The File on Bobby Darin, Chapter 23

Chapter 23

The Washington air was heavy with the scent of hibiscus when Bobby arose the next morning and said goodbye to the Casino Royal coat check girl with the flawless complexion and mane of thick black hair.  Darin had found her waiting around the corner of his motel the previous night as Winchell had performed the song and dance for him.  This date had been prearranged, when Darin had not known that Winchell would be there to see him to his room.  The dark lovely had hidden herself in the dark behind an immense dogwood shrub until Darin’s companion, unfamiliar to her, had finally gone away.  Too bad Walter had not known that he actually had an audience of two!

Once Winchell had retreated back down the street and out of sight, Darin had nodded to the hidden girl.  He placed an arm around her slim waist and drew her to him as he unlocked the motel room door.  She melted against Bobby’s side even as she looked down the street after the song and dance man.  “Who was that?” she wanted to know.

Darin cast a glance at Winchell over his shoulder.  “That?  Oh, that’s just my grandfather.  He comes to see me every night, faithful as an old dog!”

The young woman blinked as she looked at Bobby, wondering if she were hearing the truth.  “Really?” she asked.

Bobby smiled and nodded, “Yep, that’s grandpa all right.  He has a heck of a time giving grandma the slip to get out to my shows!”  As he spun a tale about grandma being a bootlegger during Prohibition who actually smuggled the stuff inside a bona fide hollow wooden leg, Bobby opened the door and drew her inside where he turned on every light in the room, then closed the shades.  He led his guest to a small love seat pushed up against the wall.  Seating himself next to her, he noted that they were exactly the same height, fitting perfectly, hip to shoulder.  He buried his nose into her neck and dark hair, exhaling softly in relief.  The girl pulled back in hesitation for a fraction of a second before she relaxed against him.  He said to her in a low voice, “This is it, baby, the promised land!”

They parted early the following morning, and he never did see her again.

Before Bobby or any of the band members were awake that morning, Walter Winchell had put in a call from his Washington hotel room to the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  J. Edgar Hoover did not always take Winchell’s phone calls, sometimes passing him off to an associate or assistant director, or even to his formidable secretary, Miss Gandy, who was qualified to handle any routine request from Walter.  But when Hoover was in the mood for a little celebrity gossip, Winchell fit the bill quite nicely. 

When Winchell was put through to Hoover’s line, he greeted him, “Good morning, John, what you know, what do you say?”

Hoover chuckled into the phone, “We usually know much more than we say in this office, Walter.”

“Just as it should be, John,” Walter agreed.  “I know you’re a busy man, so I’ll get right to the point.”  Winchell briefly outlined his request.

Hoover listened to Winchell while perusing a memo on his desk and penning a short note into the margin.  “Yes, there should be no problem with that.  I will let my people know.”

“Should we pop up to your office after we’re through?” Winchell asked.

Hoover was already reading the next memo in his stack.  “I don’t think I will be in, Walter.  Maybe next time.”

Winchell was a little disappointed, but not surprised.  “No worries, John, I know you’re a busy man these days.”

“That’s quite all right,” Hoover told him.  “An agent will be prepared to meet you.  I hope we will see you at the Stork Club sometime.”  Just as he was hanging up the phone, he added amiably, “And don’t call me John!”  Hoover was not ordinarily immune to the lure of celebrity, but he was occupied just now with the confidential files (the same files he had repeatedly told the Attorney General did not exist) on Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy, to see if they needed to be updated before the coming election.  Hoover’s future as the head of the Bureau was assured as long as he held onto the secrets of his elected masters, but at this time, he did not know who that would be, and he did not want to be caught unprepared.

Back at the Casino Royal, the house band had yet to arrive for rehearsal.  Darin was conferring onstage with Dick and Ronnie in preparation for that evening’s performance.  The opening night had been a little stiff, Darin told them.  They needed to make some changes in the song order, perhaps swap out a few numbers, to connect with this Washington audience.  Darin paced the stage restlessly as he discussed the matter.  He stopped to look out over the empty tables, trying to imagine the room filled with people.  “We need something, guys, some kind of hook.  What can we put onstage that will get their attention, get them moving?”

Dick’s mind was a blank, though he certainly agreed with Bobby, they needed something that had been lacking the night before.

At long last Ronnie Zito suggested, “How about an alarm clock?”

Both Bobby and Dick merely looked at Ronnie and said nothing.

“Okay, then” Ronnie persisted, “how about an intermission with nap time?  Maybe they’d come back refreshed and ready to listen to some good music.”

“Good one, Ronald,” Bobby said as he sat himself down before the piano and began running through the chords for I Got A Woman.  The group sat in silence until a tall, thin man with graying curly hair and a worried expression quietly approached the bandstand.  Dick thought that he resembled a very old sheep.

Bobby looked up from the piano keys.  “Good morning, Mr. Zieger,” he said.  “What can I do for you?”

Lee Zieger had the appearance of a rather nervous man, someone who devoted as much time wondering whether his next meal would agree with him as he spent running his nightclub.  He pursed his thin lips and paused before he replied.  “I’d like to talk to you about last night’s show, Mr. Darin.”

Bobby rose from the piano bench, frowning and nodding his head.  “I know, we weren’t exactly cooking last night, Mr. Zieger, but I can promise you, we’re working on that, and we’re going to get it right.”

Lee Zieger’s gray eyes widened in alarm.  He held up his hands to remonstrate.  “Oh no, Mr. Darin, the show was quite ‘cooking’ enough, I can assure you!  There is a problem, though, with one of the songs you sang, the final song, in fact, I think you were playing it just now.”

Bobby looked puzzled for an instant, then cracked a small, crooked smile.  “The Ray Charles?”  He asked.  “I Got A Woman?  Someone didn’t like it?”  Now Bobby walked toward the nightclub owner to look squarely at him.  Dick and Ronnie sat up at attention behind Bobby.  They had not heard of any objection to any song on the lineup before, except for the Cole Porter tune, Love For Sale.  Some people seemed to think it was not a fit topic, for a white singer, at any rate.

Lee Zieger met Bobby’s gaze calmly.  The mild manner of the club owner was a bit of a deception on his part, for it masked a quiet, yet powerful insistence on having things done his way.  Zieger had found that there was no other way to run a nightspot and have it be a success.  Nothing was beyond his notice or power to change, from the cut of the busboy’s pants right up to the choice of songs of his headliner. 

Darin simply looked at Lee Zieger, saying nothing.  Finally Dick asked, “What’s wrong with the song, Mr. Zieger?”

Lee Zieger look at each of them in turn, studying them, and then turned back to Bobby.  “We don’t like that,” he paused to search for the next word, “that race music down here.”  He could have used another word, but he did not, because he did not want Darin to walk out of the club at that moment.

“Mr. Zieger,” Bobby said evenly, “Surely your patrons don’t object to a song written by Ray Charles.  The man is the greatest thing since Beethoven!  He’s a little darker than Beethoven, for sure, but still!”

Lee Zieger said, “We have colored entertainers on stage in front of a mixed-race audience.  But that song, Mr. Darin, it sounds like it belongs in a brothel, and I won’t have it here.”

“Then I guess you won’t have me here, Mr. Zeiger.”

At this point, Dick rose from his chair and moved forward, signaling across the room to Steve Blauner, who had been seated at a table looking over earning statements from Atco.  He had been only half listening to the conversation up until this point.  His antennae went up instinctively upon hearing the phrase “colored entertainers,” however, and he rose from his seat and strolled in the direction of the bandstand.

“Really, Mr. Zeiger,” Bobby said to him quietly, “I find that most audiences actually enjoy this music once they give it a chance.”

“We don’t need to take any chances, young man, you can do the music that we already know they like.”

Bobby Darin let out a breath as he looked at Lee Zieger.  Just as he was opening his mouth to speak again, Steve Blauner came up beside him and said, “That’s enough, let’s take five!”  Blauner addressed himself to Mr. Zieger.  “Don’t worry, Lee, we will iron this out.”  And he walked the quietly seething Darin off of the bandstand and toward the front of the building.  The two men exited onto the sidewalk where Bobby let loose a torrent of Italian-flavored abuse toward all nightclub owners, their friends and families. 

Blauner waited patiently as Bobby’s storm blew itself out.  There was no point in trying to interject any comment at this time.  Blauner simply mimed his response to Bobby’s tirade with nods, shrugs, and sympathetic shakes of his head until Bobby ran out of steam and could talk no more.  Breathing hard, as though he had been running, Bobby finally said, “Who needs him!  We can take this act to any other place in town.” 

Blauner said nothing for a long moment, studying his client and seeming to silently agree with him.  He took Bobby by the arm and turned him out toward the street.  “This is not New York City, young man; this is Washington, DC, our nation’s capital.  There are not dozens of nightspots here, as there are back home.  For an act of your size, with more than a dozen guys in the band, there are exactly two places that can accommodate you.  Understand?”

Bobby’s breathing had settled down to normal.  He nodded as they looked out onto the street together.

“One of those places is right behind us, the Casino Royal, owned by the inestimable Mr. Zieger.”  Blauner put his arm on Bobby’s shoulder and pointed to a building directly across the street.  “The other place,” he told Bobby, “is the Blue Mirror, right there in front of us, owner, Lee Zieger.”

Bobby’s shoulders sagged momentarily on receipt of this news.  But he quickly rallied.  “Who gives a hang?” he said.  “We don’t need this town!”

“What we don’t need is a stupid fight over nothing during your last gig before you leave the country.  You said yourself you were thinking of swapping out some of the tunes.  So swap!”  With that, Steve Blauner threw his hands in the air and walked away from his hotheaded client.

Dorothy had known before she ever spoke to Walter that it was not going to be easy to persuade him to drop the story of Bobby Darin’s birth.  She pretended to be taking in the décor of the sparse office.  “Do you think gossip columnists get into Heaven, Walter?”

Walter gave a toss of his head in response to this.  “Fortunately for me, as a Jew, that point is moot!”

Dorothy ceased her inspection of the room and turned her eyes back upon him.  “But there can be Hell on earth, Walter.  I can make New York City too hot to hold you if you don’t drop this story.”

Walter Winchell pressed his lips together and blew out a derisive breath.  “What are you going to do to me, Dorothy?  We both work for Hearst papers, after all.”

Dorothy raised her head and pointed her chin at Walter.  “I won’t need to talk to your boss, Walter, I only need to talk to your wife.”

Now Winchell laughed and slapped his knee.  “Talk to June?  Whatever for?”  It was almost funny, imagining Dorothy trying to set June against him, as if such a thing were possible.  Kilgallen must really be getting desperate, he thought.

But the long pause that Dorothy let pass should have warned Winchell of impending danger.  It was the silence of a person who does not need to argue, because she knows she has the upper hand.  At last Dorothy said, “I won’t talk to your wife June.  I will talk to your wife Rita.”

Walter Winchell slumped on the stool on which he was seated.  Not a stroke, he decided.  It would be a heart attack that would carry him off.  Here.  Now.  His vision was closing down, as though he were in a tunnel.  He thought, for the first time in his life, that he might faint.

Continued in the next chapter

ID: 1474052   (Rated: ASR) The File on Bobby Darin, Chapter 24  An early close at Casino Royal by Gisele