Frank
Page 72
2. The “Franklin” was, of course, for FDR; “Emanuel” was in honor of the soon-to-be-dishonored Manie Sacks. The “Wayne” remains a mystery—perhaps a tribute to a New Jersey town where Frank once spent a pleasant hour? In any case, the emotionally snakebit and eternally paternally disregarded F. W. E. Sinatra would eventually—in a classic case of identifying with the oppressor—change his name to Frank junior. (And would be immortalized, on The Sopranos, as the Chairboy of the Board.)
3. “The artist agrees to conduct himself with due regard to public conventions and morals and agrees that he will not do or commit any act or thing that will degrade him in society, or bring him into public hatred, contempt, scorn, or ridicule, that will tend to shock, insult, or offend the community or ridicule public morals or decency, or prejudice the producer (MGM) or the motion picture industry in general” (Leff and Simmons, Dame in the Kimono, p. 5).
4. Proser was Frank Costello’s legit partner, and would gradually—and then not so gradually—be edged out.
SOURCE NOTES
5 “There’s a lot of griping”: Summers and Swan, Sinatra, p. 93.
6 “It is not too much”: Manchester, The Glory and the Dream, p. 309.
7 “Take a minute”: Vimms Vitamins radio advertisement, MP3, www.oldtimeradiofans.com/old_radio_commercials/vimms_vitamins.php.
8 “Dad was on the air”: Nancy Sinatra, American Legend, p. 59.
9 “This love of mine”: Lyrics from “This Love of Mine,” words and music by Sol Parker, Hank Sanicola, and Frank Sinatra (New York: Barton Music/Warner Bros. Music, 1953).
10 “Who wants to hire”: White, You Must Remember This, p. 304.
11 “I was at Lockheed”: James Kaplan, “The King of Ring-a-Ding-Ding,” Movies Rock (a supplemental publication of Vanity Fair), Dec. 2007.
12 “Niggers all work”: Lyrics from “Ol’ Man River,” words by Oscar Hammerstein, music by Jerome Kern (New York: T. B. Harms, 1927).
13 “I want that boy”: Nancy Sinatra, My Father, p. 64.
14 “I have just received”: Columbia Records Archive, Sony Music Corporation.
15 “it was in complete innocence”: Ibid. 204 “Joe E. Lewis, the only”: Ibid.
CHAPTER 14
1. There was also the far from negligible matter of broad new sexual horizons. From the beginning of Sinatra’s tenure at Metro springs the legend—impossible to substantiate but too delicious to ignore—of the to-do list of female fellow luminaries he posted on his dressing-room wall and checked off one by one as he proceeded through.
2. The effect of Lady May’s unique child rearing on her son’s maturing psyche was understandably complex. Getting wind that the young Englishman had certain sexual eccentricities, Mayer assumed that Lawford was simply gay and, with fatherly concern, sent him to get testosterone injections. Lawford, whom the author knew slightly, told the story on himself with great amusement.
3. And Hope and Crosby both belonged to the ritzy Lakeside Golf Club, just across the street: No Jews Allowed, and as for Italian-American entertainers, why, the question had never even come up before, but now that it was being asked … Despite Bob and Bing’s sponsorship, Lakeside turned Sinatra down, and he thereby became the first gentile ever to join the ranks of Groucho Marx, Jack Benny, and George Burns at Hillcrest Country Club, in Beverly Hills.
SOURCE NOTES
4 “Sinatra 1-A”: Spencer Leigh, “What Did the FBI Make of Top Pop Stars?” Independent, Dec. 13, 2005, www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/what-did-the-fbi-make-of-top-pop-stars-519323.html.
5 “bugle-deaf Frankie-boy”: Kuntz and Kuntz, Sinatra Files, p. 21.
6 “Even I grow humble”: Shaw, Twentieth-Century Romantic, p. 78.
7 “Dateline New York”: Columbia Records Archive, Sony Music Corporation.
8 “On the golf course”: Lyrics from “I Can’t Get Started,” words by Ira Gershwin, music by Vernon Duke (New York: Chappell, 1935).
9 “I’ll forget my sins”: Lyrics from “San Fernando Valley,” words and music by Gordon Jenkins (New York: Mayfair Music, 1943).
10 framed quotation: Shaw, Twentieth-Century Romantic, p. 71.
11 “When I arrived”: Nancy Sinatra, American Legend, p. 61.
12 “It came to such”: Cahn, I Should Care, p. 134.
13 “Frank thought Fred”: Bud Yorkin, in discussion with the author, Feb. 2006.
14 “I was born with”: Nancy Sinatra, American Legend, p. 61.
15 “quickly apologized”: Ibid.
16 “Because I didn’t think”: Ibid.
17 “We used to play”: Silverman, Dancing on the Ceiling, p. 78.
18 “Listen, I’m not supposed”: Wilson, Sinatra, p. 62.
19 “Pictures stink”: Kelley, His Way, p. 98.
20 “Naturally he was tired”: Ibid.
21 “It’s easy for a guy”: Ibid.
22 “In Sinatra’s singing spot”: Nancy Sinatra, American Legend, p. 63.
CHAPTER 15
SOURCE NOTES
1 “Could I bring”: Wilson, Sinatra, p. 63.
2 “Mac, imagine this guy”: Ibid.
3 “Then let’s see”: Kelley, His Way, p. 95.
4 “SINATRA HIT BY EGGS”: Ibid.
5 “He may be famous”: Ibid., p. 96.
6 “[It] was always jammed”: Ibid., p. 95.
7 “Let’s go down”: Shaw, Twentieth-Century Romantic, p. 80.
8 “Peg was inside”: Ibid.
9 “I was in my room”: Ibid.
10 “In the company of Orson”: Kelley, His Way, p. 99.
11 “No indictment was found”: Ibid., p. 100.
12 “Though she’d love to work”: Lyrics from “(I Got a Woman Crazy for Me) She’s Funny That Way,” words by Richard A. Whiting, music by Neil Moret (San Francisco: Villa Moret, 1928).
13 “I fall in love”: Lyrics from “I Fall in Love Too Easily,” words by Sammy Cahn, music by Jule Styne. From Anchors Aweigh (MGM, 1945).
CHAPTER 16
1. Nancy was clearly trying to butter Manie up by writing out Frankie junior’s middle name, but—fascinatingly—got her own son’s given first name (Franklin) wrong. It could have been that (just for a change) her husband was on her mind, but I think it more likely that she didn’t think of Frank as Francis, either. Ava Gardner, as we’ll see, would be the one who started all that.
2. Still, it must be noted that the Sinatra of 1945 was a very different man from the one who had been a punching bag for his Hoboken Four partners back in the Major Bowes days. Fame, money, and power had pumped up his physical confidence and sense of entitlement (and would continue to do so until the onset of old age); it never hurt his confidence, either, that the beefy retainers with whom he surrounded himself jumped at his every command and flinched at each unkind word.
SOURCE NOTES
3 “They tell me you”: Nancy Sinatra, American Legend, p. 66.
4 “What blazing new”: Parsons, Tell It to Louella, p. 151.
5 “necessary to the national”: Kelley, His Way, p. 101.
6 “IS CROONING ESSENTIAL?”: Ibid.
7 “I miss the times”: Lyrics from “Homesick, That’s All,” words and music by Gordon Jenkins (Columbia Records, 1945). V-Disc recording. 243 “MR. FRANK SINATRA”: Columbia Records Archive, Sony Music Corporation.
8 Frank’s daughter Nancy has written: Nancy Sinatra, American Legend, p. 58.
9 “There might be”: George Benjamin, “Who Says Sinatra’s a ‘Sad Sack’? They Loved Him Overseas—and 150,000 GIs Can’t Be Wrong!” Modern Screen, Jan. 1946, www.songsbysinatra.com/reprints/ms_0146.html
10 “Go away, boy”: Ibid.
11 “The singer kidded”: Kelley, His Way, p. 104.
12 “Are you a tenor”: Wilson, Sinatra, p. 337.
13 “Shoemakers in uniform”: Kelley, His Way, p. 104.
14 “Mice make women”: Kahn, Voice, p. 114.
15 “joy ride”: Kelley, His Way, p. 105.
16
“the Apollonian marvel”: Bosley Crowther, “Anchors Aweigh,” New York Times, July 20, 1945.
17 “Sinatra came down”: Summers and Swan, Sinatra, p. 111.
18 “George and I were”: Kelley, His Way, p. 107.
19 “GARY HIGH SCHOOL”: Edwardsville (Ill.) Intelligencer, Nov. 2, 1945.
20 “outstanding efforts”: Kelley, His Way, p. 109.
21 “You could reach”: Summers and Swan, Sinatra, p. 110.
22 “What’s he got?”: The House I Live In (RKO, 1945).
23 “a darling of”: Kuntz and Kuntz, Sinatra Files, p. 40.
24 “FRANK SINATRA, well known”: Ibid., p. 45.
25 “they called Shirley Temple”: Summers and Swan, Sinatra, p. 12.
26 “I don’t like Communists”: Kelley, His Way, p. 110.
27 “We’re bigger than”: Moquin and Van Doren, American Way of Crime, p. viii.
28 “Phil and Frank were”: Kelley, His Way, p. 111.
CHAPTER 17
SOURCE NOTES
1 “August 1, 1945”: Columbia Records Archive, Sony Music Corporation.
2 “Dear Frank. For the past six”: Ibid.
3 “Dear Frank: I received”: Ibid.
4 “They were tough-minded”: George Avakian, in discussion with the author, Oct. 2006.
5 “These should be recorded”: Friedwald, Sinatra! p. 176.
6 “We don’t have enough”: Ibid.
7 “Sinatra gave us”: Ibid.
8 “I don’t know the first thing”: Ibid.
9 “That was a very strange”: Avakian, discussion.
10 “Sinatra was then”: Friedwald, Sinatra! p. 176.
11 “Sinatra wasn’t so bad”: Avakian, discussion.
12 Frank Sinatra Conducts: Frank Sinatra Conducts the Music of Alec Wilder (Columbia Records, 1946).
13 “If you don’t know”: Columbia Records Archive, Sony Music Corporation.
CHAPTER 18
1. Although, as Will Friedwald points out, the long American Federation of Musicians strike, during which the big bands couldn’t record, deprived the bands of vital revenue.
2. Technically, Sinatra was beaten to the punch by the great Lee Wiley, who, beginning in the late 1930s, made a series of limited-edition, one-composer (Gershwin, Porter, Rodgers and Hart) albums for New York’s Liberty Music Shops, which catered exclusively to Manhattan’s first-nighting and cabaret-going elite.
3. The bureau continued watching the Mafia closely, but doing little about it, until J. Edgar Hoover’s death in 1972. Officially—since the Mob was aware that Hoover was a deeply closeted cross-dresser and a passionate racetrack bettor who may have financed his gambling habit in unorthodox ways—the director was of the opinion that the Mob was an exaggerated problem.
SOURCE NOTES
4 “How sweet the way”: Lyrics from “One Love,” words by Leo Robin, music by David Rose (Sydney: Chappell, 1946).
5 “As Shaw put it”: Friedwald, Sinatra! p. 155.
6 “I take great pride”: Ibid., p. 156.
7 “I was working”: Ibid., p. 153.
8 “The day after our marriage”: Summers and Swan, Sinatra, p. 124.
9 “If I had as many”: Kelley, His Way, p. 471.
10 “Yes, light an Old Gold”: Songs by Sinatra, radio broadcast, Jan. 2, 1946, transcript at emruf.webs.com/sinatra.htm
11 “featured songs for the ages”: Friedwald, Sinatra! p. 160.
12 “As a symptom”: Kuntz and Kuntz, Sinatra Files, p. 25.
13 “I got a break”: Kelley, His Way, p. 126.
14 “Company had early”: Ibid., p. 127.
15 “Frank was born”: Shaw, Twentieth-Century Romantic, p. 74.
16 “The New York Office”: Kuntz and Kuntz, Sinatra Files, p. 28.
CHAPTER 19
1. Pablo Picasso felt much the same way: see John Richardson’s superb biography.
2. This unique but completely successful meeting with jazz immortals occurred at a particularly significant juncture in the history of America’s single indigenous art form, while the young titans Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker were in the process of creating jazz’s version of cubism, bebop. A few months later, twenty-one-year-old Mel Tormé, having heard Ella Fitzgerald sing scat syllables on “Lady Be Good,” would begin trying it out himself, with great success. Sinatra, however, would keep being Sinatra (he could do nothing else), developing in parallel to jazz, never in its thrall. He was a representational artist to his core: abstraction never tempted him.
3. A recent biography quotes Avakian as saying the singer and his henchmen walked down the hall “like five diamonds” (Summers and Swan, Sinatra, p. 86). Which makes no sense at all until you realize what the producer was actually saying: that they resembled the playing card the five of diamonds.
4. Hilliard would also later co-write the great Sinatra anthem about the other end of the day, “In the Wee Small Hours.”
5. He had acquired the nickname after surviving a 1929 “ride” in which he had been stabbed in the face.
SOURCE NOTES
6 “I haven’t much”: Summers and Swan, Sinatra, p. 127.
7 “Sinatra arrived”: Kelley, His Way, p. 127.
8 “an over-festive vacation”: Wilson, Sinatra, p. 66.
9 “You get word”: Lyrics from “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” words and music by Irving Berlin (New York: Irving Berlin, 1946).
10 “Sinatra telephoned in”: Columbia Records Archive, Sony Music Corporation.
11 “Good evening, ladies”: Wilson, Sinatra, p. 66.
12 “SINATRA’S STOOGERY”: Shaw, Twentieth-Century Romantic, p. 101.
13 “Bobby Burns phoned”: Kelley, His Way, p. 127.
14 “Called Sinatra for rehearsal”: Columbia Records Archive, Sony Music Corporation.
15 “Sinatra only worked part”: Ibid.
16 “many times”: “Sinatras Split; Frankie Turns to Lana Turner,” Chester (Pa.) Times, Oct. 7, 1946.
17 “It’s just a family”: “Sinatra ‘Hiding’ in Marital Rift,” Oakland Tribune, Oct. 7, 1946.
18 “He did not report”: Kelley, His Way, p. 127.
19 “Let me welcome you”: Havers, Sinatra, p. 115.
20 “The only thing”: Lana Turner, Lana, p. 42.
21 “I am not in love”: Kelley, His Way, p. 131.
22 “I think Frank has done his best”: Louella Parsons, Los Angeles Examiner, Oct. 7, 1946.
23 “left at 2:30 to appear”: Columbia Records Archive, Sony Music Corporation.
24 “NO CONSENT”: Kelley, His Way, p. 129.
25 “I won’t be surprised”: Barbas, First Lady of Hollywood, p. 269.
26 “SUGGEST YOU READ”: Kelley, His Way, p. 129.
27 “JUST CONTINUE TO PRINT”: Ibid., p. 130.
28 George Avakian remembers: George Avakian, in discussion with the author, Oct. 2006.
29 “was relatively tense”: Ibid.
30 “He used to call me ‘kid’ ”: Ibid.
31 “He did them very quickly”: Ibid.
32 “Hard work”: Shaw, Twentieth-Century Romantic, p. 100.
33 “You must be glad”: Ibid., p. 104.
34 “There can rarely have been”: Friedrich, City of Nets, p. 262.
CHAPTER 20
1. The Brooklyn gangster born Giuseppe Doto had thus renamed himself, in the belief that he was as handsome as the Greek god. He was not.
2. As opposed to Dean Martin, who was far more confident of his strength and masculinity than Sinatra, and had little use for glad-handers of every variety, especially mobsters. As a young man, Dino Crocetti had worked as a dealer in gambling joints along the Ohio River, and knew exactly which characters to avoid.
3. Peter J. Levinson told the author that in the mid-1960s, over the course of many conversations with Hank Sanicola—the two were working on a book that didn’t pan out—Sanicola said he had helped Sinatra pack a suitcase full of cash to take to Luciano in Havana.
4. T
hirty years later, he himself would tell Pete Hamill, “It was one of the dumbest things I ever did” (Hamill, Why Sinatra Matters, p. 145).
SOURCE NOTES
5 “Well, Frankie and I”: Louella Parsons, Middletown (N.Y.) Times Herald, Jan. 27, 1947.
6 “wanted Nancy to have”: Summers and Swan, Sinatra, p. 129.
7 “to protect personal funds”: Ibid.
8 “A freakish accident”: Robert Ruark, “He Remembers Lucky Luciano,” Winona (Minn.) Daily News, Feb. 25, 1962.
9 “Shame, Sinatra”: Shaw, Twentieth-Century Romantic, p. 108.
10 “Sinatra was here for four days”: Ibid.
11 “a good kid”: Taraborrelli, Sinatra, p. 90.
12 “Luciano was very”: Kelley, His Way, p. 133.
13 “In addition to Mr. Luciano”: Shaw, Twentieth-Century Romantic, p. 108.
14 “It was a pretty story”: Ibid.
15 “I was brought up”: Ibid., p. 109.
16 “the complete story”: Summers and Swan, Sinatra, p. 131.
17 “Picture me, skinny Frankie”: Shaw, Twentieth-Century Romantic, p. 110.
18 “WILL YOU BE”: Modern Screen, May 1947.
19 “She found a doctor”: Tina Sinatra, My Father’s Daughter, p. 8.
20 “Don’t you ever”: Ibid., p. 9.
21 “Dad made a dramatic”: Ibid.
22 “This excellent and well-produced”: Shaw, Twentieth-Century Romantic, p. 115.
23 “known in the cafés”: Earl Wilson, “Frankie’s Fight,” Zanesville (Ohio) Times Recorder, April 18, 1947.
24 “shit heel”: Summers and Swan, Sinatra, p. 142.