The seven deadly sins of Hollywood (1957)

THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS OF HOLLYWOOD However, I had come to Romanoff's, the swank Hollywood restaurant, to have dinner with Mr. Sinatra — not to sock him on the nose. As a guest of producer Otto Preminger I felt it would be somewhat impolite of me to do this. So I finished my Weiner Schnitzel and nobody socked anybody on the nose. The idea of dining with Sinatra (who says he hates reporters) was that I should have an opportunity of meeting the Golden Boy (with the iron fist) at a time when good food and wine and a congenial atmosphere would have soothed his disposition. The theory was that he would then talk freely and reveal his more agreeable self, which is not always the side of him that is most noticeable. In practice it did not quite work out that way. Mr. Sinatra is apparently not so easily soothed. Moreover, the interview was limited in scope by another factor: he had brought a girl-friend along who would periodically give him an affectionate hug or a loving squeeze. In those circumstances it was scarcely possible to ask him about Ava Gardner. Or about his fatal attraction for women. Actually one did not have to ask — one merely had to watch. The dinner soon became more of a party than an interview, with a constant procession of film celebrities like Spencer Tracy, Ronald Colman, Esther Williams, making their pilgrimage to the Sinatra table to exchange pleasantries with the prima-donna of Tin Pan Alley. As far as I was able to ascertain he did not express the wish to punch any of them on the nose. This was Sinatra holding court — a spectacle that is part of the Hollywood scenery these days. Hollywood is a place where they worship success, the sun and Cecil B. De Mille, and the sort of table you get at Romanoff's is dependent on the box-office returns of your last film. As Preminger is one of the top producer 120