by Kitty Kelley
“Just run along and get higher authority,” said Frank.
Alarmed by what he had heard of Sinatra’s volatile character, the shift manager, Robert Barnum, thought the singer should be accommodated. Fearing that violence might erupt any minute, the pit boss acquiesced to the demand. “[Sinatra] seemed to be pumping himself up into a very dictatorial-type attitude,” he said.
The dealer, close to tears, began dealing by hand, more afraid of Frank than she was of breaking the law. The incident was videotaped by surveillance cameras and later shown on the CBS Evening News, giving Americans a disconcerting look at the petty tyrant within the man so recently honored at the Kennedy Center.
Months later, the New Jersey Casino Control Commission fined the Golden Nugget $25,000 for allowing the infraction and suspended four employees for three to fourteen days for breaking state gaming regulations. Joel R. Jacobson, vice-chairman of the commission, expressed outrage that the man responsible escaped without reprimand.
“When a folk hero like Frank Sinatra exhibits himself as an obnoxious bully, forcing working men and women to commit infractions which cause them to be reprimanded and to lose significant amounts of income, to fear the loss of their job, it may very well be time to reconsider the question of licensing entertainers.”
Blaming the “merciless media,” Golden Nugget chairman Stephen Wynn defended Frank. “He’s the only major entertainer who works more nights for charity than for money.”
Jacobson retorted: “Mr. Sinatra’s volatile temper and his intimidating, abusive behavior [showed] no evidence of compassion or humanitarianism. There was no charity [in his actions].”
Feeling insulted and demeaned, Frank slashed back in anger, calling Jacobson a parasite and vowing never to appear again in New Jersey.
Mickey Rudin made the announcement: “Mr. Sinatra has instructed me to limit the number of his performances and, therefore, has decided that he will not perform in a state where appointed officials feel the compulsion to use him as ‘a punching bag.’ … It is difficult to believe that Mr. Jacobson was not well aware of the fact that the obnoxious remarks he made for the benefit of the television cameras would result in headlines throughout the world.”
The lawyer berated all New Jersey officials for not springing to Frank’s defense and for not chastising Jacobson. Expressing outrage that Sinatra had not heard “from any of the prominent citizens of the State of New Jersey who have called upon him to render his services for charitable causes, or even from the board of governors of a hospital that has insisted on putting his name on one of their buildings,” Rudin canceled Frank’s coming engagement in Atlantic City with Dean Martin.
New Jersey Assemblyman Michael Adubato proposed that the state make an official apology to “our native son … for unwarranted and obnoxious criticism of him.… Let’s plead with him to return to New Jersey, the home of your parents, Dolly and Marty Sinatra. Frank, come back to your roots. Come home to New Jersey. I love you.”
When Adubato stood up with his resolution, Assembly members from the southern part of the state walked out of the chamber while others called him out of order and ended the discussion.
The New York Daily News expressed its sentiments in an editorial entitled “Old Sore Eyes” which said: “Sinatra is not only an arrogant, offensive bully, he is also a whiner. He can dish it out but he can’t take it. He’s a snob who has repudiated the people who paid his way to celebrity hood. Las Vegas can keep him.”
35
Before he issued his edict against New Jersey, Frank made a pilgrimage to Hoboken to make peace with his Irish godfather, to whom he had not spoken for almost fifty years. The death of his mother had left him bereft of his past, his roots. All of his parents’ relatives were dead, with the exception of a ninety-year-old aunt in a nursing home. There was no one left to connect him with his mother and father except for Frank Garrick, once Marty Sinatra’s best friend and the man Dolly had chosen to be her son’s godfather. But the two men had not spoken to each other since Garrick had fired Frank, when his teenage godson tried to preempt a dead reporter’s newspaper job.
“Oh, the temper and the names he called me,” Frank Garrick recalled. “Words you have never heard. That temper was something in those days. Murderous. He never spoke to me again and neither did Dolly. Marty still came around, but it was never the same. I wasn’t invited to Frankie’s wedding to Nancy Barbato. I never met his kids. I wasn’t even asked to the fiftieth anniversary party he had for his folks in Jersey City. But a while after his mom died, he called me up and said he would like to come over. He never made it, though. Then he called a couple of times more, but he never showed up. I didn’t think he ever would.”
Finally, in June 1982, Frank returned to Hoboken to see his eighty-five-year-old godfather, but he didn’t go alone. Accompanied by his secretary, Dorothy Uhlmann, and his best friend, Jilly Rizzo, he knocked on the door of the Garricks’ three-room apartment in a senior citizens’ building on the edge of town.
“After all those times of him calling us and then not coming, I didn’t believe he would ever show up,” said Minnie Garrick, “but there he was at the door looking so sheepish and nervous. Frank was out on the little porch, so Frankie went out there and put his arms around him. They both started crying.”
“He [Sinatra] said he was so sorry and he should have done this a long time ago, but he was scared,” said Garrick. “I told him he should have done it a long time ago too. He sat down in here on the couch and gave us a big basket of fruit with a cellophane wrapper and an envelope with five one-hundred-dollar bills. ‘And that’s just the beginning,’ he said when we opened the envelope. He told me we’re all that he has left now, so he wanted to keep us close. He even wanted us to move to Palm Springs and live with him, but we couldn’t do that. We have our own children and grandchildren here.… Frankie’s so changed from the hard-charging kid he used to be. In the beginning, he was just like his mom. A real pusher and tough, tough, tough, but now he’s like his old man. Real quiet and calm. That’s Barbara that’s done that. She’s a real lady.”
Two weeks later, Frank sent a limousine to Hoboken to bring the Garricks to Atlantic City, where he was performing for four days. Dorothy Uhlmann gave them a photograph of Frank in a tuxedo that he had signed: “To Frank and Minnie with much love and affection, Your godson, Francis.” She then told them that Frank wanted to talk to Mr. Garrick alone, man to man.
“I went into his apartment in the hotel, and Barbara was getting ready to leave, but Frank told her she could stay because she didn’t know what we were talking about. For the next hour and a half, we reminisced about Hoboken and what had happened so many years ago. He told me that after he had appeared at the Union Club once they booed him and he hated it. He said that he’d never come back again. He said that Hoboken hated him because of his mother, and I said, ‘No, they don’t, Frank. Not at all. They’re proud of you. You’re doing wrong by not coming back.’ That’s when he said that maybe he would go back one of these days, but … He talked a lot about Dolly’s death and how terrible it was. He said he saw the wreckage and how they found one arm here and another arm there and piles of her clothes twisted on the rocks. He wanted to know about his baptism and how the priest had made a mistake and named him after me instead of Marty. I told him the story and he laughed. ‘Yeah, my mom told me all about it,’ he said. I guess he wanted to hear it again.
“Barbara never said a word during the whole time we talked. She’s perfect for Frank. She takes care of him and she knows her place. She’s lovely.”
A few months later, the Garricks received another photograph from Frank, this one a colored glossy of himself and Barbara sitting next to each other holding hands. The picture was framed in gold with a gold-painted plaque that read: “To Frank and Minnie. Love & XXX, Frank and Barbara, July 1982.” For Christmas they both received Cartier tank watches, and anytime Frank performed at Carnegie Hall they received free tickets for themselves and their friend
s. The next year, Frank took them a painting he had done. They hung it with pride alongside their picture of the pope and the statue of the Infant of Prague.
Thrilled to be reconciled with his godson, Frank Garrick spoke glowingly of Sinatra’s visit. The reporter who interviewed Garrick wrote a long story, which was picked up by Frank’s clipping service.
“He was very, very upset,” recalled Garrick later. “The next time I saw him he asked me if I had said all those things, and then he told me never ever to talk to anyone again like that. He’s very bitter. He never was bitter before, but he’s real bitter now about the press and we’re not supposed to talk to anyone about anything.”
Striving hard to control the flow of information around him, Frank held tightly to the secrets of his family. He had been stung by the stories of his son’s three paternity suits,* and although he supported Frank, Jr., with lawyers to fight each case, Frank felt his family name had been tarnished by the press coverage. He also worried that the children might indeed be his grandchildren.
“He got real upset by that paternity business and wanted Frank, Jr., to take responsibility and act like a man,” said Gloria Massingill. “As I recall, he made sure that Frank, Jr., paid each of the mothers a monthly allowance or something.”
Little has been printed about Sinatra that wasn’t first shaped and refined by his publicists. Over the years, writers had to cooperate with his press agents or they didn’t get a story, and even then they rarely got a personal interview. If they did, they had to keep their questions general and not venture into difficult areas that might cause pain or embarrassment.
During an unguarded moment, Frank once said he would never allow the story of his life to be told.
“Never. That will never happen as long as I have any control over the project … there’s too much about my life I’m not proud of.”
When he was approaching seventy, he decided to tell the story he wanted told, and he planned to do it as a feature film.
“I want it done while I’m still alive,” he said. “If they do my life story when I’m dead, they’ll screw it up. I want to be around to see it’s done right.”
He had been trying for several years to write his autobiography but had not found a writer who would tell the story the way he wanted it told. So he decided to turn the film project over to his daughter, Tina, who planned to produce it as her first television miniseries.
Frank wanted the project to be presented with the kind of dignity befitting a close personal friend of the President of the United States. In the last few years the Reagans had made him part of their inner circle in the White House, and he reveled in the public perception of him as a Reagan insider. He was so comfortable in the role that he frequently joked about it. In a telegram to the Friars Club making excuses for his absence at a roast, he said: PRESIDENT REAGAN DOESN’T LIKE ME AND GEORGE SHULTZ [Secretary of State] TO BE ABSENT FROM THE WHITE HOUSE AT THE SAME TIME. He had been appointed to the President’s Commission on the Arts and Humanities; he had performed at White House state dinners; he had been invited to the intimate birthday celebrations of both the President and First Lady.
In the summer of 1984, the President asked Frank for help in his reelection campaign and made him the ambassador of fund-raising by sending him to seven cities for cocktail parties with selected Republicans who paid thousands of dollars for the privilege of being in his presence. Frank raised $500,000 for the Republican Victory ’84 get-out-the-vote drive.
The hardest trip was the one that the President asked him to make in July, accompanying Reagan to the Festival of St. Ann in Hoboken. Running against the Mondale-Ferraro ticket, Reagan felt that he needed to ingratiate himself with blue-collar Italians, who traditionally voted Democratic. So a New Jersey campaign swing had been planned, including a stop in Sinatra’s hometown for the church festival honoring the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the patron saint of women. And Reagan wanted to arrive there with Hoboken’s native son, the world’s most famous Italian-American singer.
Since 1900, St. Ann’s had been the parish church of the Italian community. The saint’s feast day was celebrated around the world on July 26 and was dedicated to women, especially pregnant women. It was an appropriate time for President Reagan to deliver his message against abortion and for prayer in the public schools. He wanted to attend the traditional procession as women carried the 580-pound statue of St. Ann through the streets while parishioners rushed forward to pin money and flowers and jewelry to the cape hanging from her shoulders.
The President also wanted to stay for the spaghetti dinner and zeppole dessert with the archbishop in the church basement. Frank begged off the dinner and did not sit on the dais as the President condemned abortion in front of people who still remembered his mother as “Hat Pin Dolly.”
Meeting the President in Newark, Frank flew by helicopter with him to Hoboken. They were driven in a presidential limousine to the church rectory at Seventh and Jefferson streets. Hundreds of people surged forward to greet Reagan, but hundreds more shouted to Frank, cheering his arrival and welcoming him back home.
“I can’t believe he came back,” said Margie LaGuardia, a lifelong Sinatra fan. “I felt like he would never be seen again in this city.”
Shaking the outstretched hands like a veteran politician, Frank, once an infrequent boyhood parishioner of St. Ann’s, smiled and laughed and greeted everyone amiably, but within twenty minutes he was back in the presidential limousine and heading for a concert in Hartford, Connecticut, while the President was inside the church pleading for the rights of the unborn.
New York Governor Mario Cuomo said he was disgusted by the sight of the President in Hoboken alongside Sinatra and the purple robes of the archbishop of Newark.
“It’s just the most outrageous kind of pandering,” he said. “Reagan probably thought, ‘I’ll get the Catholics, I’ll put Frank Sinatra next to me, he’s Italian,’ that means all the Italians will vote for him.”
The governor’s criticism made no difference. Reagan won reelection by one of the largest landslides in history and he later repaid his Hoboken friend in full.
Once again, the President named him as director of entertainment and executive producer of the inaugural gala, despite an editorial in the New York Daily News that said, “Find Another Singer.”
Reagan was inured to carping in the press about his friendship with Frank and dismissed it. He had ignored Joseph Kraft’s column months before that had questioned his judgment in honoring Sinatra at the White House.
“The singer is not under indictment or anything of the kind,” Kraft wrote. “But he is well known for alleged association with gangster elements. So holding him up for public admiration is the reverse of good taste. It is sleazy.”
Nevertheless, the President was not prepared for the menacing encounter that occurred on the eve of his inaugural at the gala rehearsal. Frank had walked into the Convention Center after reading a profile about himself on the front page of The Washington Post Style section entitled: “The Rat Pack Is Back—Sinatra and his Sidekicks: A Cool for Modern Times?”
Barbara Howar, a reporter from Entertainment Tonight, approached him, saying: “Frank, I wonder if I could …”
Wheeling around before she could finish her question, Frank shook his gloved index finger. “Listen, I want to tell you something,” he said. “You read the Post this afternoon? You’re all dead, every one of you. You’re all dead.”
Television cameras and microphones captured the ferocious encounter and replayed it on the evening news, much to the consternation of the Reagans. Neither of them uttered a word in rebuke, though, for they, too, had been smarting from press coverage of Nancy’s $46,000 inaugural wardrobe and insinuations that the streets of Washington were paved with idolatrous Republicans in mink coats and stretch limousines.
Sinatra continued seething about the Post article after the gala was over.
“You know why I get upset?” he said. “Did you see that
thing in the paper? Geez! We’re working eighteen hours a day trying to put together a show and every second counts, every second is important because we had so little time to put the show together, and then this thing comes out!
“I’m upset because the entire [entertainment] industry is performing like the Marine Corps. They come here from all parts of the world. Some stars gave up dates to come here. The show biz people are like the civilian Marine Corps, always ready to give our all. And then you see this story in print. It’s a rehash of old stuff that was reprinted only because of the inaugural parties.… You see why I’m upset, because they don’t use the First Amendment, they abuse it. They haven’t earned the right to be called journalists and they give other journalists a bad name.… The show was a masterful job that came off as if we had been rehearsing for weeks. All the stars did great. Eva Gabor had to change an entire schedule to get here. It all jelled, like clockwork. They didn’t write that, they had to dig up old stuff.”
Frank’s tirade did not embarrass the President or First Lady, but their son, Ron Reagan, Jr., confided to friends his shame and disgust over his parents’ friendship with Sinatra. A few months later, on May 23, 1985, the President presented Sinatra with the nation’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His fellow recipients were Jimmy Stewart, the President’s favorite movie star; marine explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau; former secretary of the Smithsonian Institution S. Dillon Ripley II; retired Army General Albert Wedemeyer, a World War II hero in the Pacific Theater; retired Air Force General Charles E. “Chuck” Yeager, record-setting test pilot and first man to break the sound barrier; philosopher and educator Sidney Hook; former ambassador to the United Nations Jeanne J. Kirkpatrick; and Mother Teresa, the Roman Catholic nun who won the Nobel Prize for her work among the poor of Calcutta.
On the day of the presentation ceremony, the President addressed the honorées in the Blue Room of the White House.