by James Kaplan
And Sinatra’s association with Jimmy Tarantino was coming back to haunt him. Tarantino was the former Varsity member whom Frank had helped set up in business with a scandal sheet called Hollywood Nite Life. No good deed goes unpunished. Maybe Frank knew at the outset that Tarantino’s modus operandi was blackmail: that celebrities had to pay for good publicity in the rag or get the bad kind. Maybe the $15,000 he invested was really protection money; or perhaps he was just being kind to a compadre. In any case, the minute Tarantino got wind of squalid doings in Vegas involving Sinatra, he tried to shake Frank down. This was complicated, given that Tarantino had Hank Sanicola and Mickey Cohen as business partners, and maybe Willie Moretti, too. Furious, Frank told Sanicola to tell Bobby Burns to write Tarantino another sizable check, ostensibly as a business loan, and to deliver the following proviso: this was the end of the line for Tarantino as far as Sinatra was concerned. The whole thing stank, but it was the kind of nonsense that happened all the time on the fringes of show business.
Now here was this Washington lawyer with his eyeglasses and narrow stare, getting in Frank’s business.
“We have information,” Nellis intoned, as the stenographer clicked away, “to the effect that you paid Tarantino quite a large sum of money to keep him from writing a quite uncomplimentary story about you.”
“Well, you know how it is in Hollywood,” Sinatra said—as if this prick had any idea. “Jimmy called up and said he had an eyewitness account of a party that was supposed to have been held down in Vegas in which some broads had been raped or something like that. I told Jimmy if he printed anything like that, he would be in for a lot of trouble.”
“Did he ask you for money?” Nellis asked.
“Well, I asked Hank Sanicola, my manager, to talk to him and that’s the last I heard of it until [the columnist and crime reporter Florabel] Muir printed a story about it in the Los Angeles Herald.”
“Did Hank tell you he paid Tarantino?”
“Well,” Frank said, “I understand Tarantino was indicted and I don’t know the rest of the story, but the Hollywood [Nite Life] quit publishing this crap afterwards.”
Nellis produced the photographs of Sinatra with Luciano in Havana, and proceeded to ask a series of questions about Frank’s February 1947 trip to Cuba. First, though, he wanted to know how Frank had met the Fischetti brothers. Frank said he had first met Joe while performing in Chicago in 1946. “He had a little speedboat on the lake, and one afternoon he took me for a ride,” Sinatra recalled nostalgically. “Having dinner with him, going to the theater.” Joe introduced him to Charlie and Rocco in Chicago, Frank said, and now and then over the following year he encountered the three casually.
“Did you ever have any business with any of the Fischettis?” Nellis asked.
“Not an ounce,” Sinatra replied.
“Where were you staying at Miami when you met them?”
“I had a little cottage.”
“How did you happen to bump into the Fischettis?”
“I went to either the Beachcomber or one of the clubs downtown in the entertainment center, and I saw Joe, and then later that evening I met Rocco,” Frank said. “He came in with some friends, and I said hello and met his friends, and that was it.”
But that was not it: a series of what seemed to be escalating coincidences kept bringing Sinatra and the brothers together. The same night he encountered Rocco, as Frank recalled, “I said to Joe, it is too cold, I think I am going to get out of here and go where it is warm. I said I think I will go down to Havana, said if I went down I would stay a couple of days because I promised my wife I would meet my wife in Mexico around February 14. It was St. Valentine’s Day; that comes back to my mind.”
As well it should.
Frank continued: “Then that is when [Joe] told me they had also contemplated going to Cuba. I think the next day he called me on the phone and wanted to know when I was going down to Cuba. Apparently, at that time I probably did say what morning I was going, either the following morning or the morning after he called me, and when I got out to the airport, they were checking the baggage through; that is when I saw them on the plane.”
Nellis gave Sinatra a hard stare. “And you had given him your phone number where you were staying?”
“Yes, he asked me for the phone number, and I gave it to him.”
“Now, you rode over together on the same plane?”
“Yes.”
“When you got off the plane, you got off with them together?”
“No, actually I didn’t know. As a matter of fact, I suspect, now that we discuss it, that when the plane landed, they may have seen the guys with the cameras. They may have seen somebody with a camera because why should they fall behind. I found myself alone …”
“Were you carrying any baggage off the plane?” Nellis asked.
“Yes.”
“What was it?”
“A tan piece of hand luggage, a briefcase like,” Frank said.
“Could you have had a paper-wrapped bundle?” Nellis asked.
“No, I don’t remember actually, but I don’t think so. I think I had a topcoat and a bag.”
“What was in the bag?”
“Sketching materials, crayons, shaving equipment, general toiletry.”
“Did you habitually carry that bag?”
“All the time, constantly,” Sinatra said. “I am now. I also use it for papers.”
“How large a bag is it?”
“It is about the size of a briefcase with a handle on it. Instead of carrying under your arms, like a little overnight bag.”
“Did either of the Fischettis give you anything to carry into Cuba?”
“No, sir.”
“Did anybody else give you anything else to carry into Cuba?”
“No, sir.”
The lawyer made a sour face. “Will you go ahead with the rest of your story,” he said.
In his lengthy account Frank described leaving his room at the Hotel Nacional (in the company of a Chicago columnist he had encountered, Nate Gross of the Herald American) and proceeding to have a series of accidental meetings with a group of gangsters who kept showing up wherever he went—the bar of the Nacional, the hotel dining room, an “American show” downtown. One of the gangsters was Lucky Luciano.
“I remarked to Nate, I said that name is familiar,” Frank recalled. “Yes, he said, that’s the guy you think it is. He started to tell me something of the history of this man. I was a boy and remember when his trial was on and remember reading about it …”
That night, according to Sinatra, was the last time he ever saw Luciano.
Nellis shook his head. “There has been stated certain information to the effect that you took a sum of money well in excess of $100,000 into Cuba,” he said.
“That is not true.”
“Did you give any money to Lucky Luciano?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you ever learn what business they were in?”
“No,” Frank said. “Actually not.”
“Where did you get started in the entertainment business?” Nellis asked.
“In a small club in Hoboken; I must have been around seventeen.”
“What’s your attraction to all these underworld characters?”
“I don’t have any attraction for them,” Frank said. “Some of them were kind to me when I started out, and I have sort of casually seen them or spoken to them at different places, in nightclubs where I worked, or out in Vegas or California.”
“Do you know Frank Costello?”
“Just to say hello. I’ve seen him at the Copa and at the Madison, and once we had a drink at the Drake where I stay when I’m in New York.”
“What about Joe Doto?”
“I’ve met him,” Sinatra said. “He’s the one they call ‘Adonis,’ right?”
“Right. How well do you know him?”
“No business,” Frank said. “Just ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye.’ ”
“Well, what about the Jersey guys you met when you first got started?” Nellis asked.
“Let me tell you something, those guys were okay,” Frank replied. “They never bothered me or anyone else as far as I know.” He was wringing his hands now—almost as though he were washing them. “Now,” Frank said, “you’re not going to put me on television and ruin me just because I know a lot of people, are you?” His famous voice was wavering a little. Nellis couldn’t help feeling a little thrill of power.
“Nobody wants to ruin you, Mr. Sinatra,” the lawyer said waspishly. “I assure you I would not be here at five in the morning at your lawyer’s request so that no newsmen could find out we’re talking to you if we intended to make some kind of public spectacle of any appearance before the committee.”
Frank wasn’t placated. His voice rose and tightened. “Well, look,” he said. “How in hell is it going to help your investigation to put me on television just because I know some of these guys?”
Nellis shook his head impatiently. “That will be up to Senator Kefauver and the committee,” he said. Then he softened ever so slightly. “Right now, if you’re not too tired, I want to continue so we can see whether there’s any basis for calling you in public session. Let’s get back to what I was asking you about. And I will ask you specifically: Have you ever, at any time, been associated in business with Moretti, Zwillman—”
“Who?” Frank asked.
“Abner Zwillman of Newark,” Nellis said. “They call him ‘Longy.’ Or Catena, Lansky, or Siegel?”
“Well, Moore, I mean Moretti, made some band dates for me when I first got started, but I have never had any business dealings with any of those men.”
“But you know Luciano, the Fischettis, and all those I have named?”
“Just like I said; just in that way.”
The sky outside the dirty windows was still black. “What is your attraction to these people?” Nellis repeated.
“Well, hell, you go into show business, you meet a lot of people,” Frank said. “And you don’t know who they are or what they do.”
The lawyer’s eyes flashed behind the circular lenses. “Do you want me to believe that you don’t know the people we have been talking about are hoodlums and gangsters who have committed many crimes and are probably members of a secret criminal club?”
Sinatra had to stifle a smile. Club. That was rich. Like the Turk’s Palace, with secret handshakes and orange and black silk jackets. Well, it was a little like that, actually. Except for the silk jackets.
“No, of course not,” Frank said. “I heard about the Mafia.”
“Well, what did you hear about it?”
Frank shook his head, elaborately disingenuous. “That it’s some kind of shakedown operation,” he said. “I don’t know.”
“Like the one you were involved with in the case of Tarantino?”
Finally, Sinatra allowed himself a half smile. It was almost six in the morning; the torment was almost over. Out over the East River, the sky was beginning to lighten. “I’m not sure that one was anybody’s idea but Jimmy’s,” he told Nellis.
What’s your attraction to these people? The question was by no means a simple one: no wonder Joseph Nellis asked it not just once but twice during the session. However much revulsion or incredulity the government lawyer may have felt at Sinatra’s associations, he also understood the Mafia’s mystique. His boss, after all, was scoring the biggest success in the brief history of television by putting these people on the air. Something about the Mob got—and still gets—to everyone. To a great degree the American fascination with gangsters stems from the pleasant fantasy that they have razored away the troublesome complexities of life by sheer, brutal acts of will. Sinatra sometimes fantasized that his celebrity had accomplished the same end. It was an illusion he would entertain until the end of his life, but the chickens always came home to roost. Life’s troubling messiness won out in the end. So it went, too, with gangsters: there was no escaping the condition of being a human being.
And yet every time Frank shook the hand of one of these powerful, magnetic men, the man on either end of the handshake enjoyed the same fantasy about the other: This fucker has got it knocked. The smiles broadened; the handclasp grew firmer as the warm thought took hold.
Gelb assured his client that it had gone reasonably well, but Nellis had handed Frank a subpoena before he left, and Frank didn’t see much assurance in his lawyer’s eyes. Sinatra thanked Gelb, dismissed Sanicola, went back to the Hampshire House. He took two Seconals, chased with three fingers of Jack Daniel’s, and paced. A fucking subpoena. If they called him in to testify, he was well and truly fucked. He got in the shower and ran the hot water for twenty minutes; he couldn’t stop yawning. He sat on the side of his bed, towel around his waist, and drank another glass of whiskey. Gelb had assured him he was unlikely to be recalled. How unlikely? The lawyer met his eyes with a hard gaze. Unlikely, he repeated. Frank swished the whiskey in the glass. A crazy thought intruded: He was standing on the bar at Marty O’Brien’s, naked, trying to sing, unable to make a sound. The old men stared at him; Dolly tapped her stick on her palm. When he opened his eyes again, it was after five thirty, and the sun was setting over the Hudson.
Later that morning Nellis reported to Kefauver. Sinatra had been lying, the lawyer said; he was certain of it. On the other hand, “He’s not going to admit any complicity concerning Luciano or the Fischettis in terms of being a ‘bagman’ or courier for them or anybody else,” Nellis said. “If we take him into public session, his career will really be jolted—possibly beyond repair. He may even balk at the TV cameras and raise a lot of hell without saying anything.”
Kefauver accepted Nellis’s recommendation not to call Sinatra to testify. The senator was less concerned about Frank’s career than his own: people were already calling the hearings a show; there was no sense turning them into a circus.
They were rowdy at Toots Shor’s that night, making pleasantly filthy jokes about Kefauver, and Frank felt braver. The next evening, trailed by Sanicola, Silvani, and Ben Barton, he strode into the Columbia studio at Third and Thirtieth to record two numbers from the new Rodgers and Hammerstein show, The King and I. It didn’t get any better than Rodgers and Hammerstein. Axel was there to conduct his arrangements of “Hello Young Lovers” and “We Kiss in a Shadow,” and it didn’t get any better than Sibelius. Frank joshed with the violinists; he joked with the drummer Johnny Blowers about the miniature Zildjian cymbals Axel had brought to give the music a Siamese sound. Then the engineers turned the tape on; Stordahl brought down his baton. Sinatra put up his hand.
His voice wasn’t right. He sipped hot tea, he joked with Sibelius and the musicians, he tried to keep smiling, but all of it—the late nights on the phone with Ava, the bad calls at odd hours from Little Nancy, the cigarettes and whiskey and the fucking subpoena—all of it was starting to get to him, scratching away at his confidence and at his instrument itself.
Yet even though “Hello Young Lovers” took not three or four or even ten but twenty-two takes, Frank smiled; he sipped his tea, happy to keep going however long it took. It was Rodgers and Hammerstein; it was Stordahl. He was, for the moment anyway, in the best possible hands.
Of course the mood couldn’t last. While MCA was busy attending to its important clients—in a groundbreaking precedent, Lew Wasserman had recently secured Jimmy Stewart profit participation in his pictures—Sinatra was screaming at Henry Jaffe to get him a goddamn movie, fast.
Offers were not pouring in. But then the screenwriter and Sinatra drinking buddy Don McGuire came up with a hard-hitting scenario he thought might be right up Frank’s alley, a story about a hot-tempered saloon singer who gets a career boost from a mobster and regrets the consequences. It was a little close to the bone, but Frank liked it anyway. Here was a chance to put Clarence Doolittle and all those sailor suits behind him, to do the kind of gritty movie he could have done with Knock on Any Door, if they’d let him do i
t. To be, at last, a man on-screen. As for the subject matter: Let the goddamn public think whatever they wanted, he thought; they were already thinking it anyway. The screenplay was called Meet Danny Wilson.
Jaffe managed to sell the script, and Frank as the star, to Universal International, a studio that was making its big money from Abbott and Costello and Ma and Pa Kettle and Francis the Talking Mule. Universal offered Sinatra a flat fee of $25,000 to do the picture. It was almost an insult, but things being what they were, he jumped at it.
In the meantime, Ava’s fortunes were skyrocketing. MGM was thrilled with her performance in Show Boat, convinced it had a major new star on its hands. Her contract was soon up for renewal, and there was serious talk of a big increase, something in the neighborhood of $1 million a year. She soft-pedaled the money when she spoke with Frank on the phone, but he could hear the excitement in her voice. Some part of him was happy for her—he did love her—but naturally enough, he also felt belittled. He knew all about career trajectories. There were times, at four and five o’clock in the morning (and who could he tell about this?), when he felt like the lowest of the low.
He and Axel and many of the same musicians were back in the Thirtieth Street studio to record three more songs on the night of March 27. The first was another number from The King and I: a cute thing called “I Whistle a Happy Tune,” with a typically inspirational Hammerstein lyric about coping with fear by pretending not to be afraid. And Mitch Miller, who was in the control room that evening, had come up with a cute idea—Frank himself would do the whistling parts. Sinatra gave the tune a charming, convincing performance, which made the next number he recorded all the more shattering.
The song, composed by Joel Herron, the former musical director of the Copacabana, and the lyricist Jack Wolf, was called “I’m a Fool to Want You.” It was a big, melodramatic ballad, much in the style of “Take My Love,” another melodramatic ballad Herron and Wolf had previously sold to Ben Barton, who ran Sinatra’s publishing company, Barton Music Corporation. Frank’s recording of “Take My Love,” which turned a perfectly honest theme from Brahms’s Third Symphony into an outright weeper, sold like the dog it was. “I’m a Fool to Want You,” however, was something else. Yes, it was sappy, but the vaguely Slavic, minor-key melody felt original rather than canned, and when Frank sang it that night, something amazing happened.