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blackmail and a wealthy family with too many secrets. Sinatra shot his scenes during the day, shuttling between locations like Vizcaya, the Fifth Street Gym and seedy bars and motels on old South Beach. At night, he played to a packed house at the Fontainebleau’s La Ronde nightclub. He’d sip Jack Daniel’s, run through a dozen or so of his signature songs, and mix in a little Rat Pack humor. One gag involved sitting on a stool that had a seat belt. “The last time I was here, I fell off,” he informed the audience. Then, for those who didn’t quite catch his drift: “I’m bombed!” It was great fun, but, as with all things Sinatra, there was an undercurrent of danger, as comedian Shecky Greene found out. Greene was Sinatra’s opening act at the La Ronde and also played one of the bad guys in “Tony Rome,” so the two men were spending a lot of time together. Perhaps too much time. The comic somehow ran afoul of his host. Some claimed Sinatra was upset because Greene’s warm-up act ran long one night, thus keeping the Chairman of the Board waiting in the wings. Others said it was drunken horseplay that got out of hand. Whatever the case, Greene was ambushed by Sinatra’s bodyguards in the hotel lobby and beaten so severely he had to be taken to the hospital. When Miami Beach police inquired about the incident, Greene quipped that he had fallen up a flight of stairs. The next day, filming resumed as if nothing had happened. Greene would eventually get the last laugh, as the incident inspired him to compose one of the great showbiz jokes. It goes something like this: “People say a lot of nasty things about Frank Sinatra, but he’s really a great guy. Seriously. He saved my life once. A couple of thugs were beating the hell out of me in the Fontainebleau Hotel. All of a sudden, Frank came along and said, ‘OK, boys, that’s enough.’”
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the Lizard King If Arthur Godfrey’s swim in the ocean behind the Kenilworth represented the dawn of Miami’s golden age, perhaps sunset came at the Dinner Key Auditorium on March 1, 1969. That’s the night rock singer Jim Morrison allegedly showed off more than his musical talents to an overflow crowd. Morrison, a Florida native, had come to Miami with his band The Doors to kick off a
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