by Kitty Kelley
“If you try to fix that or put it back, I will come and blow the fucking wall off,” he said.
Van Heusen did not say a word; the women exchanged frightened glances. Finally, one of the two women picked up at the country club said solicitously, “I love your records, Frank.”
Looking at her contemptuously, Sinatra said, “Why don’t you go slash your wrists.”
After Frank had left the house, Van Heusen’s date asked, “How could you stand there and let him do that?”
“Tomorrow he’ll be so sorry that he’ll send me some print worth five thousand dollars or something.”
“What difference does that make?” she asked. “That can’t replace a Norman Rockwell.”
She was unable to comprehend why this very strong man acquiesced to Sinatra, whom he addressed as “your eminence” to his face and referred to behind his back as “the monster.”
“Why do you put up with his craziness?” she asked. “Pick up hookers for him? Go over there all the time and stay up with him until all hours of the morning and sit back and watch him treat people like dirt?”
“Because he sings my songs, that’s why. I’m a whore for my music.”
Jimmy Van Heusen had learned long before to tolerate the strange twists in Frank’s psyche that drove him to savage behavior. Other close friends made the same allowances.
“Yes, there is a cruel streak in Frank, no question about it,” said Anthony Quinn, “but I still love the guy. He’s what all men are and not one man in a million ever is. Thomas Wolfe said that. I guess what I love is the Frank that sings. That’s when he’s really himself. I love what he says in his songs. I don’t love everything that Frank does or the way he treats people at times, but anyone who sings like he does cannot be a really bad man.”
Frank frequently tried to make amends for his bizarre behavior with an act of generosity. A few days after he ruined the Norman Rockwell painting, he sent his friend an expensive Japanese print as Van Heusen had predicted, and it was accepted without any recrimination.
Still, the violence within Frank kept people at bay, leaving some of the women in his life to receive the roughest treatment, possibly because they came to know him so intimately. During the time Natalie Wood dated Frank, he insulted her so terribly at a party in his home that she went screaming from the table in tears. Even so, he threw her a surprise party on her twenty-first birthday, and on her twenty-second he sent her twenty-two bouquets, and had them delivered one by one hourly. He also ordered twenty-two musicians to serenade her.
“He was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and sometimes you didn’t know which one you were going to get,” said Judith Campbell. “Frank’s Dr. Jekyll was a charmer, but his Mr. Hyde was frightening, truly frightening.”
“It was really something to see,” said the woman who lived with Jimmy Van Heusen. “Frank would bring someone to the desert for the weekend, and, of course, we’d have to be there, so I saw a lot of what I call Frank’s ‘before-and-after’ treatment. Before bed, he would be so charming. The girl was ‘mademoiselle this,’ ‘darling that,’ and ‘my sweet baby.’ He was [a] cavalier, a perfect gentleman. You never saw anything like this man in your life. He’d jump across the room to light a cigarette. He’d fill her glass with champagne every time she took a sip. With a hand on her neck he’d say, ‘You’re beautiful tonight,’ or he’d whisper loudly enough for all of us to hear, ‘No one prettier has ever been in my house. You look radiant, gorgeous.’ Then the next day we’d go over for his interminable pool party, where everyone drank for hours, followed by his spaghetti dinner, which was followed by more drinking. It was the next day that we’d always find the other Frank, the one who wouldn’t speak to the girl, who had been the most beautiful woman in the world the night before. Sometimes he wouldn’t even go near her, nor would he tolerate any affectionate overtures from her. Humped and dumped. The minute the conquest was achieved, kaput. The girl could pack her bags. I saw so many of them leave his house in tears.”
Paul Chandler, who worked as a houseman for Frank for many years, said one of his jobs was to drive the women home the next morning. “Frank was just like a child. He wanted every new toy there was, and then after he played with it, he’d just toss the toy away. Those girls were no more than toys to him. Some mornings, I’d get to the house and find four or five of them in the bed at the same time, and all colors of girls, too, let me tell you,” he said.
It was this “swinging” image of Frank that so fascinated President Kennedy, who delighted in hearing reports of what Frank was doing, and especially with whom. During her visits to the White House, Judith Campbell was quizzed by JFK endlessly. “Almost immediately, Jack started pumping me for gossip, most of it directed at Frank,” she said. “ ‘What was Frank doing? Was it true that he was seeing Janet Leigh?’ We always went through the same old routine.”
“It’s true that Jack loved hearing about Frank’s Hollywood broads,” said Peter Lawford. He added that the President enjoyed movie and show business gossip so much that he subscribed to Variety to keep up with what was going on.
“During one of our private dinners, he brought up Sinatra and said, ‘I really should do something for Frank.’ Jack was always so grateful to him for all the work he’d done in the campaign raising money. He said, ‘Maybe I’ll ask him to the White House for dinner or lunch.’ I said that Frank would love that, but then Jack said, ‘There’s only one problem. Jackie hates him and won’t have him in the house. So I really don’t know what to do.’ Here was the President of the United States in a quandary just like the rest of us who are afraid to upset our spouses. We joked for a few minutes about stuffing Frank into a body bag and dragging him around to the side door so the gardeners could bring him in like a bag of refuse and Jackie wouldn’t see him. We also talked about sneaking him in in one of John-John’s big diaper bundles. The President brightened up a few minutes later and said, ‘I’ll wait until Jackie goes to Middleburg, and I’ll have Eunice be the hostess.’ So that’s what he did. When Jackie left, Evelyn Lincoln called Frank and invited him to the White House. He flew to Washington for the day and a car drove him up to the southwest gate. Even without Jackie there, the President still wouldn’t let him come in the front door. I don’t think he wanted reporters to see Frank Sinatra going into the White House. That’s why he never flew on Air Force One and was never invited to any of the Kennedy state dinners or taken to Camp David for any of the parties there. He got to Hyannis once, but that was only because Pat and I invited him.”
Still, Frank stayed in close contact because President Kennedy frequently called him in Los Angeles. Frank’s secretary, Gloria Lovell, would interrupt business meetings to tell him that he had a White House call and Frank would pick up the phone, saying, “Hi ya, Prez.” If he took the call privately, he always told the men what the President said when he returned to the meeting.
“After each one of those calls, Frank pranced around so proud of the fact that the President was ringing him up,” recalled one associate.
Since the gala, Frank had seen the President in person only once and that was briefly when he visited the White House with Judy Garland and Danny Kaye. The minute they were ushered into the Oval Office, Kaye started jumping up and down, climbing behind the desk, peeking around the flag and playing the clown. The President quickly signaled his military aide to shut the door and make sure that no photographers were let in, including Cecil Stoughton, who was acting as the official White House photographer. Kennedy did not want “unpresidential” photographs published of entertainers cavorting in the Oval Office. When the meeting was over and the three stars were escorted out, Frank tried to hang back to have a one-on-one talk with Kennedy, but to no avail.
Frank got the chance in September 1961, when the President invited him to Washington to thank him for all his work on the gala. Before going to the Oval Office, Frank stopped by the press office to see press secretary Pierre Salinger, who had become a good friend. He was noticed by r
eporters, which fueled speculation about his close friendship with the President.
At a press conference, Salinger was asked about the relationship:
Q: Pierre, one other thing, was Frankie Sinatra a guest at Hyannisport last week?
A: No.
Q: Or any other weekend?
A: No.
Q: In Show Business Illustrated [it was said] that the President on Inauguration Day went to see Sinatra to thank him for his participation in the gala.
A: No, that’s not true.
Q: Has Sinatra ever been a guest of the President and his wife anywhere?
A: No.
Technically, Salinger was correct. Frank didn’t go to Hyannisport until the day after the news conference, on September 23, 1961.
The day of his White House visit, Frank was given a grand tour of the family quarters and taken out to the Truman Balcony for drinks.
“I still remember how he showed the White House maître d’ how to make Bloody Marys with his own fantastic special recipe,” said Dave Powers, a presidential aide. “He sat on the balcony sipping his drink and looking out at the sun streaming in and the wonderful view of Washington we got from there. He turned to me and said, ‘Dave, all the work I did for Jack. Sitting here like this makes it all worthwhile.’ Then I went out and got some of the big mounted color photographs of the President and we had one signed for him. (“For Frank—With the warm regards and best wishes of his friend. John F. Kennedy.”] He also signed one for his daughters and for his son. It was a new photograph of the President, and Jack wanted him to have it. He liked Frank a lot.”
The next day, September 24, 1961, Frank flew to Hyannisport with Pat Lawford, Ted Kennedy, and Porfirio Rubirosa and his wife, Odile, on the Kennedys’ plane. When fog closed the Hyannis airport, the group flew to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where they decided to take a taxi the rest of the way. Frank strolled off the Caroline holding a glass of champagne and followed by his twelve pieces of luggage, a case of wine, a dozen bottles of carefully wrapped champagne, and two loaves of Italian bread for Ambassador Kennedy. He whistled for two cabs to drive the group and the parcels, including three cartons of ice cream in dry ice, to the Kennedy compound, fifty-three miles away.
When they arrived at the Kennedy compound, the presidential flag was flying to indicate that John F. Kennedy was in residence. Driving past the White House communications trailer, the group was dropped off at the ambassador’s house, where Peter Lawford was waiting and the dinner table was set for twenty-six. The next day, everyone went cruising with the President on the Honey Fitz and listened to Frank talk about his trip to Italy and his audience with Pope John XXIII. Peter Lawford laughed out loud. “All your friends in Chicago are Italian too,” he said.
On the subject of Frank’s Mafia connections, Lawford later grew serious and formally approached his brother-in-law by making an appointment to see the attorney general in his office at the Justice Department. There Lawford begged Bobby to listen to Sinatra’s pleas for Giancana. Robert Kennedy intended to make Frank’s mobster friend the Justice Department’s top priority in Chicago and curtly told Lawford to mind his own business.
That three-and-a-half-hour cruise off Cape Cod later brought President Kennedy stinging criticism from people who objected to his socializing with Frank Sinatra and being seen with the much-divorced Porfirio Rubirosa, former Dominican ambassador and onetime son-in-law of Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic. Plucky Pierre, as Kennedy called his rotund press secretary, tried to quash the criticism by telling reporters that the Rubirosas were guests of Ted Kennedy and that Frank was a guest of the Lawfords. He emphasized that Frank had not been the guest of President and Mrs. Kennedy anywhere: “Mr. Sinatra went up there to confer with Ambassador Kennedy about a souvenir recording of the inauguration gala. The record will be a money-raiser for the Democratic Party.”
During that visit, the President mentioned the $100-a-plate fund-raiser he had to attend in November at the Hollywood Palladium and expressed hope that Frank could attend; Frank said he wouldn’t miss it.
He then told the President about his interest in making The Manchurian Candidate, a psychological thriller based on a novel by Richard Condon about two American soldiers who are captured by the Communists during the Korean War and brainwashed. One of the soldiers (Laurence Harvey) is programmed to assassinate a presidential candidate so that the Communist-backed candidate will become president. The other soldier, to be played by Frank, is deprogrammed by a psychiatrist and then works with the FBI to investigate Harvey. Frank had been approached with the property by George Axelrod and John Frankenheimer and wanted to make the film. It would be distributed by United Artists as part of the fifteen-million-dollar contract Frank had with the company. The problem was that Arthur Krim, president of United Artists, refused to distribute the movie. He was national finance chairman of the Democratic Party at the time and, as such, very protective of the Kennedys. He felt that the film was too politically explosive. Frank disagreed and took the matter directly to President Kennedy, who said that he had no objection whatsoever to seeing the film made. In fact, he enjoyed Condon’s novel and thought it would make a great movie. So Frank asked him to call Krim, and he agreed to do so.
“That’s the only way that film ever got made,” said Richard Condon. “It took Frank going directly to Jack Kennedy.”
On matters involving his Mafia friends, Frank was not so successful. Shortly after his September visit to the White House and his stay in Hyannisport, Sam Giancana was talking to his West Coast operative, Johnny Roselli, who had been Frank’s house guest in Palm Springs. On federal wire taps of December 6, 1961, the two gangsters talked about Frank’s promise to intercede with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, whose Justice Department had stepped up its investigation of Giancana.
ROSELLI: … He [Frank Sinatra] was real nice to me.… He says: “Johnny, I took Sam’s name, and wrote it down, and told Bobby Kennedy, ‘This is my buddy, this is what I want you to know, Bob.’ ” Between you and I, Frank saw Joe Kennedy three different times—Joe Kennedy, the father. He called him three times. … He [Frank] says he’s got an idea that you’re mad at him. I says: “That, I wouldn’t know.”
GIANCANA: He must have a guilty conscience. I never said nothing.… Well, I don’t know who the fuck he’s [Frank’s] talking to, but if I’m gonna talk to … after all, if I’m taking somebody’s money, I’m gonna make sure that this money is gonna do something, like, do you want it or don’t you want it. If the money is accepted, maybe one of these days the guy will do me a favor.
ROSELLI: That’s right. He [Frank] says he wrote your name down. …
GIANCANA: Well, one minute he [Frank] tells me this and then he tells me that and then the last time I talked to him was at the hotel in Florida a month before he left, and he said, “Don’t worry about it. If I can’t talk to the old man [Joseph Kennedy], I’m gonna talk to the man [President Kennedy].” One minute he says he’s talked to Robert, and the next minute he says he hasn’t talked to him. So, he never did talk to him. It’s a lot of shit.… Why lie to me? I haven’t got that coming.
ROSELO: I can imagine.… Tsk, tsk, tsk … if he can’t deliver, I want him to tell me: “John, the load’s too heavy.”
GIANCANA: That’s all right. At least then you know how to work. You won’t let your guard down then, know what I mean.… Ask him [Frank] if I’m going to be invited to his New Year’s party.
ROSELLI: I told him that’s where I usually go for New Year’s with Sam. But he says, “I have to be in Rome the twenty-seventh.”
GIANCANA: Too fucking bad. Tell him the Kennedys will keep him company.
ROSELLI: Why don’t you talk to him [Frank]?
GIANCANA: When he says he’s gonna do a guy a little favor, I don’t give a shit how long it takes. He’s got to give you a little favor.
Frank had been steadily losing clout with the Boys over his dwindling influence with the Kennedys. FBI records indica
te that when in 1961 Carlos Marcello, the capo di tutti capi (boss of all bosses) of Louisiana, who headed one of the oldest and most deeply entrenched Mafia families in the United States, had become one of Bobby Kennedy’s targets for deportation, the New Orleans don contacted Santo Trafficante, head of the Florida Mafia family, who in turn called Frank to use his influence with “the President’s father” on Marcello’s behalf. But Trafficante’s efforts failed and may have only intensified federal efforts against Marcello, who was eventually deported to Guatemala.
Mafia leaders by this time realized they had vastly overrated Frank’s influence with the Kennedys. They could no longer count on him to run interference for them. Despite the syndicate’s “donation” to the Kennedy campaign, on telephones tapped by federal agents, Johnny Roselli discussed the problem with Sam Giancana, remarking that Frank was powerless to help them at all. Roselli suggested that Sam not rely on Sinatra anymore and try something else to get rid of the FBI agents who were shadowing him constantly.
ROSELLI: He’s got big ideas, Frank does, about being ambassador, or something. You know Pierre Salinger and them guys. They don’t want him. They treat him like they treat a whore. You fuck them, you pay them, and they’re through. You got the right idea, Moe [one of Giancana’s nicknames], go the other way. Fuck everybody. We’ll use them every fucking way we can. They [the Kennedys] only know one way. Now let them see the other side of you.
Giancana’s increasing disllusionment with Frank was obvious on December 4, 1961, when he spoke to Ghuckie English, one of his lieutenants, about money that Sinatra’s record company, Reprise, owed someone.