Frank_ The Voice Part 15

Maybe Frank was frazzled and needed a vacation; maybe he was a man on a mission, however misbegotten. Maybe both were true. Or perhaps he simply needed to get out of town.

For Nancy had found out about his meetings with Lana in New York. News travels fast in Hollywood. If Lana Turner was under the illusion once more that Frank Sinatra was going to leave his wife for her, the story would travel even faster.

Nancy had other news for Frank: she was pregnant. Was Lana Turner going to give him babies? The b.i.t.c.h had one already, a three-year-old b.a.s.t.a.r.d daughter, by the n.o.body she'd married twice. Did Frank really want to be that child's stepfather? Did he really want to be Lana Turner's third husband (and fourth marriage)? Hollywood would laugh at him.

Nancy told Frank she was going to have an abortion.

He stared at her. In the mid-1940s, a time of enforced conventionality, it was unspeakable. For a Catholic couple, it was unthinkable. And for this Catholic couple-Nancy knew it; Frank knew it-it was the stain that Dolly Sinatra had brought to their marriage.

The challenge was clear: if he left on this trip, whatever it was, anything could happen. She might do this unimaginable thing. He didn't believe it, even as part of him feared it. He repeated to her that he had obligations in New York and Miami-a radio show, a benefit concert-and that he was going to take a few days off in Florida and then Havana. Boys only.

He told her it was all over with Lana. He had been a fool, a great fool. It was his nature. He knew Nancy understood: she was the only one in the world who really knew him. There was a loneliness deep in his soul, and he was susceptible. Lana Turner was scheming, inconstant (Frank knew about Tyrone Power), vain, and shallow. He realized she didn't love him, and-bending the truth-he certainly didn't love her.

He was exhausted, frayed out. He had been making bad decisions left and right, mistreating those who loved him best. He would make it up to her.

He had an inspiration: they would have a second honeymoon. In Mexico-Acapulco. Valentine's Day. Two weeks.

The car horn was blowing in the driveway. His suitcases sat in the hall. Frank tried to kiss her, but she evaded his lips. And then he was gone.

He relaxed at the Fischetti mansion on Allison Island in Miami-cool tile floors, quiet servants, views of palm trees and the sparkling bay: a very nice place to be in February. The beautiful weather, luxurious surroundings, and pleasant company put Frank in such an expansive mood that on the night of the tenth he gave a free concert at the Colonial Inn, a gambling casino in Hallandale owned by Meyer Lansky and Joe Adonis.1 The next morning at Miami International Airport, he climbed the steps to board a s.h.i.+ny-skinned TWA DC-3 to Havana. The next morning at Miami International Airport, he climbed the steps to board a s.h.i.+ny-skinned TWA DC-3 to Havana.

A still frame from a newsreel taken when the plane landed in Cuba shows Sinatra, having just disembarked, in the midst of a small group of fellow pa.s.sengers, all male. The faces all wear that distracted, just-got-off-the-plane look. Frank, seemingly unaware of being photographed (or simply inured to it at this point), is gazing off to the side, squinting in the tropical sun. He wears a snappy tweed sports jacket, a patterned necktie, a crisp white s.h.i.+rt. In his right hand is a large, squarish valise. From his posture-leaning to his left to support the valise's weight against his hip-the bag appears to be quite heavy. Behind him and over his right shoulder is a gray-templed man later identified as Rocco Fischetti. In the left foreground of the frame stands a dark-haired man in a gray suit, cigarette in his mouth, cuffs shot, his pinkie-ringed hand partially s.h.i.+elding his hunched head. The man looks patently like a gangster-more specifically, like the template for a 1940s gangster lovingly re-created in Francis Ford Coppola's movie of The G.o.dfather The G.o.dfather. There is good reason for this-Joe Fischetti was a gangster. His big brother Prince Charlie, the man who had in all likelihood invited Sinatra on this trip in June at Mary Fischetti's Brooklyn house, luckily (or craftily) avoided the camera.

A vast amount of attention has been devoted to Frank Sinatra's four-day trip to Havana in February 1947, at the time in newspapers and magazines and over the years in the immense body of Sinatra literature. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that the sojourn achieved mythic status-which is not to say that much of what has been written about it isn't true. Even giving Frank the maximum benefit of the doubt, it would seem that he made some very bad decisions at a very sensitive time in his personal life and his career. This was his walk on the wild side with the Mob, with the men he had come to admire for all kinds of reasons, both inexcusable and understandable.

His Cuba trip wouldn't have become legendary had it not coincided with the Havana conference, but the coincidence was no accident. The many attendees had known for months that Frank would be coming; they had been looking forward to it. (One account has it that a Sinatra concert in Havana was, from the beginning, a cover story for the whole gathering.) Not only was the singer the biggest star in America; he was also an Italian-American. And no doubt due in part to efficient public-relations work by Sinatra's early supporter the affable and popular Willie Moretti, Frank was widely known to be friendly where the Boys were concerned, neither a pushover nor a pain in the a.s.s.2 Most important, though, he was respectful.

But did respect translate to compliance-or, more pointedly, complicity? Was Sinatra's mere a.s.sociation with these men a form of guilt in itself? (Many have charged that it was.) Or did his sins run deeper?

It almost didn't matter. In the court of public opinion, Frank's goose was cooked-a predicament he owed, indirectly, to Ernest Hemingway.

In early 1947, a thirty-one-year-old Scripps-Howard columnist named Robert Ruark traveled to Cuba to visit the writer's haunts (Hemingway owned a villa a few miles outside of Havana) and, if possible, to meet the great man himself. While in the capital, young Ruark, who had quickly built a large readers.h.i.+p with a lightly hard-boiled, humorous writing style that owed much to his literary idol, stumbled upon not Hemingway but the scoop of a lifetime. Fifteen years later, Ruark reminisced, in a column about the recently deceased Lucky Luciano: A freakish accident put me in Havana one time, just after the war, when I was a rookie in the cosmic column business, and I collided with Charlie, who was conducting a sort of hoodlum's summit with the big names of the mob...I was young and brash and full of beans and when I ran into the aristocracy of gangland in Havana, said hoodlums being accompanied by Frank Sinatra, it seemed as newsworthy as if I had come onto Bishop Cannon consorting with [the famous madam] Polly Adler especially since Luciano was supposed to be deported to Italy, and Sinatra was the public-relations-invented leader of the nation's youth at that particular period...

The young Ruark knew a great story when he saw one, and the moment he finished his legwork, he immediately began cranking out columns from Havana: three in the last week of February alone. They were t.i.tled, none too subtly, "Shame, Sinatra!" "'Lovable' Luciano," and "The Luciano Myth." In the first, dated February 20, he wrote: Sinatra was here for four days last week and during that time his companion in public and in private was Luciano, Luciano's bodyguards and a rich collection of gamblers and highbinders. The friends.h.i.+p was beautiful. They were seen together at the race track, the gambling casino and at special parties...

Staying close to the action in a seventh-floor suite at the Nacional (the floor below Luciano's rooms), Frank rubbed a lot of elbows that week. The conference was a veritable summit of crime, with all the Jewish and Italian bosses from major and secondary American cities present. Naturally, New York and New Jersey were most heavily represented: besides Lansky and Luciano, there were Frank Costello, Vito Genovese, Joe Bonanno, Longy Zwillman, Joe Adonis, and Willie Moretti. The Fischettis and Tony Accardo represented Chicago; Moe Dalitz, Detroit; and Santo Trafficante and Carlos Marcello, Tampa and New Orleans. There were closed-door conclaves on internal politics and the divisive question of narcotics trafficking: even the Jews were excluded from meetings that strictly concerned Cosa Nostra matters, and Sinatra would probably not have been privy to any business discussions. He was there to provide a cover story and, in keeping with his lifelong relations.h.i.+p to men like these, to admire and be admired. He was, as Luciano later said, "a good kid and we was all proud of him."

Frank did what he was there to do, giving the attendees their promised concert in the hotel's banquet room. There is no record of the song list. Still, wouldn't it have been lovely to pan the house with an imaginary movie camera and watch those faces-fascinating faces, on the evidence of mug shots, but not inclined to be sensitive or reflective-while the Voice vocalized? There were probably more than a few moist eyes. "Luciano was very fond of Sinatra's singing," an a.s.sociate later recalled.

Frank performed, he glad-handed, and he was rewarded, not just with fellows.h.i.+p, but with fun. Pre-Castro Havana was a twenty-four-hour fiesta of unapologetic pleasures. There was even allegedly an orgy in his suite-twelve naked women, a number of gangsters, plenty of alcohol. Improbably, a group of Cuban Girl Scouts, led by a nun, arrived in the midst of the festivities to present Sinatra with an official token of their esteem. He is said to have hustled the celebrants into another room and received the Scouts in a silk dressing gown and ascot.

It could be a slightly more ribald version of Some Like It Hot Some Like It Hot, set in the Batista Havana of The G.o.dfather: Part II The G.o.dfather: Part II. The problem was that it was real life, and Frank's hero wors.h.i.+p of tough guys had gotten him in way over his head. Danger made these men magnetic, and our fascination with gangsters suggests that few of us could have been in their presence without being, on some level, thrilled. But to the American public of 1947, the men were not faces and eyes and rough handshakes but names, names to be censured. And ethnic names at that. The court of public opinion would quickly take note of Sinatra's new friends, and would react violently.

Ruark wrote of Frank's wild going-away party on Valentine's Day (the day he was supposed to meet Nancy in Acapulco): In addition to Mr. Luciano, I am told that Ralph Capone [brother of Al] was present...and so was a rather large and well-matched a.s.sortment of the goons who find the south salubrious in the winter, or grand-jury time...The curious desire to cavort among the sc.u.m is possibly permissible among citizens who are not peddling sermons to the nation's youth, and may even be allowed to a mealy-mouthed celebrity, if he is smart enough to confine his social tolerance to a hotel room. But Mr. Sinatra, the self-confessed savior of the country's small fry, by virtue of his lectures on clean living and love-thy-neighbor, his movie shorts on tolerance, and his frequent dabblings into the do-good department of politics, seems to be setting a most peculiar example for his hordes of pimply, shrieking slaves.

In an era when Americans got their news almost exclusively from newspapers, when every major city had at least two dailies and sometimes three or four, Ruark's columns, and the avalanche of follow-up coverage they triggered, had huge impact. And long legs. "It was a pretty story while it lasted, and it lasted quite a while," Ruark wrote, in his best Hemingway-ese, in 1962. It was also George Evans's worst nightmare: his star client, on ethnic thin ice under the best of circ.u.mstances, had done himself no favors by mingling his name with the kinds of names many Americans reflexively a.s.sociated with the darker side of Italian ident.i.ty. Sinatra's first response to the attacks was weak, almost stunned-not to mention self-contradictory: "I was brought up to shake a man's hand when I am introduced to him without first investigating his past. Any report that I fraternized with goons or racketeers is a vicious lie."

Not long after the trip, Frank told Hedda Hopper what he insisted was "the complete story": I dropped by a casino one night. One of the captains-a sort of boss-recognized me and asked if I'd mind meeting a few people...I couldn't refuse...So I went through some routine introductions, scarcely paying attention to the names of the people I was meeting. One happened to be Lucky Luciano. Even if I'd caught his name, I probably wouldn't have a.s.sociated it with the notorious underworld character...I sat down at a table for about fifteen minutes. Then I got up and went back to the hotel...When such innocent acts are so distorted, you can't win.

The tone of persecution would crop up more frequently over the next few years as Sinatra became ever more embattled; but it's hard to argue that Frank hadn't brought the controversy on himself. Hedonism was one thing; lawlessness was something else. Amiability could rapidly become complicity. Very soon after that week in February, attention focused on the picture of the heavy suitcase in Sinatra's hand. A story circulated that Frank had been acting as a courier for the Fischettis, carrying Luciano a large sum in business proceeds that had mounted up while Lucky was unavoidably out of the country. The story festered and swelled. Sinatra himself claimed, a bit absurdly, that the bag had contained painting and sketching supplies and his jewelry. (Spare pinkie rings?) In 1951 in the New York Daily Mirror Daily Mirror, Lee Mortimer formally accused the singer of carrying $2 million in small bills to Cuba.

It was a compelling tale. Who wouldn't like to open up a suitcase and find that kind of money? But the idea of fitting $2 million in small bills into hand luggage was patently ridiculous, and Sinatra quickly set about bas.h.i.+ng the straw man: Picture me, skinny Frankie [he said, in a Sinatra-bylined magazine piece in 1952], lifting two million dollars in small bills. For the record, one thousand dollars in dollar bills weighs three pounds, which makes the load I am supposed to have carried six thousand pounds. Even a.s.suming that the bills were twenties-the bag would still have required a couple of stevedores to carry it. This is probably the most ridiculous charge that has ever been leveled at me...I stepped off the plane in Havana with a small bag in which I carried my oils, sketching material, and personal jewelry, which I never send with my regular luggage.

But what if the bills were fifties? Or hundreds? By similar logic, since after all a $100 bill weighs the same as a single, a hundred thousand in Benjamins would weigh that same three pounds. Two million dollars in hundreds would therefore weigh sixty pounds. Which admittedly would make for one very heavy suitcase-one you'd have to lean against your hip while carrying it-but not one (even for skinny Frankie) that would require the a.s.sistance of baggage handlers.3

There were other consequences. Frank's behavior at the end of 1946 and the beginning of 1947 had the effect of a giant electrical surge creating power outages in its wake. On February 14, the day an orgy unfortunately detained him in Havana, he sent a plaintive cable to Nancy, who was already cooling her heels in Acapulco: WILL YOU BE MY VALENTINE?.

When he finally arrived in Mexico for their romantic interlude, he made a shattering discovery: his wife, as good as her word, had aborted their third child. "She found a doctor in Los Angeles through a friend and had the procedure while my father was in Cuba," Tina Sinatra writes. "The doctor's prep was evident, 'and [Nancy told her daughter] he knew immediately what I'd done.'"

The horror-all too uncomfortably reminiscent of the scene in G.o.dfather II G.o.dfather II when Kay tells Michael Corleone that she has not suffered a miscarriage but aborted their child ("An abortion, Michael. Just like our marriage is an abortion")-rings down the decades. Nancy Sinatra had exerted the only real power she had over her relentlessly wayward husband, and her single act of revenge had terrific impact. when Kay tells Michael Corleone that she has not suffered a miscarriage but aborted their child ("An abortion, Michael. Just like our marriage is an abortion")-rings down the decades. Nancy Sinatra had exerted the only real power she had over her relentlessly wayward husband, and her single act of revenge had terrific impact.

Tina Sinatra tells us, strangely, that her father's reaction was to order his wife, "Don't you ever ever do that again." As though she had committed a nuisance. As though he had the upper hand. It seems more likely, given Frank's seismic temper and Nancy's by now steely resolve, that the result of his discovery was something more than a curt directive: that the two had a messy and furious scene soaked with tears. do that again." As though she had committed a nuisance. As though he had the upper hand. It seems more likely, given Frank's seismic temper and Nancy's by now steely resolve, that the result of his discovery was something more than a curt directive: that the two had a messy and furious scene soaked with tears.

Then, Tina writes, sunlight came after the storm: Dad made a dramatic turnaround. He kept his road trips briefer and threw himself into home life. By day he was absorbed in his children. By night he was courting Mom all over again, with dinner and dancing at Ciro's. He was really trying. He would make this marriage work in spite of himself.Soon my mother was pregnant again, in the fall of 1947.

It's a romantic picture, but the real story is far more complicated: 1947 would be a long, hard year.

It seemed not to matter to him that his radio show, Old Gold Presents Songs by Sinatra Old Gold Presents Songs by Sinatra, was a superb vehicle for his talents: Frank had made up his mind that the indignity of earning a mere $2,800 a week (for a half hour's work) was too much for him. In January he had publicly floated the notion of returning to Your Hit Parade Your Hit Parade, at almost three times the salary. Variety Variety reported Sinatra's monetary musings, and Old Gold got upset, informing him that he still had a year to go on his three-year contract and that it would be very expensive to get out of it. Frank struck back as he often would in years to come, by announcing that he was sick and was taking three weeks off to rest up in Florida. reported Sinatra's monetary musings, and Old Gold got upset, informing him that he still had a year to go on his three-year contract and that it would be very expensive to get out of it. Frank struck back as he often would in years to come, by announcing that he was sick and was taking three weeks off to rest up in Florida.

When it turned out that he had gone to Havana, his sponsor was unhappy, as were others. Afterward, while Frank hunkered down, throwing himself into family life and doing a little recording ("Stella by Starlight," "Mam'selle," "Almost Like Being in Love"), the newspapers raged, and Louis B. Mayer fumed. He never fumed long. Very quickly Frank was called to the princ.i.p.al's office to endure the tough squint from Ida, the panicky wait in the tiny antechamber, the long trudge to the big desk with the grim-faced little man behind it.

Mayer informed Frank that after his next movie, The Kissing Bandit The Kissing Bandit (Frank had read the script, and looked forward to making it much as he would look forward to taking poison), in view of his recent deportment (Mayer cleared his throat), the studio would be loaning him out to his old employer, RKO, for a new picture called (Frank had read the script, and looked forward to making it much as he would look forward to taking poison), in view of his recent deportment (Mayer cleared his throat), the studio would be loaning him out to his old employer, RKO, for a new picture called The Miracle of the Bells The Miracle of the Bells.

He would play a priest.

This last was pointed. Mayer studied him coldly through the rimless spectacles that rode his hawk nose. Frank's image must be rehabilitated.

In the middle of March, It Happened in Brooklyn It Happened in Brooklyn premiered. It was a smaller movie than premiered. It was a smaller movie than Anchors Aweigh Anchors Aweigh, in black and white instead of Technicolor; this time Sinatra got to wear an Army uniform rather than a sailor suit. Kathryn Grayson was back as his love interest, trilling prettily and ringing new changes on haughty vulnerability. (And bringing as little chemistry to her side of the love equation as Frank did to his: if Grayson was ever on the fabled dressing-room checklist, she remained unchecked.) The great Durante was cute as the d.i.c.kens in the thankless role of a s.e.xless school janitor. Lawford, on the other hand, was a kind of black hole on-screen, too handsome for his own good, and much too pleased about it. The picture simply grinds to a halt every time he shows up. But Sinatra-for all his bad behavior on and off the set, for all the feuds with the Schnozzola-was every bit as good as Durante, once again getting great mileage out of playing another Clarence Doolittle character, a Bashful Frankie. Something about the black-and-white cinematography brought out the amazingly sculpturesque quality of his still-rawboned features and killer lower lip-a face that the sculptor Jo Davidson had compared to Lincoln's.

And when Frank sang...He had a self-conscious but bewitching way of stretching that lower lip over to the right at key moments (for emphasis? to sneak a breath? or just to look cute?), a habit he would retain to the end of his career. And the movie gave him great material to work with. After the success of Anchors Aweigh Anchors Aweigh, MGM had welcomed Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne to the ranks of officially certified screen songwriters, and once again the team did itself proud. Their tunes fit Sinatra like a Savile Row suit. When he sang (to Durante!) a great number like "Time After Time," he not only sounded magnificent, but looked utterly at home. This was an exceedingly rare trick, requiring absolute confidence, consummate stage presence, and close work with gifted composers: only Crosby, singing the works of Burke and Van Heusen, could also bring it off on-screen.

The critics were impressed-with the notable exception of Lee Mortimer, who couldn't keep his mind off current events. "This excellent and well-produced picture...bogs down under the miscast Frank (Lucky) Sinatra, smirking and trying to play a leading man," he wrote.

It was wrong, and it was. .h.i.tting below the belt. While Frank certainly deserved censure for the Havana escapade,4 Mortimer (no doubt, in great part, to please his masters at Hearst) seemed to be on a special campaign to bring down the star who had rejected him. As an arts critic who had arrogated the right of sociopolitical commentary (he would be one of the first but far from the last), the Mortimer (no doubt, in great part, to please his masters at Hearst) seemed to be on a special campaign to bring down the star who had rejected him. As an arts critic who had arrogated the right of sociopolitical commentary (he would be one of the first but far from the last), the Daily Mirror Daily Mirror columnist was hammering at the wall between Sinatra's career and his private misbehavior. It was a wall George Evans had worked long and hard to build, and one that was now-thanks both to Frank's efforts and to his energetic detractors-crumbling into dust. columnist was hammering at the wall between Sinatra's career and his private misbehavior. It was a wall George Evans had worked long and hard to build, and one that was now-thanks both to Frank's efforts and to his energetic detractors-crumbling into dust.

Much as the Manson murders in the summer of 1969 killed the Age of Aquarius, the Black Dahlia murder in January 1947 symbolized the end of Hollywood's sunny image and the beginning of a much darker new era. It wasn't so much the crime itself-a fresh-faced young woman named Elizabeth Short had been stabbed to death and left nude and grotesquely mutilated in a downtown vacant lot-as what it said about Los Angeles: a city rife with decadence, moral ambiguity, drug use, racial tension, and police corruption, all playing out against a backdrop of national political paranoia. The vision of Hollywood as a place of wartime optimism-the world of Anchors Aweigh- Anchors Aweigh-had curdled; film noir flourished. And Frank Sinatra, now a certifiably dubious figure on the American landscape, seemed to be acting out a scene from one of these ominous movies when he and a male companion pulled the wrong way in to an exit driveway of Ciro's on Sunset Boulevard shortly after 11:00 p.m. on April 8.

Sinatra could have been trying to avoid the press by not giving his car to the nightclub's valet; on the other hand, his arrival, in retrospect, looks purposefully secretive.

Lee Mortimer was just finis.h.i.+ng a late dinner with an Asian-American band singer named Kay Kino when Sinatra walked in. In the syndicated New York Post New York Post column he wrote a couple of days later, Earl Wilson, ever eager to excuse Frank for almost everything (in grat.i.tude, Sinatra had given the columnist one of those gold cigarette cases, engraved: OIL, YOUSE A POIL), offered a somewhat incoherent account of the evening's events, citing Mortimer's choice of dinner companion itself as dubious. Mortimer, Wilson wrote, was "known in the cafes for liking all champagne (except domestic) and Chinese girls, the latter so much that he sometimes brought in practically their whole families. His preference for Chinese girls brought publicity which he never mentioned suing anybody about." column he wrote a couple of days later, Earl Wilson, ever eager to excuse Frank for almost everything (in grat.i.tude, Sinatra had given the columnist one of those gold cigarette cases, engraved: OIL, YOUSE A POIL), offered a somewhat incoherent account of the evening's events, citing Mortimer's choice of dinner companion itself as dubious. Mortimer, Wilson wrote, was "known in the cafes for liking all champagne (except domestic) and Chinese girls, the latter so much that he sometimes brought in practically their whole families. His preference for Chinese girls brought publicity which he never mentioned suing anybody about."

Frank had other grievances on his mind. After he and his companion-who was almost certainly Sam Weiss, a song plugger and old New York pal-had been inside the club for about fifteen minutes, Mortimer and Kino left. While Mortimer was standing on the steps outside the entrance to Ciro's, Sinatra suddenly emerged and blindsided him, hitting him behind the ear with his right fist and knocking him to the ground.

At this point, as is usually the case with stories of fistfights, the tale grows murky. Mortimer seems to have gotten up and asked Sinatra why he had hit him, upon which a large man with black hair and a blue pin-striped suit (probably Weiss) pushed the columnist-who was about the singer's height and weight, though ten years older-down again. Then Sinatra began to pound the columnist and scream at him (calling him, by one account, a "s.h.i.+t heel" and "a perverted b.a.s.t.a.r.d" and, by another, a "degenerate" and a "f.u.c.king h.o.m.os.e.xual") while either the original large man alone, or he and two others, held him. "I'll kill you the next time I see you!" Sinatra screamed in Mortimer's face. "I'll kill you!" A King Features photographer tried to intervene. And then the beating was over.

Frank, the only one who had done any punching, had not inflicted much damage. Mortimer stood up, went to the West Hollywood sheriff's substation to lodge a complaint against Sinatra, then stopped at a hospital to have his sore jaw seen to. After phoning his lawyer, he started calling the press. Sinatra, for his part, went back into Ciro's and ordered a double brandy.

As the phone wires began to buzz, the Los Angeles Herald-Express Los Angeles Herald-Express columnist Harrison Carroll hurried over and found Frank still at the bar, in an explanatory mood. Equipped with a reporter's notebook and a sympathetic, if tin, ear, Carroll quoted Sinatra on the Mortimer dustup: columnist Harrison Carroll hurried over and found Frank still at the bar, in an explanatory mood. Equipped with a reporter's notebook and a sympathetic, if tin, ear, Carroll quoted Sinatra on the Mortimer dustup: For two years he has been needling me. He has referred to my bobby-soxer fans as morons. I don't care if they do try to tear your clothes off. They are not morons. They are only kids fourteen and fifteen years old. I think I have had more experience with their tactics than any other star in the country, but I have never beefed. Honestly, I intended to say h.e.l.lo to Mortimer. But when I glanced in his direction, he gave me a look. I can't describe it. It was one of those contemptuous who-do-you-amount-to looks. I followed him outside and I saw red. I hit him. I'm all mixed up. I'm sorry that it happened, but I was raised in a tough neighborhood, where you had to fight at the drop of a hat and I couldn't help myself.

Frank may indeed have locked eyes with Mortimer inside Ciro's. His first sight of the columnist-whose cold eyes, puffy cheeks, and pouting lower lip gave him the look of a school-yard tattletale-would not have been a pleasant experience. Yet Sinatra could be a fearsome sight himself, and both men had certainly been building up a head of steam. ("Every time Frank read one of Mortimer's columns," Jack Keller later recalled, "he went into a towering rage and threatened that the next time he saw this guy he was going to wallop him.") What happened outside the club is Rash.o.m.on, although a reminiscence tape-recorded by Keller many years later gives a fascinating picture of spin control, 1947 style. The publicist recalled that Sinatra knocked on his door in the wee hours, saying, "Jeez, I think we're in trouble."

"You bet your a.s.s we're in trouble and we better get out of here before the reporters start showing up," Keller said.

They drove over to Bobby Burns's house to hash the situation over. After much pacing, Keller came up with a solution: There's only one thing to do. It's the only way to get out of this thing. Otherwise, you're going to have every newspaper in America against you, because regardless of what they they think of this guy Mortimer, they resent any one of their number being manhandled by an actor. So Frank, you've got to pick up the phone and call all the papers and say, "This is Frank Sinatra" and listen to their questions. Then you've got to tell each one of them that when you walked out of Ciro's, Mortimer and this Chinese dame were standing there and you heard him say to her, "There's that little dago b.a.s.t.a.r.d now!" think of this guy Mortimer, they resent any one of their number being manhandled by an actor. So Frank, you've got to pick up the phone and call all the papers and say, "This is Frank Sinatra" and listen to their questions. Then you've got to tell each one of them that when you walked out of Ciro's, Mortimer and this Chinese dame were standing there and you heard him say to her, "There's that little dago b.a.s.t.a.r.d now!"This is a slur on your nationality, and no one in their right mind would expect you to take this in good grace. Knowing your temper, the press will go along with you and be more or less on your side. It's the only thing you can do to come out of this looking good.

Frank tried. He called all the reporters he knew and told them the fish tale. But when the papers ran it the next morning, Lee Mortimer went into a towering rage of his own, lodging a complaint of battery against Sinatra to the district attorney and announcing he would sue the singer for $25,000 in damages. On Wednesday afternoon, April 9, while Frank was in the CBS Vine Street studio rehearsing "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" for the Old Gold broadcast, a deputy sheriff and two investigators from the district attorney's office marched in and told him he was under arrest.

He phoned his lawyer, then went along quietly to the Beverly Hills Justice Court. The press was already there. The Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times's account was jocular, treating the affair as the non-earthshaking event it clearly was: SINATRA ARRESTED AND FREED ON BAIL IN ROW WITH WRITER.

Columnist Charges Singer Bopped Him; Date of Trial Set...Frankie was wearing a gray sports suit, regular necktie instead of his usual droopy bow tie, and a smile when he walked briskly into court."I plead not guilty," he announced in a firm voice, "and wish a jury trial-sometime late next month."Judge Woodward set the trial for 10 a.m., May 28.Then, there was the matter of bail-it was set at $500 on the warrant.Frankie had $400 on him. His attorney, Albert Pearlson, had $300. But, the money would be tied up until the trial. They didn't want to part with it. So, there was a 30-minute wait until a bail bondsman showed up to post the bail.Frankie's smile turned a bit sheepish during the bail episode and then it got practically sickly when a deputy sheriff gently informed him that his permit to carry a gun had been suspended...Semiofficial weights for the "battle" were listed yesterday as: Sinatra, 130; Mortimer, 135.

Late that night, Frank flew to New York. He was going to receive yet another award for his good works-the Thomas Jefferson Award of the Council Against Intolerance in America. It also didn't seem like a bad moment to get out of town. He boarded a triple-tailed TWA Constellation-the state of commercial-aviation art in 1947-and caught a little sleep in first cla.s.s before facing the public the next morning. Continuing its tongue-in-cheek coverage, the L.A. Times L.A. Times wrote: wrote: Frankie...was met by 500 screaming bobby-soxers and newspapermen who immediately changed his t.i.tle from "The Voice" to "The Punch"...On his arrival in New York..."The Punch" told his version of the historic Hollywood "battle" to a roomful of newspapermen at La Guardia Field.One reporter wrote:"'It was a right-hand punch,' Frankie said. He said it quietly, modestly, in the way of a man awed by his own strength."The crooner repeated for New York newsmen his a.s.sertion that he overheard Mortimer refer to him as "Dago --- --- ---.""We all have human weaknesses," he was quoted as saying in New York, "and there is just so much a man can take."In Hollywood Albert Pearlson, Sinatra's attorney, said he is checking the law which makes calling a person a profane name in public a misdemeanor."If my interpretation of the law is correct, I'm going to the District Attorney's office and demand a complaint against this fellow," Pearlson declared.

The counteroffensive was in full swing: always blame the victim. That evening, Frank ran into Mr. and Mrs. Earl Wilson at the Copacabana. "Frank came in and greeted both of us warmly," the compliant columnist recalled.

He wasn't objecting to my piece ["Frankie, you shouldn't-a," Wilson had gently written], but still said he'd done it because Mortimer had called him a name."Did you have to hit him?" I asked Frank."He was coming toward me. I thought he was going to hit me.""He said you belted him from behind.""I hit him on the chin! To hit him on the chin and hit him from behind, you got to be an acrobat." Frank's eyes lit up with excitement. "When he said what he did, I said to myself, 'Here goes,' and I let him have a good right hook. I felt very good about it afterwards. Somebody pinned my arms behind me-there was an awful tussle all at once, people coming out of walls."What did he resent most in Mortimer's writings? That about his fans being moronic was one of the things-he'd always been loyal to them as they had been to him...And, curiously, he hated references to his being an overnight success."Don't make me laugh! All the cream cheese-and-nut sandwiches I ate when I was living on about thirty cents a day, working on those sustaining programs. Nancy was working in a department store and used to slip me a couple of bucks..."The coldest nights I walked three miles because I didn't have bus fare. I wasn't getting anywhere, I was giving up, but after I got married, I got lucky."

Frank managed to mix lies and braggadocio and self-pity into one unattractive glop. Maybe he was starting to believe his own version of the Mortimer punch-up.

But the public wasn't. His second Columbia alb.u.m, Songs by Sinatra Songs by Sinatra, released not long after the Ciro's incident, wasn't selling so well. Granted, Songs Songs didn't have the same novelty and artistic integrity as didn't have the same novelty and artistic integrity as The Voice The Voice, but the avalanche of negative press that spring didn't help. The L.A. Times L.A. Times, which persistently treated the affair lightly, was the exception that proved the rule. The five hundred Hearst papers were, as Time Time noted, "[giving] the story headlines and s.p.a.ce almost fit for an attempted political a.s.sa.s.sination. Mortimer suddenly attained the stature of Dreyfus." noted, "[giving] the story headlines and s.p.a.ce almost fit for an attempted political a.s.sa.s.sination. Mortimer suddenly attained the stature of Dreyfus."

And Hearst, as we have seen, mattered enormously to Louis B. Mayer. When Frank returned to the Coast, he was called, yet again, onto the studio chief's carpet. Mayer ordered Sinatra to apologize publicly to Mortimer and pay him a settlement of $9,000. On June 4, in Beverly Hills District Court, Frank read a statement saying that the whole incident had sprung from a misunderstanding, that Mortimer had never made any remark about him, and that he keenly regretted his actions. Mortimer read a statement saying that he had received satisfaction for his injuries, and was satisfied, also, at Sinatra's acknowledgment and apology. The columnist withdrew his charges and, Sinatra having paid $50 in court costs-and some $15,000 to his lawyers, plus the $9,000 to Lee Mortimer-the case was dismissed.

But within a week Old Gold had dropped Frank from his radio show and hired Buddy Clark as his replacement.

In early May, while the Hearst papers were inveighing against Frank and MGM lawyers were parsing the Ciro's case to see if their star had a leg to stand on, Mortimer requested an audience with none other than J. Edgar Hoover. He had information on Sinatra, he said, and he needed some questions answered. t.i.t for tat.

The bureau bit. On May 12, Hoover's aide Louis B. Nichols-the same man who had gone to Detroit the previous year to observe the bobby-soxer mob greeting the singer at the airport-wrote a lengthy memo to Clyde A. Tolson, Hoover's right-hand man, detailing talking points for Mortimer's meeting with the director the next day: 1. Mr. Mortimer said he had a picture of Sinatra getting off a plane in Havana with a tough-looking man whom he has been unable to identify. He believes he is a gangster from Chicago. [This picture, no doubt, was the still frame from the newsreel showing Frank with Rocco and Joe Fischetti.]Observation: It is suggested that this picture be exhibited to Agents who have worked on the reactivation of the Capone gang in Chicago, as well as to Agents in the Newark Office who have been working on criminal work, in view of the known contacts that Sinatra has had with New York hoodlums. It is entirely possible that in this way the unidentified picture might be identified. If we identified the individual we could secure a picture of the person identified and furnish that to Mortimer and then in turn let him go out and verify the identification in such a way as to remove the Bureau from any responsibility of furnis.h.i.+ng information.2. Mortimer stated that Sinatra was backed when he first started by a gangster in New York named Willie Moretti, now known as Willie Moore.Observation: It is well known that Willie Moretti of Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, controls gambling in Bergen County, New Jersey, and is a close friend of Frank Costello. According to Captain Matthew J. Donohue of the Bergen County Police, Moretti had a financial interest in Sinatra. In this connection, Sinatra resides in Hasbrouck Heights.

Observation: the actual place of Sinatra's current residence was far from the only key fact the FBI would get wrong in its lengthy dossier on the singer, a doc.u.ment that inspires scant confidence in the intelligence-gathering abilities and motives of the bureau. The memo went on to mention other juicy details that Mortimer wanted to discuss with the director, including Frank's relations.h.i.+ps with Bugsy Siegel, the Los Angeles gangster Mickey Cohen, and the Fischettis; his "arrest on a s.e.x offense"; and his draft record.

At the last minute, though, the bureau pulled a bait and switch on Mortimer. When the columnist walked into his May 13 meeting, he found not Hoover but Tolson waiting for him. Mortimer swallowed his disappointment and went on with the meeting, which turned out to be of not much consequence: I talked this afternoon [Tolson wrote in a memo to Hoover] to Mr. Lee Mortimer, of the New York Daily Mirror, who wanted to ask some questions concerning Frank Sinatra. I told Mr. Mortimer that, of course, he realized that we could not give him any official information or be identified in this matter in any manner, which he thoroughly understands.He left a photograph taken of Frank Sinatra in Cuba and asked whether we could identify one individual shown in the picture. Copies of this photograph are being made and an effort will be made to determine whether any of our Agents are acquainted with the person in question.Secondly, he was interested in the a.s.sociation between Sinatra and Willie Moretti of Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey. I told Mr. Mortimer in this connection that his best bet would be to make appropriate contacts with the Bergen County Police and possibly with a Captain Donohue.Also, Mr. Mortimer was interested in Sinatra's arrest on a s.e.x offense.

It's an unseemly image: the oily snitch (and secret Jew) meeting with the FBI director's boyfriend to discuss the Italian-American star's s.e.x life. But then that was America in the late 1940s-ethnics were never to be entirely trusted; Communists and other subversive types were under every rock. And even though nothing of substance would come of all the bureau's scratching after Sinatra, for the moment both the FBI and Lee Mortimer could content themselves that they had met.

So what can be made of Frank's picaresque misadventures: the gun, the gangsters, the beating of the little columnist? There's something telling about his quiet, then not so quiet, swagger after the Ciro's incident: "It was a right-hand punch..." "I let him have a good right hook. I felt very good about it afterwards..." "There is just so much a man can take..." In a way, he was casting himself as a hero in a corrupt world, a little guy up against overwhelming forces, like the Hearst Syndicate.

Even when those forces were benign, they were white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Certainly one unconscious purpose for Frank's Havana trip was to reclaim the power of his Italianness. On the other hand, even he wouldn't have painted his trip to Havana as heroic. Rebellious and defiant, yes; but not heroic. One common theme uniting all his exploits that bad year was manliness. There was something boyish and wistful about his need to carry that gun, to be accepted by those mostly Italian men of honor, even to claim bragging rights for taking care of Lee Mortimer. Macrophallus and all, Frank was a little guy (not a single record exists of his ever having prevailed in a real fight), and secretly he knew he was an artist, with an exquisite sensibility. How could such a person be a man among men? Even grunting, illiterate Marty-boilermaker, athlete, fireman-was that.

As Sinatra's fame grew and his hangers-on kowtowed and cowered, he came to believe in his own toughness. Yet there was always something artificial about it. He needed the bodyguards, needed not to risk his all-important life fighting somebody else's battles overseas. He had to protect his image; even more, he needed the hard sh.e.l.l that guarded the exquisite flower within.

Sammy Cahn, the least s.e.xually adventurous member of the Varsity, had happily fallen into the tender trap in 1945, tying the knot with the young and beautiful Gloria Delson, a Goldwyn Girl (and a Jewess). Sixty years later, Gloria Delson Franks, long since divorced from Cahn, recalled an early weekend she and Sammy spent in the Springs with the Sinatras, at the Lone Palm. "Frank taught me to swim," she said. "He's the one who got me over my fear of water. I said, 'I don't like putting my face in the water, Frank; it scares me.' He said, 'Don't worry. You'll learn how to do it and you won't be afraid. I'm telling you.'

"He'd sit with me in the pool and hold me up, and he'd say, 'Okay, put your face in.' Like I was a baby. He treated me so gently, and he was so patient with me."

On Friday night, June 20, Benny Siegel ate a late dinner with friends at an Ocean Park seafood restaurant called Jack's. On the way out, he took a toothpick and a free copy of the next morning's Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times stamped, "Good Night. Sleep Well. With the Compliments of Jack's." The party drove back to Beverly Hills, where Siegel let himself into the big Tudor at 810 North Linden Drive he was renting for Virginia Hill. (Hill herself was in Paris, perhaps on her way to or from Benny's Swiss bank-or perhaps keeping away from Beverly Hills.) stamped, "Good Night. Sleep Well. With the Compliments of Jack's." The party drove back to Beverly Hills, where Siegel let himself into the big Tudor at 810 North Linden Drive he was renting for Virginia Hill. (Hill herself was in Paris, perhaps on her way to or from Benny's Swiss bank-or perhaps keeping away from Beverly Hills.) It was a warm night, the windows were open, and the ethereal fragrance of night-blooming jasmine suffused the living room, where Siegel sat at one end of a flowered chintz couch, his Times Times on his lap. He wore a beautifully tailored gray silk suit and handmade English shoes polished to a high sheen. At the other end of the couch sat his pal and business partner, a handsome, prematurely white-haired man who called himself Allen Smiley. The two men talked about the Flamingo, which had just turned the corner into profitability. on his lap. He wore a beautifully tailored gray silk suit and handmade English shoes polished to a high sheen. At the other end of the couch sat his pal and business partner, a handsome, prematurely white-haired man who called himself Allen Smiley. The two men talked about the Flamingo, which had just turned the corner into profitability.

In the bushes outside the front window a man in dark clothing squatted with a .30-caliber carbine, listening to the ratchet of the katydids and the singsong of Benny and Smiley's conversation. When he was sure Benny was speaking, the man rose and rested the carbine's muzzle in the V of a trellis and took careful aim at Siegel's head. He squeezed the trigger. There was a blast, a flash, and Benny's head exploded. His right eye was blown across the room onto the Spanish tiles of the dining-room floor. Smiley dove to the carpet. The man in the bushes fired eight more shots-all redundant-then dropped the rifle and fled into the soft night.

Pure hate. Lee Mortimer looks on as a Beverly Hills judge sets bail for Frank. April 1947. (photo credit 20.2) (photo credit 20.2) Sinatra heard the news late the next morning as he suited up for a Sat.u.r.day-afternoon Swooners softball game. The call came from Hank Sanicola, who had heard from a friend of a friend of Mickey Cohen's. Frank was shocked but not surprised. He felt sad at the death of his beautiful and magnetic friend, and at its violence, but knew he must suppress the feeling. He would soon hear that the hit had been engineered by Frankie Carbo-the same Frankie Carbo who was rumored to have helped persuade Tommy Dorsey to release Sinatra from his contract, and ironically, the same Frankie Carbo who had been implicated along with Siegel in the 1939 murder of Harry Greenberg. But it barely mattered who had done the planning, or who had pulled the trigger: Frank knew the order had come straight from the summit in Havana, and the manager of the project had been Charlie Fischetti.

21.

He didn't want to put on a sailor suit anymore; MGM obliged. Frank wore fake sideburns and a properly embarra.s.sed expression in The Kissing Bandit The Kissing Bandit, 1948. (photo credit 21.1) (photo credit 21.1) There is a weird light playing around Sinatra. Hitler affected many Germans much the same way and madness has been rife in the world.-Westbrook Pegler, in his syndicated Hearst column of September 26, 1947 As U.S. relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated, paranoia over Communism mounted, particularly in Hollywood. The climate of fear surrounding the 1946 congressional elections had put a Republican majority in both houses for the first time since 1932, including a freshman senator from Wisconsin named Joseph McCarthy. The new majority swung into action in 1947, moving the House Un-American Activities Committee to step up its inquisitions and pressuring Harry Truman into signing Executive Order 9835, the so-called Loyalty Order, which gave the FBI broad lat.i.tude to investigate citizens and suspected Communist-front organizations.

It was in this climate, in June, that Americans began spotting flying saucers: over Mount Rainier in Was.h.i.+ngton State; over Idaho, surrounding a United Airlines DC-3; over Roswell, New Mexico. And then all over the place. Every week, Norman Rockwellcovered Sat.u.r.day Evening Post Sat.u.r.day Evening Posts were plunking into American mailboxes; every night, citizens were checking under the bed.

In its own intense way, Hollywood reflected the national anxiety. On the face of it, nothing had changed: swimming pools glittered in the sun; heavy black cars glided beneath the palm trees; carpenters banged on sets. But there was big trouble in the easily spooked company town-J. Parnell Thomas, the chairman of HUAC, was in Hollywood to brief studio executives on what the committee believed was Communist infiltration of movie content by the Screen Writers Guild.

At the same time, Frank Sinatra was reporting to Culver City every weekday morning to play Ricardo, the kissing bandit.

In his previous pictures, Frank had just had to put on a costume and a little Max Factor; his latest role required a more complex transformation. Every morning, the hair department glued a luxuriant toupee, complete with sideburns, over his already thinning locks; the makeup people s.p.a.ckled his mastoid and acne scars so that his left profile would photograph acceptably under the bright lights required for Technicolor. After the failure of the black-and-white It Happened in Brooklyn It Happened in Brooklyn, MGM was reinvesting in the expensive film process, hoping The Kissing Bandit The Kissing Bandit would duplicate the magic of would duplicate the magic of Anchors Aweigh Anchors Aweigh.

Once again, Sinatra's pal and fellow Hollywood leftist Isobel Lennart wrote the script;1 once again, the haughty-faced coloratura Kathryn Grayson co-starred-and, once again, she and Frank enjoyed minimal affinity. "I couldn't stand kissing him," Grayson later confessed. "He was so skinny, so scrawny." once again, the haughty-faced coloratura Kathryn Grayson co-starred-and, once again, she and Frank enjoyed minimal affinity. "I couldn't stand kissing him," Grayson later confessed. "He was so skinny, so scrawny."

But chemistry was just one of the picture's problems. The story was a mixture common enough for the era: broad comedy, romance, and music. To write the songs, Metro (having jettisoned Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne, perhaps as the whipping boys for It Happened in Brooklyn It Happened in Brooklyn) hired the dependable if less interesting Nacio Herb Brown, writer of "Singin' in the Rain" and Bing's cla.s.sic groaner "Temptation." In this instance, though, Brown's tunes were strictly so-so; the romance wasn't quite believable; and the comedy was tragically bad.

You can practically see the wheels turning in the story department at MGM: The war's over; it's time to get Frank out of uniform. How about some laughs? How about a satire on Zorro? Sinatra plays Ricardo, a college boy who returns from Boston to Old California and takes over his father's spot as the t.i.tular bandit. The laughs are supposed to come from Ricardo's timidity-once again Frank is playing awkward and shy-and his physical clumsiness. (He falls off his horse a lot.) There's campy fun in the film, and the Technicolor is gorgeous, but from the first scene the star's discomfort is palpable. His ears and his Hoboken accent both stick out a mile. (In subsequent pictures, Frank's ears would be taped back; the movies would learn to live with the accent.) He tries hard to look adorable: he does that lower-lip twitch. But something has misfired badly. Sinatra is clearly not liking himself in this part, which makes it hard to like him.

He can hardly be blamed for his uneasiness. Each morning, while the hair and makeup people labored over him, studio lawyers were trying to figure out how to make the Lee Mortimer affair go away. Between antic.i.p.ating the verdict of the Beverly Hills District Court and having to stay out of trouble, Frank was not in buoyant spirits that spring and summer.

Still, he always managed to find outlets. If he couldn't keep Lana Turner (he finally dropped her over the phone, sending her into a rage: she she was the one who did the dropping), he was going to throw himself into his marriage. This meant keeping his hijinks low profile, but most important it meant making a grand gesture. In May, wearing a yachting cap and licking an ice-cream cone, he walked into the Palm Springs office of a young architect named E. Stewart Williams and said, as Williams later recalled, "I wanna house." was the one who did the dropping), he was going to throw himself into his marriage. This meant keeping his hijinks low profile, but most important it meant making a grand gesture. In May, wearing a yachting cap and licking an ice-cream cone, he walked into the Palm Springs office of a young architect named E. Stewart Williams and said, as Williams later recalled, "I wanna house."

And not just any house. Frank wanted a Georgian mansion, he told Williams, and he wanted it p.r.o.nto: by Christmas. Christmas was very important. Nancy was going to get a present she wouldn't forget.

Six days after Benny Siegel was gunned down, on June 26, Frank was in the studio recording Christmas songs. In 1947 he recorded as he never had before: a total of seventy sides in all. Let Old Gold drop him; let Lee Mortimer sue him; let the Hearst papers rake him over the coals: he would show them all.