1787 lines
90 KiB
Markdown
1787 lines
90 KiB
Markdown
---
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created_at: '2014-09-22T06:43:36.000Z'
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title: Frank Sinatra Has a Cold (1966)
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url: http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ1003-OCT_SINATRA_rev_
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author: nl
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points: 77
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story_text: ''
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comment_text:
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num_comments: 17
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story_id:
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story_title:
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story_url:
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parent_id:
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created_at_i: 1411368216
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_tags:
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- story
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- author_nl
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- story_8349523
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objectID: '8349523'
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---
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**In the winter of 1965,** writer Gay Talese arrived in Los Angeles with
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an assignment from Esquire to profile Frank Sinatra. The legendary
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singer was approaching fifty, under the weather, out of sorts, and
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unwilling to be interviewed. So Talese remained in L.A., hoping Sinatra
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might recover and reconsider, and he began talking to many of the people
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around Sinatra—his friends, his associates, his family, his countless
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hangers-on—and observing the man himself wherever he could. The result,
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"Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," ran in April 1966 and became one of the most
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celebrated magazine stories ever published, a pioneering example of what
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came to be called New Journalism—a work of rigorously faithful fact
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enlivened with the kind of vivid storytelling that had previously been
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reserved for fiction. The piece conjures a deeply rich portrait of one
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of the era's most guarded figures and tells a larger story about
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entertainment, celebrity, and America itself.
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Frank Sinatra, holding a glass of bourbon in one hand and a cigarette in
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the other, stood in a dark corner of the bar between two attractive but
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fading blondes who sat waiting for him to say something. But he said
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nothing; he had been silent during much of the evening, except now in
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this private club in Beverly Hills he seemed even more distant, staring
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out through the smoke and semidarkness into a large room beyond the bar
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where dozens of young couples sat huddled around small tables or twisted
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in the center of the floor to the clamorous clang of folk-rock music
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blaring from the stereo. The two blondes knew, as did Sinatra's four
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male friends who stood nearby, that it was a bad idea to force
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conversation upon him when he was in this mood of sullen silence, a mood
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that had hardly been uncommon during this first week of November, a
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month before his fiftieth birthday.
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Sinatra had been working in a film that he now disliked, could not wait
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to finish; he was tired of all the publicity attached to his dating the
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twenty-year-old Mia Farrow, who was not in sight tonight; he was angry
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that a CBS television documentary of his life, to be shown in two weeks,
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was reportedly prying into his privacy, even speculating on his possible
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friendship with Mafia leaders; he was worried about his starring role in
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an hour-long NBC show entitled Sinatra—A Man and His Music, which would
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require that he sing eighteen songs with a voice that at this particular
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moment, just a few nights before the taping was to begin, was weak and
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sore and uncertain. Sinatra was ill. He was the victim of an ailment so
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common that most people would consider it trivial. But when it gets to
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Sinatra it can plunge him into a state of anguish, deep depression,
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panic, even rage. Frank Sinatra had a cold.
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Sinatra with a cold is Picasso without paint, Ferrari without fuel—only
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worse. For the common cold robs Sinatra of that uninsurable jewel, his
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voice, cutting into the core of his confidence, and it affects not only
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his own psyche but also seems to cause a kind of psychosomatic nasal
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drip within dozens of people who work for him, drink with him, love him,
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depend on him for their own welfare and stability. A Sinatra with a cold
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can, in a small way, send vibrations through the entertainment industry
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and beyond as surely as a President of the United States, suddenly sick,
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can shake the national economy.
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\[image id='6b8616d7-696e-4604-92d6-db3fb5824177'
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mediaId='082061d1-531c-4277-bec2-03c09dd39531' caption='' loc='L'
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share='true' expand='true' size='L'\]\[/image\]
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For Frank Sinatra was now involved with many things involving many
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people—his own film company, his record company, his private airline,
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his missile-parts firm, his real-estate holdings across the nation, his
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personal staff of seventy-five—which are only a portion of the power he
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is and has come to represent. He seemed now to be also the embodiment of
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the fully emancipated male, perhaps the only one in America, the man who
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can do anything he wants, anything, can do it because he has money, the
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energy, and no apparent guilt. In an age when the very young seem to be
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taking over, protesting and picketing and demanding change, Frank
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Sinatra survives as a national phenomenon, one of the few prewar
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products to withstand the test of time. He is the champ who made the big
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comeback, the man who had everything, lost it, then got it back, letting
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nothing stand in his way, doing what few men can do: he uprooted his
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life, left his family, broke with everything that was familiar, learning
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in the process that one way to hold a woman is not to hold her. Now he
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has the affection of Nancy and Ava and Mia, the fine female produce of
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three generations, and still has the adoration of his children, the
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freedom of a bachelor, he does not feel old, he makes old men feel
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young, makes them think that if Frank Sinatra can do it, it can be done;
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not that they could do it, but it is still nice for other men to know,
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at fifty, that it can be done.
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But now, standing at this bar in Beverly Hills, Sinatra had a cold, and
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he continued to drink quietly and he seemed miles away in his private
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world, not even reacting when suddenly the stereo in the other room
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switched to a Sinatra song, "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning."
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\[pullquote align='C'\]Sinatra with a cold is Picasso without paint,
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Ferrari without fuel—only worse.\[/pullquote\]
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It is a lovely ballad that he first recorded ten years ago, and it now
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inspired many young couples who had been sitting, tired of twisting, to
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get up and move slowly around the dance floor, holding one another very
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close. Sinatra's intonation, precisely clipped, yet full and flowing,
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gave a deeper meaning to the simple lyrics—"In the wee small hours of
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the morning/while the whole wide world is fast asleep/you lie awake, and
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think about the girl...."—it was like so many of his classics, a song
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that evoked loneliness and sensuality, and when blended with the dim
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light and the alcohol and nicotine and late-night needs, it became a
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kind of airy aphrodisiac. Undoubtedly the words from this song, and
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others like it, had put millions in the mood, it was music to make love
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by, and doubtless much love had been made by it all over America at
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night in cars, while the batteries burned down, in cottages by the lake,
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on beaches during balmy summer evenings, in secluded parks and exclusive
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penthouses and furnished rooms, in cabin cruisers and cabs and
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cabanas—in all places where Sinatra's songs could be heard were these
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words that warmed women, wooed and won them, snipped the final thread of
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inhibition and gratified the male egos of ungrateful lovers; two
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generations of men had been the beneficiaries of such ballads, for which
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they were eternally in his debt, for which they may eternally hate him.
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Nevertheless here he was, the man himself, in the early hours of the
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morning in Beverly Hills, out of range.
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The two blondes, who seemed to be in their middle thirties, were preened
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and polished, their matured bodies softly molded within tight dark
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suits. They sat, legs crossed, perched on the high bar stools. They
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listened to the music. Then one of them pulled out a Kent and Sinatra
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quickly placed his gold lighter under it and she held his hand, looked
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at his fingers: they were nubby and raw, and the pinkies protruded,
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being so stiff from arthritis that he could barely bend them. He was, as
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usual, immaculately dressed. He wore an oxford-grey suit with a vest, a
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suit conservatively cut on the outside but trimmed with flamboyant silk
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within; his shoes, British, seemed to be shined even on the bottom of
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the soles. He also wore, as everybody seemed to know, a remarkably
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convincing black hairpiece, one of sixty that he owns, most of them
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under the care of an inconspicuous little grey-haired lady who, holding
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his hair in a tiny satchel, follows him around whenever he performs. She
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earns $400 a week. The most distinguishing thing about Sinatra's face
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are his eyes, clear blue and alert, eyes that within seconds can go cold
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with anger, or glow with affection, or, as now, reflect a vague
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detachment that keeps his friends silent and distant.
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\[image id='a46e9904-9d74-47c0-bb30-97b8d4f794f9'
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mediaId='d7ef5df0-7dd1-426e-84c0-e4c647238132' caption='' loc='C'
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share='true' expand='true' size='medium'\]\[/image\]
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Leo Durocher, one of Sinatra's closest friends, was now shooting pool in
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the small room behind the bar. Standing near the door was Jim Mahoney,
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Sinatra's press agent, a somewhat chunky young man with a square jaw and
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narrow eyes who would resemble a tough Irish plainclothesman if it were
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not for the expensive continental suits he wears and his exquisite shoes
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often adorned with polished buckles. Also nearby was a big,
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broad-shouldered two-hundred-pound actor named Brad Dexter who seemed
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always to be thrusting out his chest so that his gut would not show.
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Brad Dexter has appeared in several films and television shows,
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displaying fine talent as a character actor, but in Beverly Hills he is
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equally known for the role he played in Hawaii two years ago when he
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swam a few hundred yards and risked his life to save Sinatra from
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drowning in a riptide. Since then Dexter has been one of Sinatra's
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constant companions and has been made a producer in Sinatra's film
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company. He occupies a plush office near Sinatra's executive suite. He
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is endlessly searching for literary properties that might be converted
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into new starring roles for Sinatra. Whenever he is among strangers with
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Sinatra he worries because he knows that Sinatra brings out the best and
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worst in people—some men will become aggressive, some women will become
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seductive, others will stand around skeptically appraising him, the
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scene will be somehow intoxicated by his mere presence, and maybe
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Sinatra himself, if feeling as badly as he was tonight, might become
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intolerant or tense, and then: headlines. So Brad Dexter tries to
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anticipate danger and warn Sinatra in advance. He confesses to feeling
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very protective of Sinatra, admitting in a recent moment of
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self-revelation: "I'd kill for him."
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While this statement may seem outlandishly dramatic, particularly when
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taken out of context, it nonetheless expresses a fierce fidelity that is
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quite common within Sinatra's special circle. It is a characteristic
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that Sinatra, without admission, seems to prefer: All the Way; All or
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Nothing at All. This is the Sicilian in Sinatra; he permits his friends,
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if they wish to remain that, none of the easy Anglo-Saxon outs. But if
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they remain loyal, then there is nothing Sinatra will not do in
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turn—fabulous gifts, personal kindnesses, encouragement when they're
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down, adulation when they're up. They are wise to remember, however, one
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thing. He is Sinatra. The boss. Il Padrone.
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\[pullquote align='C'\]The most distinguishing thing about Sinatra's
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face are his eyes, clear blue and alert, eyes that within seconds can go
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cold with anger, or glow with affection, or, as now, reflect a vague
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detachment that keeps his friends silent and distant.\[/pullquote\]
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I had seen something of this Sicilian side of Sinatra last summer at
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Jilly's saloon in New York, which was the only other time I'd gotten a
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close view of him prior to this night in this California club. Jilly's,
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which is on West Fifty-second Street in Manhattan, is where Sinatra
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drinks whenever he is in New York, and there is a special chair reserved
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for him in the back room against the wall that nobody else may use. When
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he is occupying it, seated behind a long table flanked by his closest
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New York friends—who include the saloonkeeper, Jilly Rizzo, and Jilly's
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azure-haired wife, Honey, who is known as the "Blue Jew"—a rather
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strange ritualistic scene develops. That night dozens of people, some of
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them casual friends of Sinatra's, some mere acquaintances, some neither,
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appeared outside of Jilly's saloon. They approached it like a shrine.
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They had come to pay respect. They were from New York, Brooklyn,
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Atlantic City, Hoboken. They were old actors, young actors, former
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prizefighters, tired trumpet players, politicians, a boy with a cane.
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There was a fat lady who said she remembered Sinatra when he used to
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throw the Jersey Observer onto her front porch in 1933. There were
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middle-aged couples who said they had heard Sinatra sing at the Rustic
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Cabin in 1938 and "We knew then that he really had it\!" Or they had
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heard him when he was with Harry James's band in 1939, or with Tommy
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Dorsey in 1941 ("Yeah, that's the song, 'I'll Never Smile Again'—he sang
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it one night in this dump near Newark and we danced..."); or they
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remembered that time at the Paramount with the swooners, and him with
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those bow ties, The Voice; and one woman remembered that awful boy she
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knew then—Alexander Dorogokupetz, an eighteen-year-old heckler who had
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thrown a tomato at Sinatra and the bobby-soxers in the balcony had tried
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to flail him to death. Whatever became of Alexander Dorogokupetz? The
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lady did not know.
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And they remembered when Sinatra was a failure and sang trash like
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"Mairzy Doats," and they remembered his comeback and on this night they
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were all standing outside Jilly's saloon, dozens of them, but they could
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not get in. So some of them left. But most of them stayed, hoping that
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soon they might be able to push or wedge their way into Jilly's between
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the elbows and backsides of the men drinking three-deep at the bar, and
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they might be able to peek through and see him sitting back there. This
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is all they really wanted; they wanted to see him. And for a few moments
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they gazed in silence through the smoke and they stared. Then they
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turned, fought their way out of the bar, went home.
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Some of Sinatra's close friends, all of whom are known to the men
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guarding Jilly's door, do manage to get an escort into the back room.
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But once they are there they, too, must fend for themselves. On the
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particular evening, Frank Gifford, the former football player, got only
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seven yards in three tries. Others who had somehow been close enough to
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shake Sinatra's hand did not shake it; instead they just touched him on
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the shoulder or sleeve, or they merely stood close enough for him to see
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them and, after he'd given them a wink of recognition or a wave or a nod
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or called out their names (he had a fantastic memory for first names),
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they would then turn and leave. They had checked in. They had paid their
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respects. And as I watched this ritualistic scene, I got the impression
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that Frank Sinatra was dwelling simultaneously in two worlds that were
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not contemporary.
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On the one hand he is the swinger—as he is when talking and joking with
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Sammy Davis, Jr., Richard Conte, Liza Minelli, Bernie Massi, or any of
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the other show-business people who get to sit at the table; on the
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other, as when he is nodding or waving to his paisanos who are close to
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him (Al Silvani, a boxing manager who works with Sinatra's film company;
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Dominic Di Bona, his wardrobe man; Ed Pucci, a 300-pound former football
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lineman who is his aide-de-camp), Frank Sinatra is Il Padrone. Or better
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still, he is what in traditional Sicily have long been called uomini
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rispettati—men of respect: men who are both majestic and humble, men who
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are loved by all and are very generous by nature, men whose hands are
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kissed as they walk from village to village, men who would personally go
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out of their way to redress a wrong.
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\[image id='b2028c6f-ceac-439c-917a-c04cf1d9f144'
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mediaId='4d2d7881-e0d2-4adc-bd30-639428d6be44' caption='' loc='C'
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share='true' expand='true' size='M'\]\[/image\]
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Frank Sinatra does things personally. At Christmas time, he will
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personally pick dozens of presents for his close friends and family,
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remembering the type of jewelry they like, their favorite colors, the
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sizes of their shirts and dresses. When a musician friend's house was
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destroyed and his wife was killed in a Los Angeles mud slide a little
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more than a year ago, Sinatra personally came to his aid, finding the
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musician a new home, paying whatever hospital bills were left unpaid by
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the insurance, then personally supervising the furnishing of the new
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home down to the replacing of the silverware, the linen, the purchase of
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new clothing.
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The same Sinatra who did this can, within the same hour, explode in a
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towering rage of intolerance should a small thing be incorrectly done
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for him by one of his paisanos. For example, when one of his men brought
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him a frankfurter with catsup on it, which Sinatra apparently abhors, he
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angrily threw the bottle at the man, splattering catsup all over him.
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Most of the men who work around Sinatra are big. But this never seems to
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intimidate Sinatra nor curb his impetuous behavior with them when he is
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mad. They will never take a swing back at him. He is Il Padrone.
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At other times, aiming to please, his men will overreact to his desires:
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when he casually observed that his big orange desert jeep in Palm
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Springs seemed in need of a new painting, the word was swiftly passed
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down through the channels, becoming ever more urgent as it went, until
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finally it was a command that the jeep be painted now, immediately,
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yesterday. To accomplish this would require the hiring of a special crew
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of painters to work all night, at overtime rates; which, in turn, meant
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that the order had to be bucked back up the line for further approval.
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When it finally got back to Sinatra's desk, he did not know what it was
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all about; after he had figured it out he confessed, with a tired look
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on his face, that he did not care when the hell they painted the jeep.
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Yet it would have been unwise for anyone to anticipate his reaction, for
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he is a wholly unpredictable man of many moods and great dimension, a
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man who responds instantaneously to instinct—suddenly, dramatically,
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wildly he responds, and nobody can predict what will follow. A young
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lady named Jane Hoag, a reporter at Life's Los Angeles bureau who had
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attended the same school as Sinatra's daughter, Nancy, had once been
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invited to a party at Mrs. Sinatra's California home at which Frank
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Sinatra, who maintains very cordial relations with his former wife,
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acted as host. Early in the party Miss Hoag, while leaning against a
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table, accidentally with her elbow knocked over one of a pair of
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alabaster birds to the floor, smashing it to pieces. Suddenly, Miss Hoag
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recalled, Sinatra's daughter cried, "Oh, that was one of my mother's
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favorite..."—but before she could complete the sentence, Sinatra glared
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at her, cutting her off, and while forty other guests in the room all
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stared in silence, Sinatra walked over, quickly with his finger flicked
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the other alabaster bird off the table, smashing it to pieces, and then
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put an arm gently around Jane Hoag and said, in a way that put her
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completely at ease, "That's okay, kid."
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Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
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**NOW SINATRA SAID A FEW** words to the blondes. Then he turned from the
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bar and began to walk toward the poolroom. One of Sinatra's other men
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friends moved in to keep the girls company. Brad Dexter, who had been
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standing in the corner talking to some other people, now followed
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Sinatra.
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The room cracked with the clack of billiard balls. There were about a
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dozen spectators in the room, most of them young men who were watching
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Leo Durocher shoot against two other aspiring hustlers who were not very
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good. This private drinking club has among its membership many actors,
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directors, writers, models, nearly all of them a good deal younger than
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Sinatra or Durocher and much more casual in the way they dress for the
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evening. Many of the young women, their long hair flowing loosely below
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their shoulders, wore tight, fanny-fitting Jax pants and very expensive
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sweaters; and a few of the young men wore blue or green velour shirts
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with high collars and narrow tight pants, and Italian loafers.
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\[image id='8713cd4e-5565-4b8b-8d6c-d349672b2871'
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mediaId='3e43c741-f7c5-4427-a921-5bf92b23d5b6' caption='' loc='C'
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share='true' expand='true' size='M'\]\[/image\]
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It was obvious from the way Sinatra looked at these people in the
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poolroom that they were not his style, but he leaned back against a high
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stool that was against the wall, holding his drink in his right hand,
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and said nothing, just watched Durocher slam the billiard balls back and
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forth. The younger men in the room, accustomed to seeing Sinatra at this
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club, treated him without deference, although they said nothing
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offensive. They were a cool young group, very California-cool and
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casual, and one of the coolest seemed to be a little guy, very quick of
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movement, who had a sharp profile, pale blue eyes, blondish hair, and
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squared eyeglasses. He wore a pair of brown corduroy slacks, a green
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shaggy-dog Shetland sweater, a tan suede jacket, and Game Warden boots,
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for which he had recently paid $60.
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Frank Sinatra, leaning against the stool, sniffling a bit from his cold,
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could not take his eyes off the Game Warden boots. Once, after gazing at
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them for a few moments, he turned away; but now he was focused on them
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again. The owner of the boots, who was just standing in them watching
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the pool game, was named Harlan Ellison, a writer who had just completed
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work on a screenplay, The Oscar.
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Finally Sinatra could not contain himself.
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"Hey," he yelled in his slightly harsh voice that still had a soft,
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sharp edge. "Those Italian boots?"
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"No," Ellison said.
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"Spanish?"
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"No."
|
|
|
|
"Are they English boots?"
|
|
|
|
"Look, I donno, man," Ellison shot back, frowning at Sinatra, then
|
|
turning away again.
|
|
|
|
Now the poolroom was suddenly silent. Leo Durocher who had been poised
|
|
behind his cue stick and was bent low just froze in that position for a
|
|
second. Nobody moved. Then Sinatra moved away from the stool and walked
|
|
with that slow, arrogant swagger of his toward Ellison, the hard tap of
|
|
Sinatra's shoes the only sound in the room. Then, looking down at
|
|
Ellison with a slightly raised eyebrow and a tricky little smile,
|
|
Sinatra asked: "You expecting a storm?"
|
|
|
|
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|
|
|
|
Harlan Ellison moved a step to the side. "Look, is there any reason why
|
|
you're talking to me?"
|
|
|
|
"I don't like the way you're dressed," Sinatra said.
|
|
|
|
"Hate to shake you up," Ellison said, "but I dress to suit myself."
|
|
|
|
Now there was some rumbling in the room, and somebody said, "Com'on,
|
|
Harlan, let's get out of here," and Leo Durocher made his pool shot and
|
|
said, "Yeah, com'on."
|
|
|
|
But Ellison stood his ground.
|
|
|
|
Sinatra said, "What do you do?"
|
|
|
|
"I'm a plumber," Ellison said.
|
|
|
|
"No, no, he's not," another young man quickly yelled from across the
|
|
table. "He wrote The Oscar."
|
|
|
|
"Oh, yeah," Sinatra said, "well I've seen it, and it's a piece of crap."
|
|
|
|
"That's strange," Ellison said, "because they haven't even released it
|
|
yet."
|
|
|
|
"Well, I've seen it," Sinatra repeated, "and it's a piece of crap."
|
|
|
|
Now Brad Dexter, very anxious, very big opposite the small figure of
|
|
Ellison, said, "Com'on, kid, I don't want you in this room."
|
|
|
|
"Hey," Sinatra interrupted Dexter, "can't you see I'm talking to this
|
|
guy?"
|
|
|
|
Dexter was confused. Then his whole attitude changed, and his voice went
|
|
soft and he said to Ellison, almost with a plea, "Why do you persist in
|
|
tormenting me?"
|
|
|
|
The whole scene was becoming ridiculous, and it seemed that Sinatra was
|
|
only half-serious, perhaps just reacting out of sheer boredom or inner
|
|
despair; at any rate, after a few more exchanges Harlan Ellison left the
|
|
room. By this time the word had gotten out to those on the dance floor
|
|
about the Sinatra-Ellison exchange, and somebody went to look for the
|
|
manager of the club. But somebody else said that the manager had already
|
|
heard about it—and had quickly gone out the door, hopped in his car and
|
|
drove home. So the assistant manager went into the poolroom.
|
|
|
|
\[pullquote align='C'\]"I don't want anybody in here without coats and
|
|
ties."\[/pullquote\]
|
|
|
|
"I don't want anybody in here without coats and ties," Sinatra snapped.
|
|
|
|
The assistant manager nodded, and walked back to his office.
|
|
|
|
**IT WAS THE MORNING AFTER.** It was the beginning of another nervous
|
|
day for Sinatra's press agent, Jim Mahoney. Mahoney had a headache, and
|
|
he was worried but not over the Sinatra-Ellison incident of the night
|
|
before. At the time Mahoney had been with his wife at a table in the
|
|
other room, and possibly he had not even been aware of the little drama.
|
|
The whole thing had lasted only about three minutes. And three minutes
|
|
after it was over, Frank Sinatra had probably forgotten about it for the
|
|
rest of his life—as Ellison will probably remember it for the rest of
|
|
his life: he had had, as hundreds of others before him, at an unexpected
|
|
moment between darkness and dawn, a scene with Sinatra.
|
|
|
|
It was just as well that Mahoney had not been in the poolroom; he had
|
|
enough on his mind today. He was worried about Sinatra's cold and
|
|
worried about the controversial CBS documentary that, despite Sinatra's
|
|
protests and withdrawal of permission, would be shown on television in
|
|
less than two weeks. The newspapers this morning were full of hints that
|
|
Sinatra might sue the network, and Mahoney's phones were ringing without
|
|
pause, and now he was plugged into New York talking to the Daily News's
|
|
Kay Gardella, saying: "...that's right, Kay...they made a gentleman's
|
|
agreement to not ask certain questions about Frank's private life, and
|
|
then Cronkite went right ahead: 'Frank, tell me about those
|
|
associations.' That question, Kay—out\! That question should never have
|
|
been asked...."
|
|
|
|
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|
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|
|
As he spoke, Mahoney leaned back in his leather chair, his head shaking
|
|
slowly. He is a powerfully built man of thirty-seven; he has a round,
|
|
ruddy face, a heavy jaw, and narrow pale eyes, and he might appear
|
|
pugnacious if he did not speak with such clear, soft sincerity and if he
|
|
were not so meticulous about his clothes. His suits and shoes are
|
|
superbly tailored, which was one of the first things Sinatra noticed
|
|
about him, and in his spacious office opposite the bar is a red-muff
|
|
electrical shoe polisher and a pair of brown wooden shoulders on a stand
|
|
over which Mahoney can drape his jackets. Near the bar is an autographed
|
|
photograph of President Kennedy and a few pictures of Frank Sinatra, but
|
|
there are none of Sinatra in any other rooms in Mahoney's
|
|
public-relations agency; there once was a large photograph of him
|
|
hanging in the reception room but this apparently bruised the egos of
|
|
some of Mahoney's other movie-star clients and, since Sinatra never
|
|
shows up at the agency anyway, the photograph was removed.
|
|
|
|
Still, Sinatra seems ever present, and if Mahoney did not have
|
|
legitimate worries about Sinatra, as he did today, he could invent
|
|
them—and, as worry aids, he surrounds himself with little mementos of
|
|
moments in the past when he did worry. In his shaving kit there is a
|
|
two-year-old box of sleeping tablets dispensed by a Reno druggist—the
|
|
date on the bottle marks the kidnapping of Frank Sinatra, Jr. There is
|
|
on a table in Mahoney's office a mounted wood reproduction of Frank
|
|
Sinatra's ransom note written on the aforementioned occasion. One of
|
|
Mahoney's mannerisms, when he is sitting at his desk worrying, is to
|
|
tinker with the tiny toy train he keeps in front of him—the train is a
|
|
souvenir from the Sinatra film, Von Ryan's Express; it is to men who are
|
|
close to Sinatra what the PT-109 tie clasps are to men who were close to
|
|
Kennedy—and Mahoney then proceeds to roll the little train back and
|
|
forth on the six inches of track; back and forth, back and forth,
|
|
click-clack-click-clack. It is his Queeg-thing.
|
|
|
|
Now Mahoney quickly put aside the little train. His secretary told him
|
|
there was a very important call on the line. Mahoney picked it up, and
|
|
his voice was even softer and more sincere than before. "Yes, Frank," he
|
|
said. "Right...right...yes, Frank...."
|
|
|
|
When Mahoney put down the phone, quietly, he announced that Frank
|
|
Sinatra had left in his private jet to spend the weekend at his home in
|
|
Palm Springs, which is a sixteen-minute flight from his home in Los
|
|
Angeles. Mahoney was now worried again. The Lear jet that Sinatra's
|
|
pilot would be flying was identical, Mahoney said, to the one that had
|
|
just crashed in another part of California.
|
|
|
|
**ON THE FOLLOWING** Monday, a cloudy and unseasonably cool California
|
|
day, more than one hundred people gathered inside a white television
|
|
studio, an enormous room dominated by a white stage, white walls, and
|
|
with dozens of lights and lamps dangling: it rather resembled a gigantic
|
|
operating room. In this room, within an hour or so, NBC was scheduled to
|
|
begin taping a one-hour show that would be televised in color on the
|
|
night of November 24 and would highlight, as much as it could in the
|
|
limited time, the twenty-five-year career of Frank Sinatra as a public
|
|
entertainer. It would not attempt to probe, as the forthcoming CBS
|
|
Sinatra documentary allegedly would, that area of Sinatra's life that he
|
|
regards as private. The NBC show would be mainly an hour of Sinatra
|
|
singing some of the hits that carried him from Hoboken to Hollywood, a
|
|
show that would be interrupted only now and then by a few film clips and
|
|
commercials for Budweiser beer. Prior to his cold, Sinatra had been very
|
|
excited about this show; he saw here an opportunity to appeal not only
|
|
to those nostalgic, but also to communicate his talent to some
|
|
rock-and-rollers—in a sense, he was battling The Beatles. The press
|
|
releases being prepared by Mahoney's agency stressed this, reading: "If
|
|
you happen to be tired of kid singers wearing mops of hair thick enough
|
|
to hide a crate of melons...it should be refreshing, to consider the
|
|
entertainment value of a video special titled Sinatra—A Man and His
|
|
Music...."
|
|
|
|
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
|
|
|
|
But now in this NBC studio in Los Angeles, there was an atmosphere of
|
|
anticipation and tension because of the uncertainty of the Sinatra
|
|
voice. The forty-three musicians in Nelson Riddle's orchestra had
|
|
already arrived and some were up on the white platform warming up.
|
|
Dwight Hemion, a youthful sandy-haired director who had won praise for
|
|
his television special on Barbra Streisand, was seated in the
|
|
glass-enclosed control booth that overlooked the orchestra and stage.
|
|
The camera crews, technical teams, security guards, Budweiser ad men
|
|
were also standing between the floor lamps and cameras, waiting, as were
|
|
a dozen or so ladies who worked as secretaries in other parts of the
|
|
building but had sneaked away so they could watch this.
|
|
|
|
A few minutes before eleven o'clock, word spread quickly through the
|
|
long corridor into the big studio that Sinatra was spotted walking
|
|
through the parking lot and was on his way, and was looking fine. There
|
|
seemed great relief among the group that was gathered; but when the
|
|
lean, sharply dressed figure of the man got closer, and closer, they saw
|
|
to their dismay that it was not Frank Sinatra. It was his double. Johnny
|
|
Delgado.
|
|
|
|
\[image id='34c22066-e054-40de-b82f-93afc2ea9280'
|
|
mediaId='2520c01d-3395-4b08-9edb-0b655a70729a' caption='' loc='C'
|
|
share='true' expand='true' size='L'\]\[/image\]
|
|
|
|
Delgado walks like Sinatra, has Sinatra's build, and from certain facial
|
|
angles does resemble Sinatra. But he seems a rather shy individual.
|
|
Fifteen years ago, early in his acting career, Delgado applied for a
|
|
role in From Here to Eternity. He was hired, finding out later that he
|
|
was to be Sinatra's double. In Sinatra's latest film, Assault on a
|
|
Queen, a story in which Sinatra and some fellow conspirators attempt to
|
|
hijack the Queen Mary, Johnny Delgado doubles for Sinatra in some water
|
|
scenes; and now, in this NBC studio, his job was to stand under the hot
|
|
television lights marking Sinatra's spots on the stage for the camera
|
|
crews.
|
|
|
|
Five minutes later, the real Frank Sinatra walked in. His face was pale,
|
|
his blue eyes seemed a bit watery. He had been unable to rid himself of
|
|
the cold, but he was going to try to sing anyway because the schedule
|
|
was tight and thousands of dollars were involved at this moment in the
|
|
assembling of the orchestra and crews and the rental of the studio. But
|
|
when Sinatra, on his way to his small rehearsal room to warm up his
|
|
voice, looked into the studio and saw that the stage and orchestra's
|
|
platform were not close together, as he had specifically requested, his
|
|
lips tightened and he was obviously very upset. A few moments later,
|
|
from his rehearsal room, could be heard the pounding of his fist against
|
|
the top of the piano and the voice of his accompanist, Bill Miller,
|
|
saying, softly, "Try not to upset yourself, Frank."
|
|
|
|
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
|
|
|
|
Later Jim Mahoney and another man walked in, and there was talk of
|
|
Dorothy Kilgallen's death in New York earlier that morning. She had been
|
|
an ardent foe of Sinatra for years, and he became equally
|
|
uncomplimentary about her in his nightclub act, and now, though she was
|
|
dead, he did not compromise his feelings. "Dorothy Kilgallen's dead," he
|
|
repeated, walking out of the room toward the studio. "Well, guess I got
|
|
to change my whole act."
|
|
|
|
When he strolled into the studio the musicians all picked up their
|
|
instruments and stiffened in their seats. Sinatra cleared his throat a
|
|
few times and then, after rehearsing a few ballads with the orchestra,
|
|
he sang "Don't Worry About Me" to his satisfaction and, being uncertain
|
|
of how long his voice could last, suddenly became impatient.
|
|
|
|
"Why don't we tape this mother?" he called out, looking up toward the
|
|
glass booth where the director, Dwight Hemion, and his staff were
|
|
sitting. Their heads seemed to be down, focusing on the control board.
|
|
|
|
"Why don't we tape this mother?" Sinatra repeated.
|
|
|
|
The production stage manager, who stands near the camera wearing a
|
|
headset, repeated Sinatra's words exactly into his line to the control
|
|
room: "Why don't we tape this mother?"
|
|
|
|
Hemion did not answer. Possibly his switch was off. It was hard to know
|
|
because of the obscuring reflections the lights made against the glass
|
|
booth.
|
|
|
|
"Why don't we put on a coat and tie," said Sinatra, then wearing a
|
|
high-necked yellow pullover, "and tape this...."
|
|
|
|
Suddenly Hemion's voice came over the sound amplifier, very calmly:
|
|
"Okay, Frank, would you mind going back over...."
|
|
|
|
"Yes, I would mind going back," Sinatra snapped.
|
|
|
|
The silence from Hemion's end, which lasted a second or two, was then
|
|
again interrupted by Sinatra saying, "When we stop doing things around
|
|
here the way we did them in 1950, maybe we..." and Sinatra continued to
|
|
tear into Hemion, condemning as well the lack of modern techniques in
|
|
putting such shows together; then, possibly not wanting to use his voice
|
|
unnecessarily, he stopped. And Dwight Hemion, very patient, so patient
|
|
and calm that one would assume he had not heard anything that Sinatra
|
|
had just said, outlined the opening part of the show. And Sinatra a few
|
|
minutes later was reading his opening remarks, words that would follow
|
|
"Without a Song," off the large idiot-cards being held near the camera.
|
|
Then, this done, he prepared to do the same thing on camera.
|
|
|
|
"Frank Sinatra Show, Act I, Page 10, Take 1," called a man with a
|
|
clapboard, jumping in front of the camera—clap—then jumping away again.
|
|
|
|
"Did you ever stop to think," Sinatra began, "what the world would be
|
|
like without a song?... It would be a pretty dreary place.... Gives you
|
|
something to think about, doesn't it?..."
|
|
|
|
Sinatra stopped.
|
|
|
|
"Excuse me," he said, adding, "Boy, I need a drink."
|
|
|
|
They tried it again.
|
|
|
|
"Frank Sinatra Show, Act I, Page 10, Take 2," yelled the jumping guy
|
|
with the clapboard.
|
|
|
|
"Did you ever stop to think what the world would be like without a
|
|
song?..." Frank Sinatra read it through this time without stopping. Then
|
|
he rehearsed a few more songs, once or twice interrupting the orchestra
|
|
when a certain instrumental sound was not quite what he wanted. It was
|
|
hard to tell how well his voice was going to hold up, for this was early
|
|
in the show; up to this point, however, everybody in the room seemed
|
|
pleased, particularly when he sang an old sentimental favorite written
|
|
more than twenty years ago by Jimmy Van Heusen and Phil Silvers—"Nancy,"
|
|
inspired by the first of Sinatra's three children when she was just a
|
|
few years old.
|
|
|
|
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
|
|
|
|
If I don't see her each day
|
|
|
|
I miss her....
|
|
|
|
Gee what a thrill
|
|
|
|
Each time I kiss her....
|
|
|
|
As Sinatra sang these words, though he has sung them hundreds and
|
|
hundreds of times in the past, it was suddenly obvious to everybody in
|
|
the studio that something quite special must be going on inside the man,
|
|
because something quite special was coming out. He was singing now, cold
|
|
or no cold, with power and warmth, he was letting himself go, the public
|
|
arrogance was gone, the private side was in this song about the girl
|
|
who, it is said, understands him better than anybody else, and is the
|
|
only person in front of whom he can be unashamedly himself.
|
|
|
|
\[image id='8da092c8-15ce-455a-977a-af56a8965cee'
|
|
mediaId='efa61d97-6c1a-4596-b9dd-4425b7f080e2' caption='' loc='C'
|
|
share='true' expand='true' size='medium'\]\[/image\]
|
|
|
|
Nancy is twenty-five. She lives alone, her marriage to singer Tommy
|
|
Sands having ended in divorce. Her home is in a Los Angeles suburb and
|
|
she is now making her third film and is recording for her father's
|
|
record company. She sees him every day; or, if not, he telephones, no
|
|
matter if it be from Europe or Asia. When Sinatra's singing first became
|
|
popular on radio, stimulating the swooners, Nancy would listen at home
|
|
and cry. When Sinatra's first marriage broke up in 1951 and he left
|
|
home, Nancy was the only child old enough to remember him as a father.
|
|
She also saw him with Ava Gardner, Juliet Prowse, Mia Farrow, many
|
|
others, has gone on double dates with him....
|
|
|
|
She takes the winter
|
|
|
|
And makes it summer....
|
|
|
|
Summer could take
|
|
|
|
Some lessons from her....
|
|
|
|
Nancy now also sees him visiting at home with his first wife, the former
|
|
Nancy Barbato, a plasterer's daughter from Jersey City whom he married
|
|
in 1939 when he was earning $25 a week singing at the Rustic Cabin near
|
|
Hoboken.
|
|
|
|
\[pullquote align='C'\]He was singing now, cold or no cold, with power
|
|
and warmth, he was letting himself go, the public arrogance was gone,
|
|
the private side was in this song about the girl who, it is said,
|
|
understands him better than anybody else, and is the only person in
|
|
front of whom he can be unashamedly himself.\[/pullquote\]
|
|
|
|
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
|
|
|
|
The first Mrs. Sinatra, a striking woman who has never remarried ("When
|
|
you've been married to Frank Sinatra..." she once explained to a
|
|
friend), lives in a magnificent home in Los Angeles with her younger
|
|
daughter, Tina, who is seventeen. There is no bitterness, only great
|
|
respect and affection between Sinatra and his first wife, and he has
|
|
long been welcome in her home and has even been known to wander in at
|
|
odd hours, stoke the fire, lie on the sofa, and fall asleep. Frank
|
|
Sinatra can fall asleep anywhere, something he learned when he used to
|
|
ride bumpy roads with band buses; he also learned at that time, when
|
|
sitting in a tuxedo, how to pinch the trouser creases in the back and
|
|
tuck the jacket under and out, and fall asleep perfectly pressed. But he
|
|
does not ride buses anymore, and his daughter Nancy, who in her younger
|
|
days felt rejected when he slept on the sofa instead of giving attention
|
|
to her, later realized that the sofa was one of the few places left in
|
|
the world where Frank Sinatra could get any privacy, where his famous
|
|
face would neither be stared at nor cause an abnormal reaction in
|
|
others. She realized, too, that things normal have always eluded her
|
|
father: his childhood was one of loneliness and a drive toward
|
|
attention, and since attaining it he has never again been certain of
|
|
solitude. Upon looking out the window of a home he once owned in
|
|
Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, he would occasionally see the faces of
|
|
teen-agers peeking in; and in 1944, after moving to California and
|
|
buying a home behind a ten-foot fence on Lake Toluca, he discovered that
|
|
the only way to escape the telephone and other intrusions was to board
|
|
his paddle boat with a few friends, a card table and a case of beer, and
|
|
stay afloat all afternoon. But he has tried, insofar as it has been
|
|
possible, to be like everyone else, Nancy says. He wept on her wedding
|
|
day, he is very sentimental and sensitive....
|
|
|
|
**WHAT THE HELL** are you doing up there, Dwight?"
|
|
|
|
Silence from the control booth.
|
|
|
|
"Got a party or something going on up there, Dwight?"
|
|
|
|
Sinatra stood on the stage, arms folded, glaring up across the cameras
|
|
toward Hemion. Sinatra had sung Nancy with probably all he had in his
|
|
voice on this day. The next few numbers contained raspy notes, and twice
|
|
his voice completely cracked. But now Hemion was in the control booth
|
|
out of communication; then he was down in the studio walking over to
|
|
where Sinatra stood. A few minutes later they both left the studio and
|
|
were on the way up to the control booth. The tape was replayed for
|
|
Sinatra. He watched only about five minutes of it before he started to
|
|
shake his head. Then he said to Hemion: "Forget it, just forget it.
|
|
You're wasting your time. What you got there," Sinatra said, nodding to
|
|
the singing image of himself on the television screen, "is a man with a
|
|
cold." Then he left the control booth, ordering that the whole day's
|
|
performance be scrubbed and future taping postponed until he had
|
|
recovered.
|
|
|
|
**SOON THE WORD SPREAD** like an emotional epidemic down through
|
|
Sinatra's staff, then fanned out through Hollywood, then was heard
|
|
across the nation in Jilly's saloon, and also on the other side of the
|
|
Hudson River in the homes of Frank Sinatra's parents and his other
|
|
relatives and friends in New Jersey.
|
|
|
|
When Frank Sinatra spoke with his father on the telephone and said he
|
|
was feeling awful, the elder Sinatra reported that he was also feeling
|
|
awful: that his left arm and fist were so stiff with a circulatory
|
|
condition he could barely use them, adding that the ailment might be the
|
|
result of having thrown too many left hooks during his days as a
|
|
bantamweight almost fifty years ago.
|
|
|
|
Martin Sinatra, a ruddy and tattooed little blue-eyed Sicilian born in
|
|
Catania, boxed under the name of "Marty O'Brien." In those days, in
|
|
those places, with the Irish running the lower reaches of city life, it
|
|
was not uncommon for Italians to wind up with such names. Most of the
|
|
Italians and Sicilians who migrated to America just prior to the 1900's
|
|
were poor and uneducated, were excluded from the building-trades unions
|
|
dominated by the Irish, and were somewhat intimidated by the Irish
|
|
police, Irish priests, Irish politicians.
|
|
|
|
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
|
|
|
|
One notable exception was Frank Sinatra's mother, Dolly, a large and
|
|
very ambitious woman who was brought to this country at two months of
|
|
age by her mother and father, a lithographer from Genoa. In later years
|
|
Dolly Sinatra, possessing a round red face and blue eyes, was often
|
|
mistaken for being Irish, and surprised many at the speed with which she
|
|
swung her heavy handbag at anyone uttering "Wop."
|
|
|
|
By playing skillful politics with North Jersey's Democratic machine,
|
|
Dolly Sinatra was to become, in her heyday, a kind of Catherine de
|
|
Medici of Hoboken's third ward. She could always be counted upon to
|
|
deliver six hundred votes at election time from her Italian
|
|
neighborhood, and this was her base of power. When she told one of the
|
|
politicians that she wanted her husband to be appointed to the Hoboken
|
|
Fire Department, and was told, "But, Dolly, we don't have an opening,"
|
|
she snapped, "Make an opening."
|
|
|
|
They did. Years later she requested that her husband be made a captain,
|
|
and one day she got a call from one of the political bosses that began,
|
|
"Dolly, congratulations\!"
|
|
|
|
"For what?"
|
|
|
|
"Captain Sinatra."
|
|
|
|
"Oh, you finally made him one—thank you very much."
|
|
|
|
Then she called the Hoboken Fire Department.
|
|
|
|
"Let me speak to Captain Sinatra," she said. The fireman called Martin
|
|
Sinatra to the phone, saying, "Marty, I think your wife has gone nuts."
|
|
When he got on the line, Dolly greeted him:
|
|
|
|
"Congratulations, Captain Sinatra\!"
|
|
|
|
\[image id='e756a88a-79c4-46bf-96f2-95961b28bb9e'
|
|
mediaId='ca99bfc4-1668-4d9c-abf2-a374f20b2554' caption='Frank Sinatra
|
|
pictured at age 6.' loc='L' share='true' expand='true'
|
|
size='L'\]\[/image\]
|
|
|
|
Dolly's only child, christened Francis Albert Sinatra, was born and
|
|
nearly died on December 12, 1915. It was a difficult birth, and during
|
|
his first moment on earth he received marks he will carry till death—the
|
|
scars on the left side of his neck being the result of a doctor's clumsy
|
|
forceps, and Sinatra has chosen not to obscure them with surgery.
|
|
|
|
After he was six months old, he was reared mainly by his grandmother.
|
|
His mother had a full-time job as a chocolate dipper with a large firm
|
|
and was so proficient at it that the firm once offered to send her to
|
|
the Paris office to train others. While some people in Hoboken remember
|
|
Frank Sinatra as a lonely child, one who spent many hours on the porch
|
|
gazing into space, Sinatra was never a slum kid, never in jail, always
|
|
well-dressed. He had so many pants that some people in Hoboken called
|
|
him "Slacksey O'Brien."
|
|
|
|
Dolly Sinatra was not the sort of Italian mother who could be appeased
|
|
merely by a child's obedience and good appetite. She made many demands
|
|
on her son, was always very strict. She dreamed of his becoming an
|
|
aviation engineer. When she discovered Bing Crosby pictures hanging on
|
|
his bedroom walls one evening, and learned that her son wished to become
|
|
a singer too, she became infuriated and threw a shoe at him. Later,
|
|
finding she could not talk him out of it—"he takes after me"—she
|
|
encouraged his singing.
|
|
|
|
Many Italo-American boys of his generation were then shooting for the
|
|
same star—they were strong with song, weak with words, not a big
|
|
novelist among them: no O'Hara, no Bellow, no Cheever, nor Shaw; yet
|
|
they could communicate bel canto. This was more in their tradition, no
|
|
need for a diploma; they could, with a song, someday see their names in
|
|
lights...Perry Como...Frankie Laine...Tony Bennett...Vic Damone...but
|
|
none could see it better than Frank Sinatra.
|
|
|
|
Though he sang through much of the night at the Rustic Cabin, he was up
|
|
the next day singing without a fee on New York radio to get more
|
|
attention. Later he got a job singing with Harry James's band, and it
|
|
was there in August of 1939 that Sinatra had his first recording hit—
|
|
"All or Nothing at All." He became very fond of Harry James and the men
|
|
in the band, but when he received an offer from Tommy Dorsey, who in
|
|
those days had probably the best band in the country, Sinatra took it;
|
|
the job paid $125 a week, and Dorsey knew how to feature a vocalist. Yet
|
|
Sinatra was very depressed at leaving James's band, and the final night
|
|
with them was so memorable that, twenty years later, Sinatra could
|
|
recall the details to a friend: "...the bus pulled out with the rest of
|
|
the boys at about half-past midnight. I'd said good-bye to them all, and
|
|
it was snowing, I remember. There was nobody around and I stood alone
|
|
with my suitcase in the snow and watched the taillights disappear. Then
|
|
the tears started and I tried to run after the bus. There was such
|
|
spirit and enthusiasm in that band, I hated leaving it...."
|
|
|
|
But he did—as he would leave other warm places, too, in search of
|
|
something more, never wasting time, trying to do it all in one
|
|
generation, fighting under his own name, defending underdogs,
|
|
terrorizing top dogs. He threw a punch at a musician who said something
|
|
anti-Semitic, espoused the Negro cause two decades before it became
|
|
fashionable. He also threw a tray of glasses at Buddy Rich when he
|
|
played the drums too loud.
|
|
|
|
\[image id='d732e0c2-6681-4fe7-90d9-02c532611107'
|
|
mediaId='274478ec-9c5f-4c5e-a602-8d867cc959ea' caption='Dolly Sinatra
|
|
with son, Frank. October 1945.' loc='R' share='true' expand='true'
|
|
size='L'\]\[/image\]
|
|
|
|
Sinatra gave away $50,000 worth of gold cigarette lighters before he was
|
|
thirty, was living an immigrant's wildest dream of America. He arrived
|
|
suddenly on the scene when DiMaggio was silent, when paisanos were
|
|
mournful, were quietly defensive about Hitler in their homeland. Sinatra
|
|
became, in time, a kind of one-man Anti-Defamation League for Italians
|
|
in America, the sort of organization that would be unlikely for them
|
|
because, as the theory goes, they rarely agreed on anything, being
|
|
extreme individualists: fine as soloists, but not so good in a choir;
|
|
fine as heroes, but not so good in a parade.
|
|
|
|
When many Italian names were used in describing gangsters on a
|
|
television show, The Untouchables, Sinatra was loud in his disapproval.
|
|
Sinatra and many thousands of other Italo-Americans were resentful as
|
|
well when a small-time hoodlum, Joseph Valachi, was brought by Bobby
|
|
Kennedy into prominence as a Mafia expert, when indeed, from Valachi's
|
|
testimony on television, he seemed to know less than most waiters on
|
|
Mulberry Street. Many Italians in Sinatra's circle also regard Bobby
|
|
Kennedy as something of an Irish cop, more dignified than those in
|
|
Dolly's day, but no less intimidating. Together with Peter Lawford,
|
|
Bobby Kennedy is said to have suddenly gotten "cocky" with Sinatra after
|
|
John Kennedy's election, forgetting the contribution Sinatra had made in
|
|
both fundraising and in influencing many anti-Irish Italian votes.
|
|
Lawford and Bobby Kennedy are both suspected of having influenced the
|
|
late President's decision to stay as a house guest with Bing Crosby
|
|
instead of Sinatra, as originally planned, a social setback Sinatra may
|
|
never forget. Peter Lawford has since been drummed out of Sinatra's
|
|
"summit" in Las Vegas.
|
|
|
|
"Yes, my son is like me," Dolly Sinatra says, proudly. "You cross him,
|
|
he never forgets." And while she concedes his power, she quickly points
|
|
out, "He can't make his mother do anything she doesn't want to do,"
|
|
adding, "Even today, he wears the same brand of underwear I used to buy
|
|
him."
|
|
|
|
Today Dolly Sinatra is seventy-one years old, a year or two younger than
|
|
Martin, and all day long people are knocking on the back door of her
|
|
large home asking her advice, seeking her influence. When she is not
|
|
seeing people and not cooking in the kitchen, she is looking after her
|
|
husband, a silent but stubborn man, and telling him to keep his sore
|
|
left arm resting on the sponge she has placed on the armrest of a soft
|
|
chair. "Oh, he went to some terrific fires, this guy did," Dolly said to
|
|
a visitor, nodding with admiration toward her husband in the chair.
|
|
|
|
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
|
|
|
|
Though Dolly Sinatra has eighty-seven godchildren in Hoboken, and still
|
|
goes to that city during political campaigns, she now lives with her
|
|
husband in a beautiful sixteen-room house in Fort Lee, New Jersey. This
|
|
home was a gift from their son on their fiftieth wedding anniversary
|
|
three years ago. The home is tastefully furnished and is filled with a
|
|
remarkable juxtaposition of the pious and the worldly—photographs of
|
|
Pope John and Ava Gardner, of Pope Paul and Dean Martin; several statues
|
|
of saints and holy water, a chair autographed by Sammy Davis, Jr. and
|
|
bottles of bourbon. In Mrs. Sinatra's jewelry box is a magnificent
|
|
strand of pearls she had just received from Ava Gardner, whom she liked
|
|
tremendously as a daughter-in-law and still keeps in touch with and
|
|
talks about; and hung on the wall is a letter addressed to Dolly and
|
|
Martin: "The sands of time have turned to gold, yet love continues to
|
|
unfold like the petals of a rose, in God's garden of life...may God love
|
|
you thru all eternity. I thank Him, I thank you for the being of one.
|
|
Your loving son, Francis...."
|
|
|
|
Mrs. Sinatra talks to her son on the telephone about once a week, and
|
|
recently he suggested that, when visiting Manhattan, she make use of his
|
|
apartment on East Seventy-second Street on the East River. This is an
|
|
expensive neighborhood of New York even though there is a small factory
|
|
on the block, but this latter fact was seized upon by Dolly Sinatra as a
|
|
means of getting back at her son for some unflattering descriptions of
|
|
his childhood in Hoboken.
|
|
|
|
"What—you want me to stay in your apartment, in that dump?" she asked.
|
|
"You think I'm going to spend the night in that awful neighborhood?"
|
|
|
|
Frank Sinatra got the point, and said, "Excuse me, Mrs. Fort Lee."
|
|
|
|
After spending the week in Palm Springs, his cold much better, Frank
|
|
Sinatra returned to Los Angeles, a lovely city of sun and
|
|
[sex](/lifestyle/sex/advice/a9353/best-sex-positions/), a Spanish
|
|
discovery of Mexican misery, a star land of little men and little women
|
|
sliding in and out of convertibles in tense tight pants.
|
|
|
|
Sinatra returned in time to see the long-awaited CBS documentary with
|
|
his family. At about nine p.m. he drove to the home of his former wife,
|
|
Nancy, and had dinner with her and their two daughters. Their son, whom
|
|
they rarely see these days, was out of town.
|
|
|
|
Frank, Jr., who is twenty-two, was touring with a band and moving cross
|
|
country toward a New York engagement at Basin Street East with The Pied
|
|
Pipers, with whom Frank Sinatra sang when he was with Dorsey's band in
|
|
the 1940's. Today Frank Sinatra, Jr., whom his father says he named
|
|
after Franklin D. Roosevelt, lives mostly in hotels, dines each evening
|
|
in his nightclub dressing room, and sings until two a.m., accepting
|
|
graciously, because he has no choice, the inevitable comparisons. His
|
|
voice is smooth and pleasant, and improving with work, and while he is
|
|
very respectful of his father, he discusses him with objectivity and in
|
|
an occasional tone of subdued cockiness.
|
|
|
|
Concurrent with his father's early fame, Frank, Jr. said, was the
|
|
creation of a "press-release Sinatra" designed to "set him apart from
|
|
the common man, separate him from the realities: it was suddenly
|
|
Sinatra, the electric magnate, Sinatra who is supernormal, not
|
|
superhuman but supernormal. And here," Frank, Jr. continued, "is the
|
|
great fallacy, the great bullshit, for Frank Sinatra is normal, is the
|
|
guy whom you'd meet on a street corner. But this other thing, the
|
|
supernormal guise, has affected Frank Sinatra as much as anybody who
|
|
watches one of his television shows, or reads a magazine article about
|
|
him....
|
|
|
|
"Frank Sinatra's life in the beginning was so normal," he said, "that
|
|
nobody would have guessed in 1934 that this little Italian kid with the
|
|
curly hair would become the giant, the monster, the great living
|
|
legend.... He met my mother one summer on the beach. She was Nancy
|
|
Barbato, daughter of Mike Barbato, a Jersey City plasterer. And she
|
|
meets the fireman's son, Frank, one summer day on the beach at Long
|
|
Branch, New Jersey. Both are Italian, both Roman Catholic, both
|
|
lower-middle-class summer sweethearts—it is like a million bad movies
|
|
starring Frankie Avalon. . . .
|
|
|
|
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
|
|
|
|
"They have three children. The first child, Nancy, was the most normal
|
|
of Frank Sinatra's children. Nancy was a cheerleader, went to summer
|
|
camp, drove a Chevrolet, had the easiest kind of development centered
|
|
around the home and family. Next is me. My life with the family is very,
|
|
very normal up until September of 1958 when, in complete contrast to the
|
|
rearing of both girls, I am put into a college-preparatory school. I am
|
|
now away from the inner family circle, and my position within has never
|
|
been remade to this day.... The third child, Tina. And to be dead
|
|
honest, I really couldn't say what her life is like...."
|
|
|
|
\[image id='543c78b5-80a1-4a21-98f6-8c8a07f6f4d4'
|
|
mediaId='c5e4ebba-840b-4e89-bab6-6f0c3f2e70d1' caption='The Sinatra
|
|
Family.' loc='C' share='true' expand='true' size='M'\]\[/image\]
|
|
|
|
The CBS show, narrated by Walter Cronkite, began at ten p.m. A minute
|
|
before that, the Sinatra family, having finished dinner, turned their
|
|
chairs around and faced the camera, united for whatever disaster might
|
|
follow. Sinatra's men in other parts of town, in other parts of the
|
|
nation, were doing the same thing. Sinatra's lawyer, Milton A. Rudin,
|
|
smoking a cigar, was watching with a keen eye, an alert legal mind.
|
|
Other sets were watched by Brad Dexter, Jim Mahoney, Ed Pucci; Sinatra's
|
|
makeup man, "Shotgun" Britton; his New York representative, Henri Gine;
|
|
his haberdasher, Richard Carroll; his insurance broker, John Lillie; his
|
|
valet, George Jacobs, a handsome Negro who, when entertaining girls in
|
|
his apartment, plays records by Ray Charles.
|
|
|
|
And like so much of Hollywood's fear, the apprehension about the CBS
|
|
show all proved to be without foundation. It was a highly flattering
|
|
hour that did not deeply probe, as rumors suggested it would, into
|
|
Sinatra's love life, or the Mafia, or other areas of his private
|
|
province. While the documentary was not authorized, wrote Jack Gould in
|
|
the next day's New York Times, "it could have been."
|
|
|
|
Immediately after the show, the telephones began to ring throughout the
|
|
Sinatra system conveying words of joy and relief—and from New York came
|
|
Jilly's telegram: "WE RULE THE WORLD\!"
|
|
|
|
**THE NEXT DAY, STANDING** in the corridor of the NBC building where he
|
|
was about to resume taping his show, Sinatra was discussing the CBS show
|
|
with several of his friends, and he said, "Oh, it was a gas."
|
|
|
|
"Yeah, Frank, a helluva show."
|
|
|
|
"But I think Jack Gould was right in The Times today," Sinatra said.
|
|
"There should have been more on the man, not so much on the music...."
|
|
|
|
They nodded, nobody mentioning the past hysteria in the Sinatra world
|
|
when it seemed CBS was zeroing in on the man; they just nodded and two
|
|
of them laughed about Sinatra's apparently having gotten the word "bird"
|
|
on the show—this being a favorite Sinatra word. He often inquires of his
|
|
cronies, "How's your bird?"; and when he nearly drowned in Hawaii, he
|
|
later explained, "Just got a little water on my bird"; and under a large
|
|
photograph of him holding a whisky bottle, a photo that hangs in the
|
|
home of an actor friend named Dick Bakalyan, the inscription reads:
|
|
"Drink, Dickie\! It's good for your bird." In the song, "Come Fly with
|
|
Me," Sinatra sometimes alters the lyrics—"...just say the words and
|
|
we'll take our birds down to Acapulco Bay...."
|
|
|
|
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
|
|
|
|
Ten minutes later Sinatra, following the orchestra, walked into the NBC
|
|
studio, which did not resemble in the slightest the scene here of eight
|
|
days ago. On this occasion Sinatra was in fine voice, he cracked jokes
|
|
between numbers, nothing could upset him. Once, while he was singing
|
|
"How Can I Ignore the Girl Next Door," standing on the stage next to a
|
|
tree, a television camera mounted on a vehicle came rolling in too close
|
|
and plowed against the tree.
|
|
|
|
"Kee-rist\!" yelled one of the technical assistants.
|
|
|
|
But Sinatra seemed hardly to notice it.
|
|
|
|
"We've had a slight accident," he said, calmly. Then he began the song
|
|
all over from the beginning.
|
|
|
|
When the show was over, Sinatra watched the rerun on the monitor in the
|
|
control room. He was very pleased, shaking hands with Dwight Hemion and
|
|
his assistants. Then the whisky bottles were opened in Sinatra's
|
|
dressing room. Pat Lawford was there, and so were Andy Williams and a
|
|
dozen others. The telegrams and telephone calls continued to be received
|
|
from all over the country with praise for the CBS show. There was even a
|
|
call, Mahoney said, from the CBS producer, Don Hewitt, with whom Sinatra
|
|
had been so angry a few days before. And Sinatra was still angry,
|
|
feeling that CBS had betrayed him, though the show itself was not
|
|
objectionable.
|
|
|
|
"Shall I drop a line to Hewitt?" Mahoney asked.
|
|
|
|
"Can you send a fist through the mail?" Sinatra asked.
|
|
|
|
He has everything, he cannot sleep, he gives nice gifts, he is not
|
|
happy, but he would not trade, even for happiness, what he is....
|
|
|
|
He is a piece of our past—but only we have aged, he hasn't...we are
|
|
dogged by domesticity, he isn't...we have compunctions, he doesn't...it
|
|
is our fault, not his....
|
|
|
|
He controls the menus of every Italian restaurant in Los Angeles; if you
|
|
want North Italian cooking, fly to Milan....
|
|
|
|
Men follow him, imitate him, fight to be near him...there is something
|
|
of the locker room, the barracks about him...bird...bird....
|
|
|
|
He believes you must play it big, wide, expansively— the more open you
|
|
are, the more you take in, your dimensions deepen, you grow, you become
|
|
more what you are—bigger, richer....
|
|
|
|
"He is better than anybody else, or at least they think he is, and he
|
|
has to live up to it." —Nancy Sinatra, Jr.
|
|
|
|
"He is calm on the outside—inwardly a million things are happening to
|
|
him." —Dick Bakalyan
|
|
|
|
"He has an insatiable desire to live every moment to its fullest
|
|
because, I guess, he feels that right around the corner is extinction."
|
|
—Brad Dexter
|
|
|
|
\[pullquote align='C'\]He has everything, he cannot sleep, he gives nice
|
|
gifts, he is not happy, but he would not trade, even for happiness, what
|
|
he is....\[/pullquote\]
|
|
|
|
"All I ever got out of any of my marriages was the two years Artie Shaw
|
|
financed on an analyst's couch." —Ava Gardner
|
|
|
|
"We weren't mother and son—we were buddies." —Dolly Sinatra
|
|
|
|
"I'm for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer,
|
|
tranquilizers or a bottle of Jack Daniel." —Frank Sinatra
|
|
|
|
**FRANK SINATRA WAS TIRED** of all the talk, the gossip, the
|
|
theory—tired of reading quotes about himself, of hearing what people
|
|
were saying about him all over town. It had been a tedious three weeks,
|
|
he said, and now he just wanted to get away, go to Las Vegas, let off
|
|
some steam. So he hopped in his jet, soared over the California hills
|
|
across the Nevada flats, then over miles and miles of desert to The
|
|
Sands and the Clay-Patterson fight.
|
|
|
|
On the eve of the fight he stayed up all night and slept through most of
|
|
the afternoon, though his recorded voice could be heard singing in the
|
|
lobby of The Sands, in the gambling casino, even in the toilets, being
|
|
interrupted every few bars however by the paging public address:
|
|
"...Telephone call for Mr. Ron Fish, Mr. Ron Fish...with a ribbon of
|
|
gold in her hair.... Telephone call for Mr. Herbert Rothstein, Mr.
|
|
Herbert Rothstein...memories of a time so bright, keep me sleepless
|
|
through dark endless nights...."
|
|
|
|
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
|
|
|
|
\[image id='a48c8877-3fd4-41e9-a25d-27ff7f80314b'
|
|
mediaId='8f2febeb-db98-47b7-9938-3a45ce6b96b4' caption='' loc='L'
|
|
share='true' expand='true' size='L'\]\[/image\]
|
|
|
|
Standing around in the lobby of The Sands and other hotels up and down
|
|
the strip on this afternoon before the fight were the usual prefight
|
|
prophets: the gamblers, the old champs, the little cigar butts from
|
|
Eighth Avenue, the sportswriters who knock the big fights all year but
|
|
would never miss one, the novelists who seem always to be identifying
|
|
with one boxer or another, the local prostitutes assisted by some talent
|
|
in from Los Angeles, and also a young brunette in a wrinkled black
|
|
cocktail dress who was at the bell captain's desk crying, "But I want to
|
|
speak to Mr. Sinatra."
|
|
|
|
"He's not here," the bell captain said.
|
|
|
|
"Won't you put me through to his room?"
|
|
|
|
"There are no messages going through, Miss," he said, and then she
|
|
turned, unsteadily, seeming close to tears, and walked through the lobby
|
|
into the big noisy casino crowded with men interested only in money.
|
|
|
|
Shortly before seven p.m., Jack Entratter, a big grey-haired man who
|
|
operates The Sands, walked into the gambling room to tell some men
|
|
around the blackjack table that Sinatra was getting dressed. He also
|
|
said that he'd been unable to get front-row seats for everybody, and so
|
|
some of the men—including Leo Durocher, who had a date, and Joey Bishop,
|
|
who was accompanied by his wife—would not be able to fit in Frank
|
|
Sinatra's row but would have to take seats in the third row. When
|
|
Entratter walked over to tell this to Joey Bishop, Bishop's face fell.
|
|
He did not seem angry; he merely looked at Entratter with an empty
|
|
silence, seeming somewhat stunned.
|
|
|
|
"Joey, I'm sorry," Entratter said when the silence persisted, "but we
|
|
couldn't get more than six together in the front row."
|
|
|
|
Bishop still said nothing. But when they all appeared at the fight, Joey
|
|
Bishop was in the front row, his wife in the third.
|
|
|
|
The fight, called a holy war between Muslims and Christians, was
|
|
preceded by the introduction of three balding ex-champions, Rocky
|
|
Marciano, Joe Louis, Sonny Liston—and then there was "The Star-Spangled
|
|
Banner" sung by another man from out of the past, Eddie Fisher. It had
|
|
been more than fourteen years ago, but Sinatra could still remember
|
|
every detail: Eddie Fisher was then the new king of the baritones, with
|
|
Billy Eckstine and Guy Mitchell right with him, and Sinatra had been
|
|
long counted out. One day he remembered walking into a broadcasting
|
|
studio past dozens of Eddie Fisher fans waiting outside the hall, and
|
|
when they saw Sinatra they began to jeer, "Frankie, Frankie, I'm
|
|
swooning, I'm swooning." This was also the time when he was selling only
|
|
about 30,000 records a year, when he was dreadfully miscast as a funny
|
|
man on his television show, and when he recorded such disasters as "Mama
|
|
Will Bark," with Dagmar.
|
|
|
|
"I growled and barked on the record," Sinatra said, still horrified by
|
|
the thought. "The only good it did me was with the dogs."
|
|
|
|
His voice and his artistic judgment were incredibly bad in 1952, but
|
|
even more responsible for his decline, say his friends, was his pursuit
|
|
of Ava Gardner. She was the big movie queen then, one of the most
|
|
beautiful women in the world. Sinatra's daughter Nancy recalls seeing
|
|
Ava swimming one day in her father's pool, then climbing out of the
|
|
water with that fabulous body, walking slowly to the fire, leaning over
|
|
it for a few moments, and then it suddenly seemed that her long dark
|
|
hair was all dry, miraculously and effortlessly back in place.
|
|
|
|
With most women Sinatra dates, his friends say, he never knows whether
|
|
they want him for what he can do for them now—or will do for them later.
|
|
With Ava Gardner, it was different. He could do nothing for her later.
|
|
She was on top. If Sinatra learned anything from his experience with
|
|
her, he possibly learned that when a proud man is down a woman cannot
|
|
help. Particularly a woman on top.
|
|
|
|
\[image id='aad71476-fd68-4886-90d4-40cb7af77c31'
|
|
mediaId='fe759f77-4dff-45ce-a086-0f6ec90ef680' caption='Frank Sinatra
|
|
and Ava Gardner.' loc='C' share='true' expand='true'
|
|
size='M'\]\[/image\]
|
|
|
|
Nevertheless, despite a tired voice, some deep emotion seeped into his
|
|
singing during this time. One particular song that is well remembered
|
|
even now is "I'm a Fool to Want You," and a friend who was in the studio
|
|
when Sinatra recorded it recalled: "Frank was really worked up that
|
|
night. He did the song in one take, then turned around and walked out of
|
|
the studio and that was that...."
|
|
|
|
Sinatra's manager at that time, a former song plugger named Hank
|
|
Sanicola, said, "Ava loved Frank, but not the way he loved her. He needs
|
|
a great deal of love. He wants it twenty-four hours a day, he must have
|
|
people around—Frank is that kind of guy." Ava Gardner, Sanicola said,
|
|
"was very insecure. She feared she could not really hold a man...twice
|
|
he went chasing her to Africa, wasting his own career...."
|
|
|
|
"Ava didn't want Frank's men hanging around all the time," another
|
|
friend said, "and this got him mad. With Nancy he used to be able to
|
|
bring the whole band home with him, and Nancy, the good Italian wife,
|
|
would never complain—she'd just make everybody a plate of spaghetti."
|
|
|
|
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
|
|
|
|
In 1953, after almost two years of marriage, Sinatra and Ava Gardner
|
|
were divorced. Sinatra's mother reportedly arranged a reconciliation,
|
|
but if Ava was willing, Frank Sinatra was not. He was seen with other
|
|
women. The balance had shifted. Somewhere during this period Sinatra
|
|
seemed to change from the kid singer, the boy actor in the sailor suit,
|
|
to a man. Even before he had won the Oscar in 1953 for his role in From
|
|
Here to Eternity, some flashes of his old talent were coming through—in
|
|
his recording of "The Birth of the Blues," in his Riviera-nightclub
|
|
appearance that jazz critics enthusiastically praised; and there was
|
|
also a trend now toward L.P.'s and away from the quick three-minute
|
|
deal, and Sinatra's concert style would have capitalized on this with or
|
|
without an Oscar.
|
|
|
|
In 1954, totally committed to his talent once more, Frank Sinatra was
|
|
selected Metronome's "Singer of the Year," and later he won the U.P.I.
|
|
disc-jockey poll, unseating Eddie Fisher—who now, in Las Vegas, having
|
|
sung "The Star-Spangled Banner," climbed out of the ring, and the fight
|
|
began.
|
|
|
|
Floyd Patterson chased Clay around the ring in the first round, but was
|
|
unable to reach him, and from then on he was Clay's toy, the bout ending
|
|
in a technical knockout in the twelfth round. A half hour later, nearly
|
|
everybody had forgotten about the fight and was back at the gambling
|
|
tables or lining up to buy tickets for the Dean Martin-Sinatra-Bishop
|
|
nightclub routine on the stage of The Sands. This routine, which
|
|
includes Sammy Davis, Jr. when he is in town, consists of a few songs
|
|
and much cutting up, all of it very informal, very special, and rather
|
|
ethnic—Martin, a drink in hand, asking Bishop: "Did you ever see a Jew
|
|
jitsu?"; and Bishop, playing a Jewish waiter, warning the two Italians
|
|
to watch out "because I got my own group—the Matzia."
|
|
|
|
Then after the last show at The Sands, the Sinatra crowd, which now
|
|
numbered about twenty—and included Jilly, who had flown in from New
|
|
York; Jimmy Cannon, Sinatra's favorite sports columnist; Harold Gibbons,
|
|
a Teamster official expected to take over if Hoffa goes to jail—all got
|
|
into a line of cars and headed for another club. It was three o'clock.
|
|
The night was young.
|
|
|
|
They stopped at The Sahara, taking a long table near the back, and
|
|
listened to a baldheaded little comedian named Don Rickles, who is
|
|
probably more caustic than any comic in the country. His humor is so
|
|
rude, in such bad taste, that it offends no one—it is too offensive to
|
|
be offensive. Spotting Eddie Fisher among the audience, Rickles
|
|
proceeded to ridicule him as a lover, saying it was no wonder that he
|
|
could not handle Elizabeth Taylor; and when two businessmen in the
|
|
audience acknowledged that they were Egyptian, Rickles cut into them for
|
|
their country's policy toward Israel; and he strongly suggested that the
|
|
woman seated at one table with her husband was actually a hooker.
|
|
|
|
When the Sinatra crowd walked in, Don Rickles could not be more
|
|
delighted. Pointing to Jilly, Rickles yelled: "How's it feel to be
|
|
Frank's tractor?... Yeah, Jilly keeps walking in front of Frank clearing
|
|
the way." Then, nodding to Durocher, Rickles said, "Stand up Leo, show
|
|
Frank how you slide." Then he focused on Sinatra, not failing to mention
|
|
Mia Farrow, nor that he was wearing a toupee, nor to say that Sinatra
|
|
was washed up as a singer, and when Sinatra laughed, everybody laughed,
|
|
and Rickles pointed toward Bishop: "Joey Bishop keeps checking with
|
|
Frank to see what's funny."
|
|
|
|
Then, after Rickles told some Jewish jokes, Dean Martin stood up and
|
|
yelled, "Hey, you're always talking about the Jews, never about the
|
|
Italians," and Rickles cut him off with, "What do we need the Italians
|
|
for—all they do is keep the flies off our fish."
|
|
|
|
Sinatra laughed, they all laughed, and Rickles went on this way for
|
|
nearly an hour until Sinatra, standing up, said, "All right, com'on, get
|
|
this thing over with. I gotta go."
|
|
|
|
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
|
|
|
|
"Shaddup and sit down\!" Rickles snapped. "I've had to listen to you
|
|
sing...."
|
|
|
|
"Who do you think you're talking to?" Sinatra yelled back.
|
|
|
|
"Dick Haymes," Rickles replied, and Sinatra laughed again, and then Dean
|
|
Martin, pouring a bottle of whisky over his head, entirely drenching his
|
|
tuxedo, pounded the table.
|
|
|
|
"Who would ever believe that staggering would make a star?" Rickles
|
|
said, but Martin called out, "Hey, I wanna make a speech."
|
|
|
|
"Shaddup."
|
|
|
|
"No, Don, I wanna tell ya," Dean Martin persisted, "that I think you're
|
|
a great performer."
|
|
|
|
"Well, thank you, Dean," Rickles said, seeming pleased.
|
|
|
|
"But don't go by me," Martin said, plopping down into his seat, "I'm
|
|
drunk."
|
|
|
|
"I'll buy that," Rickles said.
|
|
|
|
**BY FOUR A.M. FRANK SINATRA** led the group out of The Sahara, some of
|
|
them carrying their glasses of whisky with them, sipping it along the
|
|
sidewalk and in the cars; then, returning to The Sands, they walked into
|
|
the gambling casino. It was still packed with people, the roulette
|
|
wheels spinning, the crapshooters screaming in the far corner.
|
|
|
|
Frank Sinatra, holding a shot glass of bourbon in his left hand, walked
|
|
through the crowd. He, unlike some of his friends, was perfectly
|
|
pressed, his tuxedo tie precisely pointed, his shoes unsmudged. He never
|
|
seems to lose his dignity, never lets his guard completely down no
|
|
matter how much he has drunk, nor how long he has been up. He never
|
|
sways when he walks, like Dean Martin, nor does he ever dance in the
|
|
aisles or jump up on tables, like Sammy Davis.
|
|
|
|
\[image id='b1caaf3a-fadd-4f2b-9814-c65eb01be90a'
|
|
mediaId='11541912-97a4-464f-a3eb-a2ef0e7c6407' caption='' loc='C'
|
|
share='true' expand='true' size='M'\]\[/image\]
|
|
|
|
A part of Sinatra, no matter where he is, is never there. There is
|
|
always a part of him, though sometimes a small part, that remains Il
|
|
Padrone. Even now, resting his shot glass on the blackjack table, facing
|
|
the dealer, Sinatra stood a bit back from the table, not leaning against
|
|
it. He reached under his tuxedo jacket into his trouser pocket and came
|
|
up with a thick but clean wad of bills. Gently he peeled off a
|
|
one-hundred-dollar bill and placed it on the green-felt table. The
|
|
dealer dealt him two cards. Sinatra called for a third card, overbid,
|
|
lost the hundred.
|
|
|
|
Without a change of expression, Sinatra put down a second hundred-dollar
|
|
bill. He lost that. Then he put down a third, and lost that. Then he
|
|
placed two one-hundred-dollar bills on the table and lost those.
|
|
Finally, putting his sixth hundred-dollar bill on the table, and losing
|
|
it, Sinatra moved away from the table, nodding to the man, and
|
|
announcing, "Good dealer."
|
|
|
|
The crowd that had gathered around him now opened up to let him through.
|
|
But a woman stepped in front of him, handing him a piece of paper to
|
|
autograph. He signed it and then he said, "Thank you."
|
|
|
|
In the rear of The Sands' large dining room was a long table reserved
|
|
for Sinatra. The dining room was fairly empty at this hour, with perhaps
|
|
two dozen other people in the room, including a table of four unescorted
|
|
young ladies sitting near Sinatra. On the other side of the room, at
|
|
another long table, sat seven men shoulder-to-shoulder against the wall,
|
|
two of them wearing dark glasses, all of them eating quietly, speaking
|
|
hardly a word, just sitting and eating and missing nothing.
|
|
|
|
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
|
|
|
|
The Sinatra party, after getting settled and having a few more drinks,
|
|
ordered something to eat. The table was about the same size as the one
|
|
reserved for Sinatra whenever he is at Jilly's in New York; and the
|
|
people seated around this table in Las Vegas were many of the same
|
|
people who are often seen with Sinatra at Jilly's or at a restaurant in
|
|
California, or in Italy, or in New Jersey, or wherever Sinatra happens
|
|
to be. When Sinatra sits to dine, his trusted friends are close; and no
|
|
matter where he is, no matter how elegant the place may be, there is
|
|
something of the neighborhood showing because Sinatra, no matter how far
|
|
he has come, is still something of the boy from the neighborhood—only
|
|
now he can take his neighborhood with him.
|
|
|
|
In some ways, this quasi-family affair at a reserved table in a public
|
|
place is the closest thing Sinatra now has to home life. Perhaps, having
|
|
had a home and left it, this approximation is as close as he cares to
|
|
come; although this does not seem precisely so because he speaks with
|
|
such warmth about his family, keeps in close touch with his first wife,
|
|
and insists that she make no decision without first consulting him. He
|
|
is always eager to place his furniture or other mementos of himself in
|
|
her home or his daughter Nancy's, and he also is on amiable terms with
|
|
Ava Gardner. When he was in Italy making Von Ryan's Express, they spent
|
|
some time together, being pursued wherever they went by the paparazzi.
|
|
It was reported then that the paparazzi had made Sinatra a collective
|
|
offer of $16,000 if he would pose with Ava Gardner; Sinatra was said to
|
|
have made a counter offer of $32,000 if he could break one paparazzi arm
|
|
and leg.
|
|
|
|
\[pullquote align='C'\]When Sinatra sits to dine, his trusted friends
|
|
are close; and no matter where he is, no matter how elegant the place
|
|
may be, there is something of the neighborhood showing because Sinatra,
|
|
no matter how far he has come, is still something of the boy from the
|
|
neighborhood—only now he can take his neighborhood with
|
|
him.\[/pullquote\]
|
|
|
|
While Sinatra is often delighted that he can be in his home completely
|
|
without people, enabling him to read and think without interruption,
|
|
there are occasions when he finds himself alone at night, and not by
|
|
choice. He may have dialed a half-dozen women, and for one reason or
|
|
another they are all unavailable. So he will call his valet, George
|
|
Jacobs.
|
|
|
|
"I'll be coming home for dinner tonight, George."
|
|
|
|
"How many will there be?"
|
|
|
|
"Just myself," Sinatra will say. "I want something light, I'm not very
|
|
hungry."
|
|
|
|
George Jacobs is a twice-divorced man of thirty-six who resembles Billy
|
|
Eckstine. He has traveled all over the world with Sinatra and is devoted
|
|
to him. Jacobs lives in a comfortable bachelor's apartment off Sunset
|
|
Boulevard around the corner from Whiskey à Go Go, and he is known around
|
|
town for the assortment of frisky California girls he has as friends—a
|
|
few of whom, he concedes, were possibly drawn to him initially because
|
|
of his closeness to Frank Sinatra.
|
|
|
|
When Sinatra arrives, Jacobs will serve him dinner in the dining room.
|
|
Then Sinatra will tell Jacobs that he is free to go home. If Sinatra, on
|
|
such evenings, should ask Jacobs to stay longer, or to play a few hands
|
|
of poker, he would be happy to do so. But Sinatra never does.
|
|
|
|
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
|
|
|
|
**THIS WAS HIS SECOND** night in Las Vegas, and Frank Sinatra sat with
|
|
friends in The Sands' dining room until nearly eight a.m. He slept
|
|
through much of the day, then flew back to Los Angeles, and on the
|
|
following morning he was driving his little golf cart through the
|
|
Paramount Pictures movie lot. He was scheduled to complete two final
|
|
scenes with the sultry blonde actress, Virna Lisi, in the film Assault
|
|
on a Queen. As he maneuvered the little vehicle up the road between the
|
|
big studio buildings, he spotted Steve Rossi who, with his comedy
|
|
partner Marty Allen, was making a film in an adjoining studio with Nancy
|
|
Sinatra.
|
|
|
|
"Hey, Dag," he yelled to Rossi, "stop kissing Nancy."
|
|
|
|
"It's part of the film, Frank," Rossi said, turning as he walked.
|
|
|
|
"In the garage?"
|
|
|
|
"It's my Dago blood, Frank."
|
|
|
|
"Well, cool it," Sinatra said, winking, then cutting his golf cart
|
|
around a corner and parking it outside a big drab building within which
|
|
the scenes for Assault would be filmed.
|
|
|
|
"Where's the fat director?" Sinatra called out, striding into the studio
|
|
that was crowded with dozens of technical assistants and actors all
|
|
gathered around cameras. The director, Jack Donohue, a large man who has
|
|
worked with Sinatra through twenty-two years on one production or other,
|
|
has had headaches with this film. The script had been chopped, the
|
|
actors seemed restless, and Sinatra had become bored. But now there were
|
|
only two scenes left—a short one to be filmed in the pool, and a longer
|
|
and passionate one featuring Sinatra and Virna Lisi to be shot on a
|
|
simulated beach.
|
|
|
|
The pool scene, which dramatizes a situation where Sinatra and his
|
|
hijackers fail in their attempt to sack the Queen Mary, went quickly and
|
|
well. After Sinatra had been kept in the water shoulder-high for a few
|
|
minutes, he said, "Let's move it, fellows—it's cold in this water, and
|
|
I've just gotten over one cold."
|
|
|
|
So the camera crews moved in closer, Virna Lisi splashed next to Sinatra
|
|
in the water, and Jack Donohue yelled to his assistants operating the
|
|
fans, "Get the waves going," and another man gave the command,
|
|
"Agitate\!" and Sinatra broke out in song. "Agitate in rhythm," then
|
|
quieted down just before the cameras started to roll.
|
|
|
|
Frank Sinatra was on the beach in the next situation, supposedly gazing
|
|
up at the stars, and Virna Lisi was to approach him, toss one of her
|
|
shoes near him to announce her presence, then sit near him and prepare
|
|
for a passionate session. Just before beginning, Miss Lisi made a
|
|
practice toss of her shoe toward the prone figure of Sinatra sprawled on
|
|
the beach. As she tossed her shoe, Sinatra called out, "Hit me in my
|
|
bird and I'm going home."
|
|
|
|
Virna Lisi, who understands little English and certainly none of
|
|
Sinatra's special vocabulary, looked confused, but everybody behind the
|
|
camera laughed. She threw the shoe toward him. It twirled in the air,
|
|
landed on his stomach.
|
|
|
|
"Well, that's about three inches too high," he announced. She again was
|
|
puzzled by the laughter behind the camera.
|
|
|
|
Then Jack Donohue had them rehearse their lines, and Sinatra, still very
|
|
charged from the Las Vegas trip, and anxious to get the cameras rolling,
|
|
said, "Let's try one." Donohue, not certain that Sinatra and Lisi knew
|
|
their lines well enough, nevertheless said okay, and an assistant with a
|
|
clapboard called, "419, Take 1," and Virna Lisi approached with the
|
|
shoe, tossed it at Frank lying on the beach. It fell short of his thigh,
|
|
and Sinatra's right eye raised almost imperceptibly, but the crew got
|
|
the message, smiled.
|
|
|
|
"What do the stars tell you tonight?" Miss Lisi said, delivering her
|
|
first line, and sitting next to Sinatra on the beach.
|
|
|
|
"The stars tell me tonight I'm an idiot," Sinatra said, "a gold-plated
|
|
idiot to get mixed up in this thing...."
|
|
|
|
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
|
|
|
|
"Cut," Donohue said. There were some microphone shadows on the sand, and
|
|
Virna Lisi was not sitting in the proper place near Sinatra.
|
|
|
|
"419, Take 2," the clapboard man called.
|
|
|
|
Miss Lisi again approached, threw the shoe at him, this time falling
|
|
short—Sinatra exhaling only slightly—and she said, "What do the stars
|
|
tell you tonight?"
|
|
|
|
"The stars tell me I'm an idiot, a gold-plated idiot to get mixed up in
|
|
this thing...." Then, according to the script, Sinatra was to continue,
|
|
"...do you know what we're getting into? The minute we step on the deck
|
|
of the Queen Mary, we've just tattooed ourselves," but Sinatra, who
|
|
often improvises on lines, recited them: "...do you know what we're
|
|
getting into? The minute we step on the deck of that mother's-ass
|
|
ship...."
|
|
|
|
\[image id='1b489825-7e76-4f78-9339-404b1201ec3f'
|
|
mediaId='185fbe7c-8941-47d1-b52d-3d8ba103af72' caption='Virna Lisi and
|
|
Frank Sinatra on the set of "Assault on a Queen". 1966.' loc='R'
|
|
share='true' expand='true' size='L'\]\[/image\]
|
|
|
|
"No, no," Donohue interrupted, shaking his head, "I don't think that's
|
|
right."
|
|
|
|
The cameras stopped, some people laughed, and Sinatra looked up from his
|
|
position in the sand as if he had been unfairly interrupted.
|
|
|
|
"I don't see why that can't work..." he began, but Richard Conte,
|
|
standing behind the camera, yelled, "It won't play in London."
|
|
|
|
Donohue pushed his hand through his thinning grey hair and said, but not
|
|
really in anger, "You know, that scene was pretty good until somebody
|
|
blew the line...."
|
|
|
|
"Yeah," agreed the cameraman, Billy Daniels, his head popping out from
|
|
around the camera, "it was a pretty good piece...."
|
|
|
|
"Watch your language," Sinatra cut in. Then Sinatra, who has a genius
|
|
for figuring out ways of not reshooting scenes, suggested a way in which
|
|
the film could be used and the "mother" line could be recorded later.
|
|
This met with approval. Then the cameras were rolling again, Virna Lisi
|
|
was leaning toward Sinatra in the sand, and then he pulled her down
|
|
close to him. The camera now moved in for a close-up of their faces,
|
|
ticking away for a few long seconds, but Sinatra and Lisi did not stop
|
|
kissing, they just lay together in the sand wrapped in one another's
|
|
arms, and then Virna Lisi's left leg just slightly began to rise a bit,
|
|
and everybody in the studio now watched in silence, not saying anything
|
|
until Donohue finally called out:
|
|
|
|
"If you ever get through, let me know. I'm running out of film."
|
|
|
|
Then Miss Lisi got up, straightened out her white dress, brushed back
|
|
her [blonde hair](/entertainment/interviews/g1311/hot-blondes/) and
|
|
touched her lipstick, which was smeared. Sinatra got up, a little smile
|
|
on his lips, and headed for his dressing room.
|
|
|
|
Passing an older man who stood near a camera, Sinatra asked, "How's your
|
|
Bell & Howell?"
|
|
|
|
The older man smiled.
|
|
|
|
"It's fine, Frank."
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"Good."
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In his dressing room Sinatra was met by an automobile designer who had
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the plans for Sinatra's new custom-built model to replace the $25,000
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Ghia he has been driving for the last few years. He also was awaited by
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his secretary, Tom Conroy, who had a bag full of fan mail, including a
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letter from New York's Mayor John Lindsay; and by Bill Miller, Sinatra's
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pianist, who would rehearse some of the songs that would be recorded
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later in the evening for Sinatra's newest album, Moonlight Sinatra.
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While Sinatra does not mind hamming it up a bit on a movie set, he is
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extremely serious about his recording sessions; as he explained to a
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British writer, Robin Douglas-Home: "Once you're on that record singing,
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it's you and you alone. If it's bad and gets you criticized, it's you
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who's to blame—no one else. If it's good, it's also you. With a film
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it's never like that; there are producers and scriptwriters, and
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hundreds of men in offices and the thing is taken right out of your
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hands. With a record, you're it...."
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But now the days are short
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I'm in the autumn of the year
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And now I think of my life
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As vintage wine
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From fine old kegs....
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It no longer matters what song he is singing, or who wrote the
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words—they are all his words, his sentiments, they are chapters from
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the lyrical novel of his life.
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Life is a beautiful thing
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As long as I hold the string....
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When Frank Sinatra drives to the studio, he seems to dance out of the
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car across the sidewalk into the front door; then, snapping his fingers,
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he is standing in front of the orchestra in an intimate, airtight room,
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and soon he is dominating every man, every instrument, every sound wave.
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Some of the musicians have accompanied him for twenty-five years, have
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gotten old hearing him sing "You Make Me Feel So Young."
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When his voice is on, as it was tonight, Sinatra is in ecstasy, the room
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becomes electric, there is an excitement that spreads through the
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orchestra and is felt in the control booth where a dozen men, Sinatra's
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friends, wave at him from behind the glass. One of the men is the
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Dodgers' pitcher, Don Drysdale ("Hey, Big D," Sinatra calls out, "hey,
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baby\!"); another is the professional golfer Bo Wininger; there are also
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numbers of pretty women standing in the booth behind the engineers,
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women who smile at Sinatra and softly move their bodies to the mellow
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mood of his music:
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Will this be moon love
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Nothing but moon love
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Will you be gone when the dawn
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Comes stealing through....
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\[pullquote align='C'\]It no longer matters what song he is singing, or
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who wrote the words—they are all his words, his sentiments, they are
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chapters from the lyrical novel of his life.\[/pullquote\]
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Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
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After he is finished, the record is played back on tape, and Nancy
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Sinatra, who has just walked in, joins her father near the front of the
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orchestra to hear the playback. They listen silently, all eyes on them,
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the king, the princess; and when the music ends there is applause from
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the control booth, Nancy smiles, and her father snaps his fingers and
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says, kicking a foot, "Ooba-deeba-boobe-do\!"
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Then Sinatra calls to one of his men. "Hey, Sarge, think I can have a
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half-a-cup of coffee?"
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Sarge Weiss, who had been listening to the music, slowly gets up.
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"Didn't mean to wake ya, Sarge," Sinatra says, smiling.
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Then Weiss brings the coffee, and Sinatra looks at it, smells it, then
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announces, "I thought he'd be nice to me, but it's really coffee...."
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There are more smiles, and then the orchestra prepares for the next
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number. And one hour later, it is over.
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The musicians put their instruments into their cases, grab their coats,
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and begin to file out, saying good-night to Sinatra. He knows them all
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by name, knows much about them personally, from their bachelor days,
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through their divorces, through their ups and downs, as they know him.
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When a French-horn player, a short Italian named Vincent DeRosa, who has
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played with Sinatra since The Lucky Strike "Hit Parade" days on radio,
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strolled by, Sinatra reached out to hold him for a second.
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"Vicenzo," Sinatra said, "how's your little girl?"
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"She's fine, Frank."
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"Oh, she's not a little girl anymore," Sinatra corrected himself, "she's
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a big girl now."
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"Yes, she goes to college now. U.S.C."
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"That's great."
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"She's also got a little talent, I think, Frank, as a singer."
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Sinatra was silent for a moment, then said, "Yes, but it's very good for
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her to get her education first, Vicenzo."
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Vincent DeRosa nodded.
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"Yes, Frank," he said, and then he said, "Well, good-night, Frank."
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"Good-night, Vicenzo."
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|
After the musicians had all gone, Sinatra left the recording room and
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|
joined his friends in the corridor. He was going to go out and do some
|
|
drinking with Drysdale, Wininger, and a few other friends, but first he
|
|
walked to the other end of the corridor to say good-night to Nancy, who
|
|
was getting her coat and was planning to drive home in her own car.
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|
After Sinatra had kissed her on the cheek, he hurried to join his
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friends at the door. But before Nancy could leave the studio, one of
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Sinatra's men, Al Silvani, a former prizefight manager, joined her.
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|
"Are you ready to leave yet, Nancy?"
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"Oh, thanks, Al," she said, "but I'll be all right."
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"Pope's orders," Silvani said, holding his hands up, palms out.
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Only after Nancy had pointed to two of her friends who would escort her
|
|
home, and only after Silvani recognized them as friends, would he leave.
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|
**THE REST OF THE MONTH** was bright and balmy. The record session had
|
|
gone magnificently, the film was finished, the television shows were out
|
|
of the way, and now Sinatra was in his Ghia driving out to his office to
|
|
begin coordinating his latest projects. He had an engagement at The
|
|
Sands, a new spy film called The Naked Runner to be shot in England, and
|
|
a couple more albums to do in the immediate months ahead. And within a
|
|
week he would be fifty years old....
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|
Life is a beautiful thing
|
|
|
|
As long as I hold the string
|
|
|
|
I'd be a silly so-and-so
|
|
|
|
If I should ever let go...
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\[image id='2af39f78-e339-4f64-8398-1a3b50218567'
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|
mediaId='f94355d1-116f-45c7-876e-3ed63199393d' caption='' loc='C'
|
|
share='true' expand='true' size='M'\]\[/image\]
|
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|
|
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
|
|
|
|
Frank Sinatra stopped his car. The light was red. Pedestrians passed
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|
quickly across his windshield but, as usual, one did not. It was a girl
|
|
in her twenties. She remained at the curb staring at him. Through the
|
|
corner of his left eye he could see her, and he knew, because it happens
|
|
almost every day, that she was thinking, It looks like him, but is it?
|
|
|
|
Just before the light turned green, Sinatra turned toward her, looked
|
|
directly into her eyes waiting for the reaction he knew would come. It
|
|
came and he smiled. She smiled and he was gone.
|
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**[Read more](/news-politics/g114/greatest-stories/) of the greatest
|
|
Esquire stories ever published—in their entirety.**
|