"Ride the Tiger" new Theater Production
March 29, 2013 )
8:42 a.m. EDT , March 29, 2013
New York New Haven
Sam and Frank, JFK
and Judy Now on Stage
Jordan Lage plays Sam and Paul Anthony Stewart plays
Frank.
(T. Charles Erickson /
By FRANK RIZZO, frizzo@courant.comThe
Hartford
When William Mastrosimone was working on the script for the
1992 mini-series "Sinatra," the singer told him a startling tale that
involved Joseph Kennedy Sr., JFK, Chicago
It was a tale of power, sex, murder, intrigue and hubris,
the stuff of Greek tragedy, not to mention political and mob legend.
That story was the starting point for a new play, "Ride
the Tiger," now in previews, and opening Wednesday, April 3, at New Haven'sLong Wharf Theatre.
An earlier version of the work titled "Dirty
Business" premiered in Florida Long
Wharf
The Long Wharf production stars John Cunningham as the
senior Kennedy, Douglas Sills as JFK, Peter Anthony Stewart as Sinatra,
Christina Bennett Lind as Exner, and Jordan Lage as Giancana. Artistic director
Gordon Edelstein stages the show.
Over a diner breakfast near the meatpacking district where
the theater is located, the Trenton, N. J.-born Mastrosimone, 65, talked about
gaining Sinatra's trust and his own efforts to fill in the details of the story
of how the singer put the Kennedys in contact with Giancana, how the Mafia's
efforts in Chicago helped get Kennedy elected, how the Kennedys — once in
office — betrayed that favor, and what happened after.
Short, stout and balding Mastrosimone looks like someone who
could easily travel in the shadowy circles of power and intrigue, a no-nonsense
sideman who would make you feel comfortable sharing a confidence, counsel or a
drink.
"I found Sinatra at a time in his life when he was very
willing to tell the story," he says sotto voce.
"This was a man who was 77 and he wanted to get things
off his chest," says the writer. "Basically Frank was saying that Sam
Giancana had the motive, the means and the opportunity to do this."
"This" meaning the 1963 assassination of the
president.
Mob Ties
The play takes place from 1960 during the presidential
campaign through 1962, and presents a motive that allows the audience to
project to Dallas
The connections among the CIA, JFK and the mob is not breaking
news. Members of the Giancana family have already recounted their version of
the time in "Double Cross: The Explosive, Inside Story of the Mobster Who
Controlled America," a 1992 book by Giancana's brother Chuck Giancana and
Chuck's son Sam. Giancana's daughter Antoinette also wrote about political and
mob ties in the 2005 book "JFK and Sam: The Connection Between the
Giancana and the Kennedy Assassinations."
Mastrosimone is working as a dramatist, using information
from Sinatra's personal perspective to imagine the behind-the-scenes power
plays.
Does he believe that the well-established mob connections
led to Kennedy's assassination?
"Yeah," says Mastrosimone.
It started, he says, in 1960 with the senior Kennedy — who
made money in the booze business during and after g Prohibition — asking the
entertainer, who was a pal to JFK, to lunch.
"Joe said to Frank, 'You know some very unsavory people
in Chicago Chicago
"Sinatra went to Giancana and asked him for this
personal 'favor' which was the coin of the realm in that world. The assumption
was in the end Kennedy would get the labor vote and the mob would have someone
in the White House."
But once elected, Kennedy's brother Robert became attorney
general and launched a campaign against the Mafia by jailing, indicting and
deporting mobsters all around the country.
"It was a precaution against anyone saying the Mafia
got the president elected," says Mastrosimone, "and it worked."
All About Hubris
"What do you call someone who asks a favor like that
and then tries to screw the Mafia?" says Mastrosimone. "Are they
idiots? The Kennedys are not idiots. It's about hubris."
"Ride the Tiger" characterizes JFK as being
"undisciplined, out-of-control and an adrenaline freak," says the
playwright. In the play's first scene Joe Kennedy, a formidable planner who envisions a
100-year dynasty for his sons and their offspring, warns his son about his
problem.
"The Kennedys cut Frank out, too," says
Mastrosimone, "and that infuriated Sam who felt like he looked like a fool
in front of his people — and foolish means weak and that means there's danger
to his own life from his own people.
"Sam said to Frank: 'Joe knows who I am but his kids
think I'm the Boy Scouts. They don't appreciate that I am a powerful man.' The
last thing he said to Frank was, 'We're going to show those two brothers how
the Boy Scouts keep score."
JFK was killed in 1963; his brother Robert in 1968, though
Mastrosimone says the mob link to RFK's assassination is not strong. Giancana's
relationship with the CIA — he was involved
since the late '50s in plots to kill Cuba's Fidel Castro — has fueled a conspiracy theory
about the presidential assassination.
That theory was bolstered beginning in January, 1975, when a
senate committee was created, headed by U.S. Sen. Frank Church, a Democrat from
Idaho CIA
and Mafia ties.
Prior to testifying, Giancana was killed June 19, 1975 , in his Chicago
Mastrosimone believes that Giancana knew his killer because
the table was set for two and sausages and peppers were simmering on the stove.
The writer is not sure whether the murder was a mob hit or done by the CIA .
Mastrosimone remembers a telling transcript of a wiretap at
a restaurant where Giancana and another mobster were meeting. When the other
mobster, who was just indicted, asked him what to do, Sam pointed to a stuffed
marlin hanging on the wall. 'You see that fish up there? The only way it got
caught was when it opened its [expletive] mouth.'
Power of Beauty
And as for party girl Exner who linked Kennedy and Giancana?
Compared to the other characters, "she looks like an
ant next to giants," he says. "But her power was that of the Geisha
Girl — the power of beauty, being subservient and possessing the ability to
stop a man in his tracks with a glance. She understood that powerful men don't
want powerful mistresses. They want malleable people.
"But there are things that she wants. She believes that
Jack loves her and she has a future. She believes she can be First Lady, though
she never says that. Still, she fights for that in her own way."
Exner wrote her own memoir in 1977 entitled, "My
Story."
"I don't buy her version at all," says
Mastrosimone. "It's laughable. I think she wrote that book after Sam was
murdered to tell the Mafia, 'Look, I have a chance to spill the beans and I'm
not going to do it. In fact, I'm going to entertain you with all this [b.s.]
and lie and you will see you have nothing to fear from me.' I believe she was
truly fearful for her life." Exner died in 1999 at the age of 65. Joseph
Kennedy suffered a stroke in 1961 and died in 1969, living long enough to see
two sons assassinated. Sinatra died in 1998 at the age of 82.
Though Mastrosimone thought Exner's version was a protective
concoction he believes the behind-the-scenes story Sinatra told him for two
reasons.
"When we talked about JFK his eyes welled up. He was
still smarting from the betrayal 25 years later. But there was an even greater
reason why I believed him. The story he told made him look bad. That tough
Sinatra of popular propaganda is not in this play. In this play he gets pushed
around. He's humiliated. So why would he tell this story? Because he wanted the
truth to be told."
Does Mastrosimone have any fear of retribution for telling
this story?
"It would look good on my resume if I ended up like
Johnny Roselli in a 50-gallon drum filled with cement," he says with a
small smile of the mobster known as "Handsome Johnny," a friend of
Sinatra's who was called twice to Church's committee. "But the mentality
of the mob has changed. They would be proud of this."
And finally, the meaning of the title of the play?
Mastrosimone says it came from Kennedy's inaugural address
in which he warned countries who were gravitating toward Communism.
"Once you are riding the tiger," says
Mastrosimone, paraphrasing Kennedy, "the problem comes in the
dismounting."
RIDE THE TIGER runs through April 21 on Long
Wharf 222
Sargent Drive , New Haven
'Ride the Tiger' at Long Wharf
Joe Meyers
Published 2:06 pm ,
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
The history and mythology of John
F. Kennedy that has fascinated Americans for more than a half-century
is the inspiration for the new play at Long
Wharf Theatre, "Ride the Tiger," by William
Mastrosimone.
The play is about one of the most gossiped-about aspects of
the Kennedy story -- his friendship with Frank
Sinatra and his sexual relationship with Judith
Exner, a woman Kennedy shared with mob boss Sam
Giancana.
Some say the tangled web of politics, show business and
organized crime played a role in Kennedy's assassination less than three years
after he became president, so "Ride the Tiger" will be of special
interest to the conspiracy theorists going into overdrive as we approach Nov. 22, 2013 -- the 50th
anniversary of the terrible events in Dallas
In a phone interview last week, Lage said he was thrilled
that director Gordon
Edelstein had chosen him to be part of this much-anticipated
production.
"It's one of those roles you only get every few years,
so I feel very lucky. There aren't a lot of roles as juicy as this," Lage
said of playing Giancana.
"That whole era is just so interesting -- the fiction
that has been created out of it, and this is a fiction," the actor
stressed of Mastrosimone's take on what happened between the four major
characters in the lead up to the 1960 election and then the months after that.
The mix of the real and the mythological might remind some
theatergoers of the Oliver
Stone film, "J.F.K," Lage said.
"You do have to regard it as a made-up story, but there
is also that element of could this have been what happened?," the
performer noted of the many fictionalized takes on Kennedy and his tragic end
over the past 50 years (including, most recently, the very popular Stephen
King novel "11/22/63").
Lage said there has been much talk of the real Sinatra at
rehearsals for the play because Mastrosimone interviewed the star extensively
when he wrote a TV miniseries on the performer's life.
Apparently, Sinatra told the writer some things off the
record that might have found their way into "Ride the Tiger."
"Some of it seems too unbelievable to be true,"
Lage said, adding with a laugh, "But what could be more unbelievable than
what is going on in Washington
The actor has done some research into the gangster he plays,
but has focused on bringing the Giancana of the script to life rather than
create a facsimile of the real man.
Lage was stymied in his attempt to find out what Giancana
himself sounded like because there is so little footage of the gangster
available.
"I watched the footage of him (at one of the Senate
organized crime hearings) but he only gave monosyllabic answers, so I can't
really go for `authenticity,' " the actor said.
Giancana was a Chicago Chicago Chelsea Manhattan
"David (and his friends) grew up in the 1950s so I'm
not even sure if Giancana would have sounded anything like that since he came
from a much earlier era," he said.
The fascination with the Kennedy era has intensfied with the
popularity of the "Mad Men" TV series, which has depicted the lifestyles
of the men and the women of the early 1960s in loving detail.
"Every generation seems to have its own nostalgia
interests. In the 1970s there were so many things about the 20s -- `The Sting,'
`The Great Gatsby.' I think now we've moved up a few decades to `Mad Men' and
the Kennedys," Lage said.
Long Wharf Theatre, 222 Sargent
Drive , New Haven
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