Krishna
Kitty Kelly, of course, has made a career out of writing unauthorized biography – reputedly sparing no details, good and bad, but often offering gossip tidbits that you would not normally come across in a combined form. However averse to gossip and innuendos you normally would be, there is a kind of a hidden pleasure in reading about the celebrities, warts and all. She has written many books, and we have reviewed the one about Queen Elizabeth II earlier in this medium. This one, if you cannot judge from the title already, is about Frank Sinatra.
His mother was from an Italian family and was very pushy and loud. When she chose to marry a boxer, Martin Sinatra, a Sicilian ‘beneath the family status’ her family was scandalized. They married anyway. Martin lost his job but she had developed enough political connections to get him and her good-for-nothing brother good unionized jobs.
Frank was named in error by the priest, who mistook the Irish Godfather’s name for the boys name but they let it be. He was born with a difficult forceps delivery and had his ear ruptured from birth. Interesting.
He grew up angry and wilful and stubborn and the entire family seems to have been in trouble with the law often. His mother is domineering. She forces his marriage to a ‘good girl with status’, Barbara, when he was not ready to wed. His wife is devoted to him though and allows him to buy expensive clothes beyond the means of his income.
He slowly gets to prominence, fighting for attention, very pushy and angry when people say that he is ‘not a good singer’ – as he was not in his early years.
He enters into an agreement with Tommy Dorsey who makes him famous and immediately runs out on him refusing to even pay the royalty as per the terms he signed with Tommy. He is on his move upwards, having acted in two movies already and having gained fame. His wife is longsuffering while he jumps into bed frequently with his groupie fans.
He seems arrogant to the point of exasperating all others but his talent keeps him in demand.
As he rises in fame and power, he is obsessed with progress to the extent of totally ignoring Nancy. Their marriage breaks up. He supports Roosevelt because the President shows him consideration.
He seems to be genuinely interested in advancing unity and against discrimination of all kinds but spoils it next by being impetuous, treating his subordinates abominably, openly giving gifts to other girlfriends – once even his wife’s ring that she gave him for repair was seen by her on the fingers of one of his mistresses. He openly invited Marlene Dietrich and Ava Gardner, not to mention other costars to his bedroom in a house of his friends – to show them he could have the rich and famous at will.
He picked fights with powerful journalists but fumed when they panned him in their critiques. He even punched a powerful journalist in the face once. He openly admired gangsters and exchanged visits openly – in spite of the authorities getting suspicious and in spite of the damage it may do to his reputation in the eyes of adoring, screaming fans.
His obsession with Ava Gardner and their explosive on again off again relationship is told well. His pestering his wife (Nancy) until she reluctantly agreed to divorce and then marrying Ava is also told well.
Ava’s rise from a thickly accented country girl to a major success in Hollywood, her constant suspicion that one day she will be ‘exposed for what she truly is’ and that the success will then disappear overnight are interesting tidbits you get from the book. Their marriage lasted longer than any of Ava’s marriages but it was tumultuous.
Frank was at the rock bottom when he landed the part in From Here to Eternity, which launched his comeback career in a very big way. Ava and others influenced the producer but also luck played a part since the prime actor he wanted, Ed Wallach was booked on a stage performance and was not available for the part.
The author tells the breakup of Ava and Frank’s marriage just after he recovered his stardom. His mercurial moods and anger are well told. His association with the mafia and his buying a stake in Los Vegas Sands is told well as is the influence of the mafia in developing the casinos.
He made money for Vegas through his shows too.
It is interesting how his arrogance and bad behaviour came right back the instant he found success and got the Oscar for his part in From Here To Eternity.
His shameless reaching out to his ex wife whom he treated shabbily and his fleeting relationships with stars of that era are all told with candour, as is expected of a Kitty Kelly story.
Frank does not come out of this in any good light. An impetuous, arrogant and at the same time emotional and insecure, he had a string of girlfriends, treated everyone horribly and also generously as the mood strikes him. He strung along Laurence Bacall (while she was married to DiMaggio and later when they were divorced). Had no respect of the law (as witnessed in his breaking and entering into the apartment he thought was Marilyn Monroe’s with her husband to catch her ‘red handed in a lesbian relationship with a friend’ and then lied about it in court and almost got jailed due to perjury.
A whining, pleading man when defeated and arrogant and self centred when fortune smiled upon him, he seems to come off as immature, vainglorious and shallow.
Frank took more than one woman to bed and had some actresses have sex with him and his friend at the same time. He was arrogant enough to have his underworld friends illegally transported to Hollywood and have them hidden in his room. He charmed Kennedy and had him supplied with a lot of girls when he was a Senator and also introduced her to an actress and the affair lasted years, with her (much later) staying in the White House bedroom when Jackie was away.
Dean Martin also was a close friend and also had a close association with the Mafia. Frank ignored Frankie, his son and showered all his attention on Nancy, his daughter to the point where the difference in attention and presents were obvious to anyone who cared to look. Frankie longed for his father’s attention but never got it.
Finally, when he hired a communist sympathizer who was exiled to Mexico to write the script for one of his films and made an announcement, it started affecting JFK’s election campaign as he was known to be close to Frank and was accused of ‘being soft on communists’. John Kennedy’s father Joseph gave an ultimatum to Frank to either choose him or us, forcing Frank to backtrack. Frank was furious and wanted to beat up John Wayne who had accused him of his scriptwriter choice in newspapers publicly earlier.
A violent man with an anger problem, with multiple affairs and open disrespect to his wives, a guy who often had no confidence in his abilities until he tasted success and who openly trashed everyone else (Elvis for instance), who were openly abusive to the press, who was proud of his close association with the underworld, who treated his TV show in so cavalier a manner (refusing to rehearse for instance) that the quality was shoddy and had to be cancelled, trashing the TV execs who even gave him the chance – not a graceful picture of a man who was flawed in so many ways.
It is shocking to read the number of infidelities that JFK had right through (even before Norma Jean aka Marilyn Monroe) and how infatuated he was with the Hollywood crowd that he left a Presidential inaugural dinner to attend one of Frank’s parties, minus the wife.
The serial hump and dump policies of Frank all through his life is also strange to read. With no repercussions or consequences. The Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde transformations were well known and tolerated among his friends but caused shock with all the girls he casually wooed one day and (after the conquest) treated contemptuously the very next day.
He even had four or five girls at one time. What is fascinating is JFK’s obsession on all things Hollywood and his minute interest in whom Frank was bedding with mutual friends being quizzed on a regular basis. Jackie hated Frank and so Frank got invited to the White House only once, when Jackie was away and he was smuggled in through a side entrance even at that one time.
When Kennedy did not come stay with Frank, mainly due to Robert Kennedy who was – shockingly for the mob and Frank’s mob friends – appointed as attorney general with a single purpose to eliminate the mob menace in US, Frank literally went berserk. It was rubbing salt into the wound when Kennedy decided to stay with another entertainer.
Frank tried to repair his image and an entire interview was ghost written for him by a famous writer and was published in Playboy. A planned goodwill trip where Frank simply obeyed the direction from the organizers generated a lot of goodwill too. But the ‘real’ Frank came out from time to time, undoing the goodwill so carefully generated.
When he does not even care about his open involvement with the mafia being investigated closely by FBI and when his guests get into a fight resulting in his long time friendship being impaired and even his mafia friend finally has had enough and cuts of ties, he seems to blithely move on. He sells the casino in favour of ownership of a division of the Warner Brothers enterprise.
The author describes Frank Jr being kidnapped and rescued; she talks of how Frank (Sr) almost drowned and was rescued by a friend and then did not like the fact that he was in his friend’s debt unlike all his other friends who were in debt to him!
She describes Mia Farrow’s pursuit of Frank (who is eager to prove his youthfulness and attractiveness) much to the embarrassment of Frank’s daughters who are older then Mia herself.
There is this episode where Frank throws a phone on Weisman, a relative of a multimillionaire who asked Frank’s group to ‘keep it down’. The hit was so hard that Weisman had a cracked skull and was in a coma for weeks and nearly died. Frank and Dean Martin who was with him lied to get themselves out of trouble with the police. The family of Weisman were warned with anonymous calls threatening their children’s lives if they filed criminal charges against Sinatra.
His tantrums and wrecking of the hotel Sands – which he helped gain fame but which he no longer owns at all – are shockingly well told. The author is also even handed where she describes several acts of extreme generosity and kindness he has displayed, stunning his accomplices.
The man who saved his life was ill served through major tantrums, so much so that he never got his due (last instalment) at the end of the picture and considered it ‘a good investment to have learnt the lesson to never work with Frank again’.
Frank continues to be wild, girl crazy and opposed Nixon and tried hard but failed to defeat him in the Presidential election.
Later due to Spiro Agnew, he supports Nixon and tries to keep Spiro in Vice President’s chair, hoping that his best friend would become the President. Nixon also seems enamored of Frank. It all goes wrong when Agnew is forced to resign due to well proven bribery charges and goes nearly destitute paying his lawyer’s bills. Frank steps in to pay his obnoxious and equally crude friend’s fees, saving him from penury.
When Frank restarts his singing career after a performance at his friend Nixon’s White House gala, he is as vituperative and obnoxious as ever, especially to the press and especially to female reporters. The only country which had the guts to force him to his knees in false repentance was Australia, where his tour was cancelled, the airlines did not want to serve him, the hotel personnel refused to provide room service until he ‘sort of ‘ apologized. After he was back in the American soil safely, he was doubly ugly regarding Australia and Australians.
Her sudden serving of divorce papers to Farah Fawcette – after she danced with his arch enemy Robert Kennedy who put his mafia buddies in prison – is told well. Then he marries Barbara, after her divorce from her much older film maker husband. Frank’s mother was virulently opposed to this marriage and was openly insulting to her face, with Frank watching in dismay and unable to control his mother.
Then, on her way to Frank’s grand performance in a chartered plane, Dolly who was in her eighties dies when the small plane she was in crashes in the fog. Frank is shattered by the suddenness of the death.
They describe a few farces where Frank seems to lie through his teeth, first to avoid prosecution and later to get a gambling license. The audacity is interesting to read. If true, than you clearly see how a rich and famous man can easily game the system and brazen out to get what he needs.
The book ends with an ever grateful Reagon presenting the highest civilian honour of the Medal of Freedom to Frank, scandalizing many who remembered his past as one who associated with hoodlums and on the same day, he getting an honorary engineering degree from his birth city of Hoboken, which he reviled in the past and had sworn never to visit.
An interesting mix of good and bad, presented by Kitty Kelly. If you are unfamiliar with his life and the details, an interesting book.
7/10
— Krishna