Frank: The Voice (118 page)

31
“What the fuck”:
Kelley,
His Way
, p. 40.

  
1.
Including the band’s girl singer, a blond, pug-nosed twenty-two-year-old from North Dakota named Norma Deloris Egstrom, a.k.a. Peggy Lee.

  
2.
Interestingly, one of the first buyers of the new and improved Sinatra age was none other than E. J. Kahn Jr. in “Phenomenon,” the three-part 1946
New Yorker
profile—prepared with the aid of that magazine’s legendary fact-checking department—that was the basis for his 1947 book,
The Voice
.

  
3.
Or, as the announcer would intone: “
Your Hit Parade
survey checks the best sellers on sheet music and phonograph records, the songs most heard on the air and most played on the automatic coin machines, an accurate, authentic tabulation of America’s taste in popular music” (Brooks and Marsh,
TV’s Greatest Hits
, p. 280).

  
4
“EXTRA ADDED ATTRACTION”:
Friedwald,
Sinatra!
p. 123.

  
5
“Be careful, it’s my heart”:
Lyrics from “Be Careful, It’s My Heart,” words and music by Irving Berlin (New York: Irving Berlin, 1942).

  
6
“a kid was given a ticket”:
Kahn,
Voice
, p. 67.

  
7
“certain things were”:
Ibid.

  
8
“George was a
genius
”:
Jerry Lewis, in discussion with the author, March 2008.

  
9
“in case a patron”:
Kelley,
His Way
, p. 67.

10
“I saw fans run”:
Nancy Sinatra,
My Father
, p. 47.

11
“I’d look out my bedroom”:
Nancy Sinatra,
American Legend
, p. 54.

12
“People call me an overnight”:
Frank Sinatra, interview with Sidney Zion, Yale University, April 15, 1986.

13
“Frankie is a product”:
Kelley,
His Way
, p. 75.

  
1.
Another hypothesis, lip-wise: starting in the early 1940s and until the end of his career, Sinatra had a habit, during vocalization, of periodically pulling his mouth to the right and lowering his eyelids—an expression that signaled emotional transport, but that also might have been his version of the corner-of-the-lips pinhole that Tommy Dorsey used to sneak a breath.

  
2.
In fact he was the president of his congregation, Temple Beth Israel in Philadelphia.

  
3.
Ben Barton, as a young supplicant, had brought the song to Frank backstage at the Paramount, initiating a thirty-year business and personal relationship.

  
4.
The figure isn’t universally accepted: some have pointed out that “All” never won a gold record, as, for example, Glenn Miller’s “Chattanooga Choo Choo” had the year before. Still, sales were brisk. And, it should be noted, the fact that Harry James himself had broken through in a big way didn’t hurt a bit. Not long after Sinatra made his big splash at the Riobamba, James—now divorced from Louise Tobin and dating Betty Grable—and the Music Makers, now twenty-seven strong (including an eight-piece string section and two French horns), opened at the Paramount, causing almost the same kind of hysteria that Frankie had.

  
5.
The studio’s pointed new slogan: “Entertainment, not genius.”

  
6.
Very chivalrous of Frank, as long as he was fudging his age by two years, to make Nancy two years younger, too!

  
7.
One of which, Harold Adamson and Jimmy McHugh’s “I Couldn’t Sleep a Wink Last Night,” was nominated for an Oscar.

  
8.
Though the general hoity-toitiness was somewhat ruffled by the highly conspicuous ringside presence of Dolly (attending not with Marty but with a gaggle of Hoboken girlfriends). Mama Sinatra cheered lustily throughout Frankie’s performance, then came backstage afterward to pose for pictures and brief reporters: “You know, my son has broken just about every record that bastard Bing Crosby ever set. Write
that
down in your goddamn notepad” (Taraborrelli,
Sinatra
, p. 67).

  
9.
Some men reluctant to go into military service during World War II are known to have had an eardrum punctured. However, the FBI file on Sinatra notes that “the perforation of the drum (tympanum) was a disease perforation so far as Captain WEINTROB could tell and not the result of an incision by human hands” (Kuntz and Kuntz,
Sinatra Files
, p. 19).

10
The following year he would acknowledge his fears, with only partial irony, by recording a novelty number called “Dick Haymes, Dick Todd, and Como.” The V-Disc, a unique collaboration among Sammy Cahn, Johnny Burke, and Jimmy Van Heusen, contained lines such as “I’ll soon become a wreck/they’re breathin’ on my neck” and “They’re really comin’ fast/Who knows, I may be past.” Where Haymes and Como were concerned, Sinatra’s fears were not misplaced. One suspects Todd, the so-called Canadian Crosby (he sounded exactly like Bing played at a slightly slower speed), was thrown in for joke value. And as always with Frank, his best jokes were written by others.

11
“You better push”:
Kelley,
His Way
, p. 72.

12
“SPECIALLY ADDED”:
Shaw,
Twentieth-Century Romantic
, p. 43.

13
“Frank was in”:
Wilson,
Sinatra
, p. 44.

14
Many years later:
Frank Sinatra, interview with Sidney Zion, Yale University, April 15, 1986.

15
“If you’re not scared”:
Jerry Lewis, in discussion with the author, March 2008.

16
“Three times an evening”:
George Frazier, “Frank Sinatra,”
Life
, May 3, 1943.

17
“When I came”:
Summers and Swan,
Sinatra
, p. 81.

18
“I’m flying high”:
Kelley,
His Way
, p. 79.

19
“was a sensation”:
Cahn,
I Should Care
, p. 132.

20
“He had them”:
Friedwald,
Sinatra!
p. 130.

21
“Jimmy Van Heusen once canceled”:
Kelley,
His Way
, p. 574.

22
“He was a very unusual-looking”:
George Avakian, in discussion with the author, Oct. 2006.

23
“He is acutely aware”:
Goddard Lieberson, liner notes for
Frank Sinatra Conducts the Music of Alec Wilder
(Columbia Records, 1946).

24
“Traveling by train”:
Nancy Sinatra,
American Legend
, p. 57.

25
“SECRET OF LURE”:
Isabel Morse Jones, “Secret of Lure Told by Crooner—It’s Love,”
Los Angeles Times
, Aug. 12, 1943.

26
“Noah Webster forgive”:
Parsons,
Tell It to Louella
, p. 147.

27
“Dear Sir”:
Kuntz and Kuntz,
Sinatra Files
, p. 4.

28
“It’s Dorsey”:
Friedwald,
Sinatra!
p. 112.

29
“The next day”:
Puzo,
Godfather
, p. 43.

30
“The man who straightened”:
Sinatra, interview.

31
“Frank told me years”:
Lewis, discussion.

32
“
Bergen Record
entertainment”:
Levinson,
Tommy Dorsey
, p. 161.

33
“vividly remembers her”:
Ibid.

34
“not real underworld”:
Taraborrelli,
Sinatra
, p. 65.

35
“It wasn’t much”:
Ibid.

36
“Hey, Wop”:
Wilson,
Sinatra
, p. 79.

37
“Frank Albert Sinatra is physically”:
Kuntz and Kuntz,
Sinatra Files
, p. 11.

38
“Dear Mr. Winchell”:
Ibid., p. 5.

39
“The diagnosis”:
Weintrob to Commanding General, Dec. 28, 1943, FBI, 25-244122-7.

40
“stated that no one”:
Kuntz and Kuntz,
Sinatra Files
, p. 20.

41
“What physical or mental”:
Ibid., p. 11.

  
1.
It must have been a different group of soldiers and sailors who attended a show at the Hollywood Canteen in January 1944. Not just Sinatra, but Hope, Crosby, Ginger Rogers, and Fibber McGee and Molly were present. “When it was [Sinatra’s] turn to sing,” Nancy Sinatra writes, “the ovations kept him on stage for over an hour. At the end of his performance, it was reported that servicemen swarmed onto the stage, lifted him to their shoulders and paraded him throughout the Canteen, cheering so loudly that it could be heard blocks away” (Nancy Sinatra,
American Legend
, p. 59).

  
2.
The “Franklin” was, of course, for FDR; “Emanuel” was in honor of the soon-to-be-dishonored Manie Sacks. The “Wayne” remains a mystery—perhaps a tribute to a New Jersey town where Frank once spent a pleasant hour? In any case, the emotionally snakebit and eternally paternally disregarded F. W. E. Sinatra would eventually—in a classic case of identifying with the oppressor—change his name to
Frank junior. (And would be immortalized, on
The Sopranos
, as the Chairboy of the Board.)

  
3.
“The artist agrees to conduct himself with due regard to public conventions and morals and agrees that he will not do or commit any act or thing that will degrade him in society, or bring him into public hatred, contempt, scorn, or ridicule, that will tend to shock, insult, or offend the community or ridicule public morals or decency, or prejudice the producer (MGM) or the motion picture industry in general” (Leff and Simmons,
Dame in the Kimono
, p. 5).

  
4.
Proser was Frank Costello’s legit partner, and would gradually—and then not so gradually—be edged out.

  
5
“There’s a lot of griping”:
Summers and Swan,
Sinatra
, p. 93.

  
6
“It is not too much”:
Manchester,
The Glory and the Dream
, p. 309.

  
7
“Take a minute”:
Vimms Vitamins radio advertisement, MP3,
www.oldtimeradiofans.com/old_radio_commercials/vimms_vitamins.php
.

  
8
“Dad was on the air”:
Nancy Sinatra,
American Legend
, p. 59.

  
9
“This love of mine”:
Lyrics from “This Love of Mine,” words and music by Sol Parker, Hank Sanicola, and Frank Sinatra (New York: Barton Music/Warner Bros. Music, 1953).

10
“Who wants to hire”:
White,
You Must Remember This
, p. 304.

11
“I was at Lockheed”:
James Kaplan, “The King of Ring-a-Ding-Ding,”
Movies Rock
(a supplemental publication of
Vanity Fair
), Dec. 2007.

12
“Niggers all work”:
Lyrics from “Ol’ Man River,” words by Oscar Hammerstein, music by Jerome Kern (New York: T. B. Harms, 1927).

13
“
I want that boy
”:
Nancy Sinatra,
My Father
, p. 64.

14
“I have just received”:
Columbia Records Archive, Sony Music Corporation.

15
“it was in complete innocence”:
Ibid. 204
“Joe E. Lewis, the only”:
Ibid.

  
1.
There was also the far from negligible matter of broad new sexual horizons. From the beginning of Sinatra’s tenure at Metro springs the legend—impossible to substantiate but too delicious to ignore—of the to-do list of female fellow luminaries he posted on his dressing-room wall and checked off one by one as he proceeded through.

  
2.
The effect of Lady May’s unique child rearing on her son’s maturing psyche was understandably complex. Getting wind that the young Englishman had certain sexual eccentricities, Mayer assumed that Lawford was simply gay and, with fatherly concern, sent him to get testosterone injections. Lawford, whom the author knew slightly, told the story on himself with great amusement.

  
3.
And Hope and Crosby both belonged to the ritzy Lakeside Golf Club, just across the street: No Jews Allowed, and as for Italian-American entertainers, why, the question had never even come up before, but now that it was being asked … Despite Bob and Bing’s sponsorship, Lakeside turned Sinatra down, and he thereby became the first gentile ever to join the ranks of Groucho Marx, Jack Benny, and George Burns at Hillcrest Country Club, in Beverly Hills.

  
4
“Sinatra 1-A”:
Spencer Leigh, “What Did the FBI Make of Top Pop Stars?”
Independent
, Dec. 13, 2005,
www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/what-did-the-fbi-make-of-top-pop-stars-519323.html
.

  
5
“bugle-deaf Frankie-boy”:
Kuntz and Kuntz,
Sinatra Files
, p. 21.

  
6
“Even I grow humble”:
Shaw,
Twentieth-Century Romantic
, p. 78.