by Kitty Kelley
Rogers and Cowan cringed when Frank insisted on responding with full-page ads in the Hollywood trade papers: “Dear Ed: You’re sick. Frankie. P.S. Sick, sick, sick!” And they were no happier when he walked into the Stork Club one night and saw columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, who was wearing sunglasses. Getting up from his table, Frank walked past her and dropped a dollar bill into her coffee cup, saying, “I always figured she was blind.”
Rogers and Cowan tried to stop Frank from sending angry telegrams, but he persisted. When Time magazine reported that he was about to buy a Palm Beach estate and nightclub to get even with a nightclub owner who had refused to offer him five thousand dollars for one appearance, Frank wired Time: I AM GLAD TO SEE THAT YOU ARE STILL BATTING A THOUSAND REGARDING ANY INFORMATION CONCERNING ME. AS USUAL YOUR INFORMATION STINKS. I NEED A HOUSE AND A NIGHTCLUB IN PALM BEACH LIKE YOU NEED A TUMOR!
When Frank refused to be fingerprinted by the New York police for a cabaret license, his publicists backed him all the way, saying it was the principle of the thing. Rogers and Cowan, not knowing of Frank’s old New Jersey arrests, told the press that he did not have a police record.
Henry Rogers became so frustrated with Sinatra’s behavior that when Frank asked him why he did not have a good public image, he impulsively said that Frank was his own worst enemy.
Silence followed Rogers’s rebuke, but Frank did not flinch. He asked Rudin’s opinion, and Cowan’s, and listened to both men discuss his poor public persona and what could be done to rehabilitate it. They decided that Frank should undertake a “people-to-people” type of personal appearance tour and do benefits around the world that would raise money for handicapped children.
Having decided on a European tour, Frank then fired Rogers and Cowan and hired another publicist, Chuck Moses, a serious, conscientious public relations man.
“Frank wanted to be not just an entertainer and an important factor in show business,” said Moses, “but he also wanted to play a role in the community other than that which is always imagined of him. He was very serious about this.… He wanted to do good. He wanted to change his image.”
It was no longer enough for Frank to be the most famous Italian-American singer in the world or an international movie star; he had to be esteemed and venerated. In Sicily, such men are revered as uomini rispettati—men of respect; men who are honored by village folk, whose hands are kissed, whose advice is heeded, whose greeting is cherished.
“Frank is totally committed to public respectability,” said Richard Condon, “but on his terms, and being a friend of the President… was in his eyes the ultimate respectability.”
“The breach with JFK was brutal for him,” said Chuck Moses, who had the task of reshaping Frank’s public persona, and who began by trying to get rid of the Rat Pack image. “It gives the public a wrong impression,” he said. “People think Frank and Dean and Sammy and a few others are inseparable. Sure, they’re good friends, but Frank has many other friends, interests, and activities.”
The first step in remaking the Sinatra image was the European concert tour arranged by Mickey Rudin in 1962 to benefit underprivileged children and to introduce his client as a philanthropist with a social conscience.
“I was married to Mickey at the time, and together the two of us had to go out and get Frank concerts,” said Elizabeth Greenschpoon. “We went all over the world—to Rome and Tokyo and London, and I watched Mickey create an atmosphere of demand for Frank, that he was desirable. Never mind the henchmen and goons. Mickey made them book Frank. Because of my husband’s strong ties to Israel, he also managed to get a youth house named for Frank because supposedly this was a tour to benefit children and youth. I say ‘supposedly’ because the real purpose was to benefit Frank. He needed a good press at the time, and Mickey saw to it that he got one.”
In Tokyo, they gave Frank the key to the city and named an orphanage for him.
In Hong Kong, hundreds of children lined the streets waving garlands of flowers in his honor.
In Nazareth, they presented him with a silver-embossed Bible in a ground-breaking ceremony for the Frank Sinatra International Friendship Youth House. But this antagonized the Arab League, which promptly banned his movies and records.
In London, Princess Margaret shook his hand and Lord Snowden bowed in admiration.
In Paris, General de Gaulle made him an officer of the “Order of Public Health.”
Throughout the ten-week tour, the press coverage was outstanding because Moses had hired a still photographer, a three-man television team, and two publicity people to accompany Frank. Photographs of him holding blind children in Greece and talking with crippled children in Italy appeared around the world, inspiring newspapers to commend “the new Frank Sinatra.” In Japan, they hailed him as “a nice, gentle guest,” in Israel as “a tough dandy.”
His return to the United States was heralded as “Do-Gooder Frank Flies Back Home.” He was honored by the Variety Club of Southern California for “services in behalf of children everywhere” and was presented with a silver plate by the Columbian Foundation. He told reporters that as an overprivileged adult he wanted to help underprivileged children.
“I think we raised something like a million dollars for children’s institutions. I wish it was five million,” he said, noting that his most moving experience had occurred while visiting with a six-year-old blind child. “It was windy, and I brushed the hair out of her eyes and told her that the wind had been blowing up her hair. She stopped me cold when she said, ‘What color is the wind?’ ”
Chuck Moses designed new press kits with a biography of Frank that began: “Frank Sinatra’s life has moved into a new phase. …” Moses also arranged as many interviews as he could, believing that Frank would gain more by talking to reporters than by beating on them.
“Frank cared very much about the press and what they wrote about him,” said Moses. “He insisted that I take a nice big suite in every hotel we checked into so that I could have reporters up. I had to be very careful when I announced his engagement to Juliet Prowse because Frank was concerned about Nancy, Sr. He knew that she [still] expected him to come back to her, and he really didn’t want to hurt her. Six weeks later, I had to announce that the engagement was broken because of ‘a conflict of career interest.’ Juliet just refused to give up her dancing and be the kind of stay-at-home wife that Frank wanted, but I couldn’t go into that kind of detail with reporters. Because of the personal nature of those two announcements, they were probably the toughest I had to make.”
Frank’s image campaign suffered a slight setback a few months later when he fought with a photographer in a San Francisco nightclub because he had not asked for permission to take Sinatra’s picture. The photographer’s camera was smashed and the film ruined.
“It is true that Frank was unhappy with the way the picture was taken,” said Moses. “He likes photographers to ask his permission to take pictures and to address him as “Mr. Sinatra.’”
Joe Hyams of the Herald-Tribune approached Moses about doing a Playboy interview with Sinatra, which Moses instantly recognized as an ideal showcase for “the new Frank” to talk about his good works and philanthropy. But Frank refused to sit still for the in-depth tape-recorded interview that Playboy required for its question-and-answer format. Billy Woodfield, the photographer, who was working with Frank at the time, urged him to reconsider and take advantage of the forum, pointing out that the magazine reached millions of people each month, but Frank still declined. Woodfield persisted until Frank finally said, “Well, why don’t you put something together for me—something controversial—shake ’em up a little, and I’ll take a look at it.”
When Woodfield tried and was unable to develop anything, he called Mike Shore, who was in charge of advertising for Reprise Records. Frank admired Shore and frequently referred to him as a genius. Fascinated by the idea of creating such an interview, Shore sat down at a typewriter and wrote out the questions he imagined that Playboy wo
uld ask and then answered them as he thought Sinatra might, given a worldly and compassionate philosophy. Shore centered the interview on the fundamentals that move and shape men’s lives—God, religion, and the progress of civilization toward disarmament and against nuclear war. He showed Frank as a man with a great understanding of the human condition, making him sound as literate as Adlai Stevenson and as humane as Albert Schweitzer. Shore pitted him firmly against bigotry and nuclear testing, in favor of admitting mainland China into the United Nations, and resentful of organized religion. Throwing in a few Las Vegas idioms to make it sound like Frank, Mike Shore “asked him” if he believed in God, and answered eloquently for him.
“I believe in you and me. I’m like Albert Schweitzer and Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein in that I have a respect for life—in any form. I believe in nature, in the birds, the sea, the sky, in everything I can see or that there is real evidence for. If these things are what you mean by God, then I believe in God, but I don’t believe in a personal God to whom I look for comfort or for a natural on the next roll of the dice. I’m not unmindful of man’s seeming need for faith; I’m for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers, or a bottle of Jack Daniels. But to me religion is a deeply personal thing in which man and God go it alone together, without the witch doctor in the middle.”
A few days later, Woodfield presented the synthetic interview to Frank, who was immensely impressed with what Mike Shore had written and was eager to have it appear as his own in the magazine.
Mickey Rudin objected, arguing that the content was much too controversial, especially the atheism.
“Rudin said, ‘Frank, you can’t say this. You can’t sign this piece,’ ” Woodfield recalled. “We all sat there and Frank looked at me, and Frank, Jr., was in the. room, and Hyams was sitting there. … I looked at Frank, Jr., and I looked at Frank and said, ‘Frank, it’s your decision. If you believe what this interview says, that these things are your beliefs, and you are afraid to say them in America, what are you saying to your son about America?’ Frank looked at me and said, ‘You’re absolutely right.’ He picked up a pen and signed [the release form].”
Mike Shore also signed a release, giving the copyright to Frank, and the interview appeared in the February 1963 issue of Playboy billed as “a candid conversation with the acknowledged king of showbiz.” The magazine received many letters commending Frank’s pacifist views about total global disarmament. Yet close friends knew him to carry a gun and be militant about a strong national defense. So much so that during the Cuban missile crisis he had put his pilot, Don Lieto, on twenty-four-hour emergency notice and equipped his private plane with enough water and canned food to survive for a month in case the crisis evolved into war and they had to fly to a safer place.
Among the impressed Playboy readers who read the intelligent discourse under Frank’s name was Kris Kristofferson, who was on the Gulf of Mexico agonizing over the end of a song he was writing.
“I was struggling with the last line,” he said, “but when I read Frank’s interview, I flashed on that part where he talks about being for anything that helps you get through the night. That’s where I got the last line and finished my song—‘Help Me Make It Through the Night.’ ”
While Frank worked at improving his public image, he continued to try to improve his relationship with Jack Kennedy. For JFK’s birthday in May 1962 he had sent him a huge rocking chair made out of flowers. A White House aide described the gift as “so gaudy and outlandish that we sent it out the same day and the President didn’t even look at the thing.” Still, Kennedy acknowledged the gift in a letter to Sinatra: “I was delighted with this lovely remembrance and thought you might like to know that the youngsters over at Childrens’ Hospital also had the opportunity of sharing, with me, your more than generous gift.”
A few months later, Frank wired the White House that he had arranged with United Artists to provide President Kennedy with a print of The Manchurian Candidate.
Although now removed from the Kennedys’ sphere, Frank remained politically committed to the Democratic Party and had campaigned hard in 1962 for Edmund “Pat” Brown, who won the governorship of California when he beat Richard Nixon.
“Frank traveled all over the state campaigning for me and raising money. Then he staged an inaugural gala in Sacramento like the one he did for Jack Kennedy in Washington,” said Pat Brown.
Of primary importance to Frank at the beginning of 1963 was the fiftieth wedding anniversary party he was planning for his parents in February. To celebrate their golden anniversary, he had already purchased a sixty-thousand-dollar home for them in an exclusive residential section of Fort Lee. His mother had promptly filled it with brand new furniture, another gift from Frank. The principal adornment in her living room was an artificial Japanese cherry tree surrounded by plaster statues of the saints, small founts of holy water, photographs of Pope John XXIII, Ava Gardner, Pope Paul, and Dean Martin, plus an autographed chair from Sammy Davis, Jr. That house on Abbott Boulevard, which was firmly situated in Bergen County, the most prosperous part of New Jersey, was the culmination of all Dolly Sinatra’s dreams of upward mobility. Thanks to her son, she was now wearing the fur stoles, mink coats, and pearl brooches that other, respectable women of Bergen County wore. Her reputation as “Hat Pin Dolly” was far behind her.
In honor of their fiftieth anniversary, Frank bought Dolly a $25,000 diamond bracelet from Tiffany, which was delivered to her home in an armored truck. He also obtained a Papal Blessing, which he sent to his parents in a letter, saying, “The sands of time have turned to gold, yet love continues to unfold like the petals of a rose, in God’s garden of life.… May God love you, through all eternity. I thank Him, I thank you for the being of one. Your loving son, Francis.”
For the evening of February ninth, he reserved the large dining room of the Casino in the Park in Jersey City, New Jersey, for a champagne dinner for three hundred people. It was to follow a special high mass at St. Augustine’s Roman Catholic Church, where Dolly and Marty were to renew their marriage vows.
Frank had sworn his mother to secrecy on the party and threatened to leave if there was press coverage or any photographers allowed inside. He had left the invitation list up to her, so Dolly invited most of Hoboken. The notable exception was her sister, Josephine Monaco, Frank’s favorite aunt, to whom Dolly had not spoken since 1957, when Look magazine quoted her as saying that Dolly turned over the rearing of young Frankie to her mother, Rosa Garavante. In that article, Josie also punctured the cherished myth of Frank’s nearly dying the day he was born and being saved by his grandmother, who held him under the cold water faucet until he came to life.
“I never could understand that story about Frank’s grandmother saving his life,” Josie said. “She wasn’t even there during the delivery.”
Also missing from the invitation list was Frank’s Irish godfather, Frank Garrick. Even after thirty years Dolly and Frank still nursed a grudge against the former newspaperman for firing Frank.
“My son is like me,” Dolly was fond of saying. “You cross him, he never forgets.”
Frank dreaded returning home and facing relatives and the friends of his youth. His relatives said that he was so nervous about going back to Hudson County that his stomach started turning flips and he had to take a tranquilizer.
“He’s a coward when it comes to Hoboken,” said his cousin. “He just can’t cope with it. When he sees somebody from his childhood, it seems to bring back everything and he tries to ignore it.”
The night of the party the jovial Dolly, wrapped in mink, arrived leading her husband, Marty, by the hand. They were quickly surrounded by news photographers and television cameramen.
“Get all your pictures now, boys,” yelled Mrs. Sinatra, posing cheerfully, smiling and waving to the press. “There won’t be any later because Frankie will be here and you know how he feels about you fellas. So snap away now.”
While his
parents were being escorted through the front entrance of the restaurant, Frank arrived at the side door with Paul “Skinny” D’Amato and Henri Gine, a former adagio dancer who had worked with Sinatra for years, attending to his parents, running all kinds of errands. They were escorted by mounted policemen and sixty security guards. Two men from the sheriffs office dressed in tuxedos were to accompany him all night so that no one could approach him.
Staring straight ahead, Frank strode into the room and did not stop to greet anyone. He joined his daughter, Nancy, and her husband, Tommy Sands, at the head table, where he greeted his parents and then sat down next to a few priests and his quiet aunt, Mary. He fidgeted and squirmed as the master of ceremonies read a personal message of congratulations from President and Mrs. Kennedy. He did not sing or make a speech of any kind. Nor would he talk to any of the old Hoboken friends he hadn’t seen for twenty years. He watched his parents dance to “The Anniversary Waltz” and smiled as Nancy danced with her grandfather, but he declined to lead his mother around the floor or to dance with his daughter. Two or three persons snapped pictures of him at the family table, which irritated him no end. “Mom, what did I tell you about pictures?” he said. Dolly shrugged. “What can I do, son? They’re guests.”
There was no way in the world that Dolly was going to allow this event to go unrecorded. Despite Frank’s orders to the contrary, she was determined to get pictures taken that evening. So she bought film and flashbulbs for three of her friends, paid them each five dollars, and instructed them to photograph the family table throughout the evening. To see to it that Frankie wouldn’t object too strenuously, she made sure that one of the friends was a Catholic Sister in a black habit draped with rosary beads.