Frank_ The Voice Part 11

That afternoon, a gaggle of sailors on leave, inspired by the reports in the papers and more than a few Knickerbocker beers consumed in a Times Square bar, arrived in front of the Paramount with a bag of overripe tomatoes and began slinging them at the giant image of a standing Sinatra on the marquee. By the time they were through, the singer's face was streaming with red juice.

Backstage, Dolly was fielding reporters' questions. "He may be famous now, but he'll always be a baby to me," she told them, waiting till everybody had stopped writing before she began talking again. "And I always told him to be nice to people as he goes up the ladder, because they're the same people he'll pa.s.s coming down. So far," she said, looking around wryly, "he has followed my instructions."

Forty years later, a Long Island society girl named Mary Lou Watts, a special friend of Sinatra's since the Dorsey days, recalled the scene in his dressing room at the Paramount. "[It] was always jammed," she said, "especially when Frank's mother was there. She was a great big bossy lady and towered over her husband, who was about the size of a mushroom. He was as little as Frank, but that mother of his was huge and very domineering. Scare you to death."

Dolly had doubtless put on some extra padding since the days when she weighed ninety-odd pounds, but she still stood an inch under five feet zero. Her size was all in the eye of the beholder. Which didn't make her one bit less intimidating.

The Paramount engagement was both a first and a last. Ma.s.s hysteria like this had never existed-not since the Children's Crusade, the newspapers noted. The events of October 11, 1944, came to be known, collectively, as the Paramount Riot, or the Columbus Day Riot. Little did anyone know at the time that in fact a template was being set: the scene would virtually repeat itself five years later when Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis played the Paramount, then would recur at successive intervals of seven years (for Elvis) and eight years (for the Beatles). Ma.s.s culture was inventing itself as youth came into power; only the avatars would change-until the explosions of the late 1960s burst the culture into a million glittering fragments.

For Sinatra, that stand at the Paramount was a kind of culmination, the final explosive orgy of his cult of youth. His fame would continue to grow until the inevitable backlash set in, but its character would change: several factors, including the war, the movies, even the musicians' strike, combined to broaden his appeal to a more adult audience. Whatever his official bio said, the singer himself was rapidly approaching thirty.

When Columbia Records finally struck a deal with the American Federation of Musicians in November, Sinatra and Stordahl rushed to Liederkranz Hall, orchestra in tow, as eager as honeymooners. Over the next month, they literally made beautiful music together, recording no fewer than seventeen new sides (with the 78-rpm phonograph record still the state of the art, a song was literally one side of the disc). Thanks to two years of prep work on the radio and on V-Discs, the Sinatra-Stordahl records were of an unprecedented splendor, the team's great ballad style fully formed. Compared with Frank's last orchestral record, Manie Sacks's rerelease of the Harry James "All or Nothing At All," the Sinatra of the fall of 1944 was not a boy any longer but a man. The Voice had changed.

To listen to his first recording from those sessions, "If You Are But a Dream," is to hear a Sinatra who, even amid the swelling strings and lush horns and soupy lyrics, is no longer yearning but relating the sad knowledge of maturity. That patented catch in his voice, the one that drove the little girls wild, now has a world-weary edge to it. And the vocal instrument itself is deeper, with a slight rasp to its low notes.

It was Frank's great artistic achievement, always, to give the world his best self in his music. Yet sounding more mature was by no means a guarantee of mature behavior. On election night, a week before he began laying down the fresh masterpieces with Stordahl, Sinatra went out on the town with a group of pals, including Orson Welles, and, at Toots Shor's, got loaded in celebration of FDR's landslide victory over Thomas Dewey. On their return to the Waldorf, Frank and the boys decided to give it to Westbrook Pegler, who was also staying at the hotel. "Let's go down and see if he's as tough as he writes," Frank is said to have said. The crew trooped to the conservative columnist's room, and Frank banged on the door.

At this point accounts diverge.

Sinatra later claimed that Pegler wasn't there, and that he and his pals left quietly. But in a 1957 Look Look magazine profile of Sinatra by Bill Davidson, a man claiming to have been an aide to Pegler recalled, "Peg was inside, and he kept needling Sinatra through the door with things like, 'Are you that little Italian boy from Hoboken who sings on the radio?' Sinatra became so frustrated that he went back to his suite and busted up his own furniture, throwing a chair out of the window." magazine profile of Sinatra by Bill Davidson, a man claiming to have been an aide to Pegler recalled, "Peg was inside, and he kept needling Sinatra through the door with things like, 'Are you that little Italian boy from Hoboken who sings on the radio?' Sinatra became so frustrated that he went back to his suite and busted up his own furniture, throwing a chair out of the window."

Pegler reacted with outrage to the article, writing the editors of Look: Look: "I was in my room at the Waldorf-Astoria continuously from about 11 p.m. until rising time the next morning. No person knocked on my door during that time, and your statement that I was inside and the implication that I was afraid to open the door and confront a drunkard who had come to see how 'tough' I might be is false, and no 'aide' of mine ever made that statement to your reporter." "I was in my room at the Waldorf-Astoria continuously from about 11 p.m. until rising time the next morning. No person knocked on my door during that time, and your statement that I was inside and the implication that I was afraid to open the door and confront a drunkard who had come to see how 'tough' I might be is false, and no 'aide' of mine ever made that statement to your reporter."

Look stood by its story. stood by its story.

Frank never went mano a mano with Westbrook Pegler, but if he'd wanted a fight with the columnist, he got one. In the aftermath of the non-incident at the Waldorf, Pegler ramped up his anti-Sinatra campaign, making it political as well as personal. Frank's friends.h.i.+p with the arch-liberal and Hearst-kingdom Antichrist (see Citizen Kane Citizen Kane) Welles was sheer serendipity. "In the company of Orson Welles and others," Pegler wrote, "Sinatra toured the circuit of expensive New York saloons known as the milk route and spent some time at the political headquarters of Sidney Hillman, which were the Communist headquarters too. He got shrieking drunk and kicked up such a row in the Waldorf that a house policeman was sent up to subdue him, and did."

The mention of the radical, Lithuanian-born Hillman, chair of the CIO's political action committee, was a red flag for the Hearst papers' Republican readers: Sinatra was not only a Commie but a Jew-lover to boot. The singer retaliated by having Pegler turned away at one of his performances at the Wedgwood Room, and the columnist fired back by writing about Sinatra's 1938 Bergen County morals arrest.

Alarmed at the escalation of hostilities, George Evans immediately picked up the phone and tried to make nice with Pegler. The publicist reminded the columnist that Frank had been young and foolish back in 1938, and that the charges had been dropped in any case. Evans asked Pegler, as nicely as he possibly could, to print a retraction. What he got instead (Evans, Pegler was sure, was a Jew who had changed his name; he was having it looked into) was this: "No indictment was found, and Sinatra was discharged. The incident would indicate a certain precocity, however, for it will be observed that the facts of the case never were tried and that this experience of the youth so soon to become the idol of American girlhood was by no means common to decent young American males, however poor."

Frank Sinatra had put a stick into a bee's nest and given it a good hard stir. Further results were to follow.

In December, Frank flew back to the Coast, reading all the way. He smiled when he stepped out of the s.h.i.+ny-skinned DC-3 into the bright kerosene-tinged air. The East had been fun and involving and politically pa.s.sionate, but the East was serious serious. It was playtime again.

Back to the beautiful house by the lake, with its merrily splas.h.i.+ng fountain on the terra-cotta-tiled front terrace and its big pots of blazing flowers and its sweet California smells. His well-spoken black butler, John, greeted him at the door, then came both Nancys, the little girl skipping with glee and leaping into his arms, his wife trailing behind and giving him that look.

He freed an arm and embraced both at the same time, but even after he had kissed Big Nancy's soft and not entirely yielding lips, she was still training the lie detector on him.

He gave her a look back. It was wonderful to see her too.

She smiled and shook her head at him. She always was a sucker for his nonsense.

A few days later, at the CBS recording studio in Hollywood, he sang the slightly weary-sounding "(I Got a Woman Crazy for Me) She's Funny That Way," which contained the line: Though she'd love to work and slave for me every day, She'd be so much better off if I went away.

He thought of her as he sang that-thought of Nancy even as he smiled at the gorgeous Marilyn Maxwell in her gorgeous sweater, staring steadily at him through the soundproof gla.s.s.

There was another song he'd recently sung in Anchors Aweigh Anchors Aweigh, its emotionally didactic but all too telling lyric custom-written for him by his attentive hanger-on Sammy Cahn: I fall in love too easily, I fall in love too fast.

They had moved all their furniture from the East and they had bought more, but still the new house felt empty. The big rooms echoed. Nancy was doing her very best to make it nice with chintz curtains and pillows and flowers, but still the rooms echoed. The living room was enormous, with long white wooden beams across the ceiling, like a rec hall at a Catskills resort. It gave Frank an idea. They would give the new place a proper housewarming, with a New Year's Eve party. And not just any party-a show! He called his studio musicians; he called Sammy Cahn and told him to start writing special lyrics. He phoned the MGM properties department and ordered them to bring over some bolts of cloth that could be hung at the front of the room as stage curtains. (Bemused at Sinatra's curt directive, the head of the properties department kicked the request straight up the line to Mayer-who, fortuitously, had just received his invitation. Of course! Nothing's too good for our boy! Of course! Nothing's too good for our boy!) Dozens of folding chairs were rented; flowers were bought, and (of course) cases and cases of champagne. As always, no expense was spared. (Dizzying sums of money were coming in every week, and, as Nancy knew all too well, equally dizzying sums were going out. They had almost nothing in the bank.) The big night was a Sunday, December 31, 1944. The war was winding down, but not easily. In the Pacific, Leyte had been secured, and the terrible fight for the islands was on. In France and Belgium, during the coldest winter in decades, the Battle of the Bulge raged; thousands of untested infantrymen, pressed into service to replace the dead and the wounded, died in the snow under withering German artillery fire. In Frank Sinatra's Toluca Lake living room, as Gene Kelly and Judy Garland and Phil Silvers and Sammy Cahn stood by, holding sheet music and grinning expectantly (Sammy a bit more expectantly than anyone else), Sinatra-wearing a tuxedo like the rest of the men-stepped to the microphone. He s.h.i.+elded his eyes from the light and peered out at the partygoers; he glanced a little nervously at his own sheet music and then at Cahn. Frank shook his head. Sam had outdone himself this time.

Oh boy, had he outdone himself.

A snickering from the crowded room.

Then Sammy cued the piano player, and Sinatra sang the special lyrics to the very familiar tune, a love song now transformed (as the stellar background singers harmonized behind him) into a satirical romp about the star who left the little studio and went to the big one, and the nice studio boss who had been smart enough-or was that gullible enough?-to sign him.

The lyrics were funny, biting, double-edged. The room was roaring with laughter. And as Mayer's long-suffering (but soon to be replaced) wife, Margaret, leaned over and whispered in her husband's ear that it was a joke, a funny song, the mogul gave a faint, thin-lipped smile.

Sinatra sings the National Anthem with Lower East Side kids at a UN Day ceremony, 1950. Frank's commitment to tolerance was genuine and profound. (photo credit 15.2) (photo credit 15.2)

16.

Sinatra and Axel Stordahl, CBS radio broadcast, 1940s. Frank couldn't read a note of music but knew precisely what he wanted at all times. (photo credit 16.1) (photo credit 16.1) Frank began 1945 by ending his contract for Lucky Strike's Your Hit Parade Your Hit Parade. The decision wasn't his. The show's producer, George Was.h.i.+ngton Hill-the flinty-eyed old tobacco peddler whose grand achievement in life had been the marketing of cigarettes to women-had wiped his hands of Sinatra when the troublesome singer had the temerity not only to ask for a raise but also to demand the show be moved to the West Coast. In Frank's place, Hill hired the opera singer Lawrence Tibbett-at $700 a week more than Sinatra had been earning. Still: no Mediterranean blood; much less trouble.

Sinatra too knew how to wipe his hands of someone. The big drawback of Your Hit Parade Your Hit Parade had been that he was only the show's co-star; the chief benefit had been to keep his voice and his name out there. He had plenty of other ways to do that, including his other radio show, had been that he was only the show's co-star; the chief benefit had been to keep his voice and his name out there. He had plenty of other ways to do that, including his other radio show, Frank Sinatra in Person Frank Sinatra in Person, which had now switched sponsors from Vimms to Max Factor and was based in Los Angeles.

Then, thank G.o.d, there were records again-with musicians. Sinatra spent much of the following year on a white-hot streak of recording for Columbia: an average of one session per month in Hollywood and New York, forty sides in all. The songs ranged from the timelessly sublime ("Where or When," "If I Loved You," "These Foolish Things," "You Go to My Head," "Why Shouldn't I?") to the schmaltzy and quickly dated ("Full Moon and Empty Arms," "Homesick, That's All," "The Moon Was Yellow") to the merely odd ("Jesus Is a Rock in a Weary Land," "My Shawl," "Old School Teacher"). Crosby, too, had experimented with offbeat material, Latin and gospel numbers. It was safe: the golden age of American popular songwriting was still alive. The vein, Frank believed, would never run out.

In August he cut-for the third time in a year!-a somewhat less than golden number, one whose lyrics, legend had it, Phil Silvers had dashed off in twenty minutes at a party and presented to Sinatra as a gift for Little Nancy's fourth birthday: "Nancy (with the Laughing Face)."

If I don't see her each day I miss her, Gee, what a thrill each time I kiss her.

When the legend becomes fact, print the legend. In point of fact, Silvers did dash off just such a lyric at a party, and Jimmy Van Heusen-a great one for sitting down at the piano at parties-came up with a winsome tune to go along with it. But the song was originally t.i.tled "Bessie (with the Laughing Face)," in honor of Johnny Burke's wife, whom Silvers had reduced to giggles with one of his patented one-liners. Upon further consideration, though, Silvers and Van Heusen (who always had a sharp eye for ingratiating himself with the friend he would come to call the Monster) weighed the benefits of pleasing Bessie Burke against those of pleasing Frank Sinatra and wisely opted for the latter. The result was, even if saccharine, a big hit for Sinatra and a very nice birthday present for the little girl, to whom Chester, with superbly politic flair, a.s.signed his songwriter royalties. (with the Laughing Face)," in honor of Johnny Burke's wife, whom Silvers had reduced to giggles with one of his patented one-liners. Upon further consideration, though, Silvers and Van Heusen (who always had a sharp eye for ingratiating himself with the friend he would come to call the Monster) weighed the benefits of pleasing Bessie Burke against those of pleasing Frank Sinatra and wisely opted for the latter. The result was, even if saccharine, a big hit for Sinatra and a very nice birthday present for the little girl, to whom Chester, with superbly politic flair, a.s.signed his songwriter royalties.

Some wonder why Frank recorded this number three times in the s.p.a.ce of a year. He may have done it out of extreme love for his daughter and wife (for, after all, the song could be construed both paternally and amorously); he may have been trying to perfect it; or there might have been another reason. On that hot August afternoon in Hollywood, Sinatra might have been recording the song as an act of atonement, for he was behaving very badly that year and things were not going at all well at home.

He was in love. In fact, he was always in love. He could barely sing a song without feeling that giddy feeling for one girl or another. (In truth, the feeling itself counted far more than the girl.) This time, though, it was pretty serious. Sinatra had known Marilyn Maxwell since 1939, when he was with Harry James and she was an eighteen-year-old singer (alongside Perry Como) with the bandleader Ted Weems, using her real first name, Marvel. She and Frank ran into each other all over the map as their respective bands crisscrossed the country; she was one of the first people to advise him to go out on his own.

As for her given name, it was corny, but only slightly. She was a marvel: a stunning, corn-fed Iowa girl, bottle blond, with a body to kill for, a real brain in her head, and a truly sweet disposition. Marilyn was nice nice, and that was what made it so hard when she and Frank reconnected at Metro (where she had just wrapped Lost in a Harem Lost in a Harem, with Abbott and Costello). In Hollywood he picked up and threw away girls like Kleenex, and this one simply wasn't disposable, something about her genuineness got him where he lived.

At 1051 Valley Spring Lane, where various Barbato relatives were trooping in and out at all hours of the day, little romantic was happening. Nancy's sister Tina was still in residence, answering fan mail, and now the other sisters and their families had moved west, too, as had Mike and Jennie Barbato, who were in the process of building a house in Glendale. Somebody was always around, having a meal, a cup of coffee. It was all-Barbato, all the time, and Frank had had it. His wife had company, fine; but he had no wife. Between recording and seeing his agents and taking meetings at the studio and going out on the town, he barely appeared at the house. When he did, it was to stalk in at four or five or six in the morning, sleep till 1:00 p.m., have his breakfast served by the maid, then stalk out again. On the rare occasions when he and Nancy did have an extended conversation, it was either about his business (to which she paid close attention) or about her family (to which he objected strenuously). It seemed they were fighting all the time these days.

The h.e.l.l of it was that she was still in love with him. She knew knew him: to her, he was still the boy with the ukulele who had courted her down the sh.o.r.e so long ago. Every once in a while, when the clouds lifted for a second and he smiled, she could see that boy. She knew about the other women, and she hated it, but what could she do? She had asked Frank to be discreet, but now they were in Hollywood, capital of indiscretion, where the night and the day had a thousand eyes. He was so cold lately: she knew exactly what was going on. him: to her, he was still the boy with the ukulele who had courted her down the sh.o.r.e so long ago. Every once in a while, when the clouds lifted for a second and he smiled, she could see that boy. She knew about the other women, and she hated it, but what could she do? She had asked Frank to be discreet, but now they were in Hollywood, capital of indiscretion, where the night and the day had a thousand eyes. He was so cold lately: she knew exactly what was going on.

But what could she do about it?

It went without saying that when Frank went out, he went out without her. Once he left the house, he never wanted for company. Sanicola and Silvani were with him at all times, to fend off the riffraff; and he could always summon the posse-Cahn, Stordahl, Styne, Silvers, Chester. Other stars might create a stir when they walked into a joint, but no one else walked in with such a retinue. One blossom-heavy night in May 1945, Sinatra and company stopped by Preston Sturges's restaurant, the Players, on Sunset across from the Garden of Allah. There, in a banquette near the front door, sat a man Frank genuinely idolized, Humphrey Bogart, with his beautiful young bride, Betty Bacall.

Sinatra took immediate notice of Bacall: Bogart's fourth wife was just twenty, with lazily insinuating feline eyes, voluptuous lips, and perfect skin. She smiled at Sinatra, he smiled back at her, and Bogart took it all in. He was jealous-what man wouldn't be?-but he also wore an air of carefully maintained irony. He was a world-weary forty-five years old, with a rapidly receding hairline, bags under his eyes, and a perpetual cigarette between nicotine-stained fingers. Humphrey Bogart looked at Frank Sinatra and, smiling that wolfish smile, said, "They tell me you have a voice that makes girls faint. Make me faint."

Frank grinned. The world's toughest tough guy was giving him the full treatment. He accepted the compliment. "I'm taking the week off," he told Bogart.

Bogart liked his sand, asked him to sit down for a minute and have a drink.

But there were other nights when Sinatra was out with Marilyn-or, since she was, after all, married (for whatever that was worth in Hollywood), any one of a dozen other girls, at Ciro's, the Trocadero, Mocambo-and Hedda and Louella and their colleagues had to write something something. "What blazing new swoon crooner has been seen night clubbing with a different starlet every night?" ran one blind item. Another: "Wonder if the wonder boy of hit records tells his wife where he goes after dark."

In a small town, a company town, Wonder Boy's wife was all too aware, and it was killing her inside, but what could she do?

She did her best. In a land of extreme, overbearing beauty, Nancy Barbato Sinatra of Jersey City was mousy at worst, merely lovely at best. She did her best. She had more work done on her teeth, and, as much as she hated spending all that money (she could never forget the days when she'd slaved as a secretary at American Type Founders in Elizabeth), Nancy bought some Jean Louis gowns for those rare occasions when he took her out. She tried to look as good as she possibly could, but deep down she knew she was Jersey City and always would be. She was both ashamed of it and proud. She took care of her babies, she talked for hours with her mother and sisters, and-having taken the driving lessons but still unwilling to scratch the new Cadillac convertible-she tooled around town doing errands in the other new car he'd bought her, a big Chrysler station wagon. She was quite a sight in it. Pet.i.te as she was (a little taller than Dolly, but not much), Nancy could barely see over the steering wheel without sitting on a pillow.

She also took care of his business. In a handwritten letter to Manie Sacks, undated, on heavy white stationery with "FRANK SINATRA" embossed in blue across the top, she expressed concern for the record executive's health, noted that she was returning (for unexplained reasons) a check of his, pa.s.sed along household news about the children's health and schooling (oddly, strikingly, referring to Frankie as Francis Emanuel1), and then came to the point. Frank was beginning a New York theater stand (probably the Paramount), and she asked Manie's help in seeing that he got his rest. "I am depending on you to watch him," she wrote, "for you know how Frank likes to make the spots...and stay out late talking."

It would take a heart of stone not to melt. I am depending on you to watch him. Frank likes to make the spots and stay out late talking I am depending on you to watch him. Frank likes to make the spots and stay out late talking. Talking. Poor Nancy! Poor Manie!

Frank Sinatra didn't have a heart of stone, but rather, one that was divided into a million chambers. He knew all too well how his wife felt, yet he could not change. Nancy was going thirty miles an hour; Frank was moving at the speed of sound. Even while he slept, his mind churned, calculating the possibilities: Metro. Columbia. Radio. Theater. Marilyn. Lana. Betty. Jean. Jane.

The possibilities were infinite, and he never stopped. He darted back and forth between the two coasts like a hummingbird. In February he reported, yet again, to his draft board in Jersey City, playing out the unfunny comedy a little further, getting recla.s.sified yet again, to 2-A, which meant he was not only physically unfit to serve but also employed in an occupation "necessary to the national health, safety, and interest." IS CROONING ESSENTIAL? one headline asked. And then, on March 5, the draft board announced it had all been a mistake, that 4-F was the real cla.s.sification. The headlines and editorials fulminated some more...but Sinatra was too fast for them. On March 6, he was back in the studio in Hollywood, recording four more numbers, including a Norman Rockwell poster of a tune Gordon Jenkins called "Homesick, That's All": I miss the times I had to set the table, I miss the rolls my mother made when she was able.

Sinatra gave the song his tenderest reading, pitching it shamelessly both to the audience that hated him most, the millions of men who were still far from home, and to the audience that adored him: the women who kept the home fires burning. Nancy, of course, heard it, too.

But she wouldn't get to see him: the moment he finished the session, he turned on a dime and headed right back east. There was a Western Union telegram, dated March 8, 1945, from Manie: MR. FRANK SINATRA, 1051 VALLEY SPRING LANE, NORTH HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA. JUST READ IN WINCh.e.l.l'S COLUMN THAT YOU AND COLUMBIA RECORD EXECUTIVES ON THE OUTS. WHAT IS IT ABOUT? THINK GOOD IDEA TO WIRE WINCh.e.l.l TELLING HIM THAT SOMEONE IS GIVING HIM WRONG INFORMATION. SEE YOU MONDAY. LOVE AND KISSES, MANIE.

But the next day, by return wire, Frank jokingly affirmed Winch.e.l.l's position, telling Manie to look out for a punch in the nose when he got back to town. He, too, signed with love and kisses.

Frank's recording was going beautifully, the recording business, less so. Columbia was crimping him on studio charges, charging him for copying, arrangements, Axel's conducting fees. Crimping him, Sinatra!

Still, there is no evidence that he gave Sacks anything but a hug when they met in New York: Sinatra never was one for personal confrontation. Besides, even where Manie was concerned, Frank had someplace else to be-a radio show, a dinner at Toots's, a speaking engagement at the World Youth rally at Carnegie Hall. He was a blur of motion. Making the spots. Staying out late. Talking.

Strangely enough, one of the glamour girls Sinatra had claimed he could live without-in Phil Silvers's lyric at least-had started spending time at 1051 Valley Spring Lane, mostly when the man of the house wasn't there. Lana Turner had struck up a conversation with Nancy at the New Year's Eve party, and the odd couple had hit it off: the pet.i.te blonde from Idaho with the checkered past and the even more pet.i.te brunette from Jersey City with the practical turn of mind and an artist's hand in the kitchen. They had laughed together that night, at Lana's lightly scathing comment about the anatomical shortcomings of one of the handsomest men there. The remark let Nancy breathe easier about her own shortcomings, her new hometown's unrelenting tyranny of beauty.

Lana, of course, was almost impossibly beautiful, but something in her brown eyes spoke of pain and a restless sadness. Hollywood was nothing but a boiler factory as far as she was concerned, her privileged place in it notwithstanding. The men were all fairies or hounds, sometimes both. (Not Frank, of course. Nancy had a real man-maybe 'cause he didn't look like all those cookie-cutter hunks.) And the women were all out to slit each other's throats.

That was why Lana liked Nancy: she was someone she could really talk to. She played with a strand of Nancy's hair. And Lana loved the way she looked, too.

Nancy smiled, accepting the compliment. Finally she felt a little less lonely. And she was delighted to tell her family and her friends back in Jersey: At last she had a real friend in Hollywood, and they wouldn't believe who it was. Lana Turner! Lana Turner!

Inconceivably-he had been president since Frank was seventeen-FDR died in April. Frank, in New York, went to light a candle at St. Patrick's Cathedral, then drove up to Hyde Park for a memorial service. He felt deeply sad, as though he had lost a beloved uncle; he felt sorrow with the rest of the country. You couldn't avoid it; it was in the air like the weather. But somehow the sadness didn't get Frank where he lived. He was young, in the vibrant prime of life; Roosevelt had been an old, sick man.

Still, Frank had shaken his hand, looked in his eyes...Death was such a strange thing: it gave him the creeps. Best not to think about it.

Less than a month later, with the nation still in mourning, the war in Europe was over, and grief turned to joy. It would still be months before the hundreds of thousands of troops came home, and George Evans and Jack Keller agreed that the time had come at last for Sinatra to go over and entertain them. It would quell the jingoistic newspapermen-not to mention the gossip columnists.

Frank's daughter Nancy has written that her father was unable to travel overseas before the end of the war because the FBI, suspicious of his left-wing activities, prevented him from getting a visa. In fact, J. Edgar Hoover didn't get really interested in Sinatra until after the war, and when he did, it wasn't just because of the singer's liberal sympathies.

The truth is that Sinatra hadn't gone abroad during the war because he'd been scared.

As he had every right to be. He read the papers. He had seen Stars and Stripes Stars and Stripes, even after Evans and Keller tried to keep it away from him. He had seen the tomatoes speckling his picture on the Paramount marquee, had heard the catcalls in the street, had felt it when he did USO shows Stateside: not all of the servicemen hated him (he could win them over when he was in a room or a theater with them)-but an awful lot did. He was the ultimate cuckolder: He might not have actually screwed their women (still, who knew? rumor had it the guy really got around), but he was in their heads. Their wives and girlfriends wanted him, and that was bad enough.

For the troops overseas, it was much worse. Missing home and missing nooky most of all, they were convinced their women were stepping out on them-and in many instances, of course, they were right. Sinatra the draft dodger was the lightning rod for their insecurity. When Evans and Keller floated the idea of a post V-E Day Sinatra tour, the Hollywood Victory Committee, the group of Screen Actors Guild worthies who ran the Canteen, weighed right in. "There might be some unpleasantness," they said. Frank had heard rumors that the troops would throw eggs at him, maybe worse...These guys had guns guns, for G.o.d's sake.

Evans and Keller had a brilliant idea.

They'd seen Phil Silvers doing shtick with Sinatra at the Hollywood Canteen: making fun of Frank's skinniness, pinching his cheeks and pulling his ears, teaching him to sing. This last bit was particularly funny-the droopy-eyed comedian would go on and on about how Sinatra's tones weren't round enough, would play with his mouth to get his lips to form just the right shape...and no matter what Sinatra did, it was wrong. Silvers, who had come up through baggy-pants vaudeville, was brilliant, and the bit was hilarious.

Evans called Phil and asked him to oversee Sinatra's USO tour, introduce him at every stop. Do the same stuff he did with him at the Canteen. Make plenty of fun of him. Push him around a little. Silvers would be doing everything those GIs really wanted to do to him, and he'd be getting them on Frank's side in the process.

It worked like a charm. In June, Sinatra and Silvers flew to Casablanca on an Army C-47, along with the pianist Saul Chaplin, the actress and singer Fay McKenzie, and the dancer Betty Yeaton. At every dusty camp they played, Silvers slapped Sinatra's cheeks, and the soldiers roared. He ordered him offstage-"Go away, boy, you bother me. The Blood Bank's down the street"-and they guffawed. By the time the comedian was done with Frank, the GIs were begging to hear him sing. Not an egg was thrown. "The singer kidded himself throughout the program and had the audience on his side all the way," the New York Times New York Times reported. The troupe played bases in North Africa, then flew to Rome, where the singer had an audience with Pope Pius XII, who didn't know who Sinatra was ("Are you a tenor, my son? Which operas do you sing?"), though he had heard of Crosby. They played Rome and Caserta and Foggia and Venice. And then they flew home. They had done seventeen shows in ten days, entertained ninety-seven thousand servicemen and servicewomen. reported. The troupe played bases in North Africa, then flew to Rome, where the singer had an audience with Pope Pius XII, who didn't know who Sinatra was ("Are you a tenor, my son? Which operas do you sing?"), though he had heard of Crosby. They played Rome and Caserta and Foggia and Venice. And then they flew home. They had done seventeen shows in ten days, entertained ninety-seven thousand servicemen and servicewomen.

The minute Sinatra stepped off the plane at La Guardia, he stuck his foot in his mouth. The USO and Army Special Services were incompetent, he told the crowd of reporters. "Shoemakers in uniform run the entertainment division," he said. "Most of them had no experience in show business. They didn't know what time it was."

What was his problem? Maybe the lighting cues had been off, or a few microphones hadn't worked. Maybe the dressing rooms had been insufficient; maybe he was still grouchy about the pope. (Or just the dirt. It couldn't have been easy for a true obsessive-compulsive, a man who was in the habit of showering and changing his underwear several times a day, to deal with military amenities in dirt-poor North Africa and Italy.) He later defended himself by saying that GIs had asked him to complain about how poorly organized and presented most of the shows were. There was plenty to gripe about in a theater of war, even after the big show was over. But Sinatra, who could turn irritable if the wind s.h.i.+fted, was the wrong person to do the griping. His momentarily silenced critics got right back into gear. "Mice make women faint too," sneered the Stars and Stripes Stars and Stripes. "He is doing an injustice to a group of people who are for the most part talented, hardworking, and sincere. There have been, of course, the usual prima donnas who have flown over, had their pictures taken with GIs, and got the h.e.l.l home." And dependable Lee Mortimer jumped on the bandwagon, calling Sinatra's post V-E Day mini-tour a "joy ride," comparing him unfavorably to "aging, ailing men like Joe E. Brown and Al Jolson [who] subjected themselves to enemy action, jungle disease, and the dangers of traveling through hostile skies from the beginning of the war."

George Evans took it all with apparent calm. Even though his heedless client had innumerable ways of ratcheting up the publicist's blood pressure, even though Sinatra often seemed to work overtime at being his own worst enemy, the Sinatra machine looked unstoppable.

In mid-July, Anchors Aweigh Anchors Aweigh came out, and it was a huge hit, with the critics and at the box office. Even the came out, and it was a huge hit, with the critics and at the box office. Even the Times Times's reliably crusty Bosley Crowther waxed grudgingly enthusiastic (after first giving well-deserved raves to Gene Kelly, "the Apollonian marvel of the piece"): "But bashful Frankie is a large-sized contributor to the general fun and youthful charm of the show."

The show made big money, and Louis B. Mayer's thin smile grew broader. He had been right about that boy.

Meanwhile, Evans and Keller plunged ahead with a new campaign. If the public was going to hear a lot of nonsense about the starlets Frankie was stepping out with in Hollywood and the ungracious remarks he persisted in making about worthy organizations like Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the U.S. Army, the public was also going to see another side of him: Frank Sinatra was going to be a humanitarian.

It wasn't phony. He was a humanitarian at heart. (Or at least in one of the many chambers of his heart.) He hated intolerance-first, of course, because it had smacked him personally in the face many times, but also because it attacked people he genuinely loved. Hadn't Mrs. Golden clasped him to her substantial breast and cooed to him in Yiddish? Didn't he love Manie like a brother? A couple of years earlier, when intimations of the Holocaust first started to emerge, Frank had had dozens of medals made up with the cross of Saint Christopher on one side and the Star of David on the other (a daring gesture in those days). He had given them out left and right.

And where Negroes were concerned, anyone who was half a musician couldn't even begin to be prejudiced. Sinatra had encountered far too many black geniuses to feel anything but pity and contempt for the thickheaded smugness of racist America. He had kissed Billie Holiday the way she ought to be kissed one night outside a Los Angeles club; he had dreamed of doing much more. He would always have a thing for black women, though, in truth, this, like everything else about him, was complicated: by his misogyny, his own feelings of inferiority.

His feelings of compa.s.sion were purely emotional. But when he talked about them with George Evans, the publicist realized Frank was being honest. And those feelings were golden. Evans repped some of the greatest entertainers in the business, yet none had Sinatra's capacity to become a great American American. Evans talked about it with Keller, and they agreed on a strategy: they would flood out the bad with the good. They sent their boy out to thirty speaking engagements in 1945, many of them at high schools in the throes of racial tension. In the fall, Frank went to Benjamin Franklin H.S. in Italian East Harlem, where there had been fistfights among the integrated student body. The future jazz giant Sonny Rollins, then a soph.o.m.ore, recalled many years later, "Sinatra came down there and sang in our auditorium...after that things got better, and the rioting stopped."

He had less luck in early November in Gary, Indiana, where a thousand white students at Froebel High had walked out of school, smas.h.i.+ng windows with bricks, after a new princ.i.p.al declared the school's 270 black students free to take cla.s.ses, play in the orchestra, and share the swimming pool with everyone else. Sinatra, with Evans and Keller along for support, walked straight into a powder keg: a tough steel town where the white students' fathers feared that blacks had come to take away their jobs. The kids were their parents' outriders in hate; the whole city was united in toxic fury.

But of the five thousand Garyites who came to hear Sinatra sing-and speak afterward-at the city's Memorial Auditorium, four thousand were women and girls. (He wore a bright blue bow tie-it went so well with his eyes-and a chrysanthemum presented to him by one of the students.) And while the overwhelmingly female audience a.s.sured he would get a sympathetic hearing, the event made no guarantee of strides toward racial tolerance in Gary, Indiana. Years afterward, Jack Keller offered a stirring version of the scene: George and I were standing in the wings, and although we had told Frank what to say, we were skeptical and pretty d.a.m.ned frightened as to what might happen. Frank walked out onstage and stood dead center while all these rough, tough steel workers and their kids started catcalling and whistling and stamping their feet. Frank folded his arms, looked right down at them, and stared for a full two minutes, until there was a dead silence in the room. Evans and I were nervous wrecks wondering what in h.e.l.l he was going to do.Without smiling, Frank...finally unfolded his arms and moved to the microphone. "I can lick any son of a b.i.t.c.h in this joint," he said. Pandemonium broke loose as the kids cheered him. They thought he was right down their street, and from then on, it was terrific.

According to Keller, Sinatra continued: "I implore you to return to school. This is a bad deal, kids. It's not good for you and it's not good for the city of Gary, which has done so much to help with the war for freedom the world over."Believe me, I know something about the business of racial intolerance. At eleven I was called a 'dirty guinea' back home in New Jersey. We've all done it. We've all used the words 'n.i.g.g.e.r' or 'kike' or 'mick' or 'Polack' or 'dago.' Cut it out, kids. Go back to school. You've got to go back because you don't want to be ashamed of your student body, your city, your country."

A contemporary newspaper account, under the headline GARY HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS COOL ON SINATRA'S APPEAL, gave a more tempered view of the occasion. "The audience came to hear Sinatra sing and stayed to listen to what he had to say about the high school strike," reported Illinois's Edwardsville Intelligencer Edwardsville Intelligencer. "But at the soda fountain where some of the bobby sockers gathered after the meeting there was doubt that Sinatra's appeal had worked. The strike leaders had not attended the meeting, and few of the striking students who were there stayed even throughout the program."

This is somewhat at odds with the picture of the tough little singer facing down a roomful of hostile steelworkers. Maybe (it's a great story) Frank did offer to lick any son of a b.i.t.c.h in the joint; maybe the quote was a product of Keller's fertile imagination.2 Nevertheless, Sinatra (perhaps emboldened by the warmer than expected response of the GIs in North Africa and Italy) must be given points for going to Gary at all. And in the weeks that followed-even though the Froebel strike continued after he left-he racked up even more points, collecting an honorary scroll from the Bureau of Intercultural Education in New York (Eleanor Roosevelt, with whom Frank would form a warm bond, was the keynote speaker); the Philadelphia Golden Slipper Square Club's annual unity award; the Newspaper Guild's Page One Award; a citation for "outstanding efforts and contribution to the cause of religious tolerance and unity among Americans" from the National Conference of Christians and Jews; et cetera, et cetera. Nevertheless, Sinatra (perhaps emboldened by the warmer than expected response of the GIs in North Africa and Italy) must be given points for going to Gary at all. And in the weeks that followed-even though the Froebel strike continued after he left-he racked up even more points, collecting an honorary scroll from the Bureau of Intercultural Education in New York (Eleanor Roosevelt, with whom Frank would form a warm bond, was the keynote speaker); the Philadelphia Golden Slipper Square Club's annual unity award; the Newspaper Guild's Page One Award; a citation for "outstanding efforts and contribution to the cause of religious tolerance and unity among Americans" from the National Conference of Christians and Jews; et cetera, et cetera.

Evans and Keller were thrilled. All those awards washed out a lot of nasty gossip, given the public's short attention span. For the time being, anyway.

But it wasn't just the high-school visits that lent Sinatra new moral substance. Over the summer, at the suggestion of former MGM production chief Mervyn LeRoy ("You could reach a thousand times more people if you'd tell your story on the screen"), he'd made a fifteen-minute movie short called The House I Live In The House I Live In. Sinatra plays himself in the RKO featurette, appearing first in a recording studio, singing "If You Are But a Dream," and looking magnificent-slim, suntanned, and sleek (even shot from his bad side, though probably through gauze, by Robert De Gra.s.se, who'd made him look so resplendent in Higher and Higher Higher and Higher and and Step Lively Step Lively). His face, at this point in its development, is a long triangle beneath those sculpted cheekbones. He mugs shamelessly for the camera, acting the song, feeling the song, being being the song-in short, dreaming. His eyebrows rise expressively, that beautiful mouth trembles pa.s.sionately. Then he switches gears. the song-in short, dreaming. His eyebrows rise expressively, that beautiful mouth trembles pa.s.sionately. Then he switches gears.