His Way

by Kitty Kelley

  Frank did not have the same inside sources that he’d had in 1960, when Sam Giancana and Skinny D’Amato made such vital contributions to the election of John F. Kennedy. This time, too many disillusioned Democrats stayed away from the polls to protest the war in Vietnam. In one of the closest elections in American history, Humphrey lost the White House by fewer than 300,000 votes to Richard Nixon.

  As a consolation prize, Frank sent Humphrey an expensive set of golf clubs, plus a set of Mark Cross luggage, and encouraged him to take advantage of his new-found leisure.

  28

  The poor health of Frank’s father had worsened. On Sunday, January 19, 1969, Frank flew his parents to Houston’s Methodist Hospital so that Dr. Michael Ellis DeBakey could examine Marty for an enlarged aorta. DeBakey, a pioneer in artificial heart pump research, was celebrated as one of the finest heart surgeons in the world. Frank had been recommending him to friends for years—and paying their expenses at the Fondren-Brown Cardiovascular Center, where DeBakey operated. Now he was bringing his seventy-four-year-old critically ill father.

  Frank and his mother spent most of the day and night by Marty’s bedside as DeBakey’s team of doctors ran tests to determine whether surgery was necessary. Two days later, Marty seemed to be resting comfortably. Assured by the hospital that he was “progressing nicely,” Frank left Houston for New York while Dolly stayed with her husband. The next day, January 24, Marty’s heart gave out and the former fire captain from Hoboken died of cardiac arrest at seven fifty-five P.M. Frank flew to Texas to take his father back to New Jersey for the last time.

  Frank buried him with a requiem mass at Fort Lee’s Madonna Church, which was jammed with five hundred people, most of whom hadn’t even known the quiet little man but who had come only to see Frank Sinatra and his show business friends. The funeral procession included twenty-five limousines, ten carrying the two hundred fifty floral arrangements sent from Hollywood and Las Vegas.

  “Dolly called me right after Marty died and said I had to be with her for the funeral,” said Sister Mary Consilia. “She insisted I walk down the aisle with her in my nun’s habit and stand in the line of mourners. The first pew in the church was Little Frank, Big Frank, Dolly, and me. She knew that they [the two Franks] wouldn’t be taking Holy Communion, so I took her to the rail and lifted up the black veil she was wearing so she could receive. Behind us were Big Nancy and Little Nancy, who had recently become engaged to Jack Haley, Jr., who had given her a big beautiful diamond ring made in the shape of a butterfly. He was there at the funeral, too, and so was Tina. …”

  After the solemn high mass celebrated by three priests, the cortege proceeded to the Holy Name Cemetery in Jersey City, followed by a horde of curiosity-seekers who yelled and waved and stamped their feet trying to get Frank’s attention. The two Franks guided Dolly to the gravesite, where she said good-bye to her husband of fifty-five years. Wailing with grief, she seemed on the verge of collapse; Frank summoned a police escort to take them back to Fort Lee.

  “[Dolly] wanted me to do some errands for her,” Sister Consilia said, “but I didn’t have the convent car, so Frank said he’d give me one and, sure enough, two nights later I got a nice green paneled Pontiac station wagon. It came with a plaque that said Sinatra Enterprises and a tape deck with all of Frank’s tapes. I drove Dolly all over in that car. I went with her to the Fontainebleau—Frank made all the arrangements and saw to it that we had our own suite—and then when he got on her a little bit for being so heavy, she went to Duke University to go on the rice diet. I went with her then, too, because she didn’t want to be alone. We had a lot of fun together, me and Dolly. She considered me her property. She had me do things for her all the time.”

  As the paterfamilias, Frank reached out to take care of those who took care of his mother.

  “I got into all of his concerts free,” said Sister Consilia. “His secretary would hold tickets for me, and I’d just walk backstage to say hello to Frank before the show. You know that no one gets backstage to see Frank. He has his bodyguards standing there, and you can’t pass through them unless you have permission, but I always got through because I’d go to Jilly, and he’d let me back to see Frank. Of course, it wasn’t the same after Dolly died, but while she was alive I saw all his concerts.”

  “Frank was good to his folks, real good,” said Al Algiro. “He bought them their place in Fort Lee and was always sending Dolly diamonds and furs and stuff like that. Marty got a lot of real nice golf sweaters. One time, Frank came to visit with Rosalind Russell and Charlotte Ford, and he wanted to watch Frankie Junior’s television special, but all Marty and Dolly had was a little black and white TV set. Frank nearly went nuts. ‘You mean this is all you got?’ he said. He couldn’t believe it. The next morning, he sent over three huge twenty-five-inch color sets, and Dolly called me to come and install them.”

  After his father’s death, Frank raised $805,000 to endow the Martin Anthony Sinatra Medical Education Center adjoining the Desert Hospital in Palm Springs. He also wanted to build a house for his mother next to his own in the desert. He was determined to move her out of the grimy industrial East, with its insufferable weather. But when he broached the subject of her moving to the West Coast, Dolly wouldn’t hear of it. She was adamant about never leaving New Jersey.

  “She told me she didn’t want to go to Palm Springs because she didn’t like Frank’s friends,” said Nancy Siracusa, the food editor of the Hudson Dispatch. “Dolly said, ‘I don’t want to move out there with all those bigshots.’

  “One reason Frank wanted to get her out with him is because he didn’t want her involved in the community here. He said he didn’t like people using her and the Sinatra name, but Dolly loved throwing benefits like the one she did at the Stanley Theater in Jersey City for the St. Joseph’s School for the Blind. She raised thirty thousand dollars that night and had everyone there, including the governor, and John V. Kenney, the big political boss of New Jersey. That’s when she wanted Jimmy Roselli to sing, but he refused to do it; Frank got so mad at him for turning down his mother that he never spoke to him again.”

  Frank continued to beg Dolly to move to Palm Springs so that he could take care of her, but she said she would never leave her husband’s grave untended in Jersey City. Who would visit it and take flowers? Who would have the commemorative masses said at the Madonna Church? Frank promised to move his father’s remains to a crypt in the Desert Park Memorial Cemetery, a few minutes drive from his house in Palm Springs, if she would change her mind.

  Dolly had stayed at her son’s compound many times and knew of its splendor—the pools and tennis court and guest houses, the railroad box car that had been converted into a health spa, the helipad and all the servants. She still didn’t want to make the move. Frank pleaded, saying he wanted her to be able to spend more time with her grandchildren. He even dangled the prospect of great-grandchildren in front of her, saying how terrible it would be if she were not there to share those joys with her family.

  He flew to Fort Lee with architectural blueprints for the house he wanted to build for her next door to his own on the grounds of the Tamarisk Country Club.

  “Dolly just didn’t know what to do,” said Al Algiro. “She worried about moving away from her friends, but Frank promised that she would never be homesick because he’d fly any of us out there anytime she wanted. She told him she didn’t want to live in the desert during the summer when the temperature soars to 120 degrees before noon, so he promised her a condominium in La Jolla or Del Mar near the racetrack, which she loved. After a while, she just couldn’t keep saying no.”

  When Dolly finally gave in, Frank built her a five-bedroom house, bought her every piece of Italian Provincial furniture she wanted, plus every kitchen appliance available. For her staff, he hired a cook, a gardener, three maids, and a team of security guards.

  The most persuasive reason for Dolly’s move to Palm Springs was simply to see her son, because come October 1969 Fran
k could no longer visit her in New Jersey without being arrested. He had refused to appear before the State Commission on Investigation to answer questions about organized crime and was being threatened with possible contempt for declining to answer a subpoena. In return, he had sued in federal court, contending that the commission’s subpoena was illegal and that the State Commission was unconstitutionally created. “… Notwithstanding the fact that I am of Italian descent,” he stated, “I do not have any knowledge of the extent or the manner in which ‘organized crime’ functions in the State of New Jersey or whether there is such a thing as ‘organized crime.’ ”

  By this time, Frank had assumed a permanent defensive stance about his Cosa Nostra relationships. In large part, he blamed Mario Puzo for his uncomfortable position in society, because of Puzo’s Mafia novel, The Godfather, which had been published in 1969. There were so many similarities between the fictional Johnny Fontane and Sinatra that little was left to the imagination, especially Frank’s.

  “How close do you want to get to a singer who knew a president who was assassinated?” he asked angrily. “I read off Puzo one night in Chasen’s. What phony stuff! Somebody going to the mob to get a role in a movie. Puzo turned out to be a bum. He prostituted his own business making up such a phony story. I screentested for Cohn, and he hired me for the role [in From Here to Eternity]. Period.”

  Jilly Rizzo, who was present at the Chasen’s confrontation, said he thought Frank was so angry he wanted to kill the author, but was restrained. Instead, he berated Puzo, who was so humiliated by Frank’s shouting that he walked out of the restaurant. Frank yelled after him, “Choke. Go ahead and choke, you pimp.”

  Days later, Frank’s suit against the New Jersey State Commission on Investigation was dismissed by Federal Judge Coolahan, who ruled that the investigative body was indeed legal and valid.

  Frank appealed the verdict to the U.S. Supreme Court, but by a 4-3 vote, the court rejected Frank’s arguments and refused to prevent his arrest for declining to answer the commission’s subpoena. His lawyer’s argument that Frank would be caused irreparable harm by appearing before the commission was not persuasive. Senator Clifford Case (R-N.J.) introduced a bill in the United States Senate, called “The Frank Sinatra Amendment,” which would make it a criminal offense to flee across a state line to avoid testifying before a state crime investigative commission.

  Frank still refused to bow to the subpoena. The commission announced that it was prepared to seek his indictment on a criminal contempt charge, an extraditable offense that could return him to the state in handcuffs. At that point, he gave in.

  “Can you imagine what the headline would have been?” asked his lawyer. “Frank simply couldn’t afford that kind of publicity, even though we felt that the commission moves against him were unconstitutional.”

  His lawyer agreed to produce Frank for questioning only if the commission would hold a secret session in Trenton at midnight on February 17, 1970, to avoid reporters and photographers. The commission agreed, and Frank testified for one hour and fifteen minutes, telling them absolutely nothing about his Mafia relationships.

  Q: Do you know Willie Moretti?

  A: No.

  Q: Ever meet him?

  A: I’m not sure whether I ever have, because it seems so long ago that I had a house in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, my wife and I. We bought a house, and the man from whom we bought the house, I think, brought him to the house one day to meet me.

  Q: Do you know Meyer Lansky?

  A: I’ve met him.

  Q: Who is he?

  A: I just read in the papers that he was an undesirable.

  Q: You have never heard that “Skinny” D’Amato is a member of Cosa Nostra?

  A: Never.

  Q: Are you familiar with Sam Giancana’s reputation as a member of Cosa Nostra?

  A: No.

  Q: Are you familiar with Joseph Fischetti’s reputation as a member of Cosa Nostra?

  A: No.

  Q: Are you familiar with Lucky Luciano’s reputation as a member of Cosa Nostra?

  A: No, sir.

  Q: Are you familiar with Willie Moretti’s reputation as a member of Cosa Nostra?

  A: No, sir.

  Q: Are you familiar with Joe Adonis’s reputation as a member of Cosa Nostra?

  A: No, sir.

  The commission member asking the questions seemed incredulous. “I have been using the word Cosa Nostra. If I were using the word Mafia with respect to any of those people named above, would your answers be different?”

  Frank said that his answers would remain the same.

  Q: Do you know anybody who’s a member of Cosa Nostra?

  A: No, sir.

  Q: Do you know anybody who’s a member of the mob?

  A: No, sir.

  Q: Do you know anybody who’s a member of any organization that would come under that category of organized crime?

  A: No, sir.

  When one of the commissioners asked Frank if he knew Harold “Kayo” Königsberg, a New Jersey extortionist and loan shark, Frank said he did not know the man and had never met him. Perhaps, but Frank’s name had surfaced during a 1961 FBI wiretapped telephone conversation between Königsberg and Angelo “Gyp” DeCarlo, a lieutenant in the Mafia family formerly headed by Vito Genovese, in which the two mobsters talked about how they would raise the money to take over a hotel in Jamaica.

  “Do you know where I’ll get it from?” Königsberg said. “Frank Sinatra.”

  “I’m going down there to Florida next week,” said DeCarlo. “I’ll see Sinatra and have a talk with him.”

  “Is he going to be in Florida next week?”

  “He’ll be there until the twelfth or thirteenth [March],” said DeCarlo. “I’m going down there Friday, so I’ll see him before he leaves.”

  Frank was asked whether he knew Generoso Del Duca, a member of the New York Mafia, and he said no.

  “Ever meet him?” asked one of the commissioners.

  Again Frank said no, although he had been in a Miami nightclub with Joe Fischetti and Del Duca a few years before, when Del Duca had a heart attack and died in Frank’s arms. Del Duca’s body was sent to New York the next day for burial. Frank and Tony Bennett canceled their midnight shows in Miami to fly to the funeral home in New York. At two-thirty A.M., they were admitted to pay their last respects. They checked into a hotel and the next morning visited Mrs. Del Duca before flying back to Miami. Unaware of this incident, the commission could not ask Frank why he went to such great lengths to pay tribute to a man he said he didn’t know.

  The commission dropped its contempt charges against him the next day, saying “he has fully and completely answered all our questions.”

  Having been forced to testify once, Frank knew that he was now vulnerable to a subpoena from any investigative body in the country looking into organized crime. Without political protection of any sort, he was defenseless.

  “For many years, every time some Italian names are involved in any inquiry—I get a subpoena,” he said. “I appear. I am asked questions about scores of persons unknown to me. I am asked questions based on rumors and events which have never happened. I am subjected to the type of publicity I do not desire and do not seek.”

  Courting respectability, he instructed his press agents to push his trip to London in May 1970 to perform in Royal Festival Hall for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, headed by the queen’s sister, Princess Margaret. His second performance benefited the Alexandra Rose Day Charity, sponsored by Princess Alexandra, the daughter of the late Duke of Kent. His publicists made a point of telling the press that Frank was not accepting a fee for either concert and was even paying for Count Basie’s orchestra so all the proceeds could go to charity. Pictures of him being feted by royalty flashed across the wire services.

  The U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James, Walter H. Annenberg, and his wife, Lenore, sent formal invitations to an embassy party in his hon
or, where he was cheered by socialites and diplomats. Saluting the assembled lords and counts and dukes, Frank said, “Bless your distinguished little hearts.”

  He returned to California in time to take part in the gubernatorial race between Governor Ronald Reagan and Jesse Unruh, former speaker of the California Assembly and once described as the century’s most important state legislator. Unruh, a disciple of Bobby Kennedy, had done nothing to help Hubert Humphrey in his race for the presidency in 1968, and now Frank was going to retaliate by announcing his support for Reagan.

  “He [Unruh] hurt my man badly in Chicago,” said Frank. “In fact, he hurt the whole Democratic Party. Humphrey didn’t lose. His people lost for him. … If Reagan ran for president against Humphrey, I’d come out for Humphrey.”

  Ronald Reagan did not seem quite so “boring and stupid” to Frank as he once had. On July 9, 1970, Frank announced his support for the Republican incumbent, proving the wisdom of the old Sicilian adage: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

  On the same day, Governor Reagan, railing against “welfare cheats,” withdrew ten million dollars in aid for California’s aged, blind, and disabled, which shocked Frank.

  “Did he do that? Did he really do that?” he asked, stunned by the news. “Well, I suppose you don’t withdraw your support for a candidate over one issue, but I’ll look into it. And you can bet I’ll speak to him about it.”

  Upon reading of Sinatra’s defection, Democrats cringed. “I can’t believe it,” said former Governor Edmund “Pat” Brown. “Frank has always been a good Democrat and one of my strongest supporters. He knows the tragedy of the Reagan administration, and maybe we can get him to change his mind.”

  The Democratic National Committeeman dismissed the endorsement as “one of the most insignificant occurrences in the annals of California politics.”

  Joey Bishop said, “It’s a shock.”