Frank
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But would Frankie be sent overseas? Plenty of entertainers were on their way: Buddy Rich had signed up, as had Joe Bushkin and Jack Leonard and Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw and Rudy Vallée, not to mention Gene Kelly and Mickey Rooney (with a heart murmur, yet) and Clark Gable (dentures and all) and Jimmy Stewart and Joe DiMaggio, though the only fighting John Wayne would do would be on celluloid.
At the end of October, Sinatra dutifully reported to the local board examining physician for the U.S. Army in Jersey City, where, in a preliminary examination, a Dr. Povalski declared the singer fit for service, classifying him 1-A. In early December, the Army, in the person of Captain Joseph Weintrob, M.D., examined Sinatra again, in Newark, and declared him 4-F. His Physical Examination and Induction form read, “Frank Albert Sinatra [note first name] is physically and/or mentally disqualified for military service by reason of: l. chronic perforation (left) tympanum; 2. chronic mastoiditis.” The form noted the examinee’s weight as 119 pounds (four pounds below the Army minimum for men of his stature) and his height as five feet seven and a half inches, and went on to say that he was further disqualified because of emotional instability.
There is every reason to believe that Weintrob’s report was correct in every particular. Not only were Sinatra’s height (sans elevators), weight, first name, and emotional state right on the money, but chronic left-ear infections would certainly account for the punctured left eardrum, and his mastoid operation would have further complicated matters.9 Nevertheless, Sinatra’s 4-F quickly became controversial big news. He was, after all, cocky, rich, famous, and Italian-American. Later that month, Walter Winchell received an anonymous letter at his New York Daily Mirror office:
Dear Mr. Winchell:
I don’t dare give you my name because of my job but here is a bit of news you can check which I think is Front Page:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is said to be investigating a report that Frank Sinatra paid $40,000 to the doctors who examined him in Newark recently and presented him with a 4-F classification. The money is supposed to have been paid by Sinatra’s Business Manager. One of the recipients is said to have talked too loud about the gift in a beer joint recently and a report was sent to the F.B.I.
A former School mate of Sinatra’s from Highland, N.J., said recently that Sinatra has no more ear drum trouble than Gen. MacArthur.
If there is any truth to these reports I think that it should be made known. Mothers around this section who have sons in the service are planning a petition to Pres. Roosevelt asking for a re-examination of the singer by a neutral board of examiners. You’ll probably read about this in the papers within a few days unless you break the story first.
Winchell sent the letter on to his pal J. Edgar Hoover, and though it turned out the FBI had not been actively investigating Sinatra, it quickly set about doing so. Matters snowballed from there. Titillated to discover that the singer had two sex-related arrests on his record, the bureau looked closely into the dismissed cases, even though they had absolutely no bearing on the present matter. In the meantime, Dr. Weintrob wrote a letter to his superior officers amplifying his original physical assessment of Sinatra and adding, “The diagnosis of ‘psychoneurosis, severe’ was not added to the list. Notation of emotional instability was made instead. It was felt that this would avoid undue unpleasantness for both the selectee and the induction service.”
Dr. Weintrob—his back to the wall—elaborated. “During the psychiatric interview,” he wrote, “the patient stated that he was ‘neurotic, afraid to be in crowds, afraid to go in elevator, makes him feel that he would want to run when surrounded by people. He had somatic ideas and headaches and has been very nervous for four or five years. Wakens tired in the A.M., is run down and undernourished.’ ”
The FBI report said that Weintrob “stated that no one had ever attempted to influence his opinion in this case and in fact no one had discussed the SINATRA case with him prior to the actual examination … Captain WEINTROB stated he was satisfied in his own mind that SINATRA should not have been inducted and was willing to stake his medical reputation on his findings.”
The FBI closed the case. The press, the public, and the men of the armed forces did not.
Was Frank Sinatra reluctant to serve his country? While his physical diagnosis alone would have been enough to disqualify him, the psychological interview is interesting. During his preliminary examination in October, his response to the inquiry “What physical or mental defects or diseases have you had in the past, if any?” had been the single word “No.” The answer didn’t quite match up to the question, indicating a certain haste on his part. He was always impatient. In Newark in December, he was willing to take more time. Everything he said to Weintrob made perfect sense: He was neurotic, highly. Where crowds were concerned, the very real prospect of having his clothes ripped off or being choked by his own bow tie quite naturally made him afraid. He did suffer from claustrophobia, and elevators often terrified him (as they did Dean Martin). The somatic ideas and headaches would match up with Sinatra’s occasional sinking feeling that he wasn’t long for this world. Nervous for four or five years? Since the moment—just say—he’d first stepped on the bus with Harry James and His Music Makers … And anyone who had spent the previous day playing six shows at the Paramount, making public appearances, and doing three nightclub shows (the last beginning at 2:30 in the morning), with plenty of gallivanting before, between, and after, would tend to wake up tired in the a.m. Or the p.m.
Sinatra was not the only star not to serve. Dick Haymes and Perry Como had not been drafted. And Crosby, at forty, was too old to join up (but would go to heroic lengths throughout the war to entertain the troops). There were a lot of singers out there, and Frank wasn’t about to give those other guys a leg up by going away for the duration—or, God forbid, dying for his country.10 It wasn’t so much that he lacked physical courage; he simply had very legitimate fears about the fickleness of the American public.
And so he quashed his natural inclination to give a curt or rude answer to this square, this nosy medical officer, and instead sat back and responded at length: thoughtfully, feelingly. It could come in handy.
Frank’s triumphant arrival in Hollywood—or Pasadena, anyway. August 1943. (photo credit 12.2)
13
Frank signs his induction papers at local draft board No. 19–160 in Jersey City, October 1943. He was classified 1-A. Two months later he was reexamined and exempted from military service due to a perforated eardrum and emotional instability. (photo credit 13.1)
Frank Sinatra had a knack for stirring people up. His draft reclassification did not go down well with the newspaper columnists, nor with the hundreds of thousands of men who were fighting overseas, or even just pulling mind-numbing Stateside duty, marching in the hot sun and eating creamed chipped beef on toast at Fort Ord or Fort Monmouth or Fort Benning. “Draft dodger” was an ugly epithet that people—mostly men—were starting to hang on Sinatra, for all his protestations to the press and even to friends that he was dying to serve, that the 4-F had been a crushing disappointment.
Part of him really did feel that way. And then there was the part that remembered what had happened to Jack Leonard: he had vanished, become just another serial number among the millions of Sad Sacks … Frank knew this was not his fate. His destiny was here, being Frank Sinatra.
His female fans were thrilled that their Frankie would be staying close to them. As for the servicemen, one old acquaintance gave it to Sinatra straight from the shoulder: Tommy Dorsey’s former band manager Bobby Burns, the man who’d once slipped Sinatra a note telling him the Great Man himself would grant him an audience, was now a buck private at Camp Haan, in California. After Sinatra entertained at the base, Burns went up to him to say hi. “There’s a lot of griping over your 4-F status,” Burns told him. “The troops figure you’re home living it up with the babes while they’re away.”
Frank grinned.
What other conclusion w
ere the troops to draw? He was living it up, with every available babe, and he was sufficiently indiscreet that the whole world knew: not only his wife, but also millions of homesick, love-starved, generally disgruntled servicemen.1 William Manchester wrote in The Glory and the Dream, his history of mid-twentieth-century America, “It is not too much to say that by the end of the war Sinatra had become the most hated man in the armed services.”
George Evans was fighting a heroic public-relations battle, but he was bucking overwhelming odds. And his client wasn’t helping matters. In the year since Sinatra had left Tommy Dorsey, he had become a spectacularly unrepentant hedonist, on the loose in a time of public piety and sacrifice. And as of January 1944, he was now on the loose in Hollywood, a continent away from Evans and Big Nancy.
On January 1, Sinatra legally became a California resident, a status he would maintain until the end of his life. On January 5, he began a new radio show on CBS, The Frank Sinatra Program. Unlike Your Hit Parade—on which the singer continued, but only as a glorified co-host—and the now defunct Songs by Sinatra, which had aired, unsponsored, for just fifteen minutes weekly, the new broadcast was a star vehicle, thirty minutes every Wednesday night, with a big-time backer, Vimms Vitamins. (“Take a minute! See what’s in it! When you’re buying a vitamin product, read the label! Make sure you get all the vitamins recommended by government experts! You do in Vimms! And three essential minerals also!”)
In compliance with Sinatra’s demands, the new show (with Stordahl conducting the orchestra, and the Bobby Tucker Singers back in service as the Vimms Vocalists) was broadcast from Hollywood.
He had come west to start shooting his second RKO feature, Step Lively, a musical version of the hit Broadway comedy Room Service, with songs written by his old pal Sammy Cahn and Cahn’s partner Jule Styne. Radio could make a crooner an imaginary friend to the great American audience, but movies could make him larger than life: look at Bing.
First, though, came a minor distraction.
At 5:50 p.m. on Monday, January 10, Nancy Sinatra once again gave birth at the Margaret Hague Maternity Hospital in Jersey City, again unattended by her husband. During Little Nancy’s delivery three and a half years earlier, Frank had been just across the Hudson River, singing with Dorsey at the Astor roof. For the birth of his only son, he managed to be all the way across the country. “Dad was on the air in the middle of a radio show broadcast live from Hollywood when Franklin Wayne Emmanuel [sic] Sinatra was born,” writes Nancy junior, in Frank Sinatra: An American Legend. At 2:50 p.m. Pacific standard time on January 10, Frank Sinatra was certainly in the middle of something, but not a radio broadcast, since Your Hit Parade aired, live, on Saturday nights; the Vimms show, Wednesdays. And so Franklin Wayne Emanuel Sinatra came squalling into the world as he would remain in the world: fatherless, more or less.2
Evans immediately kicked into overdrive, slapping together a major photo op for the next day at Margaret Hague Maternity, arriving first thing in the morning to marshal the event. He first had Nancy don a pale blue quilted Best & Co. bed jacket, then brought in a cosmetologist and a beautician who made up, coiffed, and manicured her to the nines. Evans then handed Mom a framed photo of Dad and told her exactly what to do when the reporters trooped in: Smile. Hold up the baby. Hold up the photo.
Family was always an ambivalent matter with Sinatra. But the beautification of Nancy Sinatra was real. Once the nice ladies were done with her, she was beautiful—more so than any new mother had a right to be. When the reporters finally clumped in, clad in white coats for the occasion as if they were about to discover penicillin, brandishing their notebooks and giant flash cameras, Nancy was ready to answer their questions. Who was he named for? Which side of the family did he favor? Could he sing like his old man?
George stood behind them as they flashed away. He smiled at her, and she at him. And her smile was really beautiful.
Of course she wasn’t just smiling at Evans. She was thrilled about this baby, and even loved the attention. She was, after all, Mrs. Frank Sinatra—a very important position in America, not so very different from being the First Lady. She was aware of the privileges and responsibilities.
To a great degree it was like a political marriage: the public had begun to overwhelm the private. The time they actually spent together, just the two of them, was almost nonexistent—especially with Frank so busy on the Coast. The phone calls were misery: with the three-hour difference, they always came at the wrong time, and since he hated being alone, there were usually other voices, even festive sounds, in the background, forcing her to imagine whom he was spending his evenings, not to mention his nights, with. Sometimes, when she was expecting his call, it wouldn’t even be him, but that goddamn Hank Sanicola instead, going through his usual rigmarole about how long and hard Frank’s days were, what with shooting the picture and broadcasting the radio shows and all. Frankie was dead tired, Hank would say; he never slept enough, couldn’t keep any weight on—he made her husband sound like a candidate for Vimms himself …
It had been Frank who’d phoned the night of the birth—or rather, very early in the morning of the next day, most likely with the sounds of dishes and glasses and feminine laughter in the background.
How was she doing? How was their boy? Was he handsome? He missed her … He’d better go now—she needed her sleep … He missed her …
The hell of it was that she knew it was true—that he did miss her. In his fashion. And she missed him. With all her heart.
For the second Vimms show, on January 12, the fans began lining up at 6:45 a.m. outside the CBS Radio Playhouse at 1615 North Vine. By 5:00 p.m., an hour before broadcast time, more than a thousand of them—the vast majority girls, of course—queued around the block. The CBS studio seated 350. When Sanicola came in and told him most of the girls were about to be turned away, Sinatra saw red. How would 350 girls, as opposed to 1,500, sound to the American radio audience? Like a goddamn classical string recital, that was how.
He let the nervous-looking CBS executive hovering nearby have it. Then he turned to Hank. Was there a bigger studio?
Vine Street Playhouse seated fourteen hundred.
Sinatra pointed to the executive. Vine Street.
The man began to splutter. It would take hours to set up in another studio; they were scheduled to go on live in one hour. The sound levels were completely different in the other theater. The engineers …
The singer cocked his head and narrowed his lips.
Vine Street.
Dolly could have done no better.
The executive went to an office and stood by a telephone for a panicky moment before realizing he didn’t have to put the impossible matter before his boss at all. A minute later, he leaned out the door, summoned Sanicola, and handed him the phone. It was not CBS but the chief of the local chapter of AFRA, the American Federation of Radio Artists, on the other end.
“Tell your boy either he goes on from the CBS studio or he’s through as far as AFRA’s jurisdiction is concerned,” the stern voice said.
Sanicola went back to Sinatra, whispered to him behind his hand. Frank raised his eyebrows. Should he call Saul Jaffe? In a rare moment of forbearance—the exception proving the rule—Sinatra decided to pick his battles. He squared his shoulders and turned to Stordahl. Time to rehearse.
Back at Margaret Hague Maternity, the nurse turned on the radio just before nine. Now, as Nancy held the milky-warm little bundle close, Frank was talking to her: “I’d like to sing one of my favorite songs to my little son in New Jersey. So pull up a chair, Nancy, and bring the baby with you. I want him really to hear this.”
It was hard having his tender voice so near and yet so very far away. That voice! Goddamn it, she knew it worked on a million other women, and it worked on her, too …
He sang his theme song, the schmaltzy number he’d written with Sanicola:
This love of mine goes on and on
Though life is empty since you have gone.
Lately, Evans had begun to tell her, in his calm, decisive way, that she must move out there.
She thought about it. It was the only thing that made sense—except that her whole family was here, in Jersey. Her sisters. Her parents. She didn’t know a soul in Hollywood. She wouldn’t fit in. She would die of homesickness.
She couldn’t. Not yet.
But she knew it was the only way. She ached with loneliness. This wasn’t a way for a married woman to live.
And Frank, of course, was almost never alone. Everyone wanted to be near him, to touch him; and it was so strange, he couldn’t bear to be touched (especially by strangers) except on his own terms, but he needed someone near him, always, like a drug. Chance encounters arose at delightfully odd moments: in a janitor’s closet off a soundstage, for example. But the constant was his entourage—the Western Varsity. Hank was here, naturally, and Sammy Cahn and now Jule Styne, and a couple of other funny Jews Frank kept running into at poker games and prizefights, Phil Silvers and a comedy writer named Harry Crane, né Kravitsky. Stordahl was rooming in a luxury suite in the Wilshire Tower with Jimmy Van Heusen, who was frequently absent for some shadowy reason …