Years later, rumors began to surface that Frank had actually used certain underworld connections to convince Tommy Dorsey that he should release him from the overbearing contract. The story was that New Jersey mobster Willie Moretti intervened on Frank’s behalf, putting a gun to Dorsey’s head and forcing him to release Sinatra from his contract. Moretti continually bragged that he had done this favor for Sinatra, until he was murdered gangland-style in 1951. Frank insisted that the story was untrue and that he relied entirely on his legal team to extricate himself from the unfair Dorsey contract.
“The truth is that Hank Sanicola had a couple buddies—not real underworld characters but just some frightening fellows that he and Sinatra both knew—threaten Dorsey that ifhe didn’t let Frankie out of the contract, there’d be trouble,” Joey D’Orazio recalled. “I know this because Hank called me up and asked me to fly to Los Angeles and go with this motley crew to Dorsey’s office. I refused to do it. I had a wife and kid, and I didn’t want to end up in some Los Angeles jail if things got out of hand.
“I know these hoodlums who went out there, because some of us hung out together, and when they got back, that’s all they wanted to talk about. They told me that Sanicola didn’t want Sinatra to know any of the details. ‘Just take care of it,’ he said. He didn’t know for sure if it was necessary; they were close to ending it with Dorsey anyway. ‘He just needs a little nudge,’ he told me.
“He always wanted Sinatra to be able to claim that he didn’t know nuttin’ about nuttin’ if it all blew up. He was always protecting Sinatra, Sanicola was.
“In the end, these characters told Dorsey that they’d break his arms, that he’d never play again if he didn’t sign some papers that would let Frankie out of that contract. What a joke, threatening Tommy Dorsey, who was a tough guy himself. He laughed in their faces and mocked them, saying, ‘Oh yeah, look at how scared I am. Tell Frank I’m scared to death. Then tell him I said, “Go to hell,” for sending his goons to beat me up.’
“The guys were stunned. Then Tommy said, ‘All right, fine. Forget it. I’ll sign the papers, that’s how sick I am of Frank Sinatra, the no-good bum. The hell with him.’ ”
According to D’Orazio, it wasn’t much of an intimidation. In fact, one of the guys was so excited about meeting Dorsey, he had to be talked out of going back and asking for his autograph after they left his office.
Betty Wilken—daughter of Bea Wilken, a Los Angeles friend of Tommy Dorsey’s wife, Pat Dane—recalled, “My mother often told me that Tommy was as difficult as they come, a temperamental, argumentative person that you didn’t want to cross. She also told me that Pat and Tommy hated Frankie for years because they felt he had sent his fellows to hurt Tommy. It was always said that Frank was lucky Tommy hadn’t killed all of his pals right there on the spot. He was that angry.”
Tommy Dorsey was never happy about the way it ended with Sinatra; he felt that he had a gold mine in Frank’s talent, and on top of that, he didn’t like losing. He later gave credence to Joey D’Orazio’s version of how Sinatra extricated himself from the contract when he told American Mercury magazine in 1951 that during a breakdown in negotiations with Sinatra’s attorneys, he was visited by three businesslike men who talked out of the sides of their mouths and ordered him to “sign or else.”
“Well, I just hope you fall on your ass,” Tommy Dorsey told Frank Sinatra in parting. Frank was too busy to care about Dorsey’s bitterness; as soon as the contract with Dorsey was settled, he signed a seven-year deal with RKO to make movies, the first of which would be Higher and Higher with Jack Haley and Michèle Morgan. This film would mark his acting debut, even though it consisted of portraying himself singing five songs, including “I Couldn’t Sleep a Wink Last Night” (which was nominated for an Academy Award).
Tommy Dorsey died suddenly in his sleep in 1956. Though Sinatra and Dorsey were never really close friends, they did see each other from time to time in later years and even worked together on a few occasions. Just months prior to his death, Dorsey and Sinatra appeared together at the Paramount Theatre in New York. Sinatra also recorded an album in the 1960s, I Remember Tommy, for Reprise, which paid tribute to Dorsey. Sinatra never tired of talking about the Tommy Dorsey days, both the good and the bad; he always had special memories of those years, despite the bitterness of the breakup.
Anchors Aweigh to Los Angeles
On January 10, 1944, Nancy Sinatra gave birth to a son at the Margaret Hague Maternity Hospital in Jersey City. Again, Frank could not be present for the birth; he was in Los Angeles filming Step Lively, his second movie for RKO. At the moment Nancy gave birth, he was actually on the air in the middle of a radio broadcast.
The Sinatras had decided in advance that if it were a boy, the child would be named Franklin (after Franklin Delano Roosevelt) Wayne Emmanuel (after Frank’s very close friend Manie Sacks) Sinatra. But in the end they settled on Francis Wayne Sinatra, which eventually became Frank Sinatra Jr.
In retrospect, the very popular photographs ofNancy in her hospital bed seem almost surreal. Surrounded by press photographers, she cradled the infant in her arms with a framed publicity photograph of her husband on her lap. It was as if Frank was more a symbol in her life that an actual husband; at least that’s how cynics in the media viewed it.
Frank was proud to have a son, and he wanted to be a good father, but there was always something in his career or personal life that kept him from completely committing to parenthood. Nancy, meanwhile, suppressed her anger and disappointment and focused on raising her two babies. She tried to find solace in the fact that she and the children never wanted for anything—except Frank.
Shortly after the birth of his son, Frank met Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM, at a benefit for the Jewish Home for the Aged. Mayer was so impressed with Frank’s performance of “Ol’ Man River” that he decided to put him under contract to MGM, where, according to its slogan, there were “More Stars Than There Are in the Heavens.” Frank would be in excellent company; some of the other contract players were Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Clark Gable, and Esther Williams. He would soon sign a $1.5 million, five-year contract with the studio, which, after some negotiation, preempted the RKO contract.
A few months later, Frank told Nancy he felt it was time to move from New Jersey to the West Coast. He went on to purchase Mary Astor’s large Mediterranean-style estate at 10051 Valley Spring Lane in Toluca Lake, a Los Angeles suburb.
Nancy was reluctant. At least on the East Coast she had friends she could rely on when she couldn’t depend on her husband, or when he was away, which was most of the time. To whom would she be able to confide in California? On the other hand, Frank was making over a million dollars a year now. He belonged in Los Angeles—MGM was there—and if Nancy wanted to continue to be supportive, she had to go along with the plan and keep her discontent to herself. She agreed to the move and eventually her parents and six siblings would also move to the West Coast; if Frank wasn’t going to be around, at least she had the rest of her family near her for support.
The Sinatras traveled by train on the 20th Century Limited and the Super Chief from New York to Pasadena to begin their West Coast experience. There, Frank would continue to try to balance his career with his family life. While he loved his son, his daughter really lit up his life. He doted on her, taking her on canoe rides on the lake that abutted the family home, where he taught her to swim. They also had breakfast together every morning. In these early days, he loved being a father and actually had the time to devote to it. This time together set the stage for a close relationship between Frank and Nancy Jr. They always seemed to understand each other, and, more important, she always knew when to push and when to hold back. They were on the same wavelength, so to speak, and it would be that way until the day he died.
On June 15, 1944, Frank began work on his first MGM film under the new contract, in Anchors Aweigh, with Gene Kelly. The plot was simple: Kelly and Sinatra are sailors who get into mischief w
hile on leave. The movie was considered harmless fun when it was released, and it would prove to be a big success at the box office.
During production of Anchors Aweigh, Sinatra made waves with the studio’s PR department by speaking out against the production. He had become annoyed with the shooting schedule and told a reporter he was actually thinking of quitting films because “most pictures stink, and the people in them, too.” Jack Keller—who worked on the West Coast for Frank’s publicist, George Evans—did his best to put out the flames caused by Sinatra’s statement by writing an apology for Frank and then getting it published by a national wire service.
As was his usual custom with moviemaking, Frank wanted to have his way with Anchors Aweigh, which meant he wanted Sammy Cahn to work with Jule Styne on the film. However, the film’s producer, Joe Pasternak, and the studio didn’t want Cahn. After a war of words with Pasternak, Sinatra won. In the end, a grateful Cahn got the job and did extraordinary work on it, making Sinatra proud—and making him right, again.
Frank then clashed with producer Pasternak over the viewing of dailies. A “daily” is the industry’s term for film shot on a particular day, which is often viewed by the director, cameramen, makeup artists, and other crew members to determine how the movie is progressing. MGM had a strict policy that actors were not to see dailies. It was Pasternak’s experience that no actor ever liked what he saw in a daily and that such dissatisfaction only caused trouble on the set. However, when Sinatra was told by Pasternak that he would not be viewing his footage, he became upset; there were many arguments about the matter. Finally, Pasternak relented and promised Frank he would show him some of the more recent dailies in what he called “a private viewing.” However, when Sinatra showed up for the viewing with six pals, Pasternak became upset and refused to allow the group to see the footage. Frank quit the film. But then he returned a few days later. This type of mercurial behavior when reported by the media—and these stories were somehow always leaked to reporters—only served to make Sinatra appear to his public to be what, it could be argued, he really was: quite difficult.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes of Anchors Aweigh, Gene Kelly took the clumsy, inexperienced Frank Sinatra under his wing and worked diligently to transform him into a credible dancer. Sinatra did the best he could; however, as it turned out, it would be his eyes that betrayed him, not his feet. Those Sinatra baby blues registered clear uncertainty and with each step seemed to ask, What’s next? In fact, Gene Kelly joked to Frank that he “set dancing back twenty years.”
The movie was hard work for Sinatra, emotionally as well as physically. In fact, he lost four pounds during the first week of rigorous rehearsal, which he couldn’t afford to lose because he weighed only about 125 pounds. He wanted to make a good impression, and it frightened him that he was in a film that was perhaps beyond him. Thus he was impatient with Kelly and wanted to cut many of the dance sequences. However, Kelly sensed that Sinatra could get through it if he persevered; in fact, Gene Kelly was so devoid of ego, he actually tailored the routines so that Sinatra looked good, even if that meant he, Kelly, couldn’t show off as much as he might have wanted to. “He’s one of the reasons I became a star,” Sinatra would later say of his friend Gene Kelly.
* * *
On October 11, 1944, Frank Sinatra opened a three-week engagement at the Paramount Theatre. Youngsters started lining up for tickets at 4:30 a.m. By the time the thirty-six-hundred-seat theater opened at 8:30 (the first of Frank’s five shows a day would begin at noon) it was filled to capacity. The problem arose when audience members refused to leave the theater; they stayed through performance after performance. Outside, there were ten thousand people in line, six abreast. Another twenty thousand milled around Times Square, stopping traffic, trying to figure out what the commotion was about. Two hundred policemen were called from guard duty at the Columbus Day Parade, a few blocks away on Fifth Avenue. Those fans trying to get into the theater became boisterous and rowdy when the line didn’t move. A riot broke out. “The worst mob scene in New York since nylons went on sale,” joked one New York police officer.
By the time the melee was over, 421 police reserves, 70 patrolmen, 50 traffic cops, and 200 detectives had become involved. The ticket booth was destroyed, and nearby shop windows were broken. The press dubbed it “the Columbus Day Riot.”
“Most of his fans are plain, lonely girls from lower-middle-class homes,” noted E. J. Jahn Jr. of the New Yorker. “They are dazzled by the life Sinatra leads and wish they could share it. They insist that they love him, but they do not use the verb in its ordinary sense. As they apply it to him, it is synonymous with ‘worship.’ ”
Frank was getting fairly accustomed to this kind of circus developing whenever he made an appearance. Nothing surprised him anymore. He couldn’t go out without bodyguards, he could no longer enjoy a meal in a restaurant with friends, and when he went back to Hoboken to visit his parents, it was a major news event. “I think this is the way it’s going to be from now on,” he cautioned Nancy. “We’d better get used to it.”
However, George Evans was concerned that the success could be fleeting and that his core audience might grow out of their Sinatra-mania. He wanted Frank to focus on broadening his adult fan base. But it was incomprehensible to Frank that the teenagers who were presently lavishing such love and attention on him could ever lose interest.
After a recording session on December 19, 1944, in Hollywood, George Evans and his West Coast partner, Jack Keller, had a brief conversation about the future. Evans took off his spectacles and, while cleaning them, shook his head and said, “The kid won’t listen.”
“I think he’s about to get his heart broke,” Keller added.
“Yeah. This isn’t going to last forever,” Evans said. “Look at what’s happening to Rudy Vallée. He was as big as Frank a couple years ago, and now people are moving on from him already. [In fact, Vallée’s last hit song was 1943’s ‘As Time Goes By.’] This isn’t going to last for Frank. It’s just the way the business works.”
“Try telling him that,” Keller said.
“He doesn’t want to hear it,” Evans agreed.
There was one person close to Frank who did pay heed to George Evans’s concerns, and that was Nancy. In recent months, she and Frank had begun to argue vociferously about the money he was spending. Never one to be prudent when it came to finances even back when he didn’t have the money, the always generous Frank had begun buying clothing, household furnishings, and extravagant gifts for friends and family members. He also took the most lavish of vacations, sometimes with Nancy, sometimes without. Moreover, he made risky investments that promised unreasonably lucrative payoffs with no concern for the future when these ventures didn’t pan out.
It fell upon Nancy to be responsible for budgeting the household and professional finances. While she was amazed at how much money Frank was bringing in, she was even more astonished at how much was being spent—which was most of it. “You’re always worrying about the future,” Frank told her. “Live for today. Live for now. Not tomorrow.”
“There’s not gonna be a tomorrow,” Nancy warned her husband, “if we don’t start saving up for it.”
Part Three
BIG TIME
The Voice: 1945–46
In 1945 and 1946, in addition to making films at MGM, Frank Sinatra would record some of his most memorable songs. Much of the material recorded during this period would go on to be considered Sinatra classics, including “I Should Care,” “Put Your Dreams Away,” and “I Have But One Heart.” There is a very strong body of work from this time, but for many fans, the Oscar Hammerstein-Richard Rodgers song “If I Loved You” (from Carousel) is at the top of the list. On this one, Frank is at his vibrant, yearning best. He’d become known as a performer who made women swoon, and it was easy to forget what a talented singer he had evolved into until one listened to this stellar performance. All told, there would be twelve recording sessions in 1945 and fifteen
in 1946, producing a total of ninety songs, some of which would be compiled and released on a number of successful albums, like The Voice (his first 78 rpm album).
The Voice is considered by some popular-music historians to be the first “concept album.” No singer before Sinatra—not even Bing Crosby—seemed to comprehend the potential of an album as something more than just a collection of unrelated songs. Frank realized that the tunes could connect to one another and be sequenced in a way that would tell a complete emotional story, as the songs on The Voice did. He would actually sit down and plan an album song by song before recording it. It was important to him that no one else—neither producer nor arranger—have final say over the choice of songs that would be recorded. Sometimes songwriters such as Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn would offer suggestions, of course, but Frank had veto power.
Once in the studio, Frank always took his recording sessions seriously. Unlike many vocal artists, he was involved in some way in nearly every aspect of the session, from choosing the musicians to fine-tuning the arrangements. He had great appreciation for most music—jazz, classical, as well as pop—and understood it thoroughly, even if he couldn’t read it. It often comes as a surprise that Sinatra never learned to read music. In fact, the skill of reading sheet music eluded many successful composers and musicians. Irving Berlin, for instance, couldn’t read, and neither can Paul McCartney. Elton John was able to read music in his youth, but says he has long since forgotten. Luciano Pavarotti is another singer who couldn’t read. Obviously, it’s not always necessary. In Frank’s case, he was guided by his instincts. If the music didn’t sound right to him, it didn’t matter if it was technically correct. “I’m not the kind of guy who does a lot of brain work about why or how,” he once said. It had to feel right. Or as he would say, it had to “swing.”
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