# I Don't Want Anybody in Here Without Coats and Ties



## Snow Hill Pond (Aug 10, 2011)

They were a cool young group, very California-cool and casual, and one of the coolest seemed to be a little guy, very quick of movement, who had a sharp profile, pale blue eyes, blondish hair, and squared eyeglasses. He wore a pair of brown corduroy slacks, a green shaggy-dog Shetland sweater, a tan suede jacket, and Game Warden boots, for which he had recently paid $60.

Frank Sinatra, leaning against the stool, sniffling a bit from his cold, could not take his eyes off the Game Warden boots. Once, after gazing at them for a few moments, he turned away; but now he was focused on them again. The owner of the boots, who was just standing in them watching the pool game, was named Harlan Ellison, a writer who had just completed work on a screenplay, _The Oscar._

Finally Sinatra could not contain himself.

"Hey," he yelled in his slightly harsh voice that still had a soft, sharp edge. "Those Italian boots?"

"No," Ellison said.

"Spanish?"

"No."

"Are they English boots?"

"Look, I donno, man," Ellison shot back, frowning at Sinatra, then turning away again.

Now the poolroom was suddenly silent. Leo Durocher who had been poised behind his cue stick and was bent low just froze in that position for a second. Nobody moved. Then Sinatra moved away from the stool and walked with that slow, arrogant swagger of his toward Ellison, the hard tap of Sinatra's shoes the only sound in the room. Then, looking down at Ellison with a slightly raised eyebrow and a tricky little smile, Sinatra asked: "You expecting a storm?"

Harlan Ellison moved a step to the side. "Look, is there any reason why you're talking to me?"

"I don't like the way you're dressed," Sinatra said.

"Hate to shake you up," Ellison said, "but I dress to suit myself."

Now there was some rumbling in the room, and somebody said, "Com'on, Harlan, let's get out of here," and Leo Durocher made his pool shot and said, "Yeah, com'on."

But Ellison stood his ground.

Sinatra said, "What do you do?"

"I'm a plumber," Ellison said.

"No, no, he's not," another young man quickly yelled from across the table. "He wrote _The Oscar._"

"Oh, yeah," Sinatra said, "well I've seen it, and it's a piece of crap."

"That's strange," Ellison said, "because they haven't even released it yet."

"Well, I've seen it," Sinatra repeated, "and it's a piece of crap."

Now Brad Dexter, very anxious, very big opposite the small figure of Ellison, said, "Com'on, kid, I don't want you in this room."

"Hey," Sinatra interrupted Dexter, "can't you see I'm talking to this guy?"

Dexter was confused. Then his whole attitude changed, and his voice went soft and he said to Ellison, almost with a plea, "Why do you persist in tormenting me?"

The whole scene was becoming ridiculous, and it seemed that Sinatra was only half-serious, perhaps just reacting out of sheer boredom or inner despair; at any rate, after a few more exchanges Harlan Ellison left the room. By this time the word had gotten out to those on the dance floor about the Sinatra-Ellison exchange, and somebody went to look for the manager of the club. But somebody else said that the manager had already heard about it -- and had quickly gone out the door, hopped in his car and drove home. So the assistant manager went into the poolroom. 

"I don't want anybody in here without coats and ties," Sinatra snapped. 

The assistant manager nodded, and walked back to his office.

*--Gay Talese, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold", Esquire Magazine (1966)
*


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## Tempest (Aug 16, 2012)

Sinatra always was a low-life piece of garbage, wasn't he?


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## MarkY (Mar 24, 2005)

Tempest said:


> Sinatra always was a low-life piece of garbage, wasn't he?


Yes he was. A real a$$hole.


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## Jovan (Mar 7, 2006)

Don't be so quick to make Sinatra out to be the only bad guy. Harlan Ellison is perhaps one of the most self-absorbed jerk authors of the last century. Don't believe me? Just ask anyone who had to work with him on making the screenplay of one of the best episodes of Star Trek actually usable. When he won an award for it, he shook it in the faces of the producers who had come to support him at the ceremony. That's just one example.


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## VaBeach (Oct 14, 2013)

The first question that comes to me is - is Sinatra's rant as described any worse than those tantrums demonstrated by today's so called stars (most are flashes in the pan)? Impetuous by any other name is...well you get the idea. But does it matter by whom?


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## WouldaShoulda (Aug 5, 2009)

A stranger walks into a pool hall.

The new guy gets his chops busted by a regular.

Slice of life.


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## efdll (Sep 11, 2008)

Sinatra was a despot. Had he been born in another time and place but acquired the same status -- America's highest class, as Gore Vidal pointed out, a celebrity -- he might have been torturing and beheading. As it was, he was only obnoxious. He did have strict ideas about dress code and he enforced them, just as he enforced everything else because he could. One must concede, however, that he had a point about the footwear. Sure, everybody has a right to wear whatever, but no, the boots were not proper, they were an affectation. From what I read in these fora I suspect many members, if endowed with Sinatra's power, would be just as despotic about flip-flops, baseball caps, etc. It's a temptation to wield power that will never come my way, but who knows if I too could be a tyrant.
S.O.B. sure could sing, though.


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## Snow Hill Pond (Aug 10, 2011)

efdll said:


> It's a temptation to wield power that will never come my way, but who knows if I too could be a tyrant.


Was it Lincoln who said, "Any man can withstand hardship, but if you want to see a man's true character, give him power."


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