His Way

by Kitty Kelley

  “You want the guy clipped?”

  “No, not right now. Just hurt this guy real bad. Break his legs, put him in the hospital. Work him over real good, and let’s see if he gets the message.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t know. Burbank or Glendale, but he ain’t in the book. The best place to look for this guy’s at the racetracks. You can’t miss him.”

  “Tell Frank we’ll do it, but it might take some time,” Jimmy said.

  Unable to find the bodyguard, Fratianno said he soon forgot about the request.

  For the next three years of grand jury investigations, indictments, and trials pertaining to the bankruptcy fraud of the Westchester Premier Theater, Sinatra’s name became linked with the entangled Mafia scheme. Although never charged with wrongdoing, Frank was later forced to explain the grinning photograph of him taken backstage with the lords of Cosa Nostra. Throughout the trial there were headlines like MOB HIT MAN IS TIED TO SINATRA (New York Post) and HIT MAN SAYS HE HUDDLED WITH SINATRA (Daily News) and POSSIBLE SINATRA TIE TO THEATER SCHEME IS STUDIED (The New York Times) that kept his name entwined with corruption. Rushing to his defense was columnist Pete Hamill, who wrote in the Daily News: “This disgusting little cretin [Jimmy Fratianno] has now been placed in a witness stand and put under oath and asked to describe the inner workings of the Mob. He spent all of his life lying and murdering, and we are supposed to believe what he says about Frank Sinatra. I’m sorry. But this is obscene.”

  On January 17, 1979, after a fourteen-week trial and seven days of deliberation, the jury was deadlocked, causing a mistrial.

  In a separate trial, Frank’s good friend Tommy Marson was convicted and sentenced to a year in prison and fined ten thousand dollars for his part in the bankruptcy fraud.

  A new federal grand jury was impaneled to investigate allegations of criminal violations by certain people who were not defendants in the original case. It summoned Louis Pacella to testify. He was asked one question: “Do you know an individual by the name of Frank Sinatra?” He refused to answer. Offered immunity from prosecution, Pacella again refused to answer, was found guilty of contempt, and sent to jail for the duration of the jury’s eighteen-month session.

  Pacella appealed his sentence, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathaniel Akerman responded in April 1980 by filing papers in the U.S. Court of Appeals, charging that an unnamed witness knew that Frank Sinatra was involved “in the skimming of receipts at the theater.” The prosecutor’s papers stated: “The evidence developed at the trial of the Westchester Premier Theater case clearly provided several avenues of investigation … including the involvement of Frank Sinatra, Mickey Rudin, and Jilly Rizzo in skimming of receipts at the theater. Specifically, there was testimony that Jilly Rizzo, Sinatra’s bodyguard and friend, received a portion of skimmed proceeds [from Sinatra’s concerts] and there was tape-recorded evidence that showed that Mickey Rudin, Sinatra’s manager and lawyer, also received five thousand dollars.”

  But no criminal charges were ever brought against Sinatra, Rudin, or Rizzo. Without the cooperation of Pacella, and without any additional evidence, the prosecutor was unable to prove the charges. As for Sinatra, he refused to comment on the federal inquiry as he wrapped himself in respectability, performing benefits for good causes at the bend of a knee.

  Through marriage, the Sinatras had elevated themselves socially, so there were few traces left of the showgirl in a feathered headdress who danced her way across the Las Vegas stage, or the saloon singer with the grade school education. In their place stood a stunning wife bedecked with a queen’s ransom in jewels and a husband hailed around the world as a humanitarian. Hand in hand, they chased the rainbow of respectability that had eluded Frank for so many years. While they were not embraced by the pedigreed elite, they were crowned by the rich and nouveau riche who go to nightclubs, winter in Palm Springs, and appear in Suzy’s column.

  As Mrs. Sinatra, Barbara began to do her part with charity work for the Desert Museum, the Desert Hospital, and the Sexually Abused Children Program in the Coachella Valley. She joined boards, volunteered her time, and contributed money, provided it was a considerable sum.

  “We only deal in giving away millions,” she said to a woman who requested a mere one thousand dollars.

  Together, the Sinatras traveled to the south of France to attend galas for Princess Grace of Monaco and Baron Guy de Rothschild; they promoted and accompanied a caravan to the Holy Land for one hundred seventy people who paid twenty-five hundred dollars apiece; they sponsored charity balls for the World Mercy Fund, which ushered them into the lofty circles of Laurance Rockefeller and Barron Hilton. The world hailed them as Lord and Lady Bountiful.

  In California, they waved to thousands as the grand marshals of the Rose Bowl Parade. In Philadelphia, Frank received the city’s Freedom Medal while Barbara sparkled by his side. In New Jersey, he was hailed as a humanitarian for raising $600,000 for the Atlantic City Medical Center, and a wing was dedicated in his honor.

  In New York, he helped raise one million dollars for Governor Hugh Carey’s campaign expenses, and the governor immediately defended him to the press against charges of ties to organized crime.

  “I have yet to see anyone lay any criticism against Frank Sinatra excepting he’s very good to his friends,” he said. “I admire and respect him, and I think it’s a filthy assertion unworthy of comment.”

  In Denver, where Frank raised money for the Children’s Diabetes Foundation, he was given the International Man of the Year award.

  Italy presented him with its highest civilian honor—the Grande Ufficiale Deli Ordine Al Merito Della Republica Italiana—calling him “a great and meritorious official of the Italian Republic.”

  In Egypt, he performed before the pyramids in a benefit for President and Mrs. Anwar Sadat and received international press coverage for his generosity.

  Caesars Palace staged a sixty-fourth birthday party for Frank, which also commemorated his fortieth anniversary in show business. The affair was videotaped by Sinatra’s Bristol Productions and sold to NBC-TV for a two-hour show entitled Sinatra—The First 40 Years. In saluting Frank, Dionne Warwick presented him with a special Grammy from the recording industry; Jule Styne presented him with the Pied Piper Award from ASCAP; Caesars Palace announced that the fountain in front of the casino would be called the Frank Sinatra Fountain and the coins tossed in would go to the John Wayne Memorial Cancer Clinic at UCLA; the Egyptian ambassador read a message of congratulations from President Anwar Sadat; the Israeli Consul General read a similar one from Menachem Begin; and Dean Martin presented Frank with an honorary diploma from Hoboken High School to compensate for the one he never earned.

  In Hollywood, the show was hailed as “the greatest event of the decade in the world of entertainment,” but the East Coast wasn’t so complimentary. The Washington Star published an editorial entitled “The King and His Court,” which disparaged the spectacle and the “seemingly endless procession of sycophants who celebrated it for him, in a display of public groveling that would have embarrassed anyone except the gentleman in question, Mr. Frank Sinatra.…

  “What was puzzling, as the festivities ground on and on, was the fear that seemed to quiver just beneath the gaiety. That wasn’t love emanating from the TV set; it was obsequiousness. Some of the most celebrated men and women in entertainment marched across the stage—in Las Vegas, of course—in a parade of abjection. Has Mr. Sinatra really accumulated so much wealth and influence that he can reduce Orson Welles, once a great actor and film-maker, to a sycophantic blob?

  “Even more puzzling than the groveling was all the blather about Mr. Sinatra’s humanitarian enterprises. There were even emissaries from Israel and Egypt, in Camp David lock-step, on hand to present Mr. Sinatra with awards for his benevolence. Well, Mr. Sinatra’s charities are rather like Mr. Rockefeller’s dimes—good for the old blue-eyed image. They are not to be taken seriously by any except tho
se who receive them.”

  Praising Frank as “the best singer of American popular music who ever walked down the pike,” despite a voice “that may have lost much of its timbre,” the Washington Star editorial expressed wonder and awe at his performance. “That such beautiful music should emerge from such vulgarity is one of the great mysteries of the age; but we must count our blessings, no matter how peculiar.”

  Then William Safire wrote a column in The New York Times about Frank’s “lifelong gangland friendships.” Having already called Safire “a goddamn liar,” Frank now went on a rampage against all the press. He sent letters to President Jimmy Carter, to his Cabinet, to every member of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, every governor, to publishers, business leaders throughout the country, and deans of every journalism school in America, begging them to join him in a crusade to restrain the nation’s “runaway press.” He asked them to remind “the press that there is more to the Constitution of this great nation than the First Amendment it so frequently hides behind.” Then he banned press coverage of him as the grand marshal in New York’s Columbus Day parade.

  Frank continued his association with Ronald Reagan, and campaigned for him in the 1980 presidential race. He sponsored the first major Reagan fund-raiser in the Northeast and raised more than $250,000 in Boston.

  “Why do I support Governor Reagan? Because I think he’s the proper man to be the president of the United States,” said Frank. “It’s so screwed up now, we need someone to straighten it out.”

  Appearing at a Reagan gala in Los Angeles and one in New Jersey with Raymond Donovan, he said, “I bring you regards from our President—the tooth fairy.” He then assailed President Jimmy Carter. “Like Reagan, he was a movie star. Except then he worked under the name Mickey Mouse. He wants to be reelected. We should string him up.”

  Frank had used Reagan’s name in 1980 as a character reference in applying for a Nevada gambling license as a “key employee.” Frank’s decision to apply for this license, which was not necessary for him as an entertainer, involved a full-scale investigation of his life. It would cost him $500,000, but he insisted that Caesars Palace submit the application so that he could cleanse his name once and for all.

  “Mr. Sinatra wants to get his Nevada affairs in order,” said Peter Echeverría, a member of the board of directors of Caesars Palace and the immediate past chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission. “He wants to restore his reputation.”

  “It is very important to him,” Mickey Rudin told the commission, saying that references to Sinatra over the years often mentioned that he had lost his gambling license because of entertaining Chicago Mafia boss Sam Giancana at Cal-Neva in 1963.

  “Something happened sixteen and a half years ago that has left a shadow on his record,” said the lawyer, who insisted that the commission consider Frank’s case ahead of 200 other applicants who had been waiting more than a year for some kind of action, as well as 350 applicants for promotional licensing and 60 casino investors who needed approval.

  Despite the bad publicity, the commission capitulated to Rudin’s demand because he threatened to sue them to force compliance with the ninety-day limit on investigations. Ordinarily, applicants agreed to waive the ninety-day limitation, but Rudin wouldn’t without some time control over the extent of the investigation into Frank’s life. He knew that without some limitation they might spend two years investigating.

  “He’s one of the most investigated people in America,” argued Rudin.

  “It would be ludicrous to avoid calling him in,” said Nevada Gaming Control Board Chairman Richard Bunker, who agreed to a time limit of nine months on the Sinatra investigation. He later declared that Frank’s “worldwide prominence” made it “important” to act “as quickly as possible.” He never explained why.

  During those nine months, Frank burnished his image with good works and prestigious awards. His benefit for the Desert Hospital in Palm Springs raised $1.3 million. The district’s grateful congressman, Jerry Lewis, addressed the House of Representatives and said Frank “as America’s number one entertainer and philanthropist… has brought a song and a smile to the heart of a world that so needs a smile.”

  A week later, Sinatra’s benefit for the University of Santa Clara raised $250,000, which the Catholic school announced would establish a Frank Sinatra chair in music and theater arts.

  He hosted a benefit fund-raiser for Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal and received the Humanitarian Award of the Year from Variety Clubs International. He was named national chairman for the Multiple Sclerosis Society’s Hope Chest campaign. He volunteered to be the television spokesman for Chrysler for one dollar a year. He did a benefit at Carnegie Hall for the Police Athletic League and another in the Los Angeles Universal Amphitheater for St. Francis Medical Center. He performed for Danny Thomas’s St. Jude Children’s Research Center. He sang on the Jerry Lewis telethon for muscular dystrophy as well as for the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

  By the end of the year his benefit performances had indebted to him politicians, educators, policemen, Catholics and Jews and Protestants, corporate America, the medical profession, and—on November 4, 1980—the fortieth president of the United States. Within days of his election Ronald Reagan showed his gratitude to the singer by naming him chairman of the inaugural gala.

  “It’s a big thrill,” said Frank. “Somebody you love has made the big move. You don’t say ‘Hello, Ron’ anymore. You say ‘Hello, Mr. President.’ … I promise I will try to make it the greatest gala in history—a night America and the world will remember.”

  The appointment drew worldwide coverage, setting off rumors that Reagan might appoint Sinatra U.S. ambassador to Italy—which drew scathing comment from Italian newspapers. Typical was that in La Stampa, the respected Turin daily: “Sinatra is welcome at any time for a singing engagement or to make a movie. But not in any other capacity. … If the American government thinks of Italy as the land of mandolins and La Cosa Nostra, then Sinatra would be the appropriate choice.”

  While Frank concentrated on the gala, Barbara Sinatra worked secretly with Jilly Rizzo to plan a party for her husband’s sixty-fifth birthday on December 12, 1980.

  “Please keep this under your Stetson, but I’m tossing a surprise birthday party for my blue-eyed cowboy,” said the invitations she sent to more than one hundred people.

  High on her list was William French Smith, named by Reagan to be attorney general. Months before, the Los Angeles lawyer had privately contacted the Nevada Gaming Control Board to assure them of Ronald Reagan’s high opinion of Frank, adding that he knew Frank only socially, not in a business relationship, so he did not feel he could be a character reference. “However,” said Smith, “Governor Reagan finds him to be an honorable person who is extremely charitable and loyal.”

  The Smiths were delighted to receive their invitation from Mrs. Sinatra, and flew to Palm Springs for the party at which another guest was Sidney Korshak, the Los Angeles labor lawyer linked to organized crime.

  So the man scheduled to become the nation’s highest law enforcement officer shared a social evening with the Mafia’s lawyer at a party honoring a man with underworld connections. Puzzled, a reporter from The Washington Post called Smith’s office, where a spokesman said that the attorney general-designate “had never met Korshak and wouldn’t recognize him if he saw him on the street. … If he talked to him [at the party], it was purely accidental.”

  William Safire of The New York Times was so revolted by Smith’s “rehabilitation of the reputation of a man obviously proud to be close to notorious hoodlums” that he risked Sinatra’s wrath again in a column he wrote a few days later saying the attorney general-designate had made “the first deliberate affront to propriety of the Reagan administration.” Safire mentioned records in the Department of Justice that contain “file after file on Sinatra’s liaison with mobsters, along with a vivid account of the first time the singer tried to curry favor
with a president-elect.”

  Years before, Safire had charged that Sinatra’s introduction of Judith Campbell to Jack Kennedy and Sam Giancana made “possible the first penetration of the White House by organized crime.” Now he wrote that Sinatra would be able to use William French Smith’s presence at his party to show that he is respected by the law. “Let birthday-party goer Smith review the FBI’s Sinatra file. Then let him tell the Senate to what extent he thinks it proper for a friend of mobsters to profit from being a chum of the chief executive and of the man who runs the Department of Justice.”

  Smith called the column “scurrilous” and “a cheap shot,” saying through a spokesman that he was “totally unaware of any allegations about Frank Sinatra’s background.”

  The Milwaukee Journal Found that reaction troubling. “Surely, a lawyer chosen to be attorney general should understand why his presence at the party was disturbing,” said the newspaper’s editorial.

  During his confirmation hearings, the attorney general-designate surprised Senator William Proxmire (D-Wis.) by saying he was unaware of the FBI files mentioned in Satire’s column that detailed Frank Sinatra’s gangland associations. This made Smith sound either dumb or duplicitous.

  “While I am aware of recent press reports setting forth such allegations,” Smith told Proxmire, “I have never had access to any FBI files concerning any citizen. I have no basis for assuming that allegations reported in the press [about Sinatra] are true or false.”

  In a series of written questions, the senator asked: “When the Nevada Gaming Control Board checks Sinatra’s reference by writing to President Reagan, how would you as attorney general suggest the president respond?”

  Smith wrote, “As I am not familiar with all of the facts referenced by the question, I cannot say whether the matter is one on which it would be appropriate for the attorney general to render advice.”

  Senator Proxmire was annoyed. “Instead of telling us that he was not familiar with the facts, Mr. Smith’s clear answer should have been that he had already been asked and made the response he made. [Smith’s phone call for Reagan on behalf of Sinatra to the Nevada Gaming Board.] He was less than candid in his answer.”