiled, flicked through a local directory and made a call.
“We got a serious problem,” he told his contact on the other end of the phone. “Unless you send half a dozen of your best girls within an hour, your joint will be a parking lot by midnight.”
In less than an hour six girls waltzed into his suite.
Frank, then 43 and recently divorced from screen siren Ava Gardner, invited Jim to take his pick.
“Sorry,” Jim said, “I got something I have to get to downstairs,” and he left the legendary hellraiser to it.
As a PR agent to the biggest names in Hollywood, Jim Mahoney has seen it all.
It was his job to keep the scandals out of the newspapers.
By 1958 he had helped to protect the reputations of a host of global stars including actors Clark Gable and Gary Cooper.
But of all his clients, the longest-lasting — and most entertaining — was legendary crooner Sinatra.
In his captivating new book, Jim, now 95, says: “When you were with Sinatra, you were all in, all the time.
“Whether it was a dinner or a party in his suite, there was action every night. And that action lasted until dawn.
“To keep up with Sinatra, you had to be in shape. He was an iron man. His workout was booze, women and smoking.”
And keeping up with Frank was never dull.
Jim adds: “I dealt with everything from his teeth being knocked out in Vegas by a bouncer, his being kicked out of Mexico and banned from ever coming back, to consoling Mia Farrow when she was informed by Frank’s attorney that their marriage was over.
“This had become a way of life. He was never boring.”
When Sinatra’s son, Frank Jr, was kidnapped in 1963, Jim says the first people on the phone to Sinatra were FBI chief J Edgar Hoover and mob boss Sam Giancana.
Frank took the mobster’s call first.
Jim says: “Between the personal support of J Edgar Hoover, who assured Frank of the full resources of the FBI, and Momo [Giancana], whose resources could be downright lethal, these poor kidnappers were now being chased by both the good guys and the bad.”
The kidnappers wanted £193,000, so the FBI marked each note with a traceable substance.
At one point Jim was the designated bag man until an FBI agent took over.
Frank Jr was released unhurt but although the kidnappers initially got away with the money, they were arrested after three days and later sentenced to life.
Though Frank was relieved to have his son back, he was furious when some people claimed the abduction had been a set-up to boost his then-flagging career.
That was one story Jim couldn’t spin, but he tells of other times he managed to keep a lid on Frank’s antics — like the night Sinatra went out intent on killing eccentric tycoon Howard Hughes, because he was making moves on Ava Gardner.
Frank told him: “Ava and I weren’t married yet, but he knew damned well we were together.
She told him to take a hike, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. It got a little out of hand, so one night I got a gun and went looking for him.”
Luckily for Hughes, Frank never found him. But Jim says Sinatra was never shy about standing up for someone he cared about.
He tells how Frank also beat up a drunken loudmouth who had insulted the then 12-year-old Liza Minnelli, whose mother Judy Garland had invited her on stage to sing during her opening night in Las Vegas.
After the man called Liza an embarrassment, Frank waited for him outside the toilets.
“The loudmouth raised his hands as if to push Frank away,” Jim says.
“It wasn’t a wise move. A well-executed left-right combination by Frank dropped the man right there.”
But Jim insists Frank, who infamously enjoyed an association with the Mob, also had a softer side.
He says: “He asked me to check out a story in the New York Times about a 71-year-old woman from London who had arrived in New York to visit relatives.
“A slick cabby charged her £190 to go from JFK to Woodbridge, New Jersey [about 36 miles].”
Frank asked Jim to track down the woman and give her a cheque to cover the fare and a letter from the star.
Jim recalls: “In the letter, he wrote, ‘Everyone treated me so well when I visited England, and I feel this was the least I could do’.”
Jim had a life-long history with Hollywood. He grew up next to the major studios and sneaked on to the set of Gone With The Wind as a kid, selling bottles of Coke to the cast.
When his dad helped get him a job with MGM’s PR fixer Howard Strickling, his first client was Clark Gable.
And Jim was amazed to find the studio had its own police force to quash scandals.
He says: “If anyone ever got into any kind of scrape with the law, thanks to the power of the studio most incidents were buried, and buried deep.
“People were taken care of, and the unfortunate incident just went away.
“There was Loretta Young’s affair and subsequent child with Gable.
“Another was a film distributor’s rape of a young showgirl on the back lot.
“Then there was the questionable suicide of Paul Bern, the MGM executive and husband of actress Jean Harlow.”
Clark Gable was rumoured to have run over and killed a pedestrian but the family was “taken care of” so the story never came out.
Strickling arranged marriages for stars such as Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck to help quash rumours they were gay.
Gable’s affair with Carole Lombard while still married to his second wife Rhea Langham was also suppressed.
When Jim switched jobs to work for a gossip columnist, he caught married Gary Cooper having a fling with actress Anita Ekberg, but sat on the story and approached Cooper, telling him where they could conduct their affair in private.
In return, Cooper gave him a host of stories.
He says: “It wasn’t uncommon for columnists like me to sit on horror stories about certain red-blooded, all-American celebrities.
“We let the celebrities know, and it earned us credits down the road.”
Some stars he did not get on with, however — such as “king of cool” Steve McQueen.
He says: “He had some selfish, chickens**t antics, like refusing at the last minute to attend a Press function because the limousine provided by the studio wasn’t white, or the current model.”
He says McQueen lost the co-starring role in 1969 film Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid to Robert Redford.
Jim says: “The reason? He wouldn’t take second billing to Paul Newman. You simply can’t do enough for some people, especially if they’re a**holes.”
And sometimes Jim could do nothing when the celebrities landed themselves in trouble.
In the mid-Sixties he was accompanying singer Peggy Lee when she was caught smuggling 20 cartons of cigarettes into the UK when the allowance was only two.
He had told her he would handle the customs officers but when they arrived and he said Peggy had nothing to declare, the singer piped up: “What about the cigarettes?”
Jim says: “They made her open all 26 bags, and the cigarettes were confiscated. At least it finally sank in that when I say don’t speak, DON’T SPEAK!”
Jim also had to step in when a story was about to break that Cher had fired shots at her then-husband Sonny Bono at their home because she had caught him cheating.
Jim says: “Seems Cher found Sonny doing something rude on the living room couch with one of her assistants. I got on the phone with Sonny.
“There were things to protect — a TV series, recording deals and concert dates all on the line.
“‘Are you two insane?’ I shouted. ‘You do know what could be lost here’.
“Luckily, Sonny and Cher understood the ramifications. They both agreed to explain the story was a figment of some sicko’s imagination. It was an Emmy-winning performance.”
Jim also looked after the Rolling Stones and tells how they turned down £800,000 for one show, with Mick Jagger saying: “The boys don’t want to work on Saturday.”
Another time Jim was called to the set of Dallas — then the biggest TV show in the world — because the cast were refusing to do Press interviews.
When he arrived to speak to JR Ewing actor Larry Hagman, it was a one-way conversation.
Jim says: “Among many Hagman quirks, he didn’t speak on Sundays.
“He rested his voice. So he was mute.”
In 2002, after more than 40 years in the business, Jim retired.
By then the celebrity landscape had changed beyond all recognition.
He says: “Today, we aren’t making stars like Elizabeth Taylor or Frank Sinatra, but we’re creating a far less talented genre of the star known as celebrity.
“They can’t sing or dance or act. They are famous for being famous.
“Looking back, I can see how some of the lessons I learned are still relevant today.
“One thing that has not changed: the egos of Hollywood.”
– Get Mahoney!: A Hollywood Insider’s Memoir, by Jim Mahoney, is out now, published by Bookbaby.
