Please release her... or else! How the Mob terrified the Hump into ending his f ling with Sinatra’s lover
When womanising Eurovision star wooed the wrong girl
SOME things went without saying in Las Vegas showbusiness circles back in the Sixties.
‘Never steal Frank Sinatra’s girlfriend’ was one of the more obvious ones. Particularly if you came from England and had a silly name.
But prodigious womaniser Engelbert Humperdinck, who represented the UK in last night’s Eurovision Song Contest, simply ‘couldn’t help himself’, his former manager Tony Cartwright has revealed.
The affair came to an end only when Sinatra’s key lieutenant, Mob-linked Emenigildo ‘Jilly’ Rizzo, made his displeasure terrifyingly clear.
‘Eng could have had any girl he wanted – and quite frequently did – but he had to choose Sinatra’s girl,’ sighed Cartwright. ‘I can laugh about it now but at the time it wasn’t funny in the least. I was told to end it. It was pretty clear that if I didn’t sort it out they’d make me vanish or I’d get shot.’
Humperdinck, born plain Arnold George Dorsey in Leicester, began his fling with
‘It was clear they’d make me vanish’
South African actress Juliet Prowse, once Sinatra’s fiancee, in 1967, after he had become friends with the Rat Pack.
The singer had been invited to appear on Dean Martin’s hit US television show after his song Please Release Me had become a huge hit in Britain.
‘Engelbert hit it off with Dean, who delighted in calling him Humpy, much to the amusement of the audience,’ Cartwright recalled. ‘Hump was American slang for sex, so it was appropriate really.
‘After the show Dean invited us to his restaurant. Dean was there with his agent Mort Viner and Frank Sinatra, who was with his girlfriend Juliet Prowse, and Jilly Rizzo. Engelbert and I were both terrified. Going to a fancy restaurant was a big deal for us in those days.
‘What made it worse was that during the meal I noticed that Juliet was staring at Engelbert. I could see she fancied him. I took him aside and whispered, “Whatever you do remember that’s Sinatra bird.” I thought that would put him off.’
Over dinner, Martin invited Humperdinck to open for him in Vegas. At the Riviera Hotel, Dean’s name was up in lights, but not Engelbert’s – because it was too long. ‘I went absolutely potty but there was nothing they could do,’ said Cartwright.
It was in Vegas that Humperdinck – who is said to have bed- ded 3,000 girls but jokingly tells fans to believe only half of what they read – embarked on his romance with Ms Prowse.
Cartwright, who admitted his former client’s Eurovision entry Love Will Set You Free ‘wasn’t up to much’, added: ‘Out of the blue one day I got a phone call from Jilly Rizzo who summoned me to his suite at Caesar’s Palace.
‘His tone of voice was icy. He told me that he knew about their affair, that it was a big problem, and that I had to end it immediately.
‘I raced back to the Riviera where Engelbert and Juliet were together, and banged on their door. I told them what had happened and Eng was as terrified as I was, although Juliet was more cool. I got her out the back of the hotel and the affair ended there and then. And luckily Sinatra never found out.
‘Even now, more than 40 years on, I find myself turning it over in my mind. I was terrified.’