Frank

by James Kaplan

He wanted her even though (maybe a little because) she was what Marty would call a mulignane. A moolie, an eggplant. His eyes stung at the sheer stupidity of it, boiling someone down to the color of her skin—and eggplant was all wrong anyway. He’d been called wop and dago enough times to know all the names were bullshit. He knew dumb wops and micks and kikes and niggers, and he knew plenty of smart ones too—and there was brown-skinned Teddy Wilson, with his mustache and cigarette and haughty squint, sitting like a king at his keyboard. And Billie, making everyone in the joint fall in love with her.

  Someday, someday, maybe he could sing like that.

  Not yet, though. His voice was still thin and high, stuck in his throat. Sanicola, who had a little money in his pocket (and slipped Frankie a buck or two here and there), told him he knew a singing teacher, said he would stake him to a lesson or two. He had to get that voice down into his chest somehow.

  The teacher had him sing scales while he, the teacher, played the piano—boring but necessary—and taught him where his diaphragm was. But it turned out the lessons were $2 for forty-five minutes: a fucking fortune, the price of a good meal at Horn & Hardart’s Automat, and Frank didn’t want to have to choose between eating and singing.

  The teacher passed him along to another coach desperate enough to charge half the price.

  John Quinlan had sung tenor for the Metropolitan Opera before getting bounced for drinking. Even now, at 10:00 a.m., he had that Major Bowes barroom bouquet about him. He was a big, solid fellow, his thin sandy hair slicked straight back from a high forehead, his collar slightly askew around a meager tie knot, plenty of dandruff on his shoulders. He spoke with an English accent that wasn’t quite English—there was something tough about it. Irish? Turned out he was Australian, far from home. Quinlan listened to Frank sing, and nodded.

  There was something to work with; that was a relief. But the first thing they had to do was get him to stop sounding like a stevedore from—where the Christ did he say he was from?

  Week in and week out, Frankie did the vocal exercise: “Let us wander by the bay,” running up the scale and back down, in all twelve keys. Quinlan could do accents, could mimic Caruso in perfect Italian, sing Carmen in French, speak the King’s English. He taught Sinatra that “brother” had an r at the end, a th in the middle. “While” began with an exhalation, as if the h came first.

  Puff the air out, Frank.

  Frank needed to work on his t’s—the tip of his tongue was touching the back of his teeth instead of the roof of his mouth. Crisp t’s, Frank. Tut tut tut.

  Dut dut dut.

  And so—even though his t’s, over the next sixty years, would never become entirely crisp—the Hoboken began to drain from his voice. Not in day-to-day speech; rather, it was a trick, something he could, increasingly, do at will. At first, though, it drew the discomfiture of old friends and acquaintances. But even as they mocked him, they envied him. Suddenly he could sound almost like the people in the movies and on the radio: people who were never without a trenchant observation or a witty rejoinder, people who were never sad or hard up or horny or just sitting around picking their noses, bored. Most especially, people in the movies and on the radio were never, ever bored.

  Frank was singing with more confidence. He’d begun to find regions of his chest he never knew existed; his increasing poise with diction was bringing the words alive a little bit.

  He learned to look at the lyric on paper and think about it. Somebody had written those words for a reason—he tried to imagine what that reason might have been. He began to see: you can’t sing it if you don’t understand it.

  I don’t want you

  But I hate to lose you.

  The songs were almost all about love, but the implicit and compelling argument—in that era—was that love was the ultimate human subject, and could therefore encompass absolutely any idea or shade of emotion: euphoria, sorrow, lust, hate, ambivalence, cynicism, naughty fun, surprise, surrender. The best lyricists were akin to poets. A singer who could comprehend their work would understand their brilliance and polish it, even add to it. Would, in optimal circumstances, take temporary possession of the song, making it seem like something that had just been thought up and uttered, most compellingly.

  For the time being, the best Frank could hope for was to begin to understand. He saw now how hollow his earlier efforts had been—trying to ape Bing and Rudy and Russ Columbo, wanting the rewards of acclaim without truly comprehending what he was doing. He began to see the differences between poor and fair and good and great songs.

  But it seemed the more he learned and the harder he tried, the less work he could find. Sometimes it felt as if he had had his shot, his moment in the national sun with the Major, and maybe it would all be downhill from there. He spent his nights at the Onyx Club and the Three Deuces on Fifty-second Street strictly as a spectator, a nobody from nowhere, his nose pressed against the glass. He was stuck in Hoboken like a fly on flypaper, still singing for chump change at bars and social clubs and weddings, and even in blackface—again—at a minstrel show sponsored by Marty’s fire company. (Marty looked all too entertained.) He kept dogging the radio stations, WAAT and WOR and WNEW, offering to work for free, or for carfare, and being taken up on the offer—and then having to put his hand out to Sanicola or Dolly for walking-around money. Two breaks raised his hopes: First, his cousin Ray Sinatra, an arranger for the NBC radio house band, wangled him an audition, and he got a job on a daily fifteen-minute spot on the network—for seventy cents a week. Then he sang “Exactly Like You” (accompanying himself on the ukulele) on another amateur hour, Town Hall Tonight, hosted by the vinegar-pussed Fred Allen. Nothing came of it.

  Then he heard about something he really wanted.

  The Rustic Cabin, whose parking lot he knew all too well from his days chauffeuring the Flashes, had an opening for a singing waiter and emcee. Fifteen dollars a week—not so great, even at the bottom of the Depression. But the wire to the radio station was still there, and now the station had a new broadcast, WNEW Dance Parade, featuring the Cabin’s band and singer. A golden opportunity. Frankie drove the familiar route up to Englewood Cliffs, strolled into the club—the dark interior had log-cabin walls, booths with high split-log partitions (ideal for tête-à-têtes and trysts), a dance floor, and a bandstand—and found himself face-to-face with Harold Arden. Not Harold Arlen the immortal songwriter, but Harold Arden the bush-league bandleader, who wore a mustache with long waxed tips and bore a passing resemblance to the supercilious actor Franklin Pangborn. Arden, for some reason, had taken an instant dislike to Sinatra: maybe it was the yachting cap; maybe it was the way he carried himself. In any case, as soon as Frankie, standing by the bored piano player, had finished singing his latest hit, “Exactly Like You,” Arden gave the owner, Harry Nichols, a lemon-sucking look. Nichols took out his cigar.

  They’d keep him on file.

  Dolly, of course, was standing by the door when he got home, waiting to ask if he’d gotten the job. Girlie, his miniature collie, came up to greet him, and before Dolly could get the question out, Frank swooped the dog into his arms, pounded up the stairs to his room, and slammed the door.

  Dolly stood in the front hall, stymied. Twenty-two years old, living at home, no trade, no money in his fucking pocket except what she put there—useless for everything, in short, except warbling tunes for spare change.

  And bawling like a little girl.

  Yet she knew not what he could be—she hadn’t the ear for that—but that there was nothing else he could be. So he was high-strung. So what?

  This time she picked up her white telephone and rang a Democratic Party pal named Harry Steeper, who was the mayor of North Bergen, between West New York and Cliffside Park. He was also head of the New Jersey musicians’ union—and, as such, a good pal to James Caesar Petrillo, the man who was swiftly rising toward absolute power in the American Federation of Musicians. Petrillo was a mediocre trumpet player but, as his middle name foreordain
ed, a vastly ambitious man whose chief abhorrence in life was the phonograph record. As James Caesar Petrillo saw it, the phonograph was an invention whose sole purpose was to put honest musicians out of work. And Petrillo (whose path would cross with Frank Sinatra’s in an important way in just a few years) was a Friend of the Musician, and Harry Steeper was a friend of James C. Petrillo’s.2

  So—surprise—Frankie got the job. Harold Arden could wax the tips of his mustache with that.

  5

  Frank fronting Bill Henri and His Headliners at the Rustic Cabin, early 1939. Harry James would discover Sinatra here in June. (photo credit 5.1)

  The universe, in Dolly Sinatra’s view, was a well-ordered place as long as she had anything to do with it. Within her realm, she could control the miracle of birth itself and all the machinations of the day-to-day world. But certain areas threatened her: Frankie’s temperament, for one. She possessed the same volcanic center, but she could keep a lid on it. The thought of living without that control perplexed and, at times, terrified her.

  Sex was another matter, a dark force that had to be contained at all costs. With Marty, the question had long since been put to rest, but poor Chit-U was another story. Poor Chit-U, slow-witted and gimpy, was forty, well past the age when a man should have a wife. Still, one day Chit-U found a woman: a poor little wounded duck who worked behind the counter at the greengrocer, so shy she herself could barely speak. Within a few weeks he was taking her out for beers on Friday nights.

  Dolly saw where it was going.

  The man lived under her roof, mopped her floors, dusted her vases, and put his salary from the docks into her pocket. If a piece of heavy equipment, a pallet, or a shipping crate, God forbid, fell on Chit-U’s head, the life-insurance money was hers.

  Now he was using his money—which was her money—to buy drinks for this woman. Dolly knew meals and gifts would follow, and soon enough, a ring, and brats, and then his insurance would be signed over to them.

  Dolly found out where the woman lived and went there one night, stood under her window, and shrieked abuse and obscenities at the top of her precinct captain’s voice. The whole neighborhood heard the racket, the cop on the beat came by—but one sharp look from Dolly took care of him. She continued her shrieking; the poor little wounded bird shivered in her rented room, making the only possible assumption: Chit-U must have a wife.

  But Frankie’s stream of girls would not be stopped so easily.

  A few years earlier, just before he dropped out of high school, he had gone out for a while with Marian Brush, a cute, smart Garden Street neighbor. One afternoon when the two of them came home from school, Dolly was there. Frankie, in all innocence, said he wanted to show Marian something amazing: his new radio that could pick up Pittsburgh.

  Marian, glancing back over her shoulder as they went up the stairs, saw Dolly staring after them with an expression the girl would remember until she was an old lady: She thought we were going up there to do it. Just the look in Dolly’s eyes made Marian feel dirty.

  But Frankie would always have girls pursuing him. And the Cabin was an ideal base of operations: it was a sneak joint, a place where married men brought their girlfriends. The place oozed sex, and Frankie, showing the giggly couples to their booths in his waiter’s outfit, felt horny just being there. It showed in his voice.

  The lyrics had begun to mean something. Somebody wrote that for a reason—try to imagine what that reason might have been. The better the song, the deeper the meaning.

  What is this thing called love?

  this funny thing called love?

  Feeling the words, and remembering how Billie could tell you her whole life story in the glide of a note, Frank began to sing the lyrics as if he really meant them, and something happened.

  The girls, dancing with their dates, began to stop mid-step and stare at him.

  And Dolly knew. Which was why it was so important to push forward the Plan. She’d thought of it more than two years before, when he first brought the little mouse home: Frankie had to marry her.

  She was from a good family, a family with money, with a big wooden house and five sisters who had married lawyers or accountants. Even if she wasn’t beautiful, she was pretty, with a quiet dignity about her: She would make good babies; she would take care of a household.

  And Nancy Barbato would never threaten Dolly’s supremacy.

  The Plan was accelerated when Frank met the older one. The truth of it was that there were many girls now, coming out of the cursed knotty-pine woodwork of the Rustic Cabin, bewitched by the sound of his voice. They were writing letters to him, mash notes in perfumed envelopes—Dolly stuffed them straight into the garbage, with the coffee grounds and grapefruit rinds. They were storming his front door, just as she had known they would. And the older one was the most dangerous of all: cheap trash from Lodi—her father was a rumrunner or something. She was three years Frankie’s senior, Antoinette Della Penta, and pretty, but with a fucked-out look about her—she might as well have been a whore as far as Dolly was concerned. Mrs. M. Sinatra of upper Garden Street hadn’t pulled her little clan up from Guinea Town to have her only son grabbed by a gold-digging hussy.

  There had been a dinner between the two families, Dolly and Marty generously making the trip to Lodi, but it had not gone well. Dolly—no surprise—had spoken her mind.

  Still, Toni kept coming on strong even as Frankie continued to woo Nancy. For a while it was fun, Nancy and Toni coming alternate nights to the Cabin, Nancy the good girl sitting uneasily as the other women stared openmouthed at her Frankie. Nancy the good girl, with her sweet face and sweet hair and sweet kisses—and kissing was where it stopped.

  Then, on the other nights, Toni the bad girl, or the girl with the promise of badness anyway. He couldn’t help himself; he was so desperate to have her that he gave her a ring, not a big stone, a cheap chip of diamond, but it did the trick. She let him take her to a hotel, and they registered as Mr. and Mrs. Sinatra. She teased him mercilessly as he lay there with his eyes rolled back in his head. Had anyone ever done that for him?

  Certainly not Nancy. But then came the night after Thanksgiving, when Nancy and Frank were sitting in a booth between sets and Freddy the busboy brought the black telephone to the table. Freddy gave Frankie a funny look: For you, kid. Nancy, giving him her own look, a look of power and ownership, pushed Frank’s hand away from the phone and picked up the receiver.

  He sat there with his hand over his eyes as she went at it pretty good. He was surprised at how tough she was. She’d pull Toni’s hair out by the roots if she ever caught her anywhere near her Frank.

  His stomach warmed to hear that, but then, after she slammed down the receiver, he knew he was in for it. The bawling out, though, that was the easy part. The hard part was dealing with the other one.

  Half an hour later, she stomped into the Cabin as he was about to start singing and walked toward him, but Nancy stopped her. Then they were flailing at each other like two cats. The music stopped and everyone stared. Before Frank and the other waiters and the busboys could get between the women, Toni had ripped Nancy’s good white dress.

  It was a long night, but he stuck to his story: The woman was nothing to him. It had been a flirtation, and it was over. The woman couldn’t face the facts.

  The next night, Saturday, things got worse. After he’d sung “Night and Day,” there was a stirring on the dance floor, and two cops in motorcycle boots stomped in and arrested him right in front of everyone.

  Frankie tried to bluff it out. Mistaken identity, he announced, as they led him to the door, to scattered applause (which began with the band).

  They took him to the county clink, in Hackensack—it was two in the morning—and booked him.

  Even in a mug shot it is an astonishing face. The extravagantly sensual lower lip. The intelligence of the pale, wide-set eyes. The greasy hank of hair over the left eyebrow—he could have flicked it out of the way; he chose not to—is a rebellio
us 1930s touch worthy of a Dillinger or Pretty Boy Floyd. It is a sensitive face, but one of a man with full knowledge of his own importance.

  Full-face he looked defiant, but in profile he looked weary. A night in jail had taken the starch out of Frank. Now he was allowed to make his single phone call. Dolly answered, and told him she would have him out in an hour.

  It took a bit longer than that. The whole episode was an operetta in three acts, playing out over months, each part taking its own sweet time. The original arrest warrant stated that on November 2 and 9, 1938, Frank Sinatra, “being then and there a single man over the age of eighteen years, under the promise of marriage, did then and there have sexual intercourse with the said complainant who was then and there a single female of good repute for chastity whereby she became pregnant.” Then and there. Good repute for chastity. Old English language aside, the warrant had a couple of holes in it. The beginning of November sounds like very quick work if indeed she did become pregnant; some have speculated the affair actually began in the spring and was consummated during the summer, which sounds more plausible. And there was this small detail: The female was not single. She was legally separated, but still married.

  The case fell apart like the house of cards it was, except that it fell in slow motion. First, Dolly sent Marty to call on Toni’s father. Marty had such a hangdog expression—“He looked like a hobo at the door begging for something to eat,” Toni recalled many years later—that her father offered the poor old pug a shot of booze. The two men drank together—sacred bond—and finally Toni was persuaded to go spring Frankie herself.

  According to Toni, Frankie sobbed when she confronted him in his cell. She withdrew the charges, but only after (she remembered) she made her lover promise that his mother would apologize for the mean things she’d said. Dolly apologize! Three weeks later, no apology having occurred, Toni went to Garden Street to confront Mrs. Sinatra. After a screaming fight that brought the neighbors out of their houses, the forty-two-year-old, four-foot-eleven Dolly somehow managed to throw the young woman into the basement. The police arrived. This being Dolly Sinatra’s turf, Toni was arrested and given a suspended sentence for disorderly conduct. She thereupon swore out a second warrant against Frank Sinatra: not having been able to make seduction stick, this time she owned up to her non-single status and went for adultery. Three days before Christmas, he was arrested once more—again at the Cabin, this time by court officers purporting to be bearing a Christmas gift from admirers. Dolly once more arrived with bail, and Frankie was once again released on his own recognizance. A headline in the next day’s Jersey Observer read: SONGBIRD HELD IN MORALS CHARGE.