Happy Hare…Back on the Springboard to Gehenna

I covered my segue from Galveston to Hollywood pretty completely in the earlier chapter titled “Happy Hare’s Springboard to Gehenna.” It is the allegory telling how I went from Galveston Texas radio to Hollywood in one dazzling move. I have described other elements of this epic in previous chapters.

In order to orientate yourself to this chapter, please read the “Gehenna” chapter if for some reason you did not get to it before. Scroll down the chapters about ¾ of the way till you see it.

Read last weeks’ entry, “Mafia Don Sam Maceo, my Patron Saint..” in which I introduced this week’s actors..

The Cast of Characters

Sam Maceo…… A Mafia Don.

“Sedgie” Maceo… Sam’s wife, a former blooming Hollywood star.

Jan Garber… The orchestra leader who orchestrated my departure to Hollywood

Anthony Fertitta…The Main Man under Sam, his Enforcer.

Vic Maceo……. .The “Fredo” type younger brother of Sam.

Pete Miller……. My personal Balinese Room waiter and underminer.

Joan Schroeder… My first grown up love relationship.

Frank Sinatra…. A lounge singer.

During a seemingly innocuous exchange at the Balinese Room one evening, Society orchestra leader, Jan Garber, casually mentioned to Sam Maceo that he admired my talent and that maybe he, Jan, might intervene in my behalf with his friend Don Fedderson, the VP/GM. at KLAC in Hollywood.

Jan had placed himself in a trap. Snap! Maceo “suggested” that Garber make it happen. In Mafia-ese, “Suggest” means, “Do it.”

Jan “did it.” I was hired by Fedderson with instructions to report to KLAC after undergoing Marine Reserve training exercises at Camp Pendleton.

A flash-back is appropriate in order for you to understand the scope of Maceo’s power. In bucolic Galveston, he arranged for Phil Harris and Alice Faye, the hottest couple in show business, to marry in a highly public ceremony choreographed by him with the flair of a Busby Berkeley production.

Faye preceded Betty Grable as the blonde goddess of Hollywood. In the year prior, Sedgie Maceo had been featured in a Hollywood movie. with her. Now, she was the bride of Sam Maceo. When he proposed, she didn’t exactly fall into his arms. That story later.

I met Sam in person after my historic on-the-spot reporting of the Texas City Disaster in 1947. He heard it, was impressed, and summoned me to emcee his network dance remotes from the Balinese Room. I was 20 years old, with no concept of his Dondom. To me, he was simply a nice guy who wanted to help.

The one discordant note: his almost constant companion was his reputedly evil older brother, Rose. In the years that I saw Rose, he never even nodded to me, despite standing next to me. He had been a stone cold killer and looked it.

Rose and Sam came to the States from Sicily in 1901 when the Maceos opened up a barber shop. Business jumped during Prohibition when they began rum running from the Caribbean Islands. Not rot gut. Real rum.

Those who challenged the Maceo “hold” on rum running wound up under several feet of sand on the isolated stretches of beach down the island. There is a legend that the pirate, Jean Lafitte, buried treasure in this same area. The joke is that if this were true, Rose would have found it.

In last week’s chapter, I described Anthony Fertitta, the Maceos’ “muscle” in the stages from rum running to gambling and rackets. Now, he was the point man in the Maceo interests all the way up the Texas coast to Louisiana. He ran the Balinese Room on a daily basis.

Pete Miller, my assigned waiter at the Balinese Room, was smitten with my girl friend, Joan Schroeder. I often brought Joan with me for dinner and dancing. I was so confident during the dance remotes that I would announce the songs, then dance with her during the show.

I liked Pete Miller, whom I described as a Pete Sampras look-alike, but his attraction to Joan was so blatant that Anthony Fertitta pulled me aside one evening when I arrived to do the broadcast. He led me to a quiet corner of the Room and said,” Harry. I think you should know that Pete Miller is making an ass of himself with your girl. The boss knows about it and asked me to tell you that if you give me the word, I will let him go.”

To have agreed would have been to admit weakness, not a good thing when dealing with a Don. I said,” No, thank you, Anthony. Thank Mr. Maceo. I’ll handle it.” He smiled and nodded, like that was the right answer.

Maceo bestowed other prize gigs on me, at the Studio Lounge, a posh boutique where he booked major stars. I brought on: Peggy Lee, Peter Lind Hayes and Mary Healy, Joe E Lewis and a very young Patti Page.

Patti and I hit it off in Galveston and she went on to play an integral part of my life. Ten years later, she helped me perform an audition for WNEW in New York. They had assured me that I was hired, and this was for the record only. .Patti, good naturedly, sang a very hillbilly duet rendition with me of “I Only Want A Buddy, Not a Sweetheart.” It worked, then I bailed out of the deal for personal reasons, explained earlier in this series. Patti’s portrait hangs next to mine on a wall in a four star San Diego restaurant. She is a sweet unaffected lady.

A highlight of my career was when Sam Maceo asked me to emcee the anniversary of the Tokyo Raiders, with General James Doolittle himself as the star attraction. These were the men who were immortalized in the Movie,” Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.”

The acclaimed pianist Carmen Cavallero was brought in to entertain and I was tasked to bring him on. He gave a rousing 20 minute concert. As I was introducing the General, I could see tears glistening on the faces of his fliers.

He was a man of short stature who appeared to be much taller when he strode to the stage and spoke in a sonorous voice, telling them how proud he was of them. When he finished, a former senior officer in the gathering bellowed, “Attention!” All jumped to their feet and snapped stiff salutes, straight out of the manual.

It was near time for me to go Hollywood and there was unfinished business. I had noticed that Joan was beginning to flag in her interest toward me. When we sat together on a bench facing the Gulf, I asked her how she felt about going to Hollywood with me. She sighed and said that Hollywood sounded too scary to her, and besides, she had come to love Pete Miller.

Everyone falls silent before the truth. It was so final that I got up and drove off without looking back. She and Miller married shortly after, and lived a long life together. Joan died a few years ago and Pete died earlier this year.

Pete became a successful CPA who made the mistake of dealing with Vic (Fredo) Maceo. He bought a house from Maceo for $45,000 back in ’68, then sold it in 1991 for a reported. $180.000.

Upon hearing this, an enraged 89 year old “Fredo” burst into Miller’s home, shoved Joan aside, and demanded half of the profits from the sale. He was furious that a mere bus boy would get the best of a Maceo.

Pete stalled him for a few too many seconds fumbling for his files, prompting Vic to pull a gun and shoot him, Luckily his aim was off, and he shot Miller in the arm. Pete, in true gangland tradition of “not snitching,” did not file charges…..nor share the profit.

Now, it was only a matter of doing my last Balinese Room remote, then the next morning, joining my Company B Marine Reserve buddies aboard a DC 3 and flying to Pendleton, invading Oceanside, and busing to Hollywood. It did not hit me that I had little money for the trip.

I have saved the best character for last. Not Sam. Not Rose…. Not Fertitta. But….Sedgie Maceo.. Often, when I was doing the remote, She would float regally into the Balinese Room, smile faintly at me, and continue into Sam’s office. I had no impression that she noticed me, above the smile and faint wave.

The final night she arrived, but this time sat down at a table, and watched me do the show with Jan Garber, then she applauded warmly, and walked into Sam’s office. Fetitta motioned for me to follow her, where I found the two sitting together on a couch, smiling at me conspiratorially. Jan Garber soon followed.

Sam whipped out a check book and said, “Harry, my wife and I think you deserve a little gratitude for all the things you have done for us. He then took out a golden pen, and studied his check book with great theater, and began writing with a flourish. Then, he rose, handed me the check, put a hand on my shoulder, and said with feeling, “Good luck, son.” Sedgie wrapped me in a tight embrace.

I looked at the check when I was out of the office.

$1,000…… in 1949 money.

Earlier, I told you that there was a story behind Sedgie’s consent to marry Sam. When he proposed, she told him she loved him deeply, but that she wanted children and refused to raise them as Mafiosi. Maceo, at this stage of his career, had softened. Besides, he could not stand to lose her…..easy decision.

He began converting his wealth into Texas oil. She bore him beautiful twin dark eyed boys, each with towering pompadours like their dad. So, contrary to lore, it was not the Little Kefauver anti-crime commission that got Sam out of the rackets. It was Sedgie Maceo.

Anthony Fertitta slowly took over gaming, as Sam osmoted into Oil,. and by the time the Little Kefauver Commission began busting the Texas coast rackets, he had pretty well dried up the operations.

Sam had helped Vegas’s first gaming hotelier, Moe Dalitz, fund and organize the set-up when Dalitz built the Desert Inn. A grateful Dalitz absorbed all of the Maceo group, including Anthony.

In 1951, Sam died unexpectedly while undergoing minor surgery. It was just a year or so after he had sent me to Hollywood with my $1000.00 stash and the two suits he had given me. He never asked me to do him any “favors” like you saw in “The Godfather.”

Frank Sinatra, Lord of the Ring a Ding Dings!

When I arrived in Hollywood it was only a matter of days before Frank appeared to me on a pretext of quoting something amusing that I had said on KLAC. The fact is, Sam Maceo had asked Frank to look in on me.

I loved the latter 40’s songs that he recorded with Axel Stordahl, and played them often at KLAC when few other jocks did. He was down and out at the time and took my gesture to be a show of loyalty, important to him all his life.

I never personally experienced his reputed wild side, but witnessed it the time he invited only me and Carol backstage at NBC Burbank to see his “ Frank Sinatra, the Man and his Music” TV dress rehearsal in the early 70’s.

Ecstatic that his dress rehearsal taping had gone so well, he cancelled the actual show, scheduled to follow immediately that afternoon. The order to run the rehearsal tape left several hundred Network Brass, Budweiser Distributors and their buffed-out wives stranded in the blazing sun on the NBC front sidewalk. only to be told there would be no performance for them.

                          Epilogue

Anthony Fertitta’s grandson, Anthony Fetitta III, created the wildly successful UFC Fights, headquartered in Las Vegas. I think his grandpa, Anthony Sr., would have been a champion UFC fighter.