Nancy was a loyal wife and mother, but Frank said he had mistaken friendship for love. He thought he could “have every dame” he wanted.
An early dalliance was with Marilyn Maxwell. She turned up at a Sinatra party wearing a diamond bracelet Nancy thought Frank had bought for her.
Lana Turner said that she and Frank had “a very serious affair.” They pretended to comply with MGM’s demand that they break it off but continued to meet in secret.
Frank’s obsessive love for Ava Gardner finally destroyed his first marriage and brought him close to ruin. “I don’t remember the ceremony,” she said of their wedding in 1951. This photograph snatched during the honeymoon (below) belied the conflict that followed. Frank pursued Ava until her death in 1990, in spite of their infidelities and compulsive fighting.
Lyricist Sammy Cahn (standing, center) and composer Jule Styne gave Frank hit after hit in the forties. Frank broke with both men, but finally called Cahn to say, “I need some songs.” Cahn was still responding to the need more than thirty years later.
“Do yourself a favor. Work with Nelson Riddle,” a record executive told Frank in 1953. Together, Riddle and Frank were to produce the albums of Sinatra’s golden age. Time has not dimmed In the Wee Small Hours or Only the Lonely.
“How would you like to work with me, kid?” Frank asked Bill Miller in 1951. The “kid,” who was a little older than Sinatra, was to play piano or conduct for him for more than forty years. Frank called him “Suntan Charlie”—because of his facial pallor.
The role of Maggio, the rebellious private in From Here to Eternity, was tailor-made for Frank. He fought to get the part and won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1953, and his failing career soon recovered.
His performance as a drug addict in The Man with the Golden Arm earned a Best Actor nomination but not the Oscar. Frank thought the 1962 movie The Manchurian Candidate “the finest picture I have ever made” (bottom right), but audience turnout was poor. He often found filming tedious—as a photograph taken on the set of Dirty Dingus Magee suggests.
“What phony stuff!” Frank said of The Godfather episode about the Mafia helping a singer to get a part in a movie. Yet the mob did get him his role in From Here to Eternity. Agent George Wood (top left) called in the mafiosi Jimmy Alo (top right) and Frank Costello (bottom left), who pressured Columbia’s Harry Cohn (center). When Johnny Rosselli (bottom right) threatened his life, Cohn gave Frank the part.
Frank’s valet thought him “the Casanova of modern times.” After Ava, there was a fling with Gloria Vanderbilt in 1954 (left), a romance with nineteen-year-old singer Jill Corey (center right), trysts with Marlene Dietrich (bottom left), a drunken night with would-be actress Sandra Giles (center), and a relationship with glamorous “stand-by girl” Jeanne Carmen (bottom right).
Peggy Connelly (left and above) gained rare insights into Frank’s personality. Frank gave her minks and a white Thunderbird, and proposed twice. He also asked Lauren Bacall (bottom left) to marry him, then dropped her in a fit of pique. Eva Bartok (bottom right) had a baby that she said was his, but Frank was “too busy” to meet with her.
The Rat Pack was “just a group of clean, wholesome, ordinary guys who meet once a year to take over the world,” Sammy Davis Jr. said. When they took over Las Vegas in early 1960, 34,000 people came to their shows in just four weeks. The jokes were mostly about drinking and sex. Women were on tap in the Rat Pack’s Clubhouse, the steam room and health club at the Sands.
Joe Kennedy (above) said he would “sell Jack like soap flakes.” Frank was part of the sell, publicly and in ways that long remained secret. A campaign photograph (top right) shows Skinny D’Amato of the 500 Club leaning in to speak with John F. Kennedy. Looking on at the top left of the picture is Angelo Malandra, a mob lawyer said to be one of those who “with Sinatra, had the mob’s money in West Virginia.”
Both John F. Kennedy and Sinatra dallied with Marilyn Monroe during the presidency. On a 1961 yacht trip with Frank, she was guzzling pills and disoriented. She was in a similar state while with Frank and mob boss Sam Giancana days before her death the following year.
When he took office, the new president was to describe Frank as “a great friend.” He and his brother then distanced themselves from him because of his Mafia connections. Robert Kennedy blocked calls to investigate Sinatra, however, because he knew a probe could destroy the presidency.
The president’s relationship with Judith Campbell was more dangerous than previously understood. New information suggests the “affair” was a Mafia setup. Frank was involved at all stages, but the Senate Intelligence Committee failed to call him to testify.
Frank had once obliged Chicago gangster Murray Humphreys (top left) by singing at the high school graduation (right) of Humphreys’s daughter Llewella. He liaised with Humphreys over mob support for Kennedy in 1960.
Frank played go-between to secure the help of Sam Giancana (left), the murderer who headed the Chicago mob, to get Kennedy elected. When law enforcement pressure continued, Giancana blamed Frank and spoke of having him killed. Even after the mobster was himself murdered in 1975 (below), Frank continued to lie about their relationship.
The rebuffs and defeats of the Kennedy years were a setback. Frank had said when he launched his own record company that he saw his future “not so much as an entertainer but as a high-level executive.” He encouraged the notion that he was “Chairman of the Board” (below), but the company was soon in trouble.
Frank met Mia Farrow on a film set in 1964. She was thirty years his junior.
After their Las Vegas wedding he spoke of Mia as “my child bride.” She thought the marriage “a little bit like an adoption.” It lasted just over two years.
Frank sexually assaulted twenty-year-old Susan Murphy, she has claimed, soon after his divorce from Mia. “He acted like he was God,” Murphy said.
Frank joked that alcohol was his “gasoline,” but the drunken Frank, a friend said, could be “the meanest son of a bitch that God ever put on earth.” Drink was usually a factor when he resorted to violence.
Frank’s presence in a casino attracted customers—and sometimes trouble. At the Sands in 1967, and at Caesars Palace in 1970, he went on rampages and fought with senior executives.
Frank usually had heavies to protect him. They prudently stood aside, though, when he confronted Carl Cohen, the Sands’s powerful vice president . Cohen knocked out two of his front teeth.
Hubert Humphrey, for whom Frank campaigned in 1968, called him a “solid, devoted American liberal.” Frank continued to insist he was a lifelong Democrat, even though he later began supporting Republican candidates. The lineup in 1971 (below), when his mother opened a medical facility named in memory of her husband, Marty, tells the story. Frank was now backing Ronald Reagan, whom he had earlier dismissed as “a bozo,” and was accepting overtures from Vice President Spiro Agnew.
“Nixon scares me,” Frank had said. Yet he supported Nixon in 1972 and sang at a White House state dinner for the prime minister of Italy. Frank’s comment on Watergate: “Nobody’s perfect.”
Mafia boss Joe Colombo (right) put out a contract on Frank’s life when he failed to perform at a rally for Italian-American rights. Frank did perform at the next one. Jilly Rizzo, Frank’s closest confidant, (above) was deeply involved with the Mafia. Frank cheerfully posed for a photograph (below) with Mafia boss Carlo Gambino and seven other men associated with organized crime. He later claimed that he had known nothing about their backgrounds.
The man who sang of love long found love elusive. The actress Lois Nettleton (above) still has the notes Frank wrote to her. He asked her to marry him, then promptly ruined it all with an angry tirade. He married former Las Vegas showgirl Barbara Marx (right) in 1976, and they stayed together until he died.
In 1988, at seventy-two, Frank persuaded Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. to join him on a “Together Again” tour (above). Martin quit before it was over, and Davis died in 1990, bu
t Frank sang on and on until he was almost eighty. His son Frank Jr. (below), who conducted for him in his dotage, thought he would become “a dribbling madman” were he to retire. Frank’s voice was gone and his memory was in tatters, but he could still stir deep emotions.
1 Adonis was a longtime Luciano associate, and a power in gambling and waterfront rackets in New York and New Jersey.
Acknowledgments
PEOPLE ARE THE LIFEBLOOD of biography, often more important than the paper record. This one was born of the realization by that publishing veteran Jim Silberman that there was no fully documented, rounded book on the life of Frank Sinatra. Knopf chairman Sonny Mehta, a champion of quality publishing in difficult times, had confidence in us and funded the project over a tough four years. We thank him especially, as we do Jonathan Segal, a king among editors in an era when cutbacks make that profession a vanishing breed, and Leyla Aker, our guide on the last lap to publication. Leah Heifferon did sterling work during the preparation of this paperback edition.
We owe a special debt of gratitude to Ric Ross, in Los Angeles, who is rightly credited—not least by Sinatra’s daughter Nancy, whose book on her father benefited from his scholarship—as a walking encyclopedia on the singer’s life. He is a stickler for accuracy, and the manuscript benefited from his careful reading. It gained, too, from the eagle eyes of Knopf associate general counsel Jon Fine and of copy editor Fred Chase.
Our lead researcher was Kelly DiNardo, who for three years found the unfindable for us with industry and good cheer. Bob Lamb, Catherine Valeriote, and April Lubold made valuable contributions. In Rome, Livia Borghese brought her sharp intellect to the matter of the Sinatra family’s origins and the involvement with Lucky Luciano. In Sicily, supposedly a place that rebuffs nosy foreigners, we were greeted with good cheer by everyone—from historians to citizens in humble villages. Special thanks to Nicolò Sangiorgio, the fount of all knowledge on Lercara Friddi, who honored his promise to keep a confidence; to the historian Salvatore Lupo and Umberto Santino of the Centro Siciliano de Documentazione, both brave voices against the Mafia; to Maria Gerardi, archives director at Agrigento and Mariella Marguglio at the Biblioteca Centrale in Palermo; Dottore Virginio Alberelli and officer Vera Fichera at the police headquarters in Palermo; and Kathy Kirkpatrick of GenTracer, a professional genealogist specializing in Sicily, who conducted research crucial to clinching our discovery that the Sinatras and the Luciano family shared the same town of origin.
We asked Sinatra’s first wife, Nancy, and her three children for interviews—and in the case of daughters Nancy and Tina pressed the requests after receiving no initial response. Tina replied through an attorney, saying that the Sinatras were not prepared to participate. We also asked Sinatra’s fourth wife, Barbara, for an interview, in vain. The immediate family’s silence contrasted with the cooperation received from first cousins Frank Monaco, Rose Sinatra Paldino, Rose Ellman Sinatra, Morris Esposito, and second cousins Marilyn Sinatra and Maryann Paldino Flannery. Eva Bartok’s daughter Deana, who claims Sinatra was her father and has taken his name, shared her poignant story. In Hoboken, Anthony and James Petrozelli and Rose Tamburro, relatives of two of the Hoboken Four singers, as well as Lucille Kirk Buccini, who sang with Sinatra at the Rustic Cabin, were generous with information. Bandleader Frank Mane’s widow, Mary Mane, and her attorney Robert Mandelbaum, kindly allowed us to hear Sinatra’s first recording, and Sinatra devotee Ed Shirak was helpful with photographs of the young Sinatra in Hoboken.
Of the more than five hundred people who spoke with us, we are especially grateful to Sammy Cahn’s first wife, Gloria Cahn Franks, and his widow, Tita; George Evans’s son Phil; the late Janet Leigh; Jerry Lewis; Shirley MacLaine; Jeanne Martin; Harry James’s first wife, Louise Tobin; agents Milt Ebbins and the late Mort Viner; Lee Solters, Sinatra’s longtime publicist; and producer George Schlatter. Fellow singers Buddy Greco, Connie Haines, Jo Stafford, and the comedian Joey Villa shared memories with us, as did musicians Joe Bushkin and Tony Mottola, both sadly now deceased, Frank Fighera, Al Porcino, and Al Viola. Violist Ann Barak and violinist Tony Posk were especially generous with their time—Ann also joined us on the difficult quest in Sicily. Vernise Yocum Pelzel, daughter of copyist Vern Yocum, shared recollections her late father had compiled.
One of the most sensitive tasks for a biographer, especially when the subject is a major celebrity, is the subject’s love life. Only those personally involved can really describe a relationship. Sinatra and Ava Gardner are both gone, but we had the great fortune to have access to extended taped interviews, never published, that she gave to the author Peter Evans, and to which he holds the copyright. Warm thanks to Evans, a fine professional and a good friend. Mearene “Reenie” Jordan, who was on intimate terms with Gardner for more than forty years, talked with us in California, as did Spoli Mills, the actress’s best friend in London, and Gardner’s first husband, the late Artie Shaw. The singer Peggy Connelly and the actress Lois Nettleton, who both had lengthy affairs with Sinatra, were compassionate where they might have been unkind— and patient with intrusive questions. So were Jeanne Carmen, Marianna Case, Jill Corey, Carole Lynley, and Sandra Giles. Humphrey Bogart’s lover Verita Thompson, and former showgirl Liz Renay had insights. Susan Murphy described a distressing sexual experience, and did not refuse our probing. The journalist St. Clair Pugh had a personal memory of the affair with Gloria Vanderbilt, as did Peter Duchin of his evening with Sinatra and with Jackie Kennedy Onassis.
Of the singer’s friends and acquaintances, we especially appreciate the contributions of Nick Sevano and Sonny King—who knew Sinatra almost all his life—and of Rock Brynner, the late Brad Dexter, Leonora Hornblow, Bob Neal, and Tony Oppedisano. Armand Deutsch, Matty Jordan’s widow, Jackie, and Abbe Lane also made time to talk. Phyllis McGuire, who was close to Sinatra’s Mafia associate Sam Giancana, contrived to say little but communicate a good deal. Dr. Rex Kennamer, family physician and friend, said as much as he could without betraying his professional trust. The writer Pete Hamill, in whom Sinatra placed unusual confidence, expanded on his admirable memoir Why Sinatra Matters. George Jacobs, the valet, whom author Summers first interviewed twenty years ago, talked loyally but openly about the man he served so long. Johnnie Spotts, one of Sinatra’s pilots, spoke carefully. Another pilot, Dan Arney, was more trenchant. Dominick Dunne remembered the abusive, violent Sinatra.
We strove to get to the heart of the matter everyone has wondered about, the singer’s involvement with the Mafia. The late Joe Nellis, who questioned Sinatra for the Kefauver Committee; Nick Akerman, former Assistant United States Attorney for the southern district of New York; the late Ralph Salerno, the prominent organized crime consultant; and Sal Vizzini, a former courageous undercover agent for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, were open and forthright. So was Dougald McMillan, who was an attorney in the Organized Crime Section of the Kennedy Justice Department, who in the past was very close-mouthed. Still enviably fit at the age of ninety-one, in Taormina, Sicily, the pianist Chico Scimone recalled playing for Sinatra at his mob “audition.” Angela Marrocco, Willie Moretti’s daughter, spoke with us, briefly but usefully. “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo’s niece Carole Russo and his friend, former concert promoter Ken Roberts, were forthcoming, as were Luellen Smiley, Allen Smiley’s daughter, and Joseph Sullivan, Angelo De Carlo’s grandson. Joe Shimon’s daughter Toni augmented the authors’ earlier interviews of her late father with memories of what he said about Sinatra, Sam Giancana, and Johnny Rosselli. Billy Woodfield, who died while the book was being prepared, vividly described experiences with Sinatra that featured Luciano and Giancana, and his widow, Lili, provided some superb Woodfield photographs. Tommy Dorsey’s children, Tommy Dorsey III and the late Patricia Dorsey Hooker, were helpful on the mob threat to their father. Her husband being incapacitated, Martin Jurow’s wife, Erin Jo, complemented her husband’s published account of the Mafia role in securing Sinatra a part in From Here to Eternity. The late Dan Taradash kn
ew nothing of that, but described what he learned of the casting process as screenwriter. The distinguished screenwriter and director Mel Shavelson recalled how a lamb’s head on a platter led Sinatra to cancel a meeting. Invaluable information on Sinatra in Las Vegas was provided by Count Guido Deiro and Ed Walters, once dealer and pit boss respectively at the Sands in Las Vegas; Eve Quillin, cosmetologist and columnist; Ed Becker, author and former entertainment director at the Riviera; Ralph Denton, attorney and close confidant of Nevada governor Grant Sawyer; and John Smith, the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s authoritative writer on the city’s darker history. We much respect the work of early Sinatra biographer Arnold Shaw, whose widow Ghita kindly gave us access to his papers.
More general help came from too many people to thank them all here. Ed O’Brien, who has written extensively on Sinatra, talked and corresponded over many months. Rick Apt, who runs Ric Apt’s Collectibles at www.blue-eyes.com, opened up his remarkable video archive to us. Nevada state senator Bob Coffin, who can be reached at [email protected], supplied books and photographs from his collection in Las Vegas. Thanks, too, to Mary Ann Mastrodonato, Josephine Collins in Los Angeles—she has an astonishing fund of unpublished phone numbers—and Artie Shaw’s assistant Pattie Porter.
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