by Kitty Kelley
Q: Nobody wants to ruin you, Mr. Sinatra. 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.
A: Well, look, how in hell is it going to help your investigation to put me on television just because I know some of these guys?
Q: That will be up to Senator Kefauver and the committee. 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.
Nellis continued with his roll call of Mafia names, asking Frank if he had ever been associated in business with Willie Moretti.
A: 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.
Frank did not elaborate on his close personal relationship with Willie Moretti, who had helped him so much in the early days. Nor did he say that he, Frank, had shown his gratitude in 1947 by singing at the wedding of Willie’s daughter in the Corpus Christi Church in Hasbrouck Heights. The garrulous Moretti had already testified before the committee, distinguishing himself as its most talkative witness. He had told the senators that he made a living by gambling (“Wherever there was a crap game, I was there”) and amused them by saying that he had not done too well on the horses in 1948 but he had won $25,000 on President Truman’s election.
By the end of his testimony, the wise-cracking gangster had talked himself to death. Ten months later, he was gunned down gangland-style in Joe’s Elbow Room in Cliffside Park, New Jersey.
Joe Nellis did not know the extent of Frank’s friendship with Willie Moretti, but he did have evidence of his many underworld associations. “What is your attraction to these people?” he asked Sinatra.
“Some of them were kind to me when I started out,” said Frank, “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.”
Toward the end of the two-hour session, Nellis again asked Frank about his attraction to the underworld. “Well, hell, you go into show business, you meet a lot of people. And you don’t know who they are or what they do,” Frank said.
At this point, Nellis lost his patience. “I knew he was lying and being very cagey,” he said many years later.
Q: 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?
A: No, of course not. I heard about the Mafia.
Q: Well, what did you hear about it?
A: That it’s some kind of shakedown operation; I don’t know.
Q: Like the one you were involved with in the case of Tarantino?
A: I’m not sure that one was anybody’s idea but Jimmy’s.
The secret session broke up at 5:48 A.M. Nellis handed Sinatra a subpoena and said that he might want to question him at another time.
Later that morning, Nellis recommended to Kefauver that the singer not be called upon to testify publicly.
“Even though I recognized the inconsistencies in Sinatra’s testimony and knew that he was lying at times, I also knew that he wasn’t going to admit any complicity concerning Luciano or the Fischettis in terms of being a bagman or courier for them. Besides, we weren’t out to destroy anyone or to sensationalize the hearings with Hollywood celebrities,” he said.
Although Frank escaped congressional scrutiny in 1951, the case against him and his organized crime connections was far from closed. Five grand jury subpoenas would follow, along with two Internal Revenue Service investigations, a congressional summons, and a subpoena from the New Jersey State Crime Commission that he would fight all the way to the Supreme Court, and lose.
12
Encouraged by the public support she received from the Catholic Church as well as from the Hollywood press, Nancy Sinatra continued to refuse Frank a divorce, convinced that he would eventually come back home. She saw how physically drained he was by his tempestuous relationship with Ava Gardner, following her back and forth to New York, to Europe, to California. She knew of their ugly fights and Ava’s resentment toward Frank’s cronies, who were always hanging around. She also knew how much Frank missed the comforts of home, where she kept things as neat and clean as he liked, where there was always a jar of the homemade spaghetti sauce he loved in the refrigerator, and where she had always been uncomplaining about his male friends coming and going any hour of the day or night, and eating and drinking as much as they wanted. She saw how guilty he felt about leaving the children, especially Little Nancy, his favorite child. Besides, although Frank had walked out of the house in January 1950, he kept coming back, thereby prompting Nancy to drag out the legal proceedings as long as she could in hopes of outlasting Ava Gardner.
Ava, too, sensed Frank’s ambivalence about a divorce, and after eighteen months she issued an ultimatum, stating that she would not see him again until he was a free man. Many of his friends hoped that this would bring him back to Nancy, believing that his career would be revived if he returned home to his wife and children.
Frank had finally managed to snag the lead in Meet Danny Wilson, a Universal movie starring Shelley Winters, Alex Nicol, and Raymond Burr, for which he was being paid $25,000. Sinatra’s friend Don McGuire had written the original screenplay about the rise of a brash but likeable young crooner who was backed by a gangster demanding fifty percent of all his future earnings. Frank played Danny Wilson, sang nine songs, and received lukewarm reviews.
“Frank Sinatra is obviously unfair to himself in Meet Danny Wilson. For Danny’s rise to fame and fortune as crooner and bobby-sox idol is so much like Frankie’s that the parallel is inescapable,” said the Los Angeles Times.
Time magazine agreed. “The story cribs so freely from the career and personality of Frank Sinatra that fans may expect Ava Gardner to pop up in the last reel.”
“This forgettable picture began shooting in chaos and ended in disaster,” recalled Shelley Winters. “Frank was in the process of divorcing Nancy to marry Ava Gardner—I think he thought that’s what he wanted. His children were quite young and there were always psychiatrists and priests and his kids visiting him on the set or in the commissary.… Sometimes the children would come to the commissary and I would join them. A priest from the Catholic Family Counseling Service would sometimes be with them. The priest was a very nice man, but the afternoons he visited Frank on the set we all might as well have gone home. Frank was truly impossible and so disturbed that he couldn’t hear anything that anyone said to him, including the other actors, the crew, and the director, Joe Pevney.
“Everyone in Hollywood knew of his struggles ‘to divorce or not to divorce,’ and the columnists as well as the industry were giving him a very bad time.”
The artistic chemistry between Frank and his headstrong leading lady soured immediately after rehearsals began, and their vicious arguments soon could be heard throughout the studio. He called her a “bowlegged bitch of a Brooklyn blonde” and she retaliated, denouncing him as “a skinny, no-talent, stupid, Hoboken bastard.” One night they flew into such a rage at each other that Shelley slugged him, and Frank stormed off the set. “Contrary to other Italians I have known since, he didn’t hit me back,” said Shelley. “Maybe he went home and hit Ava Gardner.”
The next morning, studio executives begged Shelley to make peace with her temperamental co-star. “Mr. Sinatra is going through a terrible and troubled period of his life and career,” said Leo Spitz, the financial wizard of Universal. “He’s going against all his religious training and has periods when he loses his voice, and it terrifies him. And he is not famous as an actor but a singer.… That’s no excuse for him behaving so outrageously, but you’re both liberals, and maybe with your ideals of brotherhood you can bring yourself to understand the reasons that are
making him behave the way he did.”
Shelley acquiesced and showed up the next day for shooting, but Frank was unrepentant. They rehearsed their scene, at the end of which he was supposed to look into the camera and say, “I’ll have a cup of coffee and leave you two lovebirds alone.” Instead, when the cameras started rolling, Frank changed the dialogue. “I’ll go have a cup of Jack Daniel’s or I’m going to pull that blond broad’s hair out by its black roots,” he said. Shelley slammed him over the head and stormed off the set, refusing to leave her home for two days. Finally, she received a tearful call from Nancy Sinatra begging her to go back to the studio to finish the picture. Nancy said: “Shelley, Frank doesn’t get the twenty-five thousand dollars for the picture. The bank might foreclose the mortgage on the house. My children are going to be out in the street. Please finish the picture or they won’t give me the twenty-five thousand dollars.”
Again, Shelley relented and returned to the studio to finish the film, but she and Frank did not part friends.
Despite Frank’s feelings of guilt about leaving his home, he finally decided to push Nancy hard for a divorce. After giving her a mink coat for her birthday, he pleaded for his freedom. She still remained unconvinced that he was sure of what he wanted, but this time he convinced her. “If I cannot get a divorce, where is there for me to go and what is there for me to do?” he asked. Nancy gave in. She notified her attorney of her decision and then called the press.
“Yes, we have come to a decision—the attorneys are working on it now,” she said on May 29, 1951. “This is what Frank wants, and I’ve said yes. I refused him a divorce for a long time because I thought he would come back to his home. … I am now convinced that a divorce is the only way for my happiness as well as Frank’s. I think it is better for the children too.”
When reporters asked him if Nancy’s decision now left him free to marry Ava, he snarled: “I’ll flatten you if you ask me one more question about that. That’s purely personal.”
Three months later, Nancy still had not filed for divorce, so when Frank and Ava left for an Acapulco vacation in August, the press assumed that he was going to obtain a quick Mexican divorce and marry Ava, and they turned out in force to cover the story. When Frank saw all the reporters waiting for him at the Los Angeles airport, he refused to board the plane until they had been cleared from the runway. But the newsmen refused to move, and so Frank sprinted past them to the plane. The enterprising journalists had already found out that he had booked reservations in the names of A. L. Guest (Ava Lavinia, who was to be his guest) and Bob Burns (Frank’s manager). At a layover in El Paso, the couple were again surrounded by the press. By the time Frank and Ava arrived in Mexico City, Frank was seething.
“Why can’t you guys leave us alone?” he shouted. “This is silly. You can tell stateside for me that what we do is our own damn business. It’s a fine thing when we can’t go on vacation without being chased.”
When a photographer took his picture in Acapulco, he exploded. His Mexican bodyguard, later identified by the United Press correspondent as a killer with a long record of murders, threatened to shoot the newsman if he didn’t give up the camera.
A policeman took the camera and gave it to Frank, who destroyed the film and threw the camera back to the photographer.
“I told you guys to leave me alone,” he screamed. “This is a private affair of my own. I don’t have to talk to anyone. It wasn’t the press who made me famous. It was my singing and the American public.”
Frank turned on a reporter who was still taking notes.
“You son of a bitch,” he yelled.
“Careful, Frankie,” said the reporter. “We’ll print this in the States.”
“You miserable crumb … print that, you son of a bitch.”
“We’ll be glad to,” said the reporter.
The story appeared in the United States the next day, which further infuriated Sinatra, and, after three days, he and Ava cut short their stay and returned.
By the time their private plane landed at Los Angeles International Airport, the Hollywood press corps was waiting for them.
After clearing customs, he and Ava rushed for the black Cadillac convertible that Bobby Burns had left at the airport for them. “Kill that light,” Frank screamed at the photographers. “Kill that light.”
Jumping into the car, he started the engine, then headed straight for the reporters. The tires screeched. He almost hit several of them as he careened toward the runway, throwing airport officers into a panic. As he reached the airport gate, a photographer named William Eccles was standing with his camera cocked. Sinatra steered the car directly at him, grazing his leg with the bumper of the car.
“Next time I’ll kill you,” Frank screamed out the window. “I’ll kill you.”
“He turned the car into me and tried to scare me away,” said Eccles. “I figured he’d swerve away from me, so I shot the picture and I didn’t move. He slammed on the brakes, and at the last minute I jumped. I went up over the fender and rolled off on my stomach, dropping my camera. It was a hit-run case. I could have sued for money, but I wasn’t after that. I was after respect for the press. I demanded a letter of apology. We got the letter a few days later.”
Frank explained: “Maybe my car did brush a photographer’s leg. I don’t know. It was a madhouse. All we were trying to do was get away and they rushed the car. It was lucky someone didn’t get killed.”
Days later, Frank was in Reno establishing Nevada residency and singing at the Riverside Hotel. He’d also accepted a two-week engagement at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas. He was determined to force Nancy’s hand by getting a Nevada divorce at the end of six weeks. On this trip, he made a concerted effort to get along with the press. In fact, he astounded Reno reporters by inviting all of them to his hotel suite, where he announced his plans. A few days later, Ava arrived to stay with him, and again he invited the press in to say that they would be married as soon as he got a divorce.
Over the Labor Day weekend, the couple went to Lake Tahoe with Hank Sanicola and his wife, Paula. Late in the evening of August 31, 1951, after a few hours of drinking and gambling at the Christmas Tree restaurant, Frank and Ava had another one of their terrible fights. It ended with Ava’s hurrying back to Hollywood while Frank, despondent and depressed, returned to his chalet at the Cal-Neva Lodge and took an overdose of sleeping pills.
His valet, George Jacobs, found him in a stupor. Jacobs immediately called Sanicola, who summoned a doctor to pump Frank’s stomach. The doctor, John Wesley Field, did not recognize Frank because he had recently grown a small mustache. Besides, as the doctor later told the sheriff, Frank identified himself as Henry Sanicola.
With George and Hank in the room, the doctor examined Frank’s heart and pulse, which were normal but slow, and prescribed salts to induce vomiting and a stimulant to counteract the sleeping pills. Then, as required by law, he reported the incident to the sheriff, who sent a deputy sheriff to investigate. Three days later, the incident became national news, but by the time reporters showed up to ask questions, Frank and Ava were reunited and sitting together holding hands.
“I did not try and commit suicide,” said Frank. “I just had a bellyache. Suicide is the farthest thought from my mind. What will you guys think of next to write about me?”
The reporters wrote what they were told: Frank didn’t feel well, so he took “a couple” of sleeping pills, which produced an allergic reaction. “That’s all there was to it—honest,” he said.
Years later, George Jacobs confirmed that Frank had indeed tried to commit suicide that night over Ava Gardner. “Thank God, I was there to save him,” he said. “Miss G. was the one great love of his life, and if he couldn’t have her, he didn’t want to live no more.”
Frank was beset by a wife who wouldn’t let go, children begging him to come home, and a lover angry about the bad publicity they were receiving and impatient to get married. In frustration, he lashed out at the press.
Ava, too, despised the press, but, understanding its power and influence, she always smiled for photographers and gave reporters some kind of a quotation. She insisted that Frank make an effort to get along with them, and he promised he would.
His reformation lasted only a few days. When his Nevada divorce became final a few weeks later, he became so enraged when he saw reporters waiting for him that he forgot his promise to Ava and called them all “newspaper bums.”
“Why should I give the newspapers anything? I ought to give a cocktail party for the press and put a Mickey Finn in every glass,” he said, prompting a headline that read: BELLIGERENT SINATRA GETS DIVORCE, SCORNS REPORTERS.
As soon as Frank was granted a Nevada divorce, Nancy filed legal papers objecting and refused to withdraw her objection until he agreed to pay her $40,000 in back alimony. Frank capitulated to every one of her financial demands, promising to pay her $65,000 immediately after she received a California divorce and $21,000 more by December 31, 1952, or she would have the right to take over the one asset he had left, the house in Palm Springs.
On October 31, 1951, Nancy was granted an interlocutory decree of divorce in Santa Monica after testifying to Frank’s many acts of mental cruelty. Fifteen minutes later, the rejected wife left the court a rich woman.
Within a day, Frank and Ava obtained a marriage license in Philadelphia and vowed to be married privately—no press—at the home of Isaac “Ike” Levy, one of the founders of CBS. Manie Sacks, who was also from Philadelphia, helped Frank make arrangements for the secret Monday evening nuptials. Levy locked the marriage license in his office safe, and Mrs. Levy hired one of the city’s best caterers and florists for the occasion. She told her decorator to get the Levys’ German-town mansion ready for twenty guests, and swore all the maids and butlers to secrecy.