by Kitty Kelley
The author also consulted numerous newspaper and magazine stories and several books, including Lou Cannon’s Reagan, New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1982, John Cooney’s The Annenbergs, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982, and Salerno and Tomkins’s Crime Confederation, New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1969.
CHAPTER 29
Information on the relationship between Sinatra and Vice-President Agnew was derived from many interviews, including ones with Vic Gold on January 24 and February 1, 1984, and Peter Malatesta on July 5, 25, 26, and 31, 1983, as well as numerous newspaper and magazine articles. The author also examined the transcript of the House of Representatives’ Select Committee on Crime Hearings of July 18, 1972, the Congressional Record, and interviewed Philip Nobile on November 10, December 14, 1983, February 12, 1984, and Elizabeth Greenschpoon (the former Mrs. Mickey Rudin).
In April 1976, the Boston Globe reported that on February 23, 1976, Sinatra met with CIA Director George Bush in New York and offered to keep the agency informed of his worldwide travels and meetings with foreign dignitaries. “It was a very sincere and generous offer,” said Bush’s brother, Jonathan, who also attended the meeting. “Sinatra said he was always flying around the world, and meeting with people like the Shah of Iran and the royal family of Great Britain,” he said. “He emphasized time and again that his services were available and that he wanted to do his part for his country.”
CHAPTER 30
Material in Chapter 30 was obtained from published articles in The Washington Post, Evening Star, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, Newsweek, Variety, Washington Star, Women’s Wear Daily, Chicago Sun-Times, and numerous Associated Press stories. In addition, the author consulted transcripts of Sinatra’s remarks at Caesars Palace on January 25, 1974, and June 6, 1974, Rona Barrett’s autobiography, Miss Rona, Los Angeles, Ca.: Nash Publishing, 1972, and interviews with Vic Gold, Rona Barrett, and Marvin Lewis on July 25, 26, 30, 1983. In an interview with Jim Mahoney, Mahoney said, “Do you know what death is? It’s a phone call from Mickey Rudin.” The author also reviewed the depositions and trial record in Frank Weinstock’s lawsuit.
CHAPTER 31
The author interviewed Joan Cohn Harvey, Edith Mayer Goetz, Peter Malatesta, Mr. Blackwell on April 23, 1984, Arthur Marx on April 16, 18, 20, 1984, Frank Weinstock on December 6, 1985, Celia Pickwell on March 30, 1984, Gratsiella Maiellano on July 10, 1985, Joyce Haber on July 22, 1983, and March 9, 1984, Robert Pack on January 11, 1983, Frank Sinatra, Jr., Steven Green on January 21, 1984, Bahman Rooin on June 3, 1983, Sister Consilia, Phyllis McGuire on July 8, 1985, Richard Condon, Nick Sevano, Thomas F. X. Smith on January 25, 1983, and June 5, 1985, Anita Colby Flagen on October 17, 1985, and Kitty Kallen.
In an interview with Charles Blakely on March 31, 1984, the author was given the following information about Zeppo Marx’s will:
When Zeppo died in November 1979, he left his diamond ring and gold belt buckles to his adopted son, Bobby Marx. He also left him $25,000 in trust to pay for his law school education. Shortly before he died, Zeppo changed his will and left his Rolls-Royce ($65,000) and interest in a Safeway store ($160,000) to Barbara’s sister, Patricia Jo Welch. Barbara was so angry that her sister received what she felt belonged to her son, Bobby, that she never spoke to Pat again. “It breaks Irene’s heart that Barbara and Pat don’t speak,” said Barbara’s father, Charles Blakely, “but she can’t do anything about it.” The next month, December 1979, Frank offered to adopt Bobby, but his children reacted so negatively that he dropped the idea.
In an interview with Phyllis McGuire, she told the author that when Sinatra’s mother died, she sent a plane to Texas for Dr. and Mrs. Michael DeBakey to come to Palm Springs to be with him. “Johnny Carson and I filled in for Frank at Caesars Palace and do you know that son of a bitch never even thanked us?”
The author also read numerous newspaper and magazine reports of the Sinatra-Marx marriage, including those in the Ladies’ Home Journal, Las Vegas Desert Sun, Modern Screen, Chicago Sun-Times, National Enquirer, New York Daily News, and The New York Times.
In addition, the author consulted several books, among them Ovid Demaris’s The Last Mafioso.
CHAPTER 32
In the Westchester Premier Theater case, the author read transcripts of wiretaps and depositions and reviewed trial and other court records as well as the news coverage in papers such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, Riverside (Calif.) Press-Enterprise, and Newsday. In addition, the author interviewed law enforcement officials, who requested anonymity.
Other material in this chapter was obtained from numerous other newspaper and magazine articles.
With respect to Sinatra’s feuds with newspapers, he had previously forced hotels in Nevada not to advertise in the state’s largest newspaper because of columns written about him that he did not like.
“He did it twice at the Sands Hotel before Howard Hughes took over, and now he forced Caesars to pull the advertising of his act,” stated a 1969 editorial in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “The balding, middle-aged crooner again sang the blues about the R-J and apparently thought he would stop the presses by dictating the advertising policy during his stay.
“… To point out how childish Sinatra actually is, to order his ads out of the state’s largest newspaper can only be compared to the way he idolizes underworld figures. He gave up a gambling license rather than break off a friendship with Chicago gangland Mafia boss Sam Giancana.”
The Sacramento Bee published a story by Denny Walsh and Nancy Skelton entitled “Palm Springs, Where Stars, Pols—and Mobsters—Live in Style.” Although not mentioned in the article, Peter Epsteen was referred to in a photo caption as an “automobile dealer financed by the Mafia.” Represented by Sinatra’s attorney, Mickey Rudin, Epsteen filed a $6 million libel suit against the newspaper. He denied any affiliation with the Mafia and demanded a retraction. The Sacramento Bee published a story reporting Epsteen’s denial but did not retract the charge.
Lawyers representing the newspaper hired former FBI agent William Roemer to investigate the matter. Roemer is a lawyer with twenty-two years’ experience investigating organized crime in Chicago. In an interview with the author on March 15, 1986, Roemer told her: “I flew to Chicago and sat down with a lower level Mafia boss at Crane’s restaurant. I told the mobster that we were going to subpoena Gus Alex and Tony Accardo [two of Chicago’s top Mafia chieftains] for depositions and bring them into the lawsuit as hostile witnesses in an effort to prove their connections with Peter Epsteen. I also said I would testify to that effect and this guy knew I could say plenty from my thirty years with the Bureau, most of it investigating organized crime. He told me he would get the word to Alex and Accardo by sundown that day. A few weeks later, Peter Epsteen dropped his lawsuit.”
lacocca by Lee Iacocca with William Novak, New York: Bantam Books, 1984, recounts that Sinatra offered to help Chrysler stay in business by doing television commercials for a well-publicized fee of one dollar a year. In addition to the one dollar, Frank received stock options which Iacocca said were valuable. “I hope Frank held on to them, because if he did, he made a bundle.”
In 1979, Ford Motor Company stockholders brought a $50 million lawsuit against Henry Ford II and the company. The suit alleged in part that Ford had diverted company money for personal use. William Safire wrote a column stating that Ford had had a meeting with Frank Sinatra in hopes that Sinatra could use his influence with Roy Cohn, the stockholders’ attorney, to “lay off.” After reading the column, Frank sent Safire a telegram: YOU ARE A GODDAMN LIAR. This incident was reported in New York magazine in October 1984.
CHAPTER 33
The author consulted the transcripts of the Nevada Gaming Board’s 1981 hearings and conducted extensive interviews with one of the Board’s investigators, who requested anonymity, on June 6, 29, and September 1, 1983. Information on Sinatra’s finances was taken from the financial state
ment submitted by Sinatra to the Board.
The author interviewed Ovid Demaris on March 21, 1984, Judith Exner, Ralph Salerno, Phyllis McGuire, and Victor LaCroix Collins, Robert Kennedy’s appointments secretary on February 4 and 12, 1986, Pearl Similly on January 14, 1984, and consulted several magazines and newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and Variety. Billboard reported in June 1975 that Sinatra started adding an extra clause to his contract stipulating that no one, “no matter how famous,” was to be allowed backstage or even to approach him.
In 1976, Judith Exner announced plans to write a book detailing her introduction to John F. Kennedy and Sam Giancana by Frank Sinatra, and her affairs with all three men. Sinatra’s publicist wanted to issue a press release denying any Exner connection to Frank. Instead, they settled on a one-sentence press release drafted by Lee Solters: ‘.’HeHhath no fury like a woman with a literary agent.” Sinatra scratched out “woman” and wrote “hooker.” Rudin crossed out “hooker” and inserted “hustler,” which is the way the release appeared.
After Kirk Douglas had submitted his article “Virtue Is Not Photogenic” to The New York Times, the newspaper’s associate editor, Charlotte Curtis, returned the piece to the actor, saying: “Warm and affectionate as the piece is, it won’t work either for Frank or for you, I’m afraid, and we are most hesitant to publish it.”
Information on Sinatra’s performances at the Fontainebleau Hotel was obtained from the Justice Department’s August 3, 1962, report on Sinatra.
On February 16, 1981, columnist William Safire printed Norman Mailer’s response to Sinatra’s comments about the attaché case he was carrying in Havana. “I’ve been doing some calculations on how many one-hundred-dollar bills can be fitted into a Samsonite attaché case twelve inches by fifteen inches by five inches deep,” he told Safire. “A one-hundred-dollar bill measures 6.2 inches by 2.6 inches. You can squeeze 350 bills down to one inch. That’s thirty-five thousand dollars to a one-inch packet. You can lay six of those packets along the seventeen-inch axis and four others lengthwise into the space that is left on that first layer. And there is still overage. Let’s see: ten packets per layer make $350,000. Multiplied by five one-inch layers that makes $1,750,000…. Make half-inch packets and tilt them sideways. I’ve worked it out: you can fit two million twelve thousand dollars into an attaché case.”
During the author’s interview with Phyllis McGuire, McGuire commented on how Frank’s friendship with Jack Entratter ended. Frank had cast other friends aside as cruelly as Jack Entratter. Men like George Evans, Hank Sanicola, Nick Sevano, Joe DiMaggio, Brad Dexter, and Peter Lawford, who had loved Frank and stood loyally by his side suddenly found themselves frozen out of the Sinatra circle for some real or imagined slight. Some, like Brad Dexter, didn’t let it bother them. Others, like Peter Lawford, never survived the hurt.
“I tried several times to apologize for whatever it was that I had done to Frank, but he has not spoken to me for over twenty years,” said Lawford in 1983. “He wouldn’t take my phone calls and wouldn’t answer my letters. Wherever I saw him at a party or in a restaurant, he just cut me dead. Looked right through me with those cold blue eyes like I didn’t exist. Friends of mine went to him to patch things up, but he’d always say, ‘That fucking Englishman is a bum.’ I even talked to his daughter, Tina, about it, saying what a waste it was to squander a good relationship on a misunderstanding. She agreed with me and said to write Frank again, so I did, but he never responded. … I don’t want to go to my grave having been responsible for someone being so disturbed that he carried a grudge all his life.”
On January 15, 1979, Barron’s National Business and Financial Weekly published a letter to the editor from Mickey Rudin under the heading “Sinatra’s Mouthpiece.” Rudin sued for libel, saying it conjured up images of “shyster.” The case went to trial in U.S. District Court in New York. Rudin lost.
CHAPTER 34
The author interviewed Richard Condon, Steven Green, Gloria Massingill on June 27, 1983, and a guest at Judy Green’s 1983 Southhampton barbecue, who requested anonymity, on October 9, 1984. Various newspaper articles were also consulted. The author also obtained a copy of Sinatra’s $16 million Golden Nugget contract, correspondence between Sinatra and the Golden Nugget’s vice-president and general counsel, and a stock option agreement between Milton Rudin and the Golden Nugget. The author interviewed a friend of Sinatra’s concerning his charitable deductions. This person also requested anonymity. Additional information on the Golden Nugget incident was obtained from the transcript of the August 1, 1984, hearing before the New Jersey Casino Control Commission, various newspaper articles, and Mickey Rudin’s statements in an August 29, 1984, press release issued by Sinatra’s publicists, Solters, Roskin/Friedman, Inc. In addition, the author interviewed a member of the Secret Service on January 3, 1986, and a member of the White House staff on June 3, 1984.
The author also consulted the United Nations Special Committee Against Apartheid’s celebrity register, and various newspapers and magazines, including People magazine and The Washington Posi.
Background on the President’s tribute to Sinatra’s achievements in the performing arts was obtained from television coverage and several newspaper articles.
CHAPTER 35
The material on Sinatra’s participation in Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign was obtained from various articles in The New York Times, the Washington Times, the Jersey Journal, and the Hudson Dispatch. The author also interviewed a friend of Ronald Reagan, Jr., on December 7, 1985, who requested anonymity.
On February 10, 1985, Star magazine recounted reporter Barbara Howar’s response to Sinatra’s outburst over The Washington Post’s profile, “The Rat Pack Is Back”: “The least I expected when I went up to him was to be recognized. I expected him to know who I am. It isn’t like I didn’t have dinner with him once—with Henry Kissinger. All the while we were eating, Sinatra kept bemoaning, ‘I’m not associated with the Mafia.…’ He kept beating that old horse to death. Then finally Kissinger looked at him and said, ‘I’m very disappointed, Frank. Who is going to take care of my enemies?’ ”
Information on Sinatra’s receipt of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the honorary degree from the Stevens Institute was obtained from The Washington Post, The New York Times, the New York Daily News, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times.
Background on Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury comic strip was obtained from several newspapers, including The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.
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