Frank_ The Voice Part 9

Dr. Weintrob-his back to the wall-elaborated. "During the psychiatric interview," he wrote, "the patient stated that he was 'neurotic, afraid to be in crowds, afraid to go in elevator, makes him feel that he would want to run when surrounded by people. He had somatic ideas and headaches and has been very nervous for four or five years. Wakens tired in the A.M., is run down and undernourished.'"

The FBI report said that Weintrob "stated that no one had ever attempted to influence his opinion in this case and in fact no one had discussed the SINATRA case with him prior to the actual examination...Captain WEINTROB stated he was satisfied in his own mind that SINATRA should not have been inducted and was willing to stake his medical reputation on his findings."

The FBI closed the case. The press, the public, and the men of the armed forces did not.

Was Frank Sinatra reluctant to serve his country? While his physical diagnosis alone would have been enough to disqualify him, the psychological interview is interesting. During his preliminary examination in October, his response to the inquiry "What physical or mental defects or diseases have you had in the past, if any?" had been the single word "No." The answer didn't quite match up to the question, indicating a certain haste on his part. He was always impatient. In Newark in December, he was willing to take more time. Everything he said to Weintrob made perfect sense: He was was neurotic, highly. Where crowds were concerned, the very real prospect of having his clothes ripped off or being choked by his own bow tie quite naturally made him afraid. He did suffer from claustrophobia, and elevators often terrified him (as they did Dean Martin). The somatic ideas and headaches would match up with Sinatra's occasional sinking feeling that he wasn't long for this world. Nervous for four or five years? Since the moment-just say-he'd first stepped on the bus with Harry James and His Music Makers...And anyone who had spent the previous day playing six shows at the Paramount, making public appearances, and doing three nightclub shows (the last beginning at 2:30 in the morning), with plenty of gallivanting before, between, and after, would tend to wake up tired in the a.m. Or the p.m. neurotic, highly. Where crowds were concerned, the very real prospect of having his clothes ripped off or being choked by his own bow tie quite naturally made him afraid. He did suffer from claustrophobia, and elevators often terrified him (as they did Dean Martin). The somatic ideas and headaches would match up with Sinatra's occasional sinking feeling that he wasn't long for this world. Nervous for four or five years? Since the moment-just say-he'd first stepped on the bus with Harry James and His Music Makers...And anyone who had spent the previous day playing six shows at the Paramount, making public appearances, and doing three nightclub shows (the last beginning at 2:30 in the morning), with plenty of gallivanting before, between, and after, would tend to wake up tired in the a.m. Or the p.m.

Sinatra was not the only star not to serve. d.i.c.k Haymes and Perry Como had not been drafted. And Crosby, at forty, was too old to join up (but would go to heroic lengths throughout the war to entertain the troops). There were a lot of singers out there, and Frank wasn't about to give those other guys a leg up by going away for the duration-or, G.o.d forbid, dying for his country.10 It wasn't so much that he lacked physical courage; he simply had very legitimate fears about the fickleness of the American public. It wasn't so much that he lacked physical courage; he simply had very legitimate fears about the fickleness of the American public.

And so he quashed his natural inclination to give a curt or rude answer to this square, this nosy medical officer, and instead sat back and responded at length: thoughtfully, feelingly. It could come in handy.

Frank's triumphant arrival in Hollywood-or Pasadena, anyway. August 1943. (photo credit 12.2) (photo credit 12.2)

13.

Frank signs his induction papers at local draft board No. 19160 in Jersey City, October 1943. He was cla.s.sified 1-A. Two months later he was reexamined and exempted from military service due to a perforated eardrum and emotional instability. (photo credit 13.1) (photo credit 13.1) Frank Sinatra had a knack for stirring people up. His draft recla.s.sification did not go down well with the newspaper columnists, nor with the hundreds of thousands of men who were fighting overseas, or even just pulling mind-numbing Stateside duty, marching in the hot sun and eating creamed chipped beef on toast at Fort Ord or Fort Monmouth or Fort Benning. "Draft dodger" was an ugly epithet that people-mostly men-were starting to hang on Sinatra, for all his protestations to the press and even to friends that he was dying to serve, that the 4-F had been a crus.h.i.+ng disappointment.

Part of him really did feel that way. And then there was the part that remembered what had happened to Jack Leonard: he had vanished, become just another serial number among the millions of Sad Sacks...Frank knew this was not his fate. His destiny was here, being Frank Sinatra.

His female fans were thrilled that their Frankie would be staying close to them. As for the servicemen, one old acquaintance gave it to Sinatra straight from the shoulder: Tommy Dorsey's former band manager Bobby Burns, the man who'd once slipped Sinatra a note telling him the Great Man himself would grant him an audience, was now a buck private at Camp Haan, in California. After Sinatra entertained at the base, Burns went up to him to say hi. "There's a lot of griping over your 4-F status," Burns told him. "The troops figure you're home living it up with the babes while they're away."

Frank grinned.

What other conclusion were the troops to draw? He was was living it up, with every available babe, and he was sufficiently indiscreet that the whole world knew: not only his wife, but also millions of homesick, love-starved, generally disgruntled servicemen. living it up, with every available babe, and he was sufficiently indiscreet that the whole world knew: not only his wife, but also millions of homesick, love-starved, generally disgruntled servicemen.1 William Manchester wrote in William Manchester wrote in The Glory and the Dream The Glory and the Dream, his history of mid-twentieth-century America, "It is not too much to say that by the end of the war Sinatra had become the most hated man in the armed services."

George Evans was fighting a heroic public-relations battle, but he was bucking overwhelming odds. And his client wasn't helping matters. In the year since Sinatra had left Tommy Dorsey, he had become a spectacularly unrepentant hedonist, on the loose in a time of public piety and sacrifice. And as of January 1944, he was now on the loose in Hollywood, a continent away from Evans and Big Nancy.

On January 1, Sinatra legally became a California resident, a status he would maintain until the end of his life. On January 5, he began a new radio show on CBS, The Frank Sinatra Program The Frank Sinatra Program. Unlike Your Hit Parade- Your Hit Parade-on which the singer continued, but only as a glorified co-host-and the now defunct Songs by Sinatra Songs by Sinatra, which had aired, unsponsored, for just fifteen minutes weekly, the new broadcast was a star vehicle, thirty minutes every Wednesday night, with a big-time backer, Vimms Vitamins. ("Take a minute! See what's in it! When you're buying a vitamin product, read the label! Make sure you get all the vitamins recommended by government experts! You do in Vimms! And three essential minerals also!") In compliance with Sinatra's demands, the new show (with Stordahl conducting the orchestra, and the Bobby Tucker Singers back in service as the Vimms Vocalists) was broadcast from Hollywood.

He had come west to start shooting his second RKO feature, Step Lively Step Lively, a musical version of the hit Broadway comedy Room Service Room Service, with songs written by his old pal Sammy Cahn and Cahn's partner Jule Styne. Radio could make a crooner an imaginary friend to the great American audience, but movies could make him larger than life: look at Bing.

First, though, came a minor distraction.

At 5:50 p.m. on Monday, January 10, Nancy Sinatra once again gave birth at the Margaret Hague Maternity Hospital in Jersey City, again unattended by her husband. During Little Nancy's delivery three and a half years earlier, Frank had been just across the Hudson River, singing with Dorsey at the Astor roof. For the birth of his only son, he managed to be all the way across the country. "Dad was on the air in the middle of a radio show broadcast live from Hollywood when Franklin Wayne Emmanuel [sic] Sinatra was born," writes Nancy junior, in Frank Sinatra: An American Legend Frank Sinatra: An American Legend. At 2:50 p.m. Pacific standard time on January 10, Frank Sinatra was certainly in the middle of something, but not a radio broadcast, since Your Hit Parade Your Hit Parade aired, live, on Sat.u.r.day nights; the Vimms show, Wednesdays. And so Franklin Wayne Emanuel Sinatra came squalling into the world as he would remain in the world: fatherless, more or less. aired, live, on Sat.u.r.day nights; the Vimms show, Wednesdays. And so Franklin Wayne Emanuel Sinatra came squalling into the world as he would remain in the world: fatherless, more or less.2 Evans immediately kicked into overdrive, slapping together a major photo op for the next day at Margaret Hague Maternity, arriving first thing in the morning to marshal the event. He first had Nancy don a pale blue quilted Best & Co. bed jacket, then brought in a cosmetologist and a beautician who made up, coiffed, and manicured her to the nines. Evans then handed Mom a framed photo of Dad and told her exactly what to do when the reporters trooped in: Smile. Hold up the baby. Hold up the photo.

Family was always an ambivalent matter with Sinatra. But the beautification of Nancy Sinatra was real. Once the nice ladies were done with her, she was was beautiful-more so than any new mother had a right to be. When the reporters finally clumped in, clad in white coats for the occasion as if they were about to discover penicillin, brandis.h.i.+ng their notebooks and giant flash cameras, Nancy was ready to answer their questions. Who was he named for? Which side of the family did he favor? Could he sing like his old man? beautiful-more so than any new mother had a right to be. When the reporters finally clumped in, clad in white coats for the occasion as if they were about to discover penicillin, brandis.h.i.+ng their notebooks and giant flash cameras, Nancy was ready to answer their questions. Who was he named for? Which side of the family did he favor? Could he sing like his old man?

George stood behind them as they flashed away. He smiled at her, and she at him. And her smile was really beautiful.

Of course she wasn't just smiling at Evans. She was thrilled about this baby, and even loved the attention. She was, after all, Mrs. Frank Sinatra- Mrs. Frank Sinatra-a very important position in America, not so very different from being the First Lady. She was aware of the privileges and responsibilities.

To a great degree it was like a political marriage: the public had begun to overwhelm the private. The time they actually spent together, just the two of them, was almost nonexistent-especially with Frank so busy on the Coast. The phone calls were misery: with the three-hour difference, they always came at the wrong time, and since he hated being alone, there were usually other voices, even festive sounds, in the background, forcing her to imagine whom he was spending his evenings, not to mention his nights, with. Sometimes, when she was expecting his call, it wouldn't even be him, but that G.o.dd.a.m.n Hank Sanicola instead, going through his usual rigmarole about how long and hard Frank's days were, what with shooting the picture and broadcasting the radio shows and all. Frankie was dead tired, Hank would say; he never slept enough, couldn't keep any weight on-he made her husband sound like a candidate for Vimms himself...

It had been Frank who'd phoned the night of the birth-or rather, very early in the morning of the next day, most likely with the sounds of dishes and gla.s.ses and feminine laughter in the background.

How was she doing? How was their boy? Was he handsome? He missed her...He'd better go now-she needed her sleep...He missed her...

The h.e.l.l of it was that she knew it was true-that he did miss her. In his fas.h.i.+on. And she missed him. With all her heart.

For the second Vimms show, on January 12, the fans began lining up at 6:45 a.m. outside the CBS Radio Playhouse at 1615 North Vine. By 5:00 p.m., an hour before broadcast time, more than a thousand of them-the vast majority girls, of course-queued around the block. The CBS studio seated 350. When Sanicola came in and told him most of the girls were about to be turned away, Sinatra saw red. How would 350 girls, as opposed to 1,500, sound to the American radio audience? Like a G.o.dd.a.m.n cla.s.sical string recital, that was how.

He let the nervous-looking CBS executive hovering nearby have it. Then he turned to Hank. Was there a bigger studio?

Vine Street Playhouse seated fourteen hundred.

Sinatra pointed to the executive. Vine Street.

The man began to splutter. It would take hours to set up in another studio; they were scheduled to go on live in one one hour. The sound levels were completely different in the other theater. The engineers... hour. The sound levels were completely different in the other theater. The engineers...

The singer c.o.c.ked his head and narrowed his lips.

Vine Street. Street.

Dolly could have done no better.

The executive went to an office and stood by a telephone for a panicky moment before realizing he didn't have to put the impossible matter before his boss at all. A minute later, he leaned out the door, summoned Sanicola, and handed him the phone. It was not CBS but the chief of the local chapter of AFRA, the American Federation of Radio Artists, on the other end.

"Tell your boy either he goes on from the CBS studio or he's through as far as AFRA's jurisdiction is concerned," the stern voice said.

Sanicola went back to Sinatra, whispered to him behind his hand. Frank raised his eyebrows. Should he call Saul Jaffe? In a rare moment of forbearance-the exception proving the rule-Sinatra decided to pick his battles. He squared his shoulders and turned to Stordahl. Time to rehea.r.s.e.

Back at Margaret Hague Maternity, the nurse turned on the radio just before nine. Now, as Nancy held the milky-warm little bundle close, Frank was talking to her: "I'd like to sing one of my favorite songs to my little son in New Jersey. So pull up a chair, Nancy, and bring the baby with you. I want him really to hear this."

It was hard having his tender voice so near and yet so very far away. That voice! G.o.dd.a.m.n it, she knew it worked on a million other women, and it worked on her, too...

He sang his theme song, the schmaltzy number he'd written with Sanicola: This love of mine goes on and on Though life is empty since you have gone.

G.o.dd.a.m.n him- him-he could sound closer when he was far away than when he was standing right next to her. Sometimes, when George called to see how she was doing-he was far more attentive than Frank-she would start to cry.

Lately, Evans had begun to tell her, in his calm, decisive way, that she must move out there.

She thought about it. It was the only thing that made sense-except that her whole family was here, in Jersey. Her sisters. Her parents. She didn't know a soul in Hollywood. She wouldn't fit in. She would die of homesickness.

She couldn't. Not yet.

But she knew it was the only way. She ached with loneliness. This wasn't a way for a married woman to live.

And Frank, of course, was almost never alone. Everyone wanted to be near him, to touch him; and it was so strange, he couldn't bear to be touched (especially by strangers) except on his own terms, but he needed someone near him, always, like a drug. Chance encounters arose at delightfully odd moments: in a janitor's closet off a soundstage, for example. But the constant was his entourage-the Western Varsity. Hank was here, naturally, and Sammy Cahn and now Jule Styne, and a couple of other funny Jews Frank kept running into at poker games and prizefights, Phil Silvers and a comedy writer named Harry Crane, ne Kravitsky. Stordahl was rooming in a luxury suite in the Wils.h.i.+re Tower with Jimmy Van Heusen, who was frequently absent for some shadowy reason...

In fact, three days a week, Jimmy was working as a test pilot at Lockheed's Burbank plant, flying P-38s and C-60s, under the name Edward Chester Babc.o.c.k. The other four days, he was writing movie tunes at Paramount with Johnny Burke, under his professional name. No one at Lockheed knew about his other career, and n.o.body at the studios was wise, either. As Burke said, "Who wants to hire a guy to write a picture knowing he might get killed in a crash before he's finished it?"

And there were plenty of crashes: wartime production was so breakneck that quality control was haphazard. Test piloting was a dangerous business. "I was at Lockheed more than two and a half years and I was scared s.h.i.+tless all of the time," Jimmy later said. But he never told Sinatra.

It was Eat, Drink, and Be Merry time: the Wils.h.i.+re Tower suite quickly became a twenty-four-hour free-for-all of poker, booze, and s.e.x. The hookers paraded in and out while Cahn and Crane and Silvers sat around the card table, cracking wise, and Stordahl puffed serenely on his pipe. Once, all jaws at the table dropped when Frank walked in with his arm draped over the shoulder of none other than Marlene Dietrich. Forty-two years old, and dazzling as ever. h.e.l.lo, boys, she said, in that German accent. And then, bold as bra.s.s, to Sinatra: Well, Frank? She took his hand, smiling, and they closed the bedroom door behind them. Just like that. The poker continued-but not before Sammy Cahn, ever the P.S. 147 wiseacre, stage-whispered what he'd heard about Dietrich's s.e.xual specialty.

Phil Silvers gave him a look. Hearing was as close as Sammy was gonna get.

Soon afterward Sinatra brought another visitor, the dark, entrancingly beautiful starlet Skitch Henderson had introduced him to at MGM in 1941. As in one of those romantic comedies, Ava Gardner and Frank kept b.u.mping into each other around town. The funny thing was that when he brought her her up to the Tower, it turned out to be for a cup of coffee only. She was a smokingly s.e.xy kid-but she up to the Tower, it turned out to be for a cup of coffee only. She was a smokingly s.e.xy kid-but she was was a kid, and she had a certain dignity to her; her heels weren't round. She appeared to be ambivalent at best about what every other girl in town was obsessed with: getting ahead at any cost. Therefore, there was no leverage, and in a funny way this was perfectly fine with Sinatra. He was content to stare at those cheekbones, those shy and haughty green eyes. a kid, and she had a certain dignity to her; her heels weren't round. She appeared to be ambivalent at best about what every other girl in town was obsessed with: getting ahead at any cost. Therefore, there was no leverage, and in a funny way this was perfectly fine with Sinatra. He was content to stare at those cheekbones, those shy and haughty green eyes.

George Evans had his hands full in New York-he had other clients besides Sinatra, hard as that was to believe sometimes. So he deputized a West Coast pal, a firecracker of a young publicist named Jack Keller, to ride herd on Frank in Hollywood, a more than full-time job. The twenty-eight-year-old Keller was a character: a hard-drinking, chain-smoking, impeccably tailored former pro golfer who looked like Jackie Gleason. He had a fierce work ethic and a ferocious loyalty to his clients, both of which were good things where Frank Sinatra was concerned. After dropping by the Wils.h.i.+re Tower suite once or twice, Keller quickly realized he had his work cut out for him. Some wholesome diversion was called for, to throw Hollywood snoops like Hedda Hopper and Lolly Parsons off the trail of any potential scandal.

Suns.h.i.+ne and fresh air, Keller thought. And then...softball!

Some of the movie stars had an informal league that played Sunday afternoons in a field behind the Hollywood Bowl. It was good for a few laughs and plenty of wholesome publicity photos-there were lots of nice shots of suntanned hunks and pretty girls in tight cheerleader s.h.i.+rts (real girls didn't play ball in those days).

Sinatra, Keller decided, would start a softball team. It would be called-but of course-the Swooners.

Evans agreed it was pure genius. He had hired the right man.

Keller had uniforms made up, and for a few Sundays, till Frank got bored (which never took very long), the Swooners took the field. Styne and Cahn and Sanicola and Crane played (Phil Silvers, not much of an athlete, preferred to kibitz from the sidelines), along with a couple of Frank's new movie pals, Anthony Quinn and Barry Sullivan. At 119 pounds, Sinatra didn't cut much of a figure in a baseball uniform-but the same couldn't be said of the Swooners cheerleaders in their official T-s.h.i.+rts: Lana Turner, Virginia Mayo, Marilyn Maxwell, and, oh yes, Miss Gardner.

Who was on deck? In play? You needed a scorecard to figure it all out.

Just a few days after his son was born, Frank performed at a benefit for the Jewish Home for the Aged, at the Roosevelt Hotel. It was an unusual cause for Sinatra: maybe he was thinking of his dear old babysitter Mrs. Golden-or maybe his new agents at MCA, Messrs. Friedman and Wa.s.serman, convinced him that the men who ran the town would eat it with a spoon.

After the interminable pious speeches, amid the red-velvet drapery and clink of coffee cups and crystal, Sinatra, stick thin in his monkey suit, stared out at the spotlight with moist eyes and gave them a giant ladleful: his version of "Ol' Man River," with a brilliant correction-Oscar Hammerstein's offensive phrase from the 1927 verse, "n.i.g.g.e.rs all work on de Mississippi," changed to the clunky, but patently uncontroversial, "Here we all work on the Mississippi." work on the Mississippi."

Out in the audience, the emotional eyes of the most powerful man in Hollywood, the tiny, rect.i.tudinous Louis B. Mayer, also grew moist. The former sc.r.a.p-metal salvager from Minsk who had created a white-picket-fence vision of America (and had had amphetamine-laced chicken soup fed to Judy Garland to keep her thin and peppy) thrilled to what he was hearing. As Sinatra's magnificent voice soared to the final "just keeps rollin' along," Louie B. turned to an aide and stage-whispered, "I want that boy."

He got him, of course. And it cost him, of course. In February-just as Step Lively Step Lively was wrapping-Lew Wa.s.serman and Harry Friedman sat down with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's lawyers and, over the next three months, hammered out one of the sweetest movie deals in history. The five-year, $260,000-per-annum contract would allow Sinatra to make one outside picture a year and sixteen guest appearances on the radio; it would give him the publis.h.i.+ng rights to the music in every second film he made with the studio. As a final fillip, MCA got MGM to relax the terms of its famously strict morals clause. was wrapping-Lew Wa.s.serman and Harry Friedman sat down with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's lawyers and, over the next three months, hammered out one of the sweetest movie deals in history. The five-year, $260,000-per-annum contract would allow Sinatra to make one outside picture a year and sixteen guest appearances on the radio; it would give him the publis.h.i.+ng rights to the music in every second film he made with the studio. As a final fillip, MCA got MGM to relax the terms of its famously strict morals clause.3 As for the seven-year contract he'd signed with RKO just six months earlier...well, thanks to MCA's iron fist, velvet glove, and fast-dancing legal tap shoes, it was more or less movie history. With the exception of one short subject (The House I Live In, 1945) and two loan-out features, one bad (The Miracle of the Bells, 1948) and the other worse (Double Dynamite, 1951), Sinatra wiped his hands of Radio-Keith-Orpheum. And, as with Dorsey, there was never any uncertainty about who wound up with the sweet end of the deal. True, RKO wouldn't languish without Sinatra: the studio rode out the 1940s on a spate of B pictures and star loan-outs from other studios. But B B was the key initial for RKO Radio Pictures, Inc., and A plus was the only grade Frank Sinatra was interested in. MGM was the top of the heap, and now so was he. was the key initial for RKO Radio Pictures, Inc., and A plus was the only grade Frank Sinatra was interested in. MGM was the top of the heap, and now so was he.

Except-with Sinatra there was always an except-there was a fly in the ointment. His fame was still based on his records, and since July 1942 he hadn't cut a single side-V-Discs excepted-with an orchestra. As the American Federation of Musicians strike dragged on, vocal backgrounds were getting monotonous and annoying. Stordahl's arrangements for the radio orchestra were more beautiful every week: imagine the records he and Sibelius could cut together!

Even more annoying was the fact that other record labels, Bing Crosby's Decca in particular, had signed agreements with the AFM. Der Bingle was back in business-as were Eberly, Haymes, and Como. Sinatra was losing ground, artistically at any rate. He was nervous, and when he was nervous, he grew testy.

On February 10, 1944, Manie Sacks sent a letter to Frank: I have just received word from Bill [Richards, Columbia's West Coast recording director] that you are not interested in making records with vocal backgrounds of tunes I sent. I've been hearing through many of your friends that you weren't going to make any more records with vocal backgrounds, but I always felt it was an over-exaggerated rumor and I took it with a grain of salt until Richards told me about it today. The thing that hurts me is the fact that you must have told others but never said a word to me. You don't think, do you, that I would tell you to do anything that would in any way impair your future? I feel badly that you would make a quick decision on such an important matter without even mentioning it to me first. I am not going to get into any long discussions, but I do want to go on record and point out a few things to you. If we were able to sell millions of Frank Sinatra records with vocal backgrounds, I don't think now is the time to stop. I admit they are not as good as instrumental backgrounds, but they are acceptable to the public, and they're the ones that count.

Sinatra's typewritten reply to Manie, dated February 18, 1944, was warm, almost conciliatory. Frank understood that Manie was upset. If he had told anyone that he wasn't going to record anymore-and he didn't quite admit that he had-"it was in complete innocence, believe me!" If he had spoken, he had spoken impulsively, he insisted. He would never hide an opinion from Manie.

On the other hand, Frank wrote, he was genuinely distressed about having to use the vocal backgrounds. He understood record sales had been good, "but, being very much an artist rather than a financial genius or a cold businessman," didn't see why he had to be artistically hamstrung just because Columbia couldn't strike a deal with the musicians. But, he said, he realized the situation was immutable, so he would stay disgruntled.

Having lodged his complaint, Frank sent along his best to Columbia president Ted Wallerstein and vice-president G.o.ddard Lieberson, and signed-a.s.sertively, in blue fountain pen-with love and kisses.

It's a remarkable letter: articulate and affectionate and disingenuous and blunt, all at once. And exceedingly practical. Frank was wise enough to vent his anger only indirectly at his esteemed friend the warmhearted Manie.

While a truly cold businessman, the ice-blooded Wa.s.serman, hammered away at RKO and MGM on his behalf, Sinatra traveled east to attend his son's christening. It was a joyous occasion, but not a happy trip. First the priest gave him a hard time about naming a Jew-Manie, who else?-as little Frank's G.o.dfather. Sinatra simply stared the watery-eyed old cleric down. Nancy was another matter.

His housebound wife, effectively a single mother, had built up a lot of unhappiness she couldn't express on a staticky and expensive transcontinental phone call (with G.o.d knows what starstruck operators listening in). The moment she saw her wandering husband, she let loose. Even though she knew she was on a tightrope, that they had had this baby to try to save what was left of their marriage, Nancy also knew that she was still Frank's wife, and still Mike Barbato's daughter. She would say whatever the h.e.l.l she wanted to say. She did not intend to raise their children alone-what were his intentions?

At the same time, George Evans was on his case: Frank was a family man, and a family man lived with his family. If his life was in California now, that's where his family had to be.

So the hounds he'd been keeping a sweet three thousand miles away had caught up with him. As Frank looked around at the Sinatras and Garaventas and Barbatos (and little Chit-U, smiling at n.o.body) jammed into his living room for the christening party, he realized that Nancy and Evans were right. He was a family man. In the first flush of excitement at home owners.h.i.+p (it felt like a hundred years ago), he and Nancy had named the little Cape Cod at 220 Lawrence Avenue Warm Valley. (The sentimental Frank had even fas.h.i.+oned a plaque with the name on it, making the letters out of sticks he'd picked up in the park, gluing the sticks onto a varnished board. A fan stole the sign.) Now the house felt like a claustrophobe's nightmare. He needed a big place to match his big new life, and he knew his family had to be there with him.

He took Nancy aside while her mother cooed over the baby. The look in his wife's large expressive eyes was complex: full of love and distrust, anger and hope. He said he wanted them to live in a great big house in California. That was where the movies were, and that was where his family should be.

She stared at him. What about her family?

She could bring 'em out. Why not?

And what on earth was she going to do in California? She couldn't even drive a car.

He'd buy her the biggest G.o.dd.a.m.n Cadillac she'd ever seen. And driving lessons to go with it. She'd be the queen of Hollywood.

She shook her head: he was full of s.h.i.+t. But she didn't say no.

"Joe E. Lewis, the only comedian who doesn't do an impression of Frank Sinatra [the handwritten invitation reads], invites you to be a guest at a farewell c.o.c.ktail party for the Voice on the eve of his departure for Hollywood, Friday, May 12th, at 4 p.m. in the c.o.c.ktail lounge at Monte Proser's Copacabana, 10 East 60th Street.4 Being quite a man with the ladies himself, Joe has induced the lovely Conover cover girls (and they really are beautiful) to take care of the charm department. They'll all be here, and Sinatra has promised to swoon for the girls just to confuse everybody. Drop in-but not without the card!" Being quite a man with the ladies himself, Joe has induced the lovely Conover cover girls (and they really are beautiful) to take care of the charm department. They'll all be here, and Sinatra has promised to swoon for the girls just to confuse everybody. Drop in-but not without the card!"

Those Conover girls-they really were beautiful...

January 11, 1944: Franklin Wayne Emanuel Sinatra is one day old. Margaret Hague Maternity Hospital, Jersey City. Photographers dressed as doctors capture the blessed event. Frank is in Hollywood, otherwise engaged. (photo credit 13.2) (photo credit 13.2)

14.

Rowdy sailors on sh.o.r.e leave throw tomatoes at Sinatra's image on the Paramount marquee, October 15, 1944. "It is not too much to say," historian William Manchester wrote, "that by the end of the war Sinatra had become the most hated man in the armed services." (photo credit 14.1) (photo credit 14.1) He was at once the most loved and the most reviled man in the country: the line seemed to fall squarely between the s.e.xes. SINATRA 1-A WITH US GIRLS, RATED 4-F BY ARMY DOCTORS, ran a typical headline. And men ran the newspapers. In the spring of 1944, as the Fifth Army fought inland from Anzio to Rome, much of America's civilian and military press mounted an offensive against Sinatra. And a columnist named Westbrook Pegler, flush from a 1941 Pulitzer for his exposes of racketeering in Hollywood's labor unions, and recently signed up by the FDR-hating Hearst Syndicate, began to make a special project of laying into the FDR-loving, "bugle-deaf Frankie-boy Sinatra."

Another newspaper writer named Lee Mortimer, the entertainment columnist for the Hearst-owned New York Daily Mirror Daily Mirror, also got into the act. Mortimer, like his colleague Winch.e.l.l a closeted Jew (ne Mortimer Lieberman), was ambivalent about Sinatra at first-he'd apparently once tried, unsuccessfully, to sell Frank a song he'd written. His early columns about the singer accordingly seem strangely sycophantic. "Even I grow humble before the compelling force [of Sinatra's impact]," Mortimer wrote. "It is inexplicable, irrational but it has made him the most potent entertainer of the day...I'll go further. I think Frank is a showman without peer, he has a unique and pleasing personality plus talent of the first l.u.s.ter." Then this uncomfortable man found the stone in his shoe. "I love Sinatra but my stomach is revolted by squealing, shouting neurotic extremists who make a cult of the boy. As a friend [!], I call on the Hero of Hasbrouck to disown his fanatics. Neither they nor his projection onto the political scene can help his brilliant theatrical career."

Where his fans were concerned, Frank, who knew where his bread was b.u.t.tered, didn't mind the idolatry a bit. He let everyone in show business know exactly what he thought of Lee Mortimer, and word got back fast. Spurned, the columnist used his platform to stick it to the singer at every opportunity. Sinatra, Mortimer wrote soon afterward, "found safety and $30,000 a week behind a mike" while Real Men were overseas fighting Krauts and j.a.ps. And as for those fans, they were worse than neurotic extremists: they were nothing but "imbecilic, moronic, screaming-meemie autograph kids."

The columns weren't just personal. Much of Mortimer's and Pegler's invective was politically motivated: right-wing and intolerant at its core. Even amid the patriotism of the war, America was a deeply divided country. Great numbers of people, many of them moneyed, detested Franklin Roosevelt for the equalizing policies of the New Deal. To many-William Randolph Hearst significantly included-FDR's policies were leading the country straight toward Communism.