15 Minutes With Fame: 50 Years Among the Stars

By Anthony Salerno

For the greater part of fifty years, it was the ride of a lifetime.

15 Minutes with Fame is a collection of personal anecdotes and stories that give the reader a taste of the excitement, exhilaration and joy Tony Salerno experienced in his five decades in the entertainment business. Whether it was with Fred Astaire, who inspired him; Paul Newman, who assured him; John Lennon, who awed him; Bette Midler, who moved him; or any of the more than four dozen other celebrities and luminaries profiled in these pages, the time Tony spent working with each of them gave him a unique and personal glimpse into who these people really were. A glimpse that a regular fan just couldn't get from the outside, but one they can share now.

Accentuated by "production notes" that take the reader behind the scenes of some of the biggest entertainment show and productions of the past half century, 15 Minutes with Fame will transport the reader backstage, as only an insider's perspective can.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638608714

Book preview

Foreword

It’s showtime, and I’m the outwardly cool, inwardly nerve-racked person responsible for everything going right and the audience responding with massive applause and cheers of approval at the end. I’m a professional producer—a hired gun—a show guy who knows all the parts and people necessary to create, develop, and produce any kind of theatrical production. For most of fifty years, production companies, corporations, associations and individuals have been hiring me to make their concerts, television programs, stadium spectaculars, special events, and corporate shows successful realities. And before I was a producer, I was learning my craft by doing almost every entertainment production job on the ladder, from page and gofer through writer, director, and executive producer.

In those fifty years, I was privileged to work with some of the biggest names in show business, politics, and sports—Frank Sinatra, John Lennon, Lucille Ball, George Bush, Muhammad Ali, Liza Minnelli, and hundreds more. Some were childhood heroes of mine, some just a voice on the radio, or a name in a newspaper, but all added to the texture, color, and fabric of my professional life.

They say that everyone gets their fifteen minutes of fame. Well, what I got was fifteen minutes with fame…hundreds, if not thousands, of times. By that, I mean that though my various jobs would find me working with myriads of celebrities, my personal interaction with them was, most often, for as little as fifteen minutes at a time. For most of my career, I was a working producer, and sometime director, worrying as much about the lighting, scenery, audio, script, etc., as I was about the talent. When I would meet and spend time with a given performer, it was almost always within the context of the show we were doing—Thanks for being here, Here’s the rundown of the show, You’re going to enter here on this cue, Here’s your mark, Exit here, Any questions? Always professional, always collegial… I always took the position that we were all there to do our jobs, and I found that whether it was Paul Newman or John Lennon, Tony Bennet or Muhammad Ali, that approach was recognized and appreciated.

Take, for instance, the time I was producing and directing a corporate show in Las Vegas for Honda Motors. Our evening’s entertainment was Bob Hope. Bob (I called him Mr. Hope) came in early to see the stage and do a sound check. I met him on stage, explained the rundown for the evening, showed him his mark, and had him do a sound check. Fifteen minutes and he was out of there till showtime. Later, another quick Hello before he went on, a thank you after his performance, and he was gone. But in that short encounter, he taught me a lesson and left an impression on me (more about that later), which I have carried with me ever since.

Altogether, maybe fifteen minutes—fifteen minutes with fame.

The reminiscences in the pages that follow are my memories of what happened in those short encounters and why I remember them. Some stayed with me just because it was cool working with a given star, or because of the way they may have played to, or against, my preconceived notion of them. Others may have taught me some sort of professional or personal lesson that I’ve tried to pass on to others. And, finally, a couple just reached down and tugged at my heartstrings in a way that will never leave me.

To put these stories in context, I have tried to lay them out somewhat chronologically by telling where I was in my career and where I was working at the time. I have also included production notes and anecdotes about some of the more unusual things that happened (not always planned and not always pretty) in the course of working on the hundreds of shows I’ve been fortunate to be a part of during the past fifty years. If you grimace at some of these, just think how I felt at the time.

In writing this memoir, thinking about one person or experience would often lead me to recall someone—or something—else from the distant past, which I would realize I had not thought about, or even remembered, since the day it actually happened. Obviously, I don’t remember everyone on every show I ever did; many were just names on a rundown that were handled by talent coordinators, stage managers, or other show executives. But an unexpected benefit of writing this all down has been that it has become quite a journey of rediscovery; a chance to relive special moments.

One other thing for the reader to consider: my stories are remembered through the prism of fifty years. They are my memories, and I’ll admit, some may have taken on lives of their own in my mind. I didn’t keep contemporaneous notes, so I’ve worked purely from recollection, as colored by time as it might be, sometimes jogged by friends and colleagues who were there. But these stories are how I remember them.

Finally, if you are looking for celebrity dirt, or lots of negative stories about movie stars, these anecdotes are not going to be for you. For the most part, I mostly seem to recall the good things only. I freely accept that my professional life was not a perfect stream of wonderful entertainment experiences, highlighted by moments with great stars and waves of massive audience applause—no one’s is—but after fifty years, it sort of feels that way. Like the theme song from the film The Way We Were says…

What’s too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget.

So it’s the laughter we will remember…

(The Way We Were, written by Alan and Marilyn Bergman and Marvin Hamlisch)

For the most part, it seems, I only remember the good times and how pleasant, nice, gracious, funny, amenable (and every other positive word you can think of) the famous people I worked with were. Sure, there were a few jerks along the way, but for the most part, everyone left me with a smile on my face.

So…let’s begin.

Introduction

The First Taste

I’m sitting in my office surrounded by memorabilia going back fifty years—pictures of shows that I worked on and celebrities I worked with, lots of family things, signed baseballs from teams I coached, and in my bookcase, my high school yearbook: Andrew Jackson High School, Class of 1967. All reminders of the improbable course of events which took me from the streets of Queens, New York, to a five-decade-long career in the entertainment business, producing television shows, concerts, stadium extravaganzas and international events, and rubbing shoulders with the biggest celebrities and show business stars in the world. It was an unlikely journey, but one which, I guess, was meant to be, with happenstance, fate, luck (whatever you want to call it), always seeming to be there, waving its hand, saying, Follow me.

1967…

Andrew Jackson High School sat right on the border between Cambria Heights and St. Albans in Queens, New York, and was fed by several other communities in the area. A massive, three-story, tan brick monument to Depression-era construction, it housed 3,500 hundred students, on triple session.

During my three years there (I entered as a sophomore), the student body was basically half White and half Black. The midsixties were a time of racial unrest, and often, confrontation in schools across America. But not at Jackson. For us, it was pretty much Camelot. Whether politics or parties, dances or dating, sports or studying, we were, for the most part, racially homogenous. Much to the chagrin of some parents, color didn’t matter to us. And we were smart—one of only two schools in the country, I believe, to win three National Merit Scholarships my senior year (I wasn’t one of them). And we were cool. So cool, in fact, that when graduation approached, we voted to not have a traditional prom—no tuxes, no limousines, and no sit-down dinner. Rather, we wanted to head into the city (Manhattan was always referred to as the city) to let loose. So rather than end up at some Beach Club on Long Island, our prom was held at a discotheque in New York called the Cheetah—right on Broadway and Fifty-Second Street, next door to the Hawaii Kai restaurant. Two bands—John Jay and the Gangbusters, and The Commanders—all the hot dogs you could eat, and five hours of almost nonstop dancing.

As vice president of the senior class, I was designated the MC of the evening, my most important job being the crowning of our Miss Cheetah—Beverly Banks. Now, ever since I can remember, I had always been kind of a ham, freely singing and dancing anywhere and anytime. Unfortunately, I had very little talent on the dance floor and couldn’t even talk on key, let alone sing. But that never stopped me. (Ever since I first heard it, I have been using a one-liner that I stole from Sammy Davis Jr. off his Live at the Coconut Grove album: When I open the refrigerator door, the light goes on and I do twenty minutes.) So here I am, onstage at the Cheetah, with a microphone in my hand, a band behind me, and a captured audience in front of me. The planets don’t get aligned like this too often, so I started singing. I don’t remember what song it was, but I hadn’t gotten through sixteen bars before various friends started shouting, and I, laughingly, was heckled off the stage. My little brush with performing immortality being memorialized in a photograph that appeared in our yearbook with the caption A Frank Sinatra he’s not!

Now, fast-forward twenty years…

It’s around 1987, and I am a full-fledged entertainment producer, standing in a studio at NBC in Rockefeller Center. I am senior vice president of a midsize production company called Imero Fiorentino Associates (IFA) and Avon, the beauty products company (Avon calling…), has asked us to produce a music video for which they’ve hired Frank Sinatra. Because I had worked with Sinatra a couple of times before, I’ve been asked to produce the video.

Apparently, Avon had promised their sales people that if they met a certain sales quota—sold a certain amount of perfume, makeup, etc.—that the company, Avon, would get Frank Sinatra to sing to the them, personally, at their next convention. Well, the Avon reps reached their goals, and so Avon tried to book Sinatra to sing My Way, with Avon specialty lyrics, for a sales convention that was coming up. Schedules couldn’t be worked out for a live appearance, so it was decided to do a tape of Frank singing the song, with a special greeting for the Avon ladies, which would be played at the meeting. I put the shoot together and helped write the specialty lyrics, and we shot at NBC in New York.

Bill Miller, Frank’s musical director at that time, would conduct the band. It was a big band, maybe twenty-five pieces, and consisted of a lot of guys Frank always used in New York. We wrote the Avon lyrics, booked the studio and crew, hired Don King, then the director of Saturday Night Live to direct, did our setup on the day of the shoot and were all set. The shoot was scheduled for when Frank was going to be in New York. There were rumors going around that he was in NY to go to Sloane Kettering for tests, that he might have cancer, all of which turned out not to be true. But he was in town, nonetheless, and we were ready to go.

Now, the word was that when you work with Frank, if he comes in and likes the way he did something, he could say, That’s it, I’m done, and he’s done. So Don King was nervous that Frank might come in, do the song once, say, Yeah, I got it. I like that, and leave—no rehearsal, no retakes. One shot and that’s it. So what we decided was that I would stand in for Sinatra for a short rehearsal before Frank got there. I knew the lyrics. I’m a Sinatra fan, so I knew how he would sing it, more or less, although, as I said, I don’t sing. But at least Don would get a chance to block and rehearse his camera shots. So there I was, standing in for Frank Sinatra, fronting his band with his musical director, at NBC…singing My Way (with Avon lyrics).

Eat your hearts out, class of ’67.

Another interesting thing that happened on that particular job was that for the first and only time, Sinatra actually spoke to me, directly. Over the years, and over the four or five projects that I did with him, I learned that you never talked to Frank directly. I never did anyway. Frank always had a group of people around him, so if you had a production question, you would go to Hank Cattaneo, his production/sound guy, and he’d get the answer. If you had a musical question, you would go to Bill Miller, or in later years, to Frank Jr. when he was conducting the band, and you’d tell them what you needed, musically. But you never spoke to Frank directly.

As it happened, Frank wanted to know when the video was going to be shown. And so, he asked the musical contractor, who was also the lead violin player, Who’s in charge here? and the contractor said, Tony Salerno is producing, and he pointed me out. And so, Frank came up to me and said, Anthony—for some reason, he called me Anthony instead of Tony—when is this going to be seen? Well, I didn’t even get a chance to answer before the Avon client, who was standing next to me, jumped in and answered the question. Anyway, that was the only time that Sinatra ever actually spoke to me directly and it was a one-way conversation at that.

And so, I stood in for Frank Sinatra at rehearsal at NBC and sang My Way (with Avon specialty lyrics). It was great fun, and although tape was not rolling, I do have a picture in my office of me fronting the band, singing, with Bill Miller behind me conducting. It’s a great turnabout from that photo twenty years earlier labeling me A Frank Sinatra he’s not!

1967 (with classmate, Shirley Jhin). They said, A Frank Sinatra He’s Not. (Photo from author’s archives.)

Standing in for Frank Sinatra in rehearsal at NBC for an Avon video

(Photo from IFA archives, by permission of Angela Fiorentino)

Chapter 1

The Beginning… The Dick Cavett Show

It’s the autumn of 1967 and the Q 4 bus is rumbling down Linden Boulevard on its way to the Jamaica Bus Terminal. I’ll get off on Parson’s Boulevard to catch a second bus, the Q 25, that will take me to Queens College where I am a freshman. It’s a commuter school with upward of 28,000 students. There are no dorms, no football team, let alone stadium (we even have to borrow the baseball field of John Bowne High School for our baseball team), and few parking lots, which doesn’t bother me since I don’t have a car and am relegated to the bus anyway. But it’s actually a very highly rated liberal arts college and it’s free. An 88 average and $35 per semester registration fee, and you’re in. And I hated it! All through high school I dreamed about going away to college. Nobody’s fault, but now I’m still riding the same bus I took every day to Jackson to get to classes and then back home again to my same room in my same house.

In an effort to create some semblance of college life, I pledged for a fraternity, Zeta Beta Tau, ZBT—Zion Bankers Trust. It’s a Jewish fraternity, and I was the token goy. Actually, there was another guy, Barry Tessoriero, but he graduated just as I got in, so then it was just me. I grew up in a predominantly Jewish area