They were high-flying times, literally. In November 1961, Sinatra swooped in for his Sands engagement on "El Dago," a $100,000 "flying hotel" equipped with an electric piano, sofas, a cocktail bar and two restrooms. Jerry Vale remembers Frank wanting to show it off. "I said, 'Frank, you get through at one-thirty in the morning. I gotta do a show at two forty-five.' He said, 'No, no, we'll wait for you. Don't worry about it. ... You come back to my suite, we'll wait for you.'
"I did my last show. ... I run and change my tux real fast, and my wife and I go back there to his suite. ... They're all sitting there waiting.
(Baseball manager) Leo Durocher said, 'Whatta you got on this guy? He don't wait for anybody.'
"He [Frank] had a way of trying to get you to go on the plane. He used to close the door, and if he flew somewhere, you had to go with him. So I said to my wife, 'Stay near the door. Don't let them close the door, because he's gonna go to Mexico and we'll have to go to Mexico with him.' He said, 'Where you going?' I said, 'I'm leaving.' I ran out the door, because I knew how he was."
During that same engagement, Sergeant's 3 was being edited for its debut the next February. Sinatra secured a Las Vegas theater for a late-night screening and invited Jerry Vale along. There was just one catch, Vale recalled: "I said, 'Frank, I've got to do a last show.' [Later] he comes in and walks over and says, 'C'mon, let's go.' I started to walk out and the fellow in charge of the lounge says, 'Where're you going? ... You can't leave, we've got a whole bunch of people here to see you.'
"So I grabbed Frank and said, 'Bobby (Entratter, Sands' owner Jack's nephew) doesn't want me to leave.' He said, 'Wait a minute.' He called Bobby over and said, 'Look here. If those people like him so much, tell 'em to buy his records.' And we walked out."
