Sinatra

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  A few months after their private ceremony in Florida, Barbara and Frank had an official Catholic ceremony at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.

  For more than a year, it would be smooth sailing for Frank where the annulment and remarriage were concerned. “Don’t even go dere,” he would tell Mickey Rudin whenever the subject would come up between them.

  Frank and Barbara continued their happy marriage, sharing what they wished and keeping to themselves what they viewed as confidential—that is, until October 9, 1979. That was the day Frank was photographed receiving the sacrament of Communion in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He was also pictured while praying after taking the host, hands clasped at his chin, eyes closed. He would not have been able to receive Communion unless his marriage to Nancy had been annulled and he’d remarried Barbara in the church. It didn’t take long for his family to start putting the pieces together, and the picture that was assembled gave them pause. “Nancy and Tina were beside themselves,” recalled one source. “They were pretty upset. This was really crossing a line.”

  Tina telephoned Frank and had it out with him. She felt the annulment had been done in a deceptive way. She believed it was very hurtful to her mother. And what did this mean in terms of his progeny? Were they now somehow illegitimate in the eyes of the law? And if so, how would it affect their inheritances? Besides the question of familial loyalty, millions of dollars were at stake, just as had been the case with the question of adopting Bobby Marx.

  Now that he’d been found out, Frank had no choice but to admit that yes, he’d gotten an annulment from Nancy, and yes, he had married Barbara not once but twice more—in Palm Beach and then again at St. Patrick’s—and no, his children had not been invited to either ceremony. Trying to calm Tina down, he told her that by annulling his marriage to her mother he didn’t mean to suggest that it had never existed. Tina shot back with, “Pop, what part of ‘an-nulment’ don’t you understand?”

  Sammy’s Fall from Grace

  Frank and Sammy Davis Jr.’s friendship had been strong for many years. In fact, they hadn’t had a rift since 1959. But then in the mid-1970s another conflict developed between them.

  Aging was not easy for any of the Rat Pack. When Frank turned fifty, he dealt with it by keeping company with Mia Farrow. When Sammy turned the same age in 1975, he found his own way of dealing with midlife crisis: He turned to cocaine. Later, he would admit that the mid-1970s would be nothing but a blur because of all the drugs and liquor. In a 1989 interview to promote his book Why Me?, he remembered that he was performing in Las Vegas when he ran into Frank’s good friend Jilly Rizzo backstage. “How’s Francis?” Sammy asked. “What the hell’s up? Why’s he avoiding me?”

  Jilly responded, “Well, Sam, the reason you ain’t heard from Frank is because he’s hacked off. He hears that you’re into that coke crap. Yous been friends for years, I know. But he told me, ‘If Sammy’s into drugs, I don’t want nuttin’ to do with him.’ ”

  Sammy was taken aback. Quickly recovering, he said, “Well, hey, screw him, then, Jilly. I’m a grown-ass man. I don’t need Frank to hold my hand. It’s not like the old days.”

  “Sure, Sam,” Jilly said. “I just thought you should know, ’s’all.”

  The two shook hands and parted company.

  Sammy would recall, “I was trying to act like a big shot with Jilly, but I was dying inside. I loved Frank. To know that he was pissed off at me was tough. I also knew that he probably sent Jilly to tell me. That’d be like Frank.

  “This was a hard time. Getting old in show business—it’s not easy,” Sammy continued. “You fall into certain traps trying to keep your youth, trying to be hip. I was doing coke, drinking, trying out Satanism, into porn. In fact, we used to rent out the Pussycat Theater in Hollywood, no shit, and go there to watch porno movies. I’d have all of Hollywood out there, had them picked up in limousines—Shirley MacLaine, Steve [Lawrence] and Eydie [Gormé], Lucille Ball—and we’d all sit in this theater and watch movies like Deep Throat. Can you imagine this? It was wild. But that was just good fun. I was into other shit that was destructive, like coke. Frank never did drugs,” Sammy allowed. “Frank’s drug was women. Safer but no less dangerous, I used to tell him.”

  In the next three years, Frank and Sammy only saw each other occasionally at cocktail parties, and even then it was just a curt hello and goodbye between them. “I missed my friend,” said Sammy. “But I’d just go home, do some more coke, and be fine. I’d said, ‘Yeah, well screw Sinatra if he can’t let me live my own life. At least I got cocaine.’ ”

  “As far as Frank was concerned,” Barbara Sinatra later recalled, “Sammy might as well have been dead.”

  At about the three-year mark, Sammy was performing at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, with Frank following him there with an engagement. Their wives, Altovise and Barbara, decided to arrange for a reunion dinner. “I didn’t want to go,” Sammy remembered. “But we were getting older. Years were going by. What a waste.”

  At dinner in the Caesars Palace dining room—which Frank had closed to the public for this reconciliation meal—the four slipped into a red leather booth. After pleasantries, as Sam recalled it, Frank tapped him on the shoulder and motioned him to another booth. They excused themselves for a private moment.

  “Charlie, how can you do it?” Frank wanted to know as soon as they sat down again.

  “Do what, Frank?” Sammy asked, trying to act innocent.

  “Sam, I am so disappointed in you,” Frank began, ignoring Sammy’s act. “What’s with this coke? Look at you. You look like shit.”

  “Hey . . .” Sammy began, protesting.

  “Sam, let me finish,” Frank continued, according to Sammy’s later recollection. “You’re breaking my heart. Can’t you see that? You know how hard it’s been for me not having you around? But watching you kill yourself is worse. You’ve always been a gasser [the best] in this business. Stop with the coke. End it now. Promise me.”

  “I . . . I . . .” Sammy was speechless.

  “You and I, we never lied to each other,” Frank said. “If you can look me in the eye right now and tell me you’ll never do this drug again, I’ll believe you. So look me in the eye, Sam. Tell me what I want to hear.”

  Sammy grabbed a cloth napkin from the table and wiped away tears. “I’ll give it up, Frank,” he said, looking at his friend squarely. “I’m done. No more coke. I promise.”

  Sammy Davis Jr. kept his promise.

  Trilogy

  Now in his sixties, Sinatra would be more active on the concert trail in the 1980s than many entertainers half his age. In January 1980 he began the year by performing at Caesars Palace. (His contract at Caesars would have him performing there throughout the coming decade, always to standing room only.) Following the Vegas engagement, he went to Brazil, where he had never before appeared. Four sold-out shows at the Rio Palace in Rio de Janeiro preceded a huge turnout of 175,000 people at the Macarena Stadium, a soccer field. When he returned to the States, Frank performed at another fund-raiser for Ronald Reagan, this one with Dean Martin at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. In March he began filming a movie, The First Deadly Sin, with Faye Dunaway.

  Despite his advancing age, his schedule never slowed down; for Frank, it would seem there was always more to do, more to experience. Throughout the year, he performed at benefits for hospitals, research centers, the Red Cross (in Monaco, for Grace Kelly), the University of Nevada, and St. Jude’s Ranch for Children. Later in the year, he would break a ninety-year record at Carnegie Hall when a two-week engagement there sold out in one day. When Liza Minnelli couldn’t perform at her December 1980 engagement at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, Frank happily stepped in to take her place.

  At the end of 1980, Frank Sinatra turned sixty-five years old; Barbara surprised him with a country-western-styled birthday party for 250 people.

  That same year, Frank had issued his first studio album release since 1973, a three-record package cal
led Trilogy that took a look at his past, present, and future through music. Disc one—Collectibles of the Early Years—included rerecordings of some Sinatra favorites, such as “The Song Is You” and “It Had to Be You,” arranged by Billy May. Disc two—Some Very Good Years—featured Sinatra on contemporary numbers such as Neil Diamond’s “Song Sung Blue” and the Beatles’ “Something.” Disc three—Reflections on the Future in Three Tenses—featured new material arranged by Gordon Jenkins. In all, this Sonny Burke production was a monumental musical endeavor that involved five hundred musicians.

  Trilogy is most noteworthy because it showed Frank still willing to do something different with his music and take chances with it. Whereas other artists his age were rerecording the same kinds of songs, Sinatra was marching ahead and trying new ideas, as he did on disc three. That third disc was critically regarded as a misfire, but a sincere one just the same—a try, at least, at something provocative and important. It was to Frank’s credit that he was still on the trail of new conquests. Trilogy went to number one on the charts and received six Grammy Award nominations. That the album was such a sensational sales success is a plus, of course, but what remains significant is its artistic intent.

  From the album came another of Frank Sinatra’s signature songs, the commercial “Theme from New York, New York,” arranged by Don Costa, on disc two. Originally from the Martin Scorsese box-office musical disaster New York, New York, starring Liza Minnelli, the song was a minor hit for Minnelli. Frank first began performing it in concert in 1978 as an opening number at Radio City Music Hall, and in months to come he would tailor the song to his own taste, transforming it into a more dramatic interpretation not only vocally but musically before finally recording it on September 19, 1979, with a superior brassy, big-band Don Costa arrangement.

  “Theme from New York, New York” was a huge hit for Sinatra. Combined with the success of Trilogy, it marked his biggest-selling bonanza in about a decade. The song became his closing number and was a guaranteed showstopper every time.

  Frank would follow Trilogy with another album in 1981, She Shot Me Down. By this time, his voice had taken on an almost completely different sound—huskier, older, sometimes richer, sometimes creaky, sometimes melodic, sometimes a tad off pitch. His impeccable phrasing and elocution shone through, however, and as a result, She Shot Me Down remains the definitive album—artistically and thematically—of Sinatra’s maturity. Certainly one reason for the album’s preeminence is that Gordon Jenkins turned out such marvelous arrangements for it. Sadly, this was “Gordy’s” last work with Sinatra, or with any artist, for he had already been diagnosed with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) and had lost the use of his tongue. Now, more than ever, the music spoke for him.

  Another reason for tears was that Frank Sinatra, who many critics felt should have given up recording long before, had turned out an album as deep, moving, and revelatory as any he had produced before, with such songs as “Hey Look, No Crying,” “Monday Morning Quarterback,” and especially, a medley of “The Gal That Got Away” and “It Never Entered My Mind.” Heard today, She Shot Me Down remains breathtaking in its depth of emotion. It reached number forty-two on the Billboard charts, which was disappointing to both Sinatra and his fans, given the album’s impact on those who did listen to it.

  Barbara Meets “the Boys”

  At the age of sixty-five, Frank Sinatra again began taking stock of his life and career. How would he be remembered? As one of the great voices of the twentieth century? A cultural icon? Friend of presidents? Civil rights and political activist? Philanthropist who’d raised millions for charities? Certainly each of those descriptions seemed a comfortable fit. However, Frank realized that one perception of him still endured after all of these years, and it was the one that galled him the most: “friend of the mob.”

  Of course, it seems obvious that if Frank had exercised more caution about his relationships with mobsters over the years, there wouldn’t have been anything to report in the media about them and his reputation wouldn’t have involved the underworld. However, the fact of the matter was that he did know his fair share of gangsters. He often explained that it was just part of the business he was in as an entertainer to socialize with them, since they controlled so many of the nightclubs in which he performed. Of course, not all entertainers were mixed up with mobsters, but Frank was, and this had been the case for decades. Not only did he get a kick out of such characters, but they treated him with respect, and he did the same.

  After he married Barbara, she got her own taste of the boys, albeit briefly. She and Frank were in New York and on their way to dinner when Jilly announced that some of “the fellas” wanted to meet her. Barbara wasn’t interested in meeting any gangsters and said no. Frank jumped in and told her that they just wanted to meet “the new Mrs. Sinatra,” telling her, “It’s a show of respect. They run a lot of the clubs I play in. Come on, Barbara. Be a sport.” Absolutely not, she said. The couple went to dinner, as planned. However, on the way out of the restaurant, Barbara saw Jilly at the bar with a gaggle of overweight guys, stereotypical mobster types in ill-fitting suits, some with diamond pinky rings. Frank motioned Barbara toward the bar. “For me?” he asked. “No, Frank. How many times . . .” But then when Frank gave her a sad look, she decided to relent. She walked over and, as Frank watched proudly, Jilly—with the biggest smile Barbara had ever seen on his round face—introduced her to his friends: “Dis one is . . . And dat one ova dere is . . . And dis one ova here is . . .”

  The men treated her as if she were royalty. Still, Barbara felt she’d been forced to do something she didn’t want to do. The severity of her expression didn’t change as she approached her husband. “Aw, come on now. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Frank asked, kissing her on the cheek. Her demeanor softened. “Okay, just this once,” she said, putting her head on his shoulder. “But you owe me one,” she told him as they walked away together. “I do,” Frank agreed, nodding. “I owe you one, my darling.”

  “Who Took That Shot?”

  Back in April 1976, Frank had appeared at the Westchester Premier Theater in Tarrytown, New York. He was paid $800,000 for the engagement, the most money he had ever received for singing in a venue of that size. It had been rumored, though, that the Mafia had financed the establishment, namely Carlo Gambino, head of the powerful, influential Gambino crime family in New York. The rumor was that Gambino had helped bankroll the theater to the tune of $100,000 on the understanding that Sinatra would be signed to perform there. If it was true, Sinatra said, it wasn’t his concern. As long as he was paid for his work, he didn’t care who was behind it.

  During his engagement at the Premier, a contingent of known gangsters—including Carlo Gambino, Greg DePalma, Jimmy Fratianno, Paul Castellano, Joseph Gambino, and Richard Fusco—came backstage on April 11, 1976, after a performance. True to form, Frank allowed himself to be photographed with them. His defenders might argue that he had no choice or that it would have been impolite to refuse to allow his picture to be taken with these fans, even if they were all Mafia kingpins, especially since mob chieftain Carlo Gambino was with his granddaughter, whose name was Phyllis Sinatra Gambino. But someone like Sinatra, who was surrounded by bodyguards, assistants, and others whose job it was to insulate him from the public when necessary, would most certainly be able to find a discreet way to avoid posing for a picture with a bunch of gangsters, especially given the persistent rumors about him.

  Unfortunately for Frank’s image, these pictures would be introduced into evidence in the summer of 1978 when certain individuals were accused of bankruptcy fraud in connection with the Westchester Premier Theater. Since the theater had generated $5.3 million during its operation, the question was, why was it bankrupt? If profits weren’t going back into the theater, the thinking was that the money was probably finding its way into the coffers of the mobsters who had financed the joint. A popular rumor was that Frank had somehow been involved in skimming those funds. />
  Frank was not subpoenaed to testify in the matter. However, the press made much of his connection to the theater and to Gambino and the rest of the men in the photograph. Others who did testify, such as Jimmy Fratianno, insisted that Frank had indeed been involved in raising money for the mob and in skimming profits from the Westchester Premier Theater. Since Fratianno was a mobster informant who had been granted immunity by the government for his testimony, he may not have been the most reliable witness. The case ended in a mistrial, with some of the principals later being tried separately and ending up in jail, and Sinatra’s image being further tarnished.