by Kitty Kelley
“On New Year’s Eve in 1958, we met him for dinner at Romanoff’s with Natalie Wood and R. J. Wagner. He wanted us to go to Palm Springs afterwards, but when he went to the gent’s room, the girls said that it was too chilly to go that night. They preferred driving in the morning, but then we said, ‘Who’s going to tell him?’ Knowing his temper, Pat out and out refused to say anything, and Natalie didn’t even want to be in the same room when he was told. Finally, R. J. insisted that I be the one to do it, so when Frank got back to the table, I explained as gracefully as I could that we’d prefer joining him in the morning. Well, he went absolutely nuts. ‘If that’s the way you want it, fine,’ he said, slamming his drink on the floor and storming out of the restaurant. I rang him the next morning and his valet, George Jacobs, answered and whispered hello. He said that Frank was still asleep because he hadn’t gotten to bed until Five A.M. Then he said, ‘Oh, Mr. Lawford. What happened last night? I better tell you that he’s pissed. Really pissed off. He went to your closet and took out all the clothes that you and your wife keep here and ripped them into shreds and then threw them into the swimming pool.’ That gives you an idea of Frank’s temper and why I say that Sammy was very lucky to have gotten off so lightly.”
Dean Martin maintains that he holds his friendship with Frank because they always keep it light. “I don’t discuss his girl with Frank or who he’s going to marry. All I discuss are movies.”
Frank had first seen Dean Martin at the Copa back in 1948 when Martin was paired with Jerry Lewis, and Frank’s comment then had been, “The dago’s lousy, but the little Jew is great.” But after Martin and Lewis split, Frank gave Dean one of his first acting roles in Some Came Running in 1958, and the two men became fast friends. They had a lot in common: both were Italians from blue-collar towns, neither had a high school education, both were singers who couldn’t read a note of music, both enjoyed gangsters (federal wiretaps show that Dean was close to Sam Giancana and Paul “Skinny” D’Amato), both adored their mothers and took good care of their parents, both preferred spending nights drinking with the boys. They even shared similar phobias: Frank’s was a fear of heights and Dean’s a fear of elevators. As they became close, their parents became friends and their children grew up with an “Uncle Frank” and an “Uncle Dean.”
Frank was not simply the leader of the Rat Pack. He had also assumed the position of il padrone in Hollywood, where he was approached by Twentieth Century Fox executives to be master of ceremonies at the luncheon on September 19, 1959, honoring Soviet Premier Nikita Sergeivich Khrushchev and his wife, Nina. This unprecedented visit to America by the Soviet head of state brought out more than four hundred of Hollywood’s most glamorous stars, including Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher, Cary Grant, Bob Hope, Richard Burton, Rita Hayworth, Gregory Peck, June Allyson, and David Niven. Militant anti-Communists like Adolph Menjou and Ronald Reagan refused to participate, but the most important movie executives in the industry were on hand to pay their respects, to eat squab, drink California wine, and listen to Khrushchev and Spyros P. Skouros, president of Twentieth Century Fox, debate the respective merits of communism and capitalism. To the chagrin of everyone but the visiting Russians, Khrushchev appeared to win the argument, leading one man to observe, “A twentieth-century fox visits Twentieth Century Fox!”
Shortly after he arrived in California, Khrushchev was informed that he could not visit Disneyland because the Los Angeles Police Force could not ensure his safety. He was furious, and his famous temper that had driven him to bang on the table with his shoe at the United Nations now erupted at the luncheon. “What is it?” he asked his assembled guests. “Why am I not allowed to go? Do you have rocket-launching pads there? I do not know. Is there an epidemic of cholera there or something? Or have gangsters taken hold of the place that can destroy me? That is the situation I am in—your guest. For me the situation is inconceivable. I cannot find words to explain this to my people.”
Immediately, Frank turned to Mrs. Khrushchev and said that he would take her to Disneyland himself, giving her a personally guided tour. The sweet-faced, gray-haired woman broke into a big smile and sent a note to her husband sitting at another table, but a security officer returned to tell her that such a tour would be impossible. “I tried, honey,” said Frank, patting her hand.
After lunch, the Khrushchevs were shown a lively sequence from Can-Can, the movie being filmed at Twentieth that starred Frank with Shirley MacLaine, Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan, and Juliet Prowse. With the help of an interpreter, Frank explained the proceedings. Grinning, he said that the first number would be a song by Louis Jourdan and Maurice Chevalier. “It’s called ‘Live and Let Live,’ and I think it’s a marvelous idea,” he said. “The movie is about a bunch of pretty girls and the fellows who like pretty girls.”
Khrushchev smiled and applauded loudly after Frank’s remarks.
“Later in the picture, we go into a saloon. A saloon is a place where you go to drink,” said Frank with a straight face. At this, Khrushchev laughed loudly. For the next few minutes, the Twentieth Century Fox sound stage was like the Copa Room of The Sands in Las Vegas as Frank sang “C’est Magnifique.” After his song, he turned the show over to the dancing girls, saying they were all his nieces. Khrushchev smiled as Shirley MacLaine and Juliet Prowse pranced onto the stage with shrill cries, kicking their legs and whirling their skirts. But when they flounced their backsides to the audience in a traditional can-can number, the Soviet premier was frowning. He pronounced the dance and the dancers “immoral,” saying: “A person’s face is more beautiful than his backside.”
Frank was on his best behavior for the Soviet visit, and as Mrs. Khrushchev’s luncheon partner, he demonstrated great charm and gallantry, looking intently at the pictures she showed him of her grandchildren and telling her about his own children.
On the subject of his children, Frank dropped his ring-a-ding-ding act to become a soft and doting father who was far too indulgent at times. He gave his eldest child, Nancy, a mink coat for her sixteenth birthday and the first pink Thunderbird in the United States when she was seventeen, as if these presents would make up for his leaving the house when she was only ten years old. Nancy, who adored her father, never blamed him for the divorce. “My father may have left home, but he never left his family,” she said.
“Nancy was clearly the favorite. No doubt about it,” said Doug Prestine, a close friend and neighbor of the Sinatra children. “Tina was too young to be affected by the favoritism, but it sure was tough on Frankie. Big Frank spoiled Nancy to the neglect of Frankie, and it hurt him a lot. He never got the equivalent of anything that she got, none of the trips with Big Frank or any of the super gifts, and certainly none of the attention and affection. It was Nancy who got to be on Frank’s television show with Elvis Presley, not Frankie. Nancy had a huge bedroom in their Bel-Air house on Nims Road and Frankie had a real tiny one. Nancy had loads of clothes but Frankie barely had any. Big Frank gave Nancy her own television set, and poor Frankie didn’t even have a radio of his own. One day, the rivalry really got to him, and the two of us pulled one of the parts out of Nancy’s television set so that it wouldn’t work anymore. That sabotage was more than just prankishness on Frankie’s part. He was hurting from being so ignored by his dad and struck back at Nancy. There was always a distance between them because of his dad’s overindulgence towards her.
“I still remember when we were walking home from school one day and, completely out of context, Frankie turned to me and said, ‘You don’t know how lucky you are to have a real father.’ Even though we were only about thirteen years old at the time, I knew that that statement was significant; I just didn’t know what to say to him. Big Frank would come around when he was in town, or for a special occasion like Thanksgiving, but then he’d be gone for months at a time. He called a lot, but that wasn’t enough for the kids. At least, it wasn’t enough for Frankie.
“One night, the two of us were watching
television in the library of the Sinatra house when Big Frank crashed through the gate in his Eldorado Cadillac with the hand-brushed stainless steel top. He was real drunk and wearing a white dinner jacket that was torn and dirty, as if he’d been in a fight or rolling around the gutter someplace. He wasn’t the least belligerent. In fact, he was kind of friendly. He slurred his words and said, ‘What are you two doing?’ I was stunned to see him in that condition because I’d never seen a grown-up drunk before, but Frankie wasn’t surprised at all. He very matter-of-factly went outside, got his dad out of the car, and carried him into the house, where we tried to wash him up and poured some coffee down him. Then Big Frank passed out on the couch, and we went back to watching TV. Frankie acted like it happened all the time.”
Early on, young Frank saw how much his sister and his mother adored his father. Hungry for some of that same affection, he began fashioning himself in his father’s likeness, imitating his mannerisms, his singing, his speech.
“If I stand in front of the fireplace with my hands behind my back, he does the same thing,” Frank said of his ten-year-old boy. “He kills me. When I do a television show, he’ll quote everything I said the next time I see him.”
Frank’s way of demonstrating love was through lavish gifts, and his former wife and children always looked forward to opening “Daddy’s presents.”
“I was one of Nancy, Jr.’s closest friends and I remember the first Christmas that I spent with the Sinatras,” said Rona Barrett, the Hollywood commentator. “It was incredible. There was a stack of Frank’s presents higher than the tree for Nancy and Tina, and a brand-new car with a red satin ribbon on it for Nancy, Sr., but scarcely anything for Frankie. It was so pathetic. The girls got furs and diamond bracelets and cashmere sweaters and silk blouses and loads of one-hundred-dollar shoes. I’d say each one of their piles was worth at least fifteen thousand dollars, but poor Frankie didn’t get more than five hundred dollars’ worth of gifts. I really felt sorry for him.”
Much of Frank’s fathering fell to his valet, George Jacobs, and to his secretary, Gloria Lovell, who remembered all the children’s birthdays, shopped for all their presents, and called them on a regular basis.
“I feel like I raised those kids,” said George Jacobs. “For a while when Frank and Nancy weren’t speaking to each other I was the go-between. Young Frankie and I got to be real good pals. He’s a sad little guy, but sweet. A nice kid. I’d drive around with him, and when I’d bring him back home, Nancy, Sr., would be there, asking, ‘Well, what did Frankie say? What did he talk about? I don’t want you teaching my son no jive.’ I never did tell her what Frankie talked about, and I never told Frank either, because I didn’t want to break the kid’s confidence. With all those damn women around, he needed some man to talk to, and his dad just wasn’t around that much.”
“Poor Frankie. He’s had it tough being Frank’s son,” said Nelson Riddle, the father of six children, and someone Frank, Jr., had confided in over the years. “Frankie’s not an athlete like Dean Martin’s kid; he’s not a great student; he’s not a comedian or a back-slapper. He’s an introspective little guy. Broods a lot. Frank has never taken the time to know his son, and what he does know, he doesn’t like.
“[Frankie] never had a father who took responsibility for him. I don’t mean financial responsibility because Frank’s always been generous to his family with money, but a son needs more than that. He needs a man he can look up to. I’ve talked to Frankie a lot, and I know he doesn’t like his dad, but deep down he wants to be loved by him. He can’t get that love, though. He knows it. He doesn’t fawn like the girls do. He’s been left out ever since he was a little kid.”
Always self-conscious about his own lack of education, Frank wanted his children to finish high school and pleaded with them to go to college, hoping that at least one Sinatra might earn a degree. Trying to please him, Nancy, Jr., enrolled at the University of Southern California but lasted only a semester before dropping out; Frankie also attended USC, but after a year he, too, quit; and Tina never even applied. There was no motivation toward higher education at home and certainly no need to learn a profession. The children knew they would never have to rely on a job. Frank had established trust funds for all of them that would be worth millions.
Frank’s children were proud of him. They looked up to their father as the most important man in Hollywood. They saw movie stars approach him with reverence and fear, and even felt themselves treated with deference just because they were his children. To them, he seemed like the most influential man in the country. He knew important people all over the world—the Pope, the Queen of England, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Shah of Iran. He had recently become a close friend of John F. Kennedy, the most electrifying young politician in the United States, and he was close to the chieftains of the underworld—all of which convinced Little Nancy that her father possessed magic.
“Daddy is the most charismatic figure of the twentieth century,” she said.
20
Sam Giancana smoked Cuban cigars, drove a pink Cadillac, and talked out of the side of his mouth. He had fourteen aliases, but was known mostly as Sam Flood, Momo Salvatore Giancana, Moe or Mooney Giancana. He frequently introduced himself as Dr. Goldberg or Mr. Morris, but to Frank he was simply Sam.
A short, dour little man, he sat in the Armory Lounge in Forest Park, Illinois, and ordered killings as easily as he ordered his linguine. Some of the victims were simply shot, while others were hung on meat hooks and tortured with electric cattle prods, ice picks, baseball bats, and blowtorches. By 1960, Giancana had eliminated more than two hundred men.
This short, balding man with a sixth-grade education was known as Chicago’s Mafia boss. He was the successor to Al Capone, and as such he was a top member of La Cosa Nostra, the national crime syndicate. He controlled all the protection rackets, pinball machines, prostitution, numbers games, narcotics, loan sharks, extortionists, counterfeiters, and bookmakers in the Chicago area.
In Las Vegas, he owned points in the Riviera, the Desert Inn, and the Stardust, which brought him hundreds of thousands of dollars in skimmed money. He also had Mafia business interests in Miami Beach, St. Louis, Arizona, California, Mexico, and Central and South America. The estimated annual take from these enterprises was two billion dollars, of which forty to fifty million went directly to him. Outside of the Armory Lounge, he conducted business on the golf course or in a hearse, to avoid federal eavesdropping.
Sam had served time in prison and been arrested more than seventy times for assault with intent to kill, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, burglary, assault and battery, larceny, possession of burglar tools and concealed weapons, bombing, and gambling. He was arrested three times for murder.
A dapper little man, Giancana wore sharkskin suits, alligator shoes, silk shirts, a gold monogrammed leather belt buckle, and a star sapphire pinky ring that was a gift from Frank Sinatra. When he knew he was under FBI surveillance, he added a black fedora and a pair of black wraparound sunglasses.
“Frank never called him or any of his killers Mafia—they were always ‘the Boys’ or ‘the Outfit,’ ” said Peter Lawford. “But they were Mafia all right.… Because of Giancana, he kowtowed to the Chicago mob. Why do you think Frank ended every one of his nightclub acts by singing ‘My Kind of Town Chicago Is’? That was his tribute to Sam, who was really an awful guy with a gargoyle face and weasel nose. I couldn’t stand him, but Frank idolized him because he was the Mafia’s top gun. Frank loved to talk about ‘hits’ and guys getting ‘rubbed out.’ And you better believe that when the word got out around town [Hollywood] that Frank was a pal of Sam Giancana, nobody but nobody ever messed with Frank Sinatra. They were too scared. Concrete boots were no joke with this guy. He was a killer.
“Giancana was always summoning Frank and Dean to perform for him, and they always went. They both flew to Chicago on four different occasions that I know of, and sang free of charge. One time, Giancana made Frank a
nd Dean and Sammy sing for engagements at the Villa Venice, and they did that gig free of charge, too. Frank once went to Chicago by himself to do a command performance for Sam at Giannotti’s Restaurant and Cocktail Lounge in 1962. I spent a lot of time with Frank when Giancana was around. They were very close friends. I was with Frank and Giancana in Miami at the Fontainebleau, where Sam kept a permanent suite and Frank performed every winter. Down there, Sinatra liked to get together with Joe Fischetti, or Joe Fish as he called himself in those days. Frank and Fischetti and Giancana would run around throwing cherry bombs at everyone. Sam threw one under my chair once, and I wanted to go for his neck, but, of course, I could hardly do that, could I?”