Frank_ The Voice Part 8

His greatest work of fiction was Sinatra's first publicity bio, a text that would have done Parson Weems (George Was.h.i.+ngton's early biographer and the inventor of the cherry-tree myth) proud. To establish greater solidarity with teenage fans, Evans first chopped a couple of years off the singer's age: Frank Sinatra had been born, it was now a.s.serted, in 1917.2 He had been raised poor but proud in the slums of Hoboken, narrowly avoiding mayhem at the hands of vicious street gangs. He had triumphantly graduated, rather than dropped out, from A. J. Demarest High, where he had not only lettered in football, basketball, and track but also sung in the glee club. The sports reporter's chair he had so hungered for at the He had been raised poor but proud in the slums of Hoboken, narrowly avoiding mayhem at the hands of vicious street gangs. He had triumphantly graduated, rather than dropped out, from A. J. Demarest High, where he had not only lettered in football, basketball, and track but also sung in the glee club. The sports reporter's chair he had so hungered for at the Jersey Observer Jersey Observer was now his. And in a truly inspired invention, Evans transformed Dolly from a cussing midwife-abortionist-political fixer into a former Red Cross nurse in World War I-from Mammy Yok.u.m to Catherine Barkley in a single swoop. was now his. And in a truly inspired invention, Evans transformed Dolly from a cussing midwife-abortionist-political fixer into a former Red Cross nurse in World War I-from Mammy Yok.u.m to Catherine Barkley in a single swoop.

And that was only the beginning. In Evans-world, the present-day Frank was a model suburban husband and dad, mowing the lawn, was.h.i.+ng the car, patiently teaching Little Nancy chords on the family's upright piano. To doc.u.ment all this Potemkin domesticity, the publicist dispatched photographers to the Sinatras' new house, the cute Cape Cod at 220 Lawrence Avenue, Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey. It was an upward-aspiring middle-cla.s.s quarter of similarly cute houses, all set rather closely together. The Sinatra family doctor lived right next door. And down the block and around the corner-just a hop, skip, and jump away-lived the North Jersey crime boss Willie Moretti. Naturally, the publicity material did not mention this last fact, which may or may not have been sheerest coincidence.

It was also a crowded street, now that Swoonatra had moved in. There were all those publicity photographers, for one thing; for another, there was now a more or less nonstop procession of teenage girls tiptoeing up the driveway, hiding behind the bushes, swiping Frank's under-shorts from the clothesline, writing love notes in lipstick on the garage door, or casting discretion to the winds and simply pressing their noses against the gla.s.s. "I'd look out my bedroom window and there would be somebody's face," Big Nancy recalled. "They'd sit out there on the lawn for hours. We tried asking them to go home, but they wouldn't leave. It scared me, but finally I'd feel so sorry for them I'd send out doughnuts and something for them to drink." As magnanimous as she was, it's hard to imagine Mrs. S. sending out those doughnuts and drinks more than once or twice before putting her foot down. Publicity, she was quickly learning, cut two ways.

So did fame, though if Sinatra had any regrets, he hid them well. The threadbare private life glimpsed by the twelve-year-old babysitter Ed Kessler in the Audubon Avenue apartment (a life in which, even then, Sinatra partic.i.p.ated only sporadically) was now quite thoroughly a thing of the past. Private life for Frank Sinatra had simply winked out like a light, ceased to exist-or rather, he found what little privacy he could in his trysts, and in the wee hours with his pals. It was as though he had stepped out of his front door and into the basket of a hot-air balloon. As he ascended over the landscape of everyday reality, Mr. and Mrs. America got up early, went to work, punched a time clock, listened to the radio, worried about the bills. Far above, Frank Sinatra smiled amid the unimaginably sweet breezes of his new life.

It was a life that seemed somehow inevitable. He had done his share of hard scrabbling, and then some. "People call me an overnight success," he said. "Don't make me laugh." But when real success did come, it came fast. In early January, when RCA Victor released "There Are Such Things," one of the Dorsey-Sinatra recordings the bandleader had stockpiled in antic.i.p.ation of the American Federation of Musicians strike (which had been in full swing since August), the record instantly went to number 2 on the Billboard Billboard chart. By the middle of the month, it had risen to number 1, knocking off Bing Crosby's "White Christmas." As a result, the Paramount held Sinatra over for another four-week run, a nearly unprecedented honor (only Rudy Vallee had accomplished it before). And on the strength of the Paramount run and the record sales, CBS, whose recording arm, Columbia, was about to sign the singer, named Sinatra the star of its flags.h.i.+p radio show, Lucky Strike's chart. By the middle of the month, it had risen to number 1, knocking off Bing Crosby's "White Christmas." As a result, the Paramount held Sinatra over for another four-week run, a nearly unprecedented honor (only Rudy Vallee had accomplished it before). And on the strength of the Paramount run and the record sales, CBS, whose recording arm, Columbia, was about to sign the singer, named Sinatra the star of its flags.h.i.+p radio show, Lucky Strike's Your Hit Parade Your Hit Parade.

Your Hit Parade was based on a simple formula: bean counters somewhere would supposedly tabulate the week's top-selling songs, was based on a simple formula: bean counters somewhere would supposedly tabulate the week's top-selling songs,3 and the studio orchestra and singers (Sinatra's female counterpart was the now-forgotten Joan Edwards) would perform the top dozen or so of them in reverse order, saving the biggest hit for last. Sandwiched in between were plenty of commercials for Lucky Strikes, with the brand's mystical, mellifluous slogan (L.S.M.F.T.-"Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco") and its catchphrase ("so round, so firm, so fully packed"): magic words that made you feel, if you happened to smoke the brand, part of an elect. and the studio orchestra and singers (Sinatra's female counterpart was the now-forgotten Joan Edwards) would perform the top dozen or so of them in reverse order, saving the biggest hit for last. Sandwiched in between were plenty of commercials for Lucky Strikes, with the brand's mystical, mellifluous slogan (L.S.M.F.T.-"Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco") and its catchphrase ("so round, so firm, so fully packed"): magic words that made you feel, if you happened to smoke the brand, part of an elect.

The show was hokey, and over Sinatra's two tenures there (194344 and 194749) many of the songs were dogs (not even Sinatra could do much with "Red Roses for a Blue Lady"). But radio was everything then, and Sinatra's selection as the star of Your Hit Parade Your Hit Parade was a direct weekly injection of his name into the American consciousness. Not everyone bought records. Certainly not everyone went to the Paramount Theater (although the cops in Times Square would have disagreed). But was a direct weekly injection of his name into the American consciousness. Not everyone bought records. Certainly not everyone went to the Paramount Theater (although the cops in Times Square would have disagreed). But everyone everyone listened to the radio. listened to the radio.

And George Evans was succeeding beyond even his expectations-so much so that in early 1944 Billboard Billboard gave him an award for "Most Effective Promotion of a Single Personality," an occasion that inspired him to p.r.o.nounce (a little indiscreetly) to the Chicago Tribune News Service, "Frankie is a product of crowd psychology...Understand, it was the Sinatra influence that provided the initial impetus. But it was I, Evans, who saw the possibilities in organized and regimented moaning...It's a big s...o...b..ll now, and Frankie's riding to glory on it." gave him an award for "Most Effective Promotion of a Single Personality," an occasion that inspired him to p.r.o.nounce (a little indiscreetly) to the Chicago Tribune News Service, "Frankie is a product of crowd psychology...Understand, it was the Sinatra influence that provided the initial impetus. But it was I, Evans, who saw the possibilities in organized and regimented moaning...It's a big s...o...b..ll now, and Frankie's riding to glory on it."

I, Evans. The publicist may have been a popinjay, yet he was a very successful one, and there is no evidence that Sinatra resented his ego-as long as that ego was doing good things for him. And Evans was more than just a publicist: he was a father figure, the third in a series of such figures in Frank Sinatra's life, after Tommy Dorsey and Manie Sacks. While Sinatra invariably found a way to pry away the intimacies that complicated his life, with the father surrogates things were even more complex, and ultimately explosive. It was as if he had to kill the old man again and again. And each of the father subst.i.tutes was-as Sinatra's actual father of course was not-a considerable figure. Then again, to loom large in Sinatra's life at this point, a man had to be.

George Evans's genius went beyond mere publicity. He took a strong hand with his new client, the main issue being Sinatra's marriage, which was increasingly troubled. There was no deep psychological underpinning to this: it was simply that the more famous Frank Sinatra got, the more women there were who wanted to go to bed with him, and he saw no reason not to oblige as many of them as possible. Covering up the evidence was rarely his first priority. In the quaint era when there was still such a thing as bad publicity, this was one of the worst kinds: in 1940s America, a man-and especially a public exemplar-was nothing if he was not a family man. And if George Evans had anything to do with it, Frank Sinatra would, by G.o.d, be a family man-whatever the reality was.

Evans undertook a three-p.r.o.nged offensive. The first was positioning, or what might today be called spin: the pictures of Frank mowing the lawn and dandling Baby Nancy.

The second was active interdiction. With Sinatra, the women gathered like flies, came in over the transom and through the emergency exit doors. Whenever possible, Evans headed them off, but he couldn't always be present to look out for his client's best interests. So whenever news of the singer's latest indiscretions reached him, the publicist started working the phones-to Sinatra, to the girl, to her folks in Oshkosh, if need be: anything to stamp out the brush fire. And there were a lot of brush fires.

Evans was earning his fat salary, and it was fine with Sinatra. He liked George, liked the fact that the older man was unafraid of him. He smiled when the publicist grabbed him by the elbow to steer him from trouble, smiled even when he stamped out another brush fire. There were always more fires to be lit.

The third p.r.o.ng of the offensive turned out, surprisingly, to be Nancy Sinatra herself. From the moment he met her, George Evans saw that she was a remarkable woman, direct and intelligent, with a quiet dignity and a real beauty behind a physically unconfident exterior. Her liquid brown eyes searched and questioned. And suffered. Evans immediately saw that Nancy was well on her way to becoming one of those Italian peasant ladies you saw sitting on apartment stoops-heavy, fiercely plain, all browns and blacks, coa.r.s.e fabrics and unplucked hairs. As a married man himself, he understood how women battled with weight, and as Frank Sinatra's publicist he understood that Nancy was on the verge of giving in: there was simply too much compet.i.tion.

For the longest time she had been grappling on her own with her position, and it was starting to wear on her. She made bargains with herself: She would lose the weight. (It wasn't easy.) She would look the other way as long as he came home to her. (He didn't come home very often.) What made it all so terribly difficult was that she still loved Frank, she was closer to him than to anyone else on earth: they were soul mates-except that the part of his soul that that b.i.t.c.h Dolly owned would never be satisfied. And not only did Nancy love him, but (and this made her furious sometimes) she had stuck by him since the beginning, since the days when they'd lived on spaghetti and meatless tomato sauce because meat simply cost too much. Now that he was really beginning to make some money, why should she share any part of his success with another woman?

But in George Evans, Nancy Sinatra found an ally. He looked at her appreciatively, he saw her as a woman, not just the suffering wifey. In truth, a great part of Evans's appreciation was professional: the woman had possibilities. Frank Sinatra had to be made to see those possibilities. Evans squinted at Nancy through his horn-rims, seeing the changes in his mind's eye. And then he went to work.

He took her to Bonwit Teller to shop for dresses-an unimaginable expense for a woman who had made her own clothes forever. He took her to Helena Rubinstein to have her hair done, and for a makeup consultation. He took her to a Park Avenue dentist to have her teeth capped. And then there was the matter of her generous Barbato nose: just a little thinning of the tip and she would be perfection itself. Louis Mayer would be testing her for the screen.

She gave him a level look. She had lived with this nose for twenty-five years, and it had worked just fine for her so far.

But she was a beautiful woman. Why not make the most of what she already had?

Was there a moment between them? He came to appreciate, more and more, the beauty that flowered under his ministrations. (Meanwhile, his own wife was sullen and resentful these days about the long hours he spent away from home.) And Nancy Barbato Sinatra longed-ached, really-to be looked at again that way that way. It had been such a long time. She melted a little when George called her beautiful, but at heart she was practical and decisive. As was he.

Then there came a day, in early April, when Frank looked at her with her new dress and her hair and her makeup and her teeth (and the five pounds she'd tortured herself to lose), and it was that look that look again. He took her into the city, to go dancing at El Morocco (Hank Sanicola, at a nearby table, shooed away the girls), and for a late supper at Le Pavillon, and they laughed together and looked in each other's eyes just the way they used to down the sh.o.r.e, down at Long Branch. Later they drove back to Hasbrouck Heights and paid the babysitter, and a month later she was pregnant again. again. He took her into the city, to go dancing at El Morocco (Hank Sanicola, at a nearby table, shooed away the girls), and for a late supper at Le Pavillon, and they laughed together and looked in each other's eyes just the way they used to down the sh.o.r.e, down at Long Branch. Later they drove back to Hasbrouck Heights and paid the babysitter, and a month later she was pregnant again.

Warm Valley. Frank posts the sign he made himself on the front lawn of the Hasbrouck Heights house, April 1943. Big and Little Nancy look on adoringly. (photo credit 11.2) (photo credit 11.2)

12.

Frank at the Riobamba, February 1943. "You better push the walls of this joint out. I'm gonna pack 'em in." (photo credit 12.1) (photo credit 12.1) Even as Sinatra soared, he encountered occasional turbulence, not to mention other highfliers. Handsome d.i.c.k Haymes (who was d.o.g.g.i.ng Sinatra's trail, having followed him with both Harry James and Tommy Dorsey) had now also gone out on his own, and was selling an awful lot of records on Decca. A new kid named Perry Como was on the rise. Nor was it clear, yet, that Frank Sinatra was anything more than a national fad. He had the hysteria market locked up; the girls would buy his records. But would the grown-ups listen?

On this count, he failed at first. In February 1943, Sinatra's management moved heaven and earth to book him into the Copacabana, a big new club on East Sixtieth Street. These were the days when Manhattan was the center of the popular-culture universe, and nightclubs were the white-hot core of Manhattan sophistication. And the Copa was the hottest of the hot. The club was secretly owned by the top mobster (and Walter Winch.e.l.l buddy) Frank Costello, but its major-domo was a pinkie-ring-wearing, frog-voiced thug named Jules Podell, who, where this kid Sinatra was concerned, was not buying.

Podell croaked his indignation. So the kid had had Times Square tied in knots for two months; so what. f.u.c.k Times Square. f.u.c.k all those little girls, and f.u.c.k Frankie Sinatra. Frankie Sinatra would not play the Copacabana. Sophie Tucker played the Copacabana. Jimmy Durante played the Copacabana. f.u.c.k Frankie Sinatra!

A year later, Podell would be kissing Sinatra's pinkie ring. But for now, the singer's people, in a bind, had to do the best they could-which in this case was a Copa knockoff (right down to the Mob owners.h.i.+p), only smaller: a glitzy jewel box of a joint on East Fifty-seventh called the Riobamba. Unlike the Copacabana, however, the Riobamba was on its uppers, largely due to depressed wartime business. (There was also the minor detail that its proprietor, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter of Murder Inc., was in Leavenworth awaiting execution.) The club was delighted to book Sinatra-it needed a quick injection of whatever it could get-but the most it could pay was a cut-rate $750 a week, half of what he was earning at the Paramount.

Sinatra was angry, and scared. (The two usually went hand in hand with him.) He could make the bobby-soxers scream by raising an eyebrow; the Upper East Side sn.o.bs who frequented the Riobamba might not react so favorably, and he hadn't played a nightclub since his days with Dorsey. Moreover, the Riobamba was an intimate place-no stage, just a piano on a little dance floor. Sinatra would be out there on his own, the patrons at their tables close enough to see him sweat.

Typically, he turned fear into bl.u.s.ter. When the club's manager showed Sinatra the tiny setup, he said, "You better push the walls of this joint out. I'm gonna pack 'em in."

But then he got scared all over again. He really was going to have to prove himself. The club's ads for his appearance didn't even bill him first: he was listed as "SPECIALLY ADDED," under Walter O'Keefe (a monologist and comedian) and Sheila Barrett (a singer and comedian). On opening night, in honor of the sophisticated surroundings, Sinatra came out in a tuxedo instead of his Paramount uniform of suit and floppy bow tie. He had to make his entrance right across the nightclub floor, sidling among the tables, trying his best not to b.u.mp into anyone. Literally shaking with stage fright, he backed into the protective curve of Nat Brandwynne's baby grand and began to sing. That was when things started going his way.

"Frank was in a dinner jacket," Earl Wilson wrote, "and he was wearing a wedding band. He had a small curl that fell almost over his right eye. With trembling lips-I don't know how he made them tremble, but I saw it-he sang 'She's Funny That Way' and 'Night and Day' and succeeded in bringing down the house...It was a wondrous night for all of us who felt we had a share in Frankie...The New York Post New York Post's pop-music critic, Danny Richman, leaned over to me and said, 'He sends me.'"

That night Frank didn't have to make his lips tremble: he was that terrified.1 Many years later he would confess that he felt sick with fear every time he walked out onto a stage. The same is true of many other performers ("If you're not scared, it means you don't care," Jerry Lewis has said), but unlike most Sinatra never bothered to try to hide his vulnerability. Wide-eyed with trepidation and excitement, he gave an audience naked emotion. d.i.c.k Haymes or Perry Como or Bob Eberly would have made a very different presentation: a nightclub audience would have admired the handsome face and voice, the musical grace, the thoroughgoing professionalism. But what the swell crowd at the Riobamba got was a jolt of sheer electricity. Many years later he would confess that he felt sick with fear every time he walked out onto a stage. The same is true of many other performers ("If you're not scared, it means you don't care," Jerry Lewis has said), but unlike most Sinatra never bothered to try to hide his vulnerability. Wide-eyed with trepidation and excitement, he gave an audience naked emotion. d.i.c.k Haymes or Perry Como or Bob Eberly would have made a very different presentation: a nightclub audience would have admired the handsome face and voice, the musical grace, the thoroughgoing professionalism. But what the swell crowd at the Riobamba got was a jolt of sheer electricity.

Life magazine wrote: "Three times an evening, Sinatra steps into the baby spotlight that splashes on to the dance floor. In a come-hither, breathless voice, he then sings such songs as 'You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To,' 'That Old Black Magic,' 'She's Funny That Way,' and 'Embraceable You.' As he whispers the lyrics, he fondles his wedding ring and his eyes grow misty. A hush hangs over the tables, and in the eyes of the women present there is soft contentment. The lights go up and Sinatra bows, slouches across the floor and is swallowed up by the shadows." magazine wrote: "Three times an evening, Sinatra steps into the baby spotlight that splashes on to the dance floor. In a come-hither, breathless voice, he then sings such songs as 'You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To,' 'That Old Black Magic,' 'She's Funny That Way,' and 'Embraceable You.' As he whispers the lyrics, he fondles his wedding ring and his eyes grow misty. A hush hangs over the tables, and in the eyes of the women present there is soft contentment. The lights go up and Sinatra bows, slouches across the floor and is swallowed up by the shadows."

Suddenly, rather than having to try to hear him over screams, audiences-grown-up audiences-were hanging on the caress of his voice. He had made them come to him. Overnight, Frank Sinatra had become an adult phenomenon.

The word traveled like lightning around Manhattan, and within a week it was standing room only at the Riobamba, even for the 2:30 a.m. show. Just as Frank had predicted. Within a week, Sheila Barrett was history-the club had put her under Sinatra on the bill; she walked-and Walter O'Keefe followed quickly. "When I came to this place," O'Keefe told the audience on his final night, "I was the star and a kid named Sinatra, one of the acts. Then suddenly a steamroller came along and knocked me flat. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the rightful star-Frank Sinatra!" Just like that, the joint was all Frank's. His pay was doubled, and his gig extended.

And no one was less surprised than Sinatra. To a young reporter, he said, "I'm flying high, kid. I've planned my career. From the first minute I walked on a stage I determined to get exactly where I am; like a guy who starts out being an office boy but has a vision of occupying the president's office."

Frank "was a sensation, doing extra shows," Sammy Cahn remembered, "and I went to the two-thirty a.m. show with a stop first in his dressing room. The moment he saw me he put his arms around me and said, 'Did I tell ya? Did I tell tell ya?' ya?'

"He had them in the grip of his hand," Cahn said. "One of my vivid memories is, while he was singing, some gorilla coughed. A giant guy, like two hundred fifty pounds. He turned and looked at this guy, and the guy didn't know what to do with himself. Do you understand what I'm trying to say? Frank had power, menace...It was an incredible experience."

Only a week or two earlier, he had been backed up trembling against the club's piano; now he was staring down tough guys. His bravado was a self-fulfilling prophecy: bl.u.s.ter away the terror; then, when victorious, strut and gloat and bully. It was unattractive, but Dolly's teaching had left him little middle ground. The triumphant present was maximum revenge on the past, on the days when the Flashes had used him as a punching bag. Suddenly he was the alpha-dog leader of a pack of hangers-on self-dubbed the Varsity.

The group was the first of its kind, the 1943 forerunner of a hip-hopper's posse, complete with camel-hair overcoats, golden bling, and nights at the fights. Among them were Sanicola and (for the time being) Sevano; Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen when they were in from the Coast; Manie Sacks; the singer's music-publis.h.i.+ng partner, Ben Barton; two pugilists (and crowd-control specialists) named Al Silvani and Tami Mauriello; and another Jimmy, Tarantino, a shady character who wrote for a boxing magazine picturesquely called Knockout Knockout. They would swagger around Manhattan, from watering hole to watering hole, the little man at the center of the group, protectively cordoned, the functionaries at the periphery greasing the way with crisp new bills. It was the beginning of a pattern that would continue for the next thirty-three years of Sinatra's life, until he slipped the wedding ring onto the finger of his fourth and final wife-who, in a self-preserving power play, proceeded, with ruthless efficiency, to force out the sycophants, cronies, and enablers, one by one.

In the meantime, for a long time to come, he was King, with all that that entailed. The oboist and conductor Mitch Miller, who would one day produce Sinatra's records at Columbia, recalled: "Jimmy Van Heusen once canceled dinner with me by saying, 'I'm sorry, but I've got to eat with the Monster.' Everyone called Sinatra the Monster."

They called him that because he acted like that-not always, but too often for comfort. He gave free rein to the terrible impatience that had always plagued him; his temper too was sanctioned by his success. Anything could set him off: a bad review, a package of s.h.i.+rts mistakenly starched by the laundry. He felt too much: it was his burden, his gift.

And what did Manie Sacks think of all these macho goings-on? How did the quiet and Talmudic record executive blend in with the hearty extroverts of the Varsity? No doubt, like many reflective men, he took vicarious pleasure in the company of doers. We do know that by a complicated formula, Sinatra, who detested solitude and surrounded himself with loud talkers and backslappers, took great pleasure in Manie Sacks's company. And he trusted him. Sacks brought out (as no man ever had before) a better self in Sinatra, a contemplative side at his center that few, with the exception of Nancy, had ever seen. Manie calmed Frank down. It was a valuable skill, and a unique one. The arranger Stordahl was a serene character, yet when things went south during a recording session, he would quietly smoke his pipe (upside down, like the Norwegian sailor he actually was) as Hurricane Sinatra raged and threatened and finally blew itself out.

Manie Sacks was a different ball of wax. From their first meeting, Sinatra seems to have sensed that Manie didn't just have real business ac.u.men, didn't just have something Sinatra wanted (a contract with Columbia, the Rolls-Royce of record labels); he also had-for lack of a better word-soul. Manie was honest to the core; he was incapable of disingenuousness. Sinatra, who could wear a half-dozen personalities in the course of a morning, was fascinated by the man's purity. Like George Evans, Sacks was in his early forties, old enough to feel like a father to Sinatra. But Evans was another extrovert, a man to whom words were verbs. Sacks was deep.

He was small and dark haired, with a long, thin, acne-scarred face and a sizable nose-not homely-handsome, really, but homely-memorable. When he began to spend time with Sinatra, the crazed fans would sometimes mistake the record executive for the recording artist. For a brief time the press, when it had nothing else to write about, would make much of the supposed resemblance between the two. In fact, though, only in the grossest possible details-stature, hair color, face shape-was there a correspondence. Sinatra, for all his facial imperfections, had a wild, Dionysian beauty. Manie Sacks looked like a rabbi.2 "He was a very unusual-looking man," George Avakian recalled. Avakian first met Sacks in the late 1930s, when, while still a student at Yale, he was starting to produce jazz alb.u.ms for Columbia. "You got the feeling right away that this was a man who knew what he was doing. He could have a piercing gaze. I don't mean like Benny Goodman's famous ray. But he looked you in the eye, and he was very direct in his speech. He didn't waste a lot of time. He always looked as though he was on the point of doing something very intense. He looked very intense. And he was. Manie I think ended up getting ulcers."

And Sinatra would have been the one who gave them to him. But at first the relations.h.i.+p was a beautiful thing, even in a difficult time. The American Federation of Musicians strike against the record companies, which had begun in August 1942, was in full swing when Sinatra signed with Columbia Records. Indeed, the first time Frank stepped into a recording studio as a solo artist (Liederkranz Hall on East Fifty-eighth Street; Monday, June 7, 1943), beginning a commercial relations.h.i.+p with Columbia that would last for a tumultuous decade, he saw no musicians, only the eight-person vocal group that had recently accompanied him on the radio, the Bobby Tucker Singers. Sinatra hadn't made a record in eleven months. Manie Sacks was so desperate to get product out to Frank's female fan base that he had asked him to sing a cappella.

He was game at first. Listen to his maiden recording, of Hoffman, Lampl, and Livingston's "Close to You": You hear Sinatra in fine vocal form, backed by what sounds at first like a heavenly choir, trilling along in close harmony.3 Unfortunately, the heavenliness quickly turns cloying. The effect is pretty, but...crowded. Too many voices in the room, when there should be only the Voice. Unfortunately, the heavenliness quickly turns cloying. The effect is pretty, but...crowded. Too many voices in the room, when there should be only the Voice.

He would record nine of the instrumentless singles between June and November 1943, and the fans would dutifully buy them (five of the numbers. .h.i.t the Billboard Billboard best-sellers chart), but none of the records had anything like the impact of a disc that Sinatra had cut an eon ago, with Harry James-and that Manie Sacks had the good sense to reissue on June 19. The song was "All or Nothing At All." Only eight thousand people had bought the record when it was first released in June 1940. This time it sold a million. best-sellers chart), but none of the records had anything like the impact of a disc that Sinatra had cut an eon ago, with Harry James-and that Manie Sacks had the good sense to reissue on June 19. The song was "All or Nothing At All." Only eight thousand people had bought the record when it was first released in June 1940. This time it sold a million.4 Since Axel Stordahl was an orchestra arranger, and organizing the voices of a small chorus so they would sound something like a band of actual instruments was a highly specialized problem, Sacks brought in a new man to arrange and conduct Sinatra's Bobby Tucker sessions. His name was Alexander Lafayette Chew Wilder-Alec for short. He was an upstate New Yorker, thirty-six years old, and a genuine American eccentric: a self-taught composer who wrote both serious music and popular songs, Wilder lived alone in the Algonquin Hotel, pa.s.sed his days doing crosswords and jigsaw puzzles, and spent his evenings drinking, smoking, drinking some more, and dazzling New York's best and brightest with his encyclopedic knowledge of more or less everything. "He is acutely aware of what is happening in the world and why it happens," read the liner notes to an alb.u.m of Wilder's orchestral music released several years later-an alb.u.m that would loom large in Sinatra's life. "He is pa.s.sionately fond of living in hotels, riding on trains, and reading detective stories; he is equally enamored of sitting still in a small town, attending to a garden, and talking to children." Wilder was mustached and handsome in an old-money way, with a beetling brow and a distracted, kind of sideways, manner. The first time Sinatra laid eyes on him, he called him by the only possible nickname: the Professor.

Working with Sinatra would have been a big deal for Wilder, if Wilder hadn't been above caring about such matters. But oddly enough, working with Alec did feel like a big deal to Frank. In Sacks and Wilder, Frank Sinatra was rubbing elbows with a new caliber of talent. Manie may have hung with the crew, have smiled at the hijinks, but ultimately he kept himself to himself. His integrity was inviolable. And as charmed as Alec Wilder was with Sinatra-and as bowled over by his musical gifts-he had absolutely no interest in joining the Varsity, or any fraternity at all. He might, out of anthropological curiosity, tag along to a Friday-night prizefight; he might, just as likely, spend the next evening drinking with Alexander Woollcott and Dottie Parker.

Both Sacks and Wilder had that ineffable quality that Frank Sinatra thought of as Cla.s.s. He wanted the same thing of those who had it that those who lacked it wanted of him. Cla.s.s didn't necessarily have anything to do with wealth: the rich stiffs who flocked to see him at the Riobamba mostly lacked the elusive quant.i.ty entirely, as far as he could see. (Though in later years, cleverer stiffs, primarily in Hollywood and Palm Springs, would gain access to Sinatra by a.s.suring him that their money was no greener than his.) It was easy to feel superior to some jacka.s.s with dough; Sinatra never, for one second, felt superior to Manie or the Professor. If anything, it was quite the opposite. Which made things kind of complicated sometimes, but never stopped him from longing for just a little bit of what they had.

On August 11, 1943, Frank Sinatra made his grand entrance to Hollywood-except that it wasn't Hollywood. It was Pasadena. Nancy Sinatra writes, in Frank Sinatra: An American Legend Frank Sinatra: An American Legend, "Traveling by train to Los Angeles, Dad tried to avoid the waiting crowds by deboarding [sic] in Pasadena, but it was no use: A huge throng of bobby-soxers mobbed the station, and he was rushed by police to the safety of a nearby garage. 'They converged on our car and practically picked it up,' Dad recalls. 'There must have been 5,000 kids mashed against the car. It was exciting, but it scares the wits out of you, too.'"

This is disingenuous. In fact, Sinatra's true goal on that summer Wednesday was not eluding the crowds but meeting them, and the waiting throng-probably closer to a few hundred than five thousand-had been lured by a radio "whisper" of the singer's arrival. As the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Super Chief pulled in to the little Mission-style depot, a loudspeaker was blaring "All or Nothing At All." The whole event had been carefully orchestrated by the Evans office (Margaret Divan, Los Angeles representative), working in league with the West Coast Sinatra fan clubs and the RKO publicity department. Another photograph taken that day shows Sinatra standing on a ladder in the midst of an enthusiastic but notably restrained throng; a couple of female hands are proffering autograph books, but none are ripping at his clothing. The ladder is clearly stenciled "RKO GRIP DEP'T."

His fans weren't the only ones thrilled to see him. RKO executives were hoping Sinatra could help lift Radio-Keith-Orpheum Pictures out of the financial trough into which another young genius, Orson Welles, had sunk it with his brilliant but money-losing epics Citizen Kane Citizen Kane and and The Magnificent Ambersons The Magnificent Ambersons.5 It was astonis.h.i.+ng: Frank was about to sign a seven-year movie contract, and n.o.body really even knew whether he could act. He had appeared, very briefly, in three motion pictures to date: Paramount's Las Vegas Nights Las Vegas Nights (1941), MGM's (1941), MGM's s.h.i.+p Ahoy s.h.i.+p Ahoy (1942), and-released earlier in 1943-a Columbia musical with the perky, patriotic t.i.tle (1942), and-released earlier in 1943-a Columbia musical with the perky, patriotic t.i.tle Reveille with Beverly Reveille with Beverly. In Las Vegas Nights Las Vegas Nights and and s.h.i.+p Ahoy s.h.i.+p Ahoy, Sinatra had been a mere singing extra, the male vocalist for Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra, and while he was featured in Reveille Reveille, it was only as the singer of one number, "Night and Day" (accompanied by six female pianists).

Still, whether he could play Hamlet was hardly the point. He had been playing one role, brilliantly, for almost ten years. He didn't have to act. He was Frank Sinatra Frank Sinatra.

The staid Chandler family's Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times gave front-page treatment to the new star's arrival. SECRET OF LURE TOLD BY CROONER-IT'S LOVE, read the two-column headline. The story reported that Sinatra had come not only to start his movie career but also to play a concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. L.A. cla.s.sical music aficionados were outraged, the paper said, even though Sinatra's appearance promised to give the orchestra, and the bowl, a badly needed financial boost. One of the naysayers had been the gave front-page treatment to the new star's arrival. SECRET OF LURE TOLD BY CROONER-IT'S LOVE, read the two-column headline. The story reported that Sinatra had come not only to start his movie career but also to play a concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. L.A. cla.s.sical music aficionados were outraged, the paper said, even though Sinatra's appearance promised to give the orchestra, and the bowl, a badly needed financial boost. One of the naysayers had been the Times Times's distinguished music critic, Isabel Morse Jones, a portly old-guard Angeleno who ventured bravely out to that besieged garage in Pasadena. It wasn't just the howling fans Ms. Jones was nervous about; it was Frank himself. "My objections to swooner-crooner singing in sacred precincts [had recently] hit the wires and reached him in New York," she wrote. But Sinatra smiled that smile at her, and practically from the moment she opened her reporter's notebook, Isabel Morse Jones was a goner. Frank knew just how to play the ladies, young and pretty or middle-aged and plump. And if the lady in question was a distinguished cla.s.sical music critic, why, all the better. He spoke softly, and she listened carefully.

"I expect to get the thrill of my life Sat.u.r.day night," he told Ms. Jones. "Oh, yes, I can be just as enthusiastic about cla.s.sical music as those kids out there are about my kind. What do you suppose I have 500 alb.u.ms of symphonies and so on for?"

Five hundred alb.u.ms of symphonies... One can see the music critic's eyes widening, her features softening..."It's the words of a song that are important," Sinatra went on. "I pick my songs for the lyrics. The music is only a backdrop. I sing love songs and mean them. They're meant for two girls, both named Nancy. One is my wife, aged 24, and not jealous and the other is my three-year-old." One can see the music critic's eyes widening, her features softening..."It's the words of a song that are important," Sinatra went on. "I pick my songs for the lyrics. The music is only a backdrop. I sing love songs and mean them. They're meant for two girls, both named Nancy. One is my wife, aged 24, and not jealous and the other is my three-year-old."6 "He is just naturally sensitive," Isabel Morse Jones wrote, her fingers flying over the typewriter keys, when she got back to the office. "He is a romanticist and a dreamer and a careful dresser and he loves beautiful words and music is his hobby. He makes no pretensions at all."

Another one bites the dust.

He handled his first meeting with Louella Parsons, a few days later, with equal skill. Here was another small, pudgy female columnist, except that this one was a real dragon lady: a personal favorite of her employer, William Randolph Hearst, and the most feared woman in Hollywood. Her forty million readers gave her tremendous power. Yet even Lolly Parsons's knees wobbled in Sinatra's presence. She wrote that he had, "Noah Webster forgive me, humility. He was warm, ingenuous, so anxious to please." He would grow less eager to please as his own power grew. Parsons and Sinatra would have a love-hate relations.h.i.+p over the years, until her clout waned and he decided he didn't need her anymore. Long afterward, she would reflect: "Sinatra couldn't have been so boyishly unspoiled, so natural and considerate. But I have to admit he was. After I met him, I was enrolled in the Sinatra cheering squad. And I stayed in a long, long time."

Two days after Sinatra's arrival in Pasadena, a radio listener in San Jose wrote a letter to the FBI: Dear Sir:The other day I turned on a Frank Sinatra program and I noted the shrill whistling sound, created supposedly by a bunch of girls cheering. Last night as I heard Lucky Strike produce more of this same hysteria I thought: how easy it would be for certain-minded manufacturers to create another Hitler here in America through the influence of ma.s.s-hysteria! I believe that those who are using this shrill whistling sound are aware that it is similar to that which produced Hitler. That they intend to get a Hitler in by first planting in the minds of the people that men like Frank Sinatra are O.K. therefore this future Hitler will be O.K. As you are well aware the future of some of these manufacturers is rather shaky unless something is done like that...

Crazy as it was, the letter was notable for one reason: it was the beginning of what would become a 1,275-page FBI dossier on Sinatra.

He rented a bungalow at the Garden of Allah, where the parties never stopped. Five years earlier, Sheilah Graham had moved Scott Fitzgerald out of the complex so he could get some work done. Sinatra, who had come to Hollywood not only to start a movie career but also to have some serious fun, had picked his new residence deliberately. He took some vocal coaching from his new neighbor Kay Thompson. And he commuted to Culver City to make Higher and Higher Higher and Higher.

The picture was a trifle, the kind of silly B fluff the studios cranked out by the ton in the 1930s and 1940s. The upstairs-downstairs comedy, such as it is, is set in motion when the wealthy Drake family loses its money and Mr. Drake conspires with the servants to marry the scullery maid off to the rich boy next door...Who, in an unconsciously inspired bit of casting, is played by none other than the Hoboken Kid, as himself. His first line, ever, in the movies, to the maid who opens the Drakes' door: "Good morning. My name is Frank Sinatra." (The maid faints.) The big surprise about Sinatra in Higher and Higher Higher and Higher is not how well he can hold a big screen, but how beautiful he is. Not handsome-any Joe Blow can be handsome. The twenty-seven-year-old Frank Sinatra, shot in rich black and white by cinematographer Robert De Gra.s.se, is resplendent. Lovingly lit, photographed in slightly soft focus (and largely from the camera's left, his right, to avoid the bad profile), he glows through his every scene, all cheekbones and wide, wide eyes. He's like Bambi with s.e.x appeal. is not how well he can hold a big screen, but how beautiful he is. Not handsome-any Joe Blow can be handsome. The twenty-seven-year-old Frank Sinatra, shot in rich black and white by cinematographer Robert De Gra.s.se, is resplendent. Lovingly lit, photographed in slightly soft focus (and largely from the camera's left, his right, to avoid the bad profile), he glows through his every scene, all cheekbones and wide, wide eyes. He's like Bambi with s.e.x appeal.

As for his acting-it scarcely matters: you simply can't take your eyes off the guy. A great deal has to do with the undismissable fact that this is Frank Sinatra Frank Sinatra. Had he been killed in a plane crash in 1947, or had his career come to an end (as it almost did) in 1950 or thereabouts, maybe Sinatra wouldn't have glowed quite so luminously.

But Frank endured. He became, for better and worse, a kind of G.o.d, and it's particularly interesting to observe him in the celluloid guise of a bashful young swain. The role, of course, was just a slight variation of the role he played when he sang. Watching Higher and Higher Higher and Higher (in which Sinatra also gets to perform five numbers (in which Sinatra also gets to perform five numbers7), you can understand why the girls went bonkers: the guy was gorgeous and magnetic and achingly vulnerable. Quite simply, he was phenomenal-way too much so for little RKO Radio Pictures, a fact of which Frank Sinatra, doubtless, was sharply aware. Surely he had his people working frenziedly on contingency plans to extricate him from the studio even as he wrapped his first film with them. After all, contracts, seven-year and otherwise, were only pieces of paper.

Another contract, one that grew progressively more irksome as Sinatra's earnings skyrocketed, was the onerous severance agreement he had signed with Tommy Dorsey. Having initially boasted he would simply stiff the steely-eyed bandleader, Frank now decided to toss Tommy a bone: reportedly, about $1,000 in commissions. Predictably, this was not an amount that made Dorsey happy-and he grew increasingly unhappy hearing Sinatra brag to the press how much he was raking in.

In response, Sinatra, under the brilliant aegis of Evans, was turning the dispute into a cause celebre, having his radio writers inject comic jabs at the bandleader into his sketches (at the sound of a few out-of-tune bars of "I'm Getting Sentimental over You": "It's Dorsey, coming to collect his commission!") and paying bobby-soxers to carry picket signs ("Dorsey Unfair to Our Boy Frankie!") outside Tommy's show in Philadelphia, while eager newspaper photographers immortalized the event.

Battered in the public arena, Dorsey would have been down for the count-except for the fact that Tommy Dorsey took no s.h.i.+t from anyone. There was also the fact that Dorsey was represented by that rising giant, the Music Corporation of America (MCA), which was desperate to also represent Frank Sinatra. Despite the imaginative formulations of both Mario Puzo and Sinatra, the whole affair was resolved in the most Byzantine (and peaceful) way possible.

The G.o.dfather, of course, was the vehicle that elevated the whole contretemps to the realm of myth. In the novel, Puzo relates how the fictional bandleader Les Halley pressures the fictional singer Johnny Fontane into an impossibly severe personal-services contract. When Fontane approaches his G.o.dfather, Don Corleone, and asks him to intervene on his behalf, the don goes to Halley and offers him $20,000 to release Fontane from the contract. Halley refuses to play ball. Even after Don Corleone ominously drops his offer to $10,000, the bandleader won't budge.

The next day [Puzo writes] Don Corleone went to see the band leader personally. He brought with him his two best friends, Genco Abbandando, who was his Consigliere Consigliere, and Luca Brasi. With no other witnesses Don Corleone persuaded Les Halley to sign a doc.u.ment giving up all rights to all services from Johnny Fontane upon payment of a certified check to the amount of ten thousand dollars. Don Corleone did this by putting a pistol to the forehead of the band leader and a.s.suring him with the utmost seriousness that either his signature or his brains would rest on that doc.u.ment in exactly one minute. Les Halley signed. Don Corleone pocketed his pistol and handed over the certified check.

Still wincing from his portrayal as the sniveling Fontane, but loftily refusing to acknowledge it, Sinatra took the high road when Sidney Zion asked him in 1986 about the Dorsey contract. "The man who straightened it out was named Saul Jaffe," Sinatra told Zion. "He's a lawyer who now is retired. Mr. Jaffe was the secretary of the American Federation of Radio Artists, and Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra would play from hotel [ball]rooms around the country on radio programs. I told [Jaffe] the whole story, and he went to Mr. Dorsey and he said to him, 'I represent Frank Sinatra in this case that you and he are involved in.' He said, 'I think we can come to a settlement quite simply.' Tom said, 'No no, I want one-third of his salary for the rest of his life.' So Jaffe said to him, 'Do you enjoy playing music in hotel [ball]rooms and having the nation hear you on the radio?' [Dorsey] said, 'Sure I do.' [Jaffe] said, 'Not anymore, you won't.'"

Whether other, darker forces were brought to bear-and if they were, whether Sinatra knew anything about it-are questions that will forever remain unresolved. The answers are tied up in Frank's relations.h.i.+p to the Mob, and mobsters, in 1943 and for the rest of his life: a teasing, conflicted, flirtatious dance on both sides.

Jerry Lewis had another version of the Dorsey-Sinatra brouhaha. He a.s.serted that, based on the Mafia's early adoration for Sinatra, a summit consisting of Frank Costello, Albert Anastasia, Willie Moretti, and the Murder Inc. hit man Frankie Carbo got together and went to Dorsey to make him that offer he couldn't refuse. "Frank told me years later-laughing-how that talk went," Lewis remembered. "Carbo said, 'Mr. Dorsey, could you play your trombone if it had a dent in it? Could you play it if you didn't have the slide?' It was all just like that, and Dorsey got the idea."

One kernel of truth in this account would seem to be the partic.i.p.ation of Sinatra's Hasbrouck Heights neighbor Willie Moretti, a.k.a. Willie Moore, the boss of North Jersey. Moretti was short, plump, bald, wisecracking, gregarious-and, as his job demanded, dangerous. He had his fingers in many pies, paid close attention to such profit centers as the Meadowbrook in Cedar Grove, the Riviera in Fort Lee, and the Rustic Cabin, and apparently took quite a s.h.i.+ne to Sinatra. Still, whether that makes Moretti (who was about as different from the n.o.ble Don Corleone as it was possible to be) Sinatra's G.o.dfather, and whether Moretti interceded personally with Dorsey (who was, after all, a North Jersey resident himself), is another question.

Peter J. Levinson, in his Dorsey biography, tells us that the "Bergen Record Record entertainment editor and syndicated writer Dan Lewis, [who] knew Moretti personally...once asked [the gangster] if there was any truth to these reports. Moretti smiled and, in a rare departure from entertainment editor and syndicated writer Dan Lewis, [who] knew Moretti personally...once asked [the gangster] if there was any truth to these reports. Moretti smiled and, in a rare departure from omerta omerta, answered, 'Well, Dan, let's just say we took very good care of Sinatra.'"

In fact, Moretti had a reputation for making frequent departures from omerta omerta. He was an infamous blowhard whose garrulity-perhaps abetted by an advanced case of syphilis-would eventually lead to his elimination.

To complicate matters further, Dorsey's daughter, Levinson writes, "vividly remembers her father telling her about getting a threatening telephone call at dinnertime early in the Sinatra-Dorsey contretemps. The anonymous caller implied ominous consequences if Dorsey didn't 'cooperate' by letting Sinatra out of his contract. He was reminding Dorsey that he had two children, and that he wouldn't want anything to happen to them. That's when Dorsey responded by putting up barbed wire atop the wall surrounding [his house], installed sweeping searchlights that bathed the property on a nightly basis, and constructed an elaborate electric fence at the entrance to the property."

There is yet another story, told by an old Hoboken pal of Sinatra's, one Joey D'Orazio, that possesses a seriocomic ring of truth. D'Orazio a.s.serted that Hank Sanicola sent two rough customers, "not real underworld characters but just some frightening fellows that he and Sinatra both knew," to threaten Dorsey if he didn't release the singer from the contract. Sanicola claimed that in order to protect Sinatra should things go wrong, he never told him about the two thugs.

But, according to D'Orazio, when the two threatened to break Dorsey's arms if he didn't sign legal papers to let the singer go, the bandleader "laughed in their faces...[saying] 'Oh, yeah, look how scared I am. Tell Frank...I said, "Go to h.e.l.l for sending his goons to beat me up."'"

Dorsey then told the men, "I'll sign the G.o.dd.a.m.n papers, that's how sick I am of Frank Sinatra, the no good b.u.m. The h.e.l.l with him."

"It wasn't much of an intimidation," D'Orazio said. "In fact, one of the guys was so excited about meeting Tommy Dorsey, he had to be talked out of going back and asking the guy for his autograph after they left his office."

The story seems just too charming not to be true.

There was little charm, however, once the lawyers and agents got involved. Saul Jaffe, who was indeed the secretary of the American Federation of Radio Artists, actually did threaten Tommy Dorsey with exclusion from the airwaves, and Dorsey-who perhaps had already been softened up by a threatening telephone call and a threatening visit-took his point. All that remained was the paperwork. MCA was able to s.n.a.t.c.h Sinatra away from his former agency, Rockwell-O'Keefe, by brokering the deal-which essentially just meant moving money around. Dorsey got $60,000 ($700,000 today) to finally cut Frank loose: $35,000 of it came from MCA itself, advanced to its new client; Columbia Records advanced the remaining $25,000 to its new recording artist.

Lawyers, agents, executives, goons, mobsters, gofers-all dancing attendance on the Golden Boy, who yawned, picked his teeth, and winked at the next beautiful girl at his dressing-room door, while his publicist pulled out what remained of his hair.

By the end of 1943, Frank Sinatra had ascended from mere teen idol to bona fide American superstar, one of only a handful of such creatures who had existed up to that point in history-think Caruso, Chaplin, Valentino, Crosby-but one who possessed unprecedented power and influence. Sinatra was a radio and recording star; he was soon to break through in the movies. He had smashed attendance records at the Paramount and wowed the snooty nightclub crowds at the Riobamba-and then, historically, in October, he knocked them dead at the Waldorf-Astoria's Wedgwood Room, a venue of such high tone that Cole Porter himself descended from his thirty-third-floor suite to take in the show (and, presumably, forgive the singer for blowing the lyrics to "Night and Day" back at the Rustic Cabin).8 Sinatra had vocalized along with the Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles philharmonics. Soon he would pay a call on the president of the United States-his idol Franklin Delano Roosevelt (who would ask Sinatra to clue him in on the winner of that week's Sinatra had vocalized along with the Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles philharmonics. Soon he would pay a call on the president of the United States-his idol Franklin Delano Roosevelt (who would ask Sinatra to clue him in on the winner of that week's Your Hit Parade Your Hit Parade). But he still had a big problem.

Along with sixteen million other young men, Sinatra had first registered for the draft in December 1940. As a new father, he had been granted an exemption from service, but now, in the fall of 1943, with the United States throwing every resource into the conflicts in Europe and the Pacific, the government was about to abolish deferments for married fathers. Meanwhile, Sinatra was already catching flak from resentful soldiers ("Hey, Wop. Why aren't you in uniform?"), and George Evans was doing plenty of scrambling to keep his prize client from looking like a slacker, making sure the press knew he was singing "G.o.d Bless America" at war-bond rallies (lots of them), and on American Forces Radio shows, and on unbreakable vinyl V-Discs to be sent to soldiers and sailors overseas.

But would Frankie Frankie be sent overseas? Plenty of entertainers were on their way: Buddy Rich had signed up, as had Joe Bushkin and Jack Leonard and Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw and Rudy Vallee, not to mention Gene Kelly and Mickey Rooney (with a heart murmur, yet) and Clark Gable (dentures and all) and Jimmy Stewart and Joe DiMaggio, though the only fighting John Wayne would do would be on celluloid. be sent overseas? Plenty of entertainers were on their way: Buddy Rich had signed up, as had Joe Bushkin and Jack Leonard and Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw and Rudy Vallee, not to mention Gene Kelly and Mickey Rooney (with a heart murmur, yet) and Clark Gable (dentures and all) and Jimmy Stewart and Joe DiMaggio, though the only fighting John Wayne would do would be on celluloid.

At the end of October, Sinatra dutifully reported to the local board examining physician for the U.S. Army in Jersey City, where, in a preliminary examination, a Dr. Povalski declared the singer fit for service, cla.s.sifying him 1-A. In early December, the Army, in the person of Captain Joseph Weintrob, M.D., examined Sinatra again, in Newark, and declared him 4-F. His Physical Examination and Induction form read, "Frank Albert Sinatra [note first name] is physically and/or mentally disqualified for military service by reason of: l. chronic perforation (left) tympanum; 2. chronic mastoiditis." The form noted the examinee's weight as 119 pounds (four pounds below the Army minimum for men of his stature) and his height as five feet seven and a half inches, and went on to say that he was further disqualified because of emotional instability.

There is every reason to believe that Weintrob's report was correct in every particular. Not only were Sinatra's height (sans elevators), weight, first name, and emotional state right on the money, but chronic left-ear infections would certainly account for the punctured left eardrum, and his mastoid operation would have further complicated matters.9 Nevertheless, Sinatra's 4-F quickly became controversial big news. He was, after all, c.o.c.ky, rich, famous, and Italian-American. Later that month, Walter Winch.e.l.l received an anonymous letter at his New York Nevertheless, Sinatra's 4-F quickly became controversial big news. He was, after all, c.o.c.ky, rich, famous, and Italian-American. Later that month, Walter Winch.e.l.l received an anonymous letter at his New York Daily Mirror Daily Mirror office: office: Dear Mr. Winch.e.l.l:I don't dare give you my name because of my job but here is a bit of news you can check which I think is Front Page:The Federal Bureau of Investigation is said to be investigating a report that Frank Sinatra paid $40,000 to the doctors who examined him in Newark recently and presented him with a 4-F cla.s.sification. The money is supposed to have been paid by Sinatra's Business Manager. One of the recipients is said to have talked too loud about the gift in a beer joint recently and a report was sent to the F.B.I.A former School mate of Sinatra's from Highland, N.J., said recently that Sinatra has no more ear drum trouble than Gen. MacArthur.If there is any truth to these reports I think that it should be made known. Mothers around this section who have sons in the service are planning a pet.i.tion to Pres. Roosevelt asking for a re-examination of the singer by a neutral board of examiners. You'll probably read about this in the papers within a few days unless you break the story first.

Winch.e.l.l sent the letter on to his pal J. Edgar Hoover, and though it turned out the FBI had not been actively investigating Sinatra, it quickly set about doing so. Matters s...o...b..lled from there. t.i.tillated to discover that the singer had two s.e.x-related arrests on his record, the bureau looked closely into the dismissed cases, even though they had absolutely no bearing on the present matter. In the meantime, Dr. Weintrob wrote a letter to his superior officers amplifying his original physical a.s.sessment of Sinatra and adding, "The diagnosis of 'psychoneurosis, severe' was not added to the list. Notation of emotional instability was made instead. It was felt that this would avoid undue unpleasantness for both the selectee and the induction service."