{"id":3739,"date":"2021-01-04T15:12:55","date_gmt":"2021-01-04T15:12:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drmirkin.com\/?p=3739"},"modified":"2021-01-05T17:32:29","modified_gmt":"2021-01-05T17:32:29","slug":"phyllis-mcguire-last-of-the-mcguire-sisters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/?p=3739","title":{"rendered":"Phyllis McGuire, Last of the McGuire Sisters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-3740\" src=\"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/mcGuire2.jpg\" alt=\"phyllis mcGuire\" width=\"151\" height=\"175\" \/>Phyllis McGuire, lead singer of the \u201cMcGuire Sisters\u201d who were famous in the 1950s and 1960s, died on December 29, 2020 at age 89 in Las Vegas. In 1968, she left her singing career for a multi-year affair with equally famous Sam Giancana, who was a notorious gangster and leader of the Chicago mob. She also had long-term affairs with Bob Stupak, a Las Vegas casino maverick, and Mike Davis, an oil and gas tycoon.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Early Life and Career<\/strong><br \/>\nMcGuire was born on Valentine&#8217;s Day 1931 in Middletown, Ohio and grew up in Miamisburg, a small town near Dayton. Her father was a steelworker and her mother was a minister. By age four, she was singing with her two older sisters, Dorothy and Christine, at their mother\u2019s church. They went on to entertain at military bases and veterans&#8217; hospitals, and by 1952 when she was only 21, the McGuire Sisters were recording for Coral Records and appearing regularly on television shows including <em>Arthur Godfrey&#8217;s Talent Scouts<\/em> and <em>The Ed Sullivan Show<\/em>. Their top hit records included \u201cSugartime\u201d, \u201cSincerely\u201d and \u201cGoodnight Sweetheart\u201d. They performed for five U.S. presidents and Queen Elizabeth II.<\/p>\n<p>At the height of their career in 1968, the McGuire Sisters retired suddenly, presumably because of Phyllis\u2019s long-term affair with Sam Giancana.<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bRvEHn6fKWE\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Unwanted Notoriety<\/strong><br \/>\nIn 1959, mobster Sam Giancana, who was 23 years older than Phyllis, saw the three sisters performing at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas and asked his workers to check out the then-single Phyllis McGuire. How could an unattractive, uncultured 52-year-old mobster and widower from big-city Chicago get into a relationship with a 28-year-old beautiful lead singer of a successful and wholesome singing group from a small mid-western town? Giancana found out that she owed more than a hundred thousand dollars to the casino for gambling debts, and he told the casino to cancel her debts.<\/p>\n<p>Many years later, she told Barbra Walters, \u201cWhen I met him I did not know who he was. He was not married and I was an unmarried woman, and according to the way I was brought up there was nothing wrong with that. I didn&#8217;t find out until sometime later who he really was, and I was already in love.\u201d At the time he met Phyllis McGuire, Giancana was already infamous. In the early 1960s, Giancana was part of a CIA plot to assassinate Fidel Castro. At that time, Giancana and President Kennedy had the same mistress, Judith Exner. When the news media found out that one of the \u201csqueaky clean\u201d McGuire Sisters was dating a mobster, she tried to leave him. Her parents were very upset with her, the news media lambasted her, and her sister\u2019s husband told her that the group would break up if she didn\u2019t leave him. Each time she left him, she returned. In 1968, the McGuire Sisters singing group stopped performing, in part due to her affair with Giancana. Her sisters stayed at home and had children, while Phyllis kept on singing as a solo act.<\/p>\n<p>The mob didn\u2019t like the relationship either, because it drew too much attention to them. Giancana was sentenced to jail for refusing to testify in front of a grand jury and after his release, he fled to Mexico, but in 1974, after seven years there, he was arrested by Mexican authorities and sent back to the United States. He agreed to be a witness in the prosecution of organized crime in Chicago, but he was murdered by an unknown assailant in his Chicago home in 1975.<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JjrPogBxmNc\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Another Improbable Affair<\/strong><br \/>\nIn the 1960s, when she was still spending time with Sam Giancana, she met a Las Vegas gambler, \u201cTiger Mike\u201d Davis. At that time, she was a friend of Davis\u2019s wife, Helen Bonfils. She started a relationship with Tiger Mike, who, like Giancana, was hot-tempered and often got into disputes with other people. He repeatedly went from periods when he owed everyone money to times when he was so rich that he owned several jet planes at the same time. He was one of the biggest gamblers in Las Vegas. He wore custom-tailored suits and claimed that the CIA asked him to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi. Tiger Mike was born in poverty and grew up on a Sioux reservation in South Dakota. He dropped out of school at age 13 and falsely claimed that he was 16 to get into the army. At age 20, he moved to Denver and was hired as a chauffeur for newspaper heiress Helen Bonfils. In 1959, at age 28, he married the 69-year-old Bonfils and lived in her Manhattan home. In 1960, he used her money to found Tiger Oil to drill oil wells. The company was originally very successful, but went into bankruptcy in the 1980s. His wife\u2019s biography claimed that when Tiger Oil lost money it was his wife\u2019s, and when the company made money, it was his.<\/p>\n<p>In 1960, when he was separated but not divorced from his wife, he met Phyllis McGuire in Las Vegas. He bought her \u201cthe biggest necklace, bracelet and ring Harry Winston had.\u201d Davis told the news media, &#8220;Giancana sent four hit men to kill me, but I killed two of them.&#8221; Tiger Mike then arranged a meeting with Giancana, snuck up on him at a restaurant and put a gun to his head. Sam told Tiger Mike that he could have the girl.<\/p>\n<p>Tiger Mike was rumored to have paid for the massive mansion that McGuire lived in from 1967 up to the end of her life &#8212; a 55,000 square foot estate with gold bathroom fixtures, a 19th century chandelier, a swan moat, a 45-foot replica of the Eiffel Tower, bulletproof windows and a basement disco. There was also a guest house, two swimming pools, a lagoon, a tennis court, and a soda fountain. She claimed that she paid for it all with money \u201cfrom her oil and gas investments.\u201d McGuire lived with Tiger Mike on and off until he died in 2016 at age 85, after a 10-year battle with prostate cancer.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Yet Another Lover with a Strange Background<\/strong><br \/>\nShe also spent several years with her on-and-off-again lover, Bob Stupak, a casino owner. Like her other lovers, he was very generous. After an argument with her, he sent out a press release that he had sent her 1,001 dozen roses. He had dropped out of school in the eighth grade and bought a Harley-Davidson. At age 22, he rode into Las Vegas and ended up building several casinos there. He was also a world-class poker player. In 1995, at age 53, he was nearly killed when his Harley-Davidson motorcycle collided with a car, causing him to remain in a coma for five weeks. In 2009, he died at age 67 from leukemia.<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0dqsfbJHjNc\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>The McGuire Sisters Together Again<\/strong><br \/>\nThe trio reunited in the 1980s and for the next twenty years, they made frequent night club appearances, mostly in Las Vegas, Atlantic City and New York City. In 1994, they were inducted into the National Broadcasting Hall of Fame and in 2001 into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame. In 2004, they were featured in a PBS special called &#8220;Magic Moments: The Best of &#8217;50s Pop.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Phyllis&#8217;s older sisters died before her, Dorothy in 2012 and Christine in 2018. A brief local obituary notice for Phyllis said that she had died at home of <a href=\"https:\/\/drmirkin.com\/histories-and-mysteries\/sean-connery-dementia-and-death-from-natural-causes.html\">natural causes<\/a>\u00a0on December 29, 2020, with three nephews as her only survivors.<\/p>\n<p>It certainly is nice to have all the money you want and need. However, sometimes, the lure of extra money can lead you to make decisions that can make you miserable. None of Phyllis McGuire\u2019s financially-successfully lovers really made her happy or worry-free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Phyllis McGuire, lead singer of the \u201cMcGuire Sisters\u201d who were famous in the 1950s and 1960s, died on December 29, 2020 at age 89 in Las Vegas. In 1968, she left her singing career for a multi-year affair with equally famous Sam Giancana, who a notorious gangster and leader of the Chicago mob.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7602,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[848],"class_list":["post-3739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-histories-and-mysteries","tag-mcguire-sisters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}