Linda Anderson???
Butterkup
usually both wrong it is most likely his horse!
sue
JPG
>Ok, I guess secretary. My husband guess was pilot. So, as we are usually >both wrong it is most likely his horse!
As usual, I'm sure :), You are correct and your husband is wrong!
Linda Anderson was Sinatra's secretary. I found this article posted on another
newsgroup awhile back and managed to save it. It's one of the few things I've
ever found that's actually written by FS himself! It's amazing too, since when
you read it, you can immediately tell it's his own writting. Although not
"Politically Correct" by today's standards, remember this was written in 1955. I
believe the article was for Secretaries Day.
Enjoy! -JPG
I LOVE SECRETARIES !
BY FRANK SINATRA
Not too long ago, I had a recurrence of an old nostalgia-the urge to revisit my
United States. To most people, outside of a certain echelon of show business,
this may sound strange. But to people like myself, it is a periodic "must."
We function for the most part in three constricted areas: Hollywood, the
transcontinential airlines or railways and New York. And none of these is what I
would call especially typical of the American scene. And if we forget the
American scene, where are we ?
Anyway, this was a real grassroots expedition. I chose to drive, naturally, and
set myself no itinerary except that I was going to points North. And even that
was a well kept secret. Only two or three people knew, and among them was that
indispensable person, my secretary. Her name happens to be Linda Anderson, but
that, if she'll forgive me, is not the point. For me, she represents every
secretary in these United States, which as far as I'm concerned is a choice
piece of representing. I may notlook to you like the type, but I've made a study
of the American secretary and I've come up with this: She's the hardest working,
most dutiful, most efficient and frequently least-appreciated part of the
national scene. The Unfeeling Boss regards her as casually as he does his adding
machines, and he expects the same results. Usually he gets them. But the adding
machine now and then comes in for some respect, whereas the secretary is taken
for granted.
There is something basically wrong here. The machine is set up to be technically
perfect-until a cog snaps. The secretary is human. The machine doesn't have to
cope with any hardship worse than a clerk with a hangover so bad he hits the
wrong keys. Hangover is only one of the secretary's opponents.
The boss can also be suffering from a dozen occupational ailments. Mumble-itis
of the tongue, for instance. General pessimism or anxiety. Who's any easier to
take it out on than Miss Martyr with the pad and pencil? Domestic trouble-an
argument with the wife-hence the 10 A.M. conviction that women, including Miss
Martyr, are no damn good. Or forgetfulness. Miss Martyr has now gracefully
stalled a favorite customer in the waiting room for an hour while Mr. Big
gets around to putting in an appearance.
I don't say all bosses are unfeeling or have the frailities of Mr. Big. But the
ones that are-brother!...All right, now to the grass-roots trip, remember ? I
took off for the unspecified North one morning without a single worry on my
mind-except perhaps where my next job was coming from. Things were pretty fair
in the little world of F.Sinatra, but they could have been better. That is, I
wasn't exactly booked for the next 17 years. But I was solvent, and I had a idea
that a picture assignment would be sticking its head up sooner or later. So it
was a good time to take a break. What I'd forgotten, of course, was that the
biggest picture assignments always come when you're not on hand, and the
producer always has to have you in the next half hour or not at all. Eddie
Fisher's available, too, you know....
Well, this was no exception. I'd been beating the North country not more than
48 hours when news came that Sinatra had been flagged for the greatest part
since Maude Adams was introduced to Peter Pan. After this one, Sinatra would
never have to exert himself again except for beating off importunate studio
heads and disdainfully tearing up zillion-dollar contracts. But if Sinatra
couldn't be found, there were at least three dozen other guys who were willing
to risk the headaches of an Academy Award. That left it right in Linda's lap.
She knew I was trickling "North" somewhere. That was all she knew. And believe
me, "North"- in this case the Pacific North-west-is a big lunk of real estate.
To make an essentially short story long, Linda did it. She worked from late
afternoon into the early hours of the morning. She finally caught up to me at
a bump in the road I recall as Last Gasp, Oregon, although hysteria may have
something to do with that. It was a medium-sized hamburger stand and the
counterman had been alerted to keep his eye out for a traveler who looked
like poor Yorick after exhumation, and tell him to call Operator Such-and-Such
in Los Angeles. It wasn't till I got back there-in very fast time-that I got the
whole story. Linda had simply had every telephone operator on the Coast playing
private eye, flashing alarms in all directions, laying down a dragnet that
saturated the territory as thoroughly as Jack Webb's. I'd be pleased to state
here that my name was of some small help, but that doesn't seem to have been the
case. Not if Linda gave it to me straight. According to her, she fed the name to
the first operator she got on the line."Sin what?" asked the operator.
"Sinatra," said Linda, "Frank Sinatra, S as in-Oh, you know!""Sinatra," said the
operator reflectively. "Oh, YES. Are you tracing a race horse?" It's great to be
famous. Anyway, that's part of what I mean about secretaries. Not only my
secretary in this case, but ANY sectretary....
My first experience with secretaries came quite a few years ago when I was
eating off what I laughingly call my wrist. There were agents' secretaries and
producers' secretaries and bandleaders' secretaries and, after a time,sponsors'
secretaries. I met them all in outer offices-the ones that doubled as
receptionists. They were unfailingly courteous to me, back there in what
I have to think of as the beginning.I wasn't Frank Sinatra then-whoever he is. I
was Joe Blow, a guy I still know better than I know Frank Sinatra. I was shabby,
and that skinny bit wasn't just for laughs in those days. Nothing was. There
wasn't much to laugh about. But they'd cheer me up while I sat there dripping
rain on their rugs and keep telling me Mr. Whozit would see me any time now, and
once in a while one would throw in a remark that Mr. Whozit had spoken well of
me the other day. There was plenty of evidence that they made that one up, but
how kind can you be? Never think they weren't busy, either, which is about the
hardest time to be kind. I used to watch them while they[so I imagined] studied
me, trying to determine when I'd fall and give them a malnutrition emergency
case, right there in the anteroom. When they weren't typing, they were answering
the phone. When they weren't answering the phone, they were trotting in to take
dictation for more typing. When they weren't doing anything else, they were
keeping the callers happy and making them feel welcome while the boss communed
with the RACING FORM. Between times, they filed.
And you know, I don't think I've ever seen a secretary that I didn't think was
beautiful in one way or another. I guess that was either because they WERE
beautiful, or because there's an inescapable beauty in anyone doing a job they
know how to do. Ballplayer, dancer, fighter, secretary-it's all the same. And
out of all of us, it's the secretary who often seem to me to know their jobs
best. So... I was outside the inner sanctrum in those days, in the secretary's
own domain. But then, after a time, I got through that big, blank door to the
man with the green leather furniture and the wall-to-wall carpeting. That's when
the Sinatra Fan Club for Secretaries really got its humble start.
By and by, things got around to where the secretary would come in to record
anything we might say of a deathless nature. And I remember especially one of
my very first big shots, a character who never took an unlighted cigar out of
the corner of his mouth under any circumstances. We'd get down to cases and this
lad would call for his secretary. And when she came in, and the cigar would
start rotating a little, like a cue settling on a cue-ball, and the noises would
begin.. They're not very easy to spell, but a rough sample of a typical
sound-effect would go:"Miss Atch-fymee um gatta surrange guyack lass eek or
maybe eek fore,fuhget iz name." I've never been able to translate this-it had
something to do with data of one or two weeks before, but I don't know what.
Miss Atch, though-and that was not her name-wasn't stumped for a moment. She
interpreted that and worse, without a blink. You should have heard The Cigar
dictate letters. Seals enunciate much more clearly.
Finally I asked Miss Atch about it, expressing admiration both for her eardrums
and her ready knowledge of tribal dialects. "Oh," she said "Mr. X. has splendid
diction! You should hear SOME of them..." Secretary seems so modest a word for
it. Inadequate. It goes further. Diplomat, certainly-SECRET is the root word,
isn't it ? A walking, breathing appointment pad. Intermediary between boss and
that part of the outside world he'd rather not see. Efficiency to such a point
that the only real chance for some secretaries to get themselves noticed is to
make a mistake. And the "reward," as I see it, of a truly superb secretary is to
assume more and more of the weight of the business as she gets better. Can't
something be done to knight these re-markable women? But to me, the most
impeessive secretarial trait of all is the wearing of antenna. You can't see it
but it's there, and I don't know of any other human classification that can say
as much. Linda, for example, at her best, knows what I want before I want it. In
everyday stride, she at least knows it before I can say it. And even on her very
worst mornings, three words of mine add up to five pages of detailed
instructions for her. If not the antenna, then what is it? Linda burned out a
tube just once in this respect, and it was only because of a dirty trick of
mine. I've been talking about the shortcomings of bosses, but I have a few
myself. For instance, I'm not the world's most patient guy, and when I give an
order, I reduce it to verbal shorthand, relying on Linda's own special antenna
to come up with the full answer. This applies particularly to phone calls. "Get
me Harold! breaks down in the end into: "Get me Harold Arlen, a song-writer who
is somewhere in the world, God knows where, on the telephone." "Call Hank!" is
even more rudimentary. Hank Sanicola is my manager and doubtless can be reached
in one of no more than 400 places east of the Mississippi. These are dimentary.
Some are trickier and some downright complicated,notably those that Linda has
never heard of to begin with. But never until very recently has she asked me to
amplify by a single word. She knows I don't like to, for one thing. For another,
her secretarial background in entertainmentis deep and extensive, and she'd hate
to admit she can't follow a simple order, even when it appears impossible.
That was the trouble. She became so good at following through on these grunts
of mine that I had a perverse desire to louse her up. I'll never do it again.
I invented a name. Eddie Sludge, something like that, and walked out of the
office. Fifteen minutes later, I came back. Linda was still at the phone, but
she had a strained look, like a soldier driven at last to bay. I pretended to
ignore her, giving the business of drumming my fingers on the desk and frowning.
Finally she hung up from talking to someone and turned to me. There were tears
in her eyes. "I'm sorry, Mr. Sinatra," she said. "But who is Eddie Sludge ?" Let
me give all bosses a piece of advice. Never do a thing like that to a good
secretary. She is too precious an asset and too precious a person. It was a
cheap gag and I felt just as cheap about it. It won't happen again. I hope any
secretaries among my audience will keep remembering that when I speak of Linda,
I speak for them, too. But she is MY secretary and therefore the closest access
I have to source material. There was a time in Las Vegas. Technically, Linda's
secretarial duties extend no further than-well, secretarial duties. Or is there
any limit to them? But in my business, there are apt to be extensions of the
norm. Pests, to name one. And I had a blue-ribbon pest this time. I'd met him
only once, but he felt I was honor-bound to lend him $10,000. To him, it just
figured. I was playing the Sands Hotel. He wired me he was coming-a rare bit of
sportsmanship, come to think of it. So in my noblest cowardly fashion, I dumped
it all on Linda and went underground. She met him at the airport. She was
charming, he was charmed. They dashed gaily from spot to spot, always by Linda's
apologetic account no more than a step behind me. Down the south side of Vegas'
famed strip and up the north-back toward the airport. Somehow, during both my
dinner and supper shows, Linda had the man both far away and too enthralled to
be even thinking of F. Sinatra.
All of a sudden they were back at the airport with my nemesis' reservation
tucked in his hot little hand. I assume he was halfway back to Los Angeles
before he remembered what he had come for, and I have not heard from him
again. Secretaries !....My numerous inquiries among secretary friends indicate
that $50 a week is average pay, $75 good, and $100 virtually top. Overtime? Yes,
but as a rule the nonpaying variety. The average domestic does at least as
well. What are these secretarial duties I've mentioned ? Typing, shorthand,
filing, of course. Fronting at all times for the boss and crossing the fingers
when the expedient lie is indicated to shield him from the nuisance elements.
Arranging his desk and keeping his date book and doing his shopping and being,
so to speak, his wife away from wife in details affecting the office. Mapping
his itinarary when he travels, working as late as he has to work, contributing
flawless performance as a matter of course and whipping-girl duty if, on rare
occasions, something does go wrong. And above all, being at all times fresh and
neat, even groomed to the teeth on her time and money.It took me a long time to
feel busy enough or important enough to employ a secretary-Linda, my first. And
when I did, a friend asked in that tone one gets to recognize: "What would you
do with a secretary?" And I had to answer what I answer here, what has become
true now that I have taken the step: "What would I do WITHOUT one?" In fact if
this modest essay has supplied just one stone to an eventual monument to these
miracles of unsung devotion and loyalty and skill, that much-neglected
phenomenon, the American secretary, I will be happy-although it is much, much
less than she deserves. My own reward is simple: I'm glad to have gotten it off
my chest.
CORONET APRIL 1955
Dave Reitzes
Dave \:^)
Perpetual Starlight
http://reitzes.www4.50megs.com/
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