Sinatra grabbed a towel off the shoulder of a production assistant and rubbed the Vaseline off his face. His makeup guy, a short old man whom Sinatra called “Brownie,” scurried quickly to his boss’s side and offered him a Chesterfield cigarette, the kind the singer helped advertise—Man-Size Satisfaction; Clean, Smooth, Fresh!—and a light. Sinatra inhaled deeply, then turned to the director. “I’ll be in my dressing room when you get your act together here.” He stalked off the set, Brownie following in his wake. As Sinatra walked by an attractive young woman presumably from the wardrobe department—she was carrying three dry-cleaned Chinese army uniforms—he said, “Hiya, doll.” She blushed.

Frankenheimer rolled his eyes. “He’s gifted, but he never has more than one good take in him,” he said dryly. “It’s usually the first one.”

The director reached into his pocket, dug out a pack of Pall Malls, and offered cigarettes to Charlie and Margaret. Smoothly, his lighter appeared in his other hand and he offered them his flame.

Frankenheimer was ascendant. He’d been labeled “television’s boy genius for 1954,” and in 1957, convinced movies were where an artist could take risks, he directed The Young Stranger, a film that everyone pretended to have seen but no one had. Four years later, in 1961, the transition to film was complete with the release of his critically acclaimed “thinking man’s crime drama,” The Young Savages, starring an uncharacteristically restrained Burt Lancaster. Executives saw promise in his craftsmanship and his ability to direct films that could make audiences think while earning studios buckets of money. The wunderkind’s bloodshot eyes and bloated face indicated that he might be equally precocious in his noncinematic pursuits.

Margaret discreetly looked around to make sure no one could hear them.

“Oh, this is hardly a secret,” Frankenheimer said. “Frank himself told me he’s a performer more than an actor.”

“Whatever it is, it was good enough to get an Oscar,” Margaret said.

Some hammering from the corner of the studio reminded Frankenheimer. “Tomorrow we’re shooting the scene on the train,” he said.

“The shell-shock scene,” Margaret said, helpfully reminding Charlie, who was looking blankly at the director. “Marco is blinking, unsteady, hands shaking so much he can’t light a cigarette.” Charlie was glad Margaret was there. She seemed to have memorized the entire script already.

“Have you seen a lot of that among your fellow vets?” Frankenheimer asked.

“I’ve seen battle fatigue manifest itself in all sorts of ways,” Charlie said. “The scenes I read with the nightmares rang truer. To me, at any rate.”

“Do you think it works for the train scene?” Frankenheimer asked. “We need a quick way to telegraph he’s having a rough go of it.”

Charlie stroked his chin. “Sure,” he said. “It’s not just standard battle fatigue that Marco has, right? It’s the brainwash thing.”