Friday, May 15, 1998 | 9:32 a.m.
Frank Sinatra was not especially kind to card dealers, but he loved to play blackjack and otherwise use the casino as his personal playground, a longtime retired local dealer said.
"I dealt an ace on top and was about to ask if anyone wanted insurance when Frank grabbed the card, threw it under the table and told me to deal another one," said Frank Marcus, a dealer at the Sands hotel-casino for a quarter of a century, until his retirement in 1982.
"I looked to the floorman, who just turned away. So I turned over the next card -- a six or a seven, I can't remember -- and Frank liked it. He won his $500 bet."
That apparently was not the only time Sinatra flirted with the rules at the gaming tables.
In 1983, New Jersey gaming officials investigated allegations that Sinatra intimidated a blackjack dealer into altering the rules when he played at the Golden Nugget hotel-casino in Atlantic City.
Sinatra, playing at a table with fellow entertainer Dean Martin, was alleged to have insisted that a dealer dispense cards to them from a single deck.
New Jersey gaming rules required that blackjack be dealt from an eight-deck shoe. Atlantic City casinos could only deal single-deck blackjack after submitting an outline of procedures to the Casino Control Commission. No such permission was or is required for Nevada casinos.
Casino employees at the time claimed that Sinatra and Martin were abusive and that they had threatened not to perform in the casino unless dealers dealt by hand from a single deck
Sinatra and Martin denied intimidating the workers.
A Sinatra spokesman at the time said Sinatra sat down at an empty table where several decks were ready to be shuffled. As the dealer started to shuffle them together, Sinatra said, "just deal one (deck) from your hands," not realizing it was illegal for the dealer to do that, the spokesman said.
The dealer turned to a floorman or pit boss, who gave her the go-ahead. Casino employees involved in the incident were suspended.
In 1984, the resort was fined $250,000 for infractions by the dealers during that blackjack game.
Then-New Jersey Casino Control Commissioner Joel Jacobsen called Sinatra "an obnoxious bully," prompting Sinatra to cancel all appearances in his home state.
Marcus said he knew of no dealer who got rich off tokes from Sinatra.
"Frank wasn't like Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr., who liked us (dealers in general)," said Marcus, 83. "Frank didn't like us too much, and he never smiled when he played.
"One year for Christmas, we (Sands dealers) got together and got Dean a new set of golf clubs. We got Frank nothing, so he didn't even speak to us for the longest time."
Marcus said Sinatra always was polite to other players at the table. It was common for empty tables to fill up shortly after Frank sat down to play, he said.
"The whole casino would fill up," Marcus said. "Word would travel fast up and down the Strip that Frank was playing at the Sands, and people came -- he really drew them in."
And Sinatra was not afraid to let his hair down in the casino, which he considered an adult playground. Marcus said he once witnessed Sinatra drive a golf cart through the Strip casino, in which he owned a 9 percent interest.
Marcus noted that the Sands, which has been imploded to make room for the Venetian, was perhaps the first Las Vegas haven for high-rollers.
"The Dunes was there before Caesars and the Hilton," he said. "It was the hot spot where movie stars, producers and other famous people gathered religiously. And, in his time, Frank Sinatra was the pope of the Sands."
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