Sinatra

by James Kaplan

  Anyone knows an ahnt cahn’t

  Move a rubber-tree plahnt.

  The message of hope was as powerful as its deliverer, and Frank’s esteem for the great lady was palpable. As was his wish, signaled by her appearance on the show, to be involved in politics at the highest level. The man who could hold Eleanor Roosevelt in such high regard and also feel intense admiration for Sam Giancana and Johnny Formosa might have had a complex sense of self-esteem, but he also possessed a quite simple respect for power.

  —

  What’s with Frank Sinatra?

  Sinatra, who is the hottest thing in show business, has not made a record since last Aug. 1 when he recorded a single record called “Talk to Me.” He has not made an album since July 20 when he recorded “No One Cares”—despite the fact that his albums sell more than those of any other entertainer…

  As the situation stands, Sinatra can’t make records for anyone but Capitol and he won’t make them for Capitol. This deadlock could go on for years.

  —John Crosby, syndicated column, March 2, 1960

  Sometime in late 1959 or early 1960, Glenn Wallichs, the head of Capitol Records, called Alan Livingston and asked for his help in dealing with Sinatra. The previous May, after Wallichs had definitively nixed the singer’s umpteenth demand that his Essex Productions become a sub-label under Capitol’s aegis—with Capitol bearing all expenses and Essex and Capitol sharing profits fifty-fifty—Frank had walked out, refusing to make any more records until he got his way. Wallichs reasoned that Livingston (who was soon to quit NBC and return to Capitol as president) had a special relationship with Sinatra. After all, he was the man who’d signed Frank to Capitol in 1953 when no one else wanted him. But as Sinatra’s Columbia Records rabbi and close friend, the late Manie Sacks, had learned to his sorrow, nothing—not friendship, not love, not loyalty—was more important to Frank than his career. Once he decided he wanted something, anyone who opposed it was the enemy.

  “I called him up and said, ‘Frank, I understand you’ve had a problem with Capitol…Can we sit down and talk about it?’ ” Livingston recalled. “He said, ‘No way. I don’t want to talk to you. I’m going to tear down that round building.’ He was threatening to do this and that and using every four-letter word in the book. And I was shocked. I said, ‘Frank, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you felt that way.’ And I hung up. That was it. From there on we dealt with lawyers.”

  Capitol’s attorneys and Sinatra’s lawyer Mickey Rudin worked out a deal: in return for giving Capitol the Can-Can soundtrack album, Frank would be released from the seven-year contract he’d signed in 1956. He would make five more albums for the label, under the current terms, and would then be free to leave. He began recording the first LP on the night of March 1, the first time he had set foot in Studio A since the previous May.

  It was as though he’d never left. Nelson was at the podium, the Slatkins were in the string section, Dave Cavanaugh was in the control booth. Frank was relaxed and happy. The plan for the album (at first meant to be titled The Nearness of You)*1 was to update a dozen standard ballads Frank had recorded for Columbia a decade or more earlier: most of them, crucially, from the pre-Ava period—love songs, that is, rather than cries of desolation.

  From the first track, he was right back in the pocket. He’d last laid down Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie’s majestic “You Go to My Head” on July 30, 1945—a month before V-J Day, while he was still in his twenties. The Axel Stordahl–arranged version was beautiful, a wispy dream, like the curl of smoke from a wartime Lucky Strike. Frank’s vocal was young, yearning, wistful: it was the sound that made the girls scream, that made the boys overseas long for home.

  So much had changed in fifteen years. In Sinatra and Riddle’s hands, the number turned from a thing of beauty to one of magnificence. It wasn’t just the timbre of Frank’s voice that had deepened; it was the song itself. Nelson’s trademark swirling strings and flute in the intro, followed by Frank’s deep, dark vocal, rendered “You Go” oceanic.

  On the four tunes he recorded that night—he also sang “Fools Rush In,” “That Old Feeling,” and “Try a Little Tenderness”—Sinatra revealed a new side to his ballad singing. Once the ardent young lover, then, for so many years, the torch carrier, he was now the sadder but wiser swinger: an artist on the near edge of being an elder statesman.

  On three consecutive nights, March 1, 2, and 3, Sinatra and Riddle made twelve gorgeous recordings, enough to fill the album Frank had in mind. But the restless perfectionist in him wasn’t satisfied. He had Hank Sanicola call a number of songwriters, Cahn and Van Heusen among them, to ask for a brand-new number, a title tune for an album of “lightly swinging love songs”—that was the phrase. It was a tall order.

  Among the songwriting teams Sanicola approached were the composer Lew Spence and the lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman, who’d already written a pair of singles for Sinatra: “Sleep Warm” and “Love Looks So Well on You.” Spence had recently played a catchy song fragment for the Bergmans, wondering what to do with it; the piece’s jaunty six-note core conjured a phrase for Alan Bergman: “Nice ’n’ easy does it.” The rest of the music and lyrics quickly followed.

  —

  Frank and the screenwriter Albert Maltz had been Hollywood liberals together in the 1940s, only Maltz—who wrote the script for the 1945 Oscar-winning short The House I Live In, starring Sinatra as himself in a paean to tolerance—was a little more liberal: in fact, he was a card-carrying member of the American Communist Party. Two years later, Maltz, along with nine other left-leaning writers and directors, was cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee. The group, who became known as the Hollywood Ten, were all imprisoned and blacklisted. Upon his release, Maltz moved to Mexico, and it was there, in early 1960, that Sinatra called him about writing a new screenplay.

  Frank intended to produce—and, for the first time, direct—the film, which was to be based on William Bradford Huie’s book The Execution of Private Slovik, the story of a Detroit ne’er-do-well who became the only U.S. soldier executed for desertion during World War II. “It was a total downer,” George Jacobs recalled, “but, as Mr. S put it, ‘You don’t win Oscars for comedies.’ He still really wanted that Oscar.”

  Albert Maltz seemed the perfect choice to write the antiwar picture—except for one little detail: he was still blacklisted. The Writers Guild of America had dropped him; in theory, no studio could hire him or distribute a film he had worked on. (Many of the Ten, including Maltz, had skirted the blacklist by writing under pseudonyms.)

  That January, though, Frank’s Man with the Golden Arm director, Otto Preminger, had struck the first major blow against the blacklist by telling the New York Times that he’d hired another member of the Hollywood Ten, Dalton Trumbo, to write his latest movie, Exodus.*2 Sinatra, who admired Preminger greatly, was clearly making a political point in this supercharged year. “Frank said that he had been thinking of hiring me for a long time and that it was very important to him to do so and to make this film,” Maltz recalled.

  It was a typically headstrong decision, and cooler heads in Sinatra’s circle questioned it at once. Frank’s lawyer Martin Gang telephoned Maltz and asked if the announcement could be put off until after the first presidential primary, in New Hampshire (March 8), so as not to prejudice voters against John Kennedy, for whom Sinatra had been campaigning heavily.

  Kennedy won handily in New Hampshire, and Albert Maltz phoned Frank. The longer the announcement was postponed, the screenwriter felt, the less impact it would have on the blacklist. “I asked him openly if he wanted to delay because he was raising money for Kennedy and was worried that being publicly involved with a blacklisted writer might dry up finances, but he said, ‘No, I support Kennedy because I think he’s the best man for the job, but I’m not doing anything special for him.’ So I suggested we make the announcement right away, and he said fine.”

  As it turned o
ut, it was not so fine. On March 20, speaking from Miami, where he’d gone to play a nineteen-night stand (along with Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, and his daughter Nancy) at the Fontainebleau, Frank let the world know he had hired Albert Maltz. (And that Steve McQueen was to play Eddie Slovik.) As the New York Times’s Murray Schumach noted, in a full-column story, it was a historic announcement. “This marks the first time that a top movie star has defied the rule laid down by the major studios,” Schumach wrote. “Since stars have attained such power in Hollywood that they can now often choose their own writers, Mr. Sinatra’s position may become a precedent in helping undermine the blacklist, the existence of which has often been denied.”

  Schumach asked Frank if he was fearful of the reaction in Hollywood. “We’ll find that out later,” Sinatra said. “We’ll see what happens.”

  He didn’t have to wait long. On March 23, under the headline STARS SCORN SINATRA’S HIRING OF “HOLLYWOOD 10” WRITER MALTZ, UPI noted that Frank’s decision had “brought a salvo of criticism…from such stars as Ward Bond and Robert Taylor. Mr. Maltz’s hiring is part of a trend that ‘might be called “hire the Commies” club,’ said Mr. Bond.” Bond’s close friend, frequent co-star, and fellow right-winger John Wayne furiously asked reporters, “I wonder how Sinatra’s crony, Senator John Kennedy, feels about him hiring such a man? I’d like to know his attitude because he’s the one who is making plans to run the administrative government of our country.”

  Editorial pages around America laid into Sinatra. Predictably, the Hearst papers led the charge. “What kind of thinking motivates Frank Sinatra in hiring an unrepentant enemy of his country—not a liberal, not an underdog, not a free thinker, but a hard revolutionist who has never done anything to remove himself from the Communist camp or to disassociate himself with the Communist record?” asked the New York Mirror.

  Hedda Hopper jumped on the bandwagon. “On returning from New York I found more than a hundred letters on my desk protesting Frank Sinatra’s hiring of Commie Albert Maltz,” the columnist, a fervent Republican and Nixon supporter, wrote.

  I tried to reach Frank, but he was unavailable. He’s given several reasons why he did this but none has met with approval of real Americans.

  Personally, I don’t believe the story should be filmed…But the people have the privilege of refusing to see his picture if it’s ever made. They also have the privilege of not buying Sinatra’s records and not looking at his TV shows. This is their right.

  But what of the people of other nations—those who hate us? They will revel in an ugly story about our country. If Sinatra loves his country he won’t do this. He’ll write off the cost of the story and forget it. But will he? That’s the question. He’s stubborn, but not pigheaded. He has a fine family of which he’s proud. Will he do this to them? There is also his friend Sen. John Kennedy for whom he intends to campaign. Has he thought of the harm this could do him? “Private Slovik” could be the end of a brilliant career. I ask you, Frank, can you afford to take the risk?

  Frank wasn’t worrying about his career. His records were selling better than ever; he had (as always) several movie projects lined up; and let the right wing tut-tut all it wished, his very large audience loved him. At the end of March, a front-page story in Variety reported that he had once more racked up a record gross at the Fontainebleau, $400,000 for the nineteen nights, the last three of which, a Summit reprise, were packed beyond capacity.

  “Font’s Ben Novack is shuttering club for week, feeling nothing can follow Sinatra,” the Variety item noted.

  But another, bigger story sat above this one, at the top of the front page, announcing that Frank was quitting the William Morris Agency to form his own management company. The Morris Agency had been “hard hit with the failure of Frank Sinatra to renew,” the show-business daily said. “Sinatra’s exit deprives the Morris office with [sic] its top earner in the personal appearance field and a major moneymaker in the film and television areas.” Variety added that the new firm, to be headed by Hank Sanicola, with Milt Ebbins and Nick Sevano as associates, was “expected to represent some members of ‘The Clan,’ the show biz–socialite group that has been surrounding Sinatra for the past few years. Included in the new stable are likely to be Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop…as well as Tony Bennett, Shirley MacLaine, and others.”

  All of whom, of course, were represented by other agencies at the time. “Frank Sinatra’s new talent agency’s plans,” Earl Wilson observed in his column, “are really raising hell in Show Biz.” Frank had, in effect, staged a Hollywood coup.

  Hedda Hopper’s call for a commercial boycott of Sinatra sounded chilling, though in typical fashion Frank left the worrying to others. According to Nick Sevano, General Motors called him soon after the new management firm opened its doors and threatened to pull its ads from three upcoming Sinatra specials unless the singer disassociated himself from Maltz. Sevano recalled that he, Sanicola, and Rudin “flew to Palm Springs to try to talk Frank into firing Maltz, but he wouldn’t budge. ‘Fuck ’em,’ he said. ‘There will be other specials.’ ”

  According to Peter Lawford, it took a greater force than General Motors—Joseph P. Kennedy—to finally change Sinatra’s mind. Lawford said the old man got nervous after anti-JFK forces during the New Hampshire primary smeared the candidate as soft on Communism, and Cardinals Cushing of Boston and Spellman of New York warned the elder Kennedy about the Sinatra-Maltz connection.

  “That’s when old Joe called Frank and said, ‘It’s either Maltz or us. Make up your mind,’ ” Lawford told Kitty Kelley. “He felt that Jack was getting rapped for being a Catholic and that was going to be tough enough to put to rest. He didn’t want him to get rapped for being pro-Communist as well, so Frank caved in, and dumped Maltz that day.”

  —

  Tina Sinatra tells a different story: that the catalyst behind Maltz’s firing was a force even greater than Joe Kennedy alone. “Both Joe and Bobby Kennedy told my dad flat out to fire Maltz,” she writes.

  I suppose they expected him to do the expedient thing without a second thought—which was, after all, how the Kennedys had made their way in the world. They hadn’t banked on my father’s stubborn Sicilian streak. He was willing to compromise, but not to compromise himself in the process. And he resented being told what to do, even by the father of the next president of the United States. He told the Kennedys that he’d stick by Maltz, whether or not it jeopardized his role in the campaign.

  But what about the jeopardy to the campaign itself? Frank’s first response to Maltz—that he wasn’t “doing anything special” for JFK—was both high-handed and disingenuous: of course he was doing all kinds of special things for JFK, some of them very far off the record. In his March 20 story, the Times’s Schumach had noted, “It was reported, but without confirmation, that Mr. Sinatra at first considered keeping news of his association with Mr. Maltz secret until after the Democratic National Convention, for fear that the story might hurt the chance of Senator John F. Kennedy for the Presidential nomination.” The story reinforced the Sinatra-JFK connection in the newspaper of record, remarking that Frank’s recording of “High Hopes” was the senator’s campaign song and noting his close association with Brother-in-Lawford.

  But Tina Sinatra writes that it was her father’s consideration for her feelings, rather than for JFK’s chances, that changed his mind. She was eleven at the time, in the fifth grade at Marymount, a Catholic school for girls in Brentwood, when a girl walked up to her and said, “My dad says your dad’s a communist. Does that mean you’re a communist, too?”

  “I went home in tears that afternoon,” Sinatra writes.

  I ran off the bus and told my mother what had happened, and she got Dad on the phone right away…“I’m sorry that this happened, Pigeon,” he told me. “This whole thing is very complicated, but I’m telling you that I’m not a communist, and neither are you. Don’t cry, please. I’ll take care of it”…


  Where Dad wouldn’t bow to the mighty Kennedys, he buckled before his troubled child. After saying goodbye to me, he turned to Guy McElwaine, his publicist, and said, “Get Albert a check, and tell him I’m very sorry.” He paid Maltz the full $75,000 for the job, which he didn’t have to do. “It was my problem, not his,” Dad said.

  What makes most sense is that Frank bowed both to the mighty Kennedys and to his young daughter. As George Jacobs remembered it, it “killed him to have to eat Joe’s humble pie and give up his own dream. He went on a three-day Jack Daniel’s binge and totally destroyed his office at the Bowmont house. ‘Who gives a shit? I’m outta this fucking business!’ he screamed, ripping up books and scripts, hurling over bookcases. This time I felt his rage and frustration were understandable.”

  —

  There was certainly tension in the air. A week later, Dorothy Kilgallen made a curious observation in her syndicated gossip column:

  It’s mighty puzzling to members of Hollywood’s famous Rat Pack, but intimates of Senator Jack Kennedy say the handsome Presidential candidate keeps disavowing any close friendship with Frank Sinatra and insists any publicity linking the singer with his campaign must have been “planted” by the Sinatra interests. They quote him as saying he’s only met the singer “a few times” and protesting that Frank is brother-in-law Peter Lawford’s pal, not his.

  The item was doubly striking: for one thing, it marked the first use in print of the term “Rat Pack” as applied to the members of the Summit, as opposed to Humphrey Bogart’s old coterie. For another, there was that strange and chilling, albeit anonymous, assertion of Kennedy’s disaffection with Sinatra. And while it must be noted that there was no love lost between Frank and Kilgallen—she seemed to particularly enjoy needling him in print (and probably knew well how he would hate the Rat Pack label); he used to refer to her, onstage, as “that chinless broad”—it’s doubtful that the columnist made her item up out of whole cloth. A number of people close to Jack Kennedy (especially his brother Bobby) were extremely uneasy about his palling around with a man who palled around with hookers and hoodlums. Not to mention Communists.