by James Kaplan
She was sixty-four, a full decade older than he, and handsome rather than beautiful, but the combination of her wealth, her loftiness, and her vulnerability was catnip to Sinatra. And she found the attentions of the most famous and charismatic man in Hollywood, a man with his own wealth and jet planes at his command, intoxicating.
“Frank took such good care of me, and was so good for me after Billy died,” she recalled years later. “We traveled everywhere together. He took me to Palm Springs and to New York for Arthur and Bubbles Hornblow’s twenty-fifth anniversary party. And, oh, the presents…one Christmas he gave me an embroidered bag—you couldn’t see the embroidery under a magnifying glass it was so fine, and inside there was a solid gold box which was engraved: ‘To Edie, With Much Love—Noel. Francis’…
“We had such a friendly love affair,” she said. “He called me ‘sexy’—it was gay and fun.”
Then, one night, in the library of the Goetzes’ mansion on Delfern Drive, just north of Sunset in Holmby Hills, Frank proposed to her.
It was something he did from time to time, with various women along a broad spectrum of age and accomplishment. He always meant it, just as he meant the words of the songs he sang…He was filled with the feeling of the moment and expected the object of his affections to feel the same.
Instead, however, Edith Mayer Goetz was taken aback. “Why, Frank, I couldn’t marry you,” she sputtered. “Why…why…you’re nothing but a hoodlum.”
He got up and walked out, never to speak to her again.
—
Throughout the latter part of 1969, Sinatra’s team of lawyers had jousted with the New Jersey State Commission of Investigation on their client’s behalf, boldly declaring the body unconstitutional, on the grounds that its proceedings were “accusatorial,” and asking that a special three-judge panel be formed to hear Frank’s argument. In January 1970, after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit turned down the request, Sinatra’s case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, where his attorneys argued that an indictment against Frank would do him and his career irreparable harm.
But on February 3, the highest court in the land ruled against him, with the liberal justices Hugo L. Black, William O. Douglas, and Thurgood Marshall dissenting. Justice William J. Brennan recused himself—probably because his son was a New Jersey state investigator who had recently made the attention-getting declaration that, according to the New York Times, “organized crime had infiltrated nearly every facet of life in the state, including the Legislature.”
On Tuesday evening, February 17, “shortly after he flew into nearby Mercer County Airport from New York City aboard his private jet airliner, a Grumman-4,” the Times reported in a front-page story the next day, Frank went to Trenton and “testified for more than an hour…before a hastily summoned, extraordinary closed session of the State Commission of Investigation, which asked him what he knew about organized crime and official corruption in New Jersey.”
Though the hearing was closed—and therefore by definition secret—it did not, as Nancy Sinatra wrote dramatically, take place at midnight. Prosaically enough, the proceedings began just before 7:00 p.m. after Frank, hatless and wearing a dark overcoat against the February chill, walked into the commission’s executive offices a few blocks west of the statehouse with an entourage of six, including two lawyers. By previous agreement, he then entered the closed session alone and spent the next hour and a quarter being questioned by two members of the commission, Glen B. Miller Jr. and James T. Dowd. “Under questioning, Mr. Sinatra reportedly abandoned his customary breezy demeanor and appeared apprehensive,” the Times’s Ronald Sullivan wrote (having apparently interviewed one of the participants afterward).
Though nothing of what Frank said in the hearing was divulged at the time, a dozen or so years later Kitty Kelley managed to obtain a transcript of the meeting. It appeared that Frank told the commissioners next to nothing.
Q: Do you know Willie Moretti?
SINATRA: No.
Q: Ever meet him?
FS: I’m not sure whether I ever have, because it seems so long ago that I had a house in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, my wife and I. We bought a house, and the man from whom we bought the house, I think, brought him to the house one day to meet me.
Q: Do you know Meyer Lansky?
FS: I’ve met him.
Q: Who is he?
FS: I just read in the papers that he was an undesirable.
Q: You have never heard that “Skinny” D’Amato is a member of Cosa Nostra?
FS: Never.
Q: Are you familiar with Sam Giancana’s reputation as a member of Cosa Nostra?
FS: No.
Q: Are you familiar with Joseph Fischetti’s reputation as a member of Cosa Nostra?
FS: No.
Q: Are you familiar with Lucky Luciano’s reputation as a member of Cosa Nostra?
FS: No, sir.
Q: Are you familiar with Willie Moretti’s reputation as a member of Cosa Nostra?
FS: No, sir.
Q: Are you familiar with Joe Adonis’s reputation as a member of Cosa Nostra?
FS: No, sir.
Q: I have been using the word “Cosa Nostra.” If I were using the word “Mafia” with respect to any of those people named above, would your answers be different?
FS: No, sir.
Q: Do you know anybody who’s a member of Cosa Nostra?
FS: No, sir.
Q: Do you know anybody who’s a member of the mob?
FS: No, sir.
Q: Do you know anybody who’s a member of any organization that would come under that category of organized crime?
FS: No, sir.
It was—in advance and in secret—like the Senate subcommittee’s interrogation of Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone in The Godfather, Part II: the strange and dangerous Italian names tripping, not lightly, from the tongues of the earnest, square white bureaucrats; the tense, grim Italian-American witness denying everything in monosyllables.
Nancy Sinatra wrote that the hearing was a mere publicity exercise on behalf of the State Committee of Investigation, not to mention a needless humiliation to her father. The questions the commissioners posed to Frank had been answered before, she contended—and once they ran out of questions, they turned into starry-eyed fans, one commissioner asking if it had really been Sinatra, or a stunt double, running for the train at the end of Von Ryan’s Express.
She had a point. The next morning, after the New Jersey State Commission of Investigation announced it was satisfied with Frank’s testimony and was dropping its contempt charges against him, “a high [commission] official who asked not to be identified revealed that the primary purpose in interrogating Mr. Sinatra was not to learn more about underworld activities in New Jersey,” according to the Times. “The official said the commission was bent on showing it had the power to elicit testimony from virtually anyone and that a primary factor in forcing Mr. Sinatra to appear here was the publicity his appearance would generate.”
By then, however, Frank was long gone, having jetted back to California to trade one circus for another. A week later he would be in Arizona, wearing long johns and shooting Dirty Dingus Magee.
—
In early February, Sinatra had been scheduled to emcee a gala tribute to Harry Truman thrown by the Democratic National Committee in Miami Beach. He canceled, Don Rickles cracked onstage, because “he had an engagement in Newark”—“Newark” being a funnier-sounding word than “Trenton,” the actual site of the New Jersey engagement that had unfortunately detained Frank.
At the end of the month, though, he was able to find a night off from his movie shoot and fly to Washington to entertain at another gala, a White House fund-raiser for a congressional research center in memory of the late senator Everett Dirksen. Although the black-tie dinner was “bipartisan, short on speeches and long on entertainment,” the Associated Press reported—Danny Thomas, Dinah Shore, and Wayne Newton were also on the program—Dirks
en had been a Republican, and President and Mrs. Nixon were listed as honorary co-chairmen of the event. It was the first time Frank had set foot in the White House since his Lincoln Bedroom encounter with Lyndon Johnson two years earlier and, nonpartisan though it might have been, a considerably more pleasant occasion.
—
The following day, back on the Dingus Magee set on two hours’ sleep, Sinatra gave a long interview to Cue magazine’s film critic, William Wolf. Jim Mahoney had reminded Wolf beforehand that his client’s time was precious and inappropriate questions might cause the conversation to come to a sudden close. The warning was unnecessary. The ground rules had long been understood: Sinatra trusted that his eminence and overpowering personality would prevent most journalists from disrespecting him to his face, and most journalists, thrilled just to be in his presence, gladly toed the line. To Wolf, Frank seemed in the giving vein that day—or what, in him, passed for it: expansive and thoughtful, if not precisely candid. “He appeared tired, though relaxed and friendly,” the critic wrote. “It seemed almost as if, for a rare change, he was anxious to talk to a reporter.”
Maybe he really was. For whatever reason, Sinatra was in a philosophical mood. “Enough has happened to me,” he said, squinting into the desert sun. “More than I deserve—all I’d ever want to use the rest of my life. Now I would just like peace of mind.”
A tall order for him. But an odd new tune was playing in the background that year, wherever he went and whatever he did: he hurt, and he was tired. He denied it vigorously sometimes—sometimes a little too vigorously. “I never think about it,” he said, when Wolf asked if he was concerned about growing old. “I feel in great shape. I keep fit.” He also claimed that he was down to ten cigarettes a day, though drinking was a different story. (“He smiled and said, ‘I’ll handle several jars a night. I do it for pleasure and I enjoy it.’ ”)
What to ask the man who has done everything? Wolf wondered what held Frank’s interest these days, what kept him from getting bored with it all. “Every time a new song comes along, you have a whole new excitement again,” Sinatra told him.
That’s what makes entertaining an interesting business. No day is the same. Generally, what performers look for most is variance. If not, they should. It keeps you and the audience interested.
I loved pictures like “Man With the Golden Arm” because I played an interesting character. And I enjoy musicals. I don’t think musicals ever will come back in the sense of the way they were. Now I prefer a story with songs. If it were possible, I’d like to do “Born Yesterday” as a film with songs, with Barbra Streisand.
There was a poignancy to all of this. It had been many years since he had made The Man with the Golden Arm, and he was right about musicals: they weren’t coming back. Still, it was perceptive of him to say that a story with songs could work, given the right story: Born Yesterday really could have been a great vehicle for him and Streisand.
Frank had pride and intelligence enough to know that Dirty Dingus Magee fell into a different category altogether. “It’s a funny part” was the best he could muster. “I’ve been looking for a comedy for some time.”
Did he still get a thrill, the critic asked, at the prospect of making even more money? Frank shook his head. “Money never really interested me, and doesn’t now,” he insisted. “I made a lot of money working, but I never worked hard just to make money. I like to spend money. That’s what it’s for—move it around!”
With the mood up, Wolf decided to hazard a couple of delicate questions. Would Frank ever marry again?
The mood shifted instantly. “I have no thoughts about it,” he said softly. “I wouldn’t want to delve into that.”
Properly warned, the writer let it go. But then he picked up another hot potato: Sinatra’s recent adventures with the New Jersey State Commission of Investigation. Did he have any message for fellow Italian-Americans who were unhappy about perpetually being associated with the Mafia?
Frank was dismissive. “I don’t think they are very upset about it,” he said. “Most Italian-Americans are…pretty secure in their lives—the second and third generations. I don’t believe they are too concerned about the Mafia thing.” Much more serious, he went on, was a “general problem that affects everybody.” He then revealed what concerned him most about American life today. “It’s amorality!” Sinatra said.
And so much restlessness. I guess we just got used to a way of life in my age bracket. Things are confusing a lot of Americans. Take the protestations, called for or uncalled for. I’m not against protestations, if they’re for a cause. But I don’t like rebellion without a cause. It’s frightening.
Going on fifty-five, the man to whom enough had happened was sounding less like a swinger than a careful old bourgeois.
—
The New Jersey State Commission of Investigation’s goal of generating publicity appears to have been successful, as shown by an unusual cable the FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, received on March 10. The communiqué, marked “URGENT,” came from a legal attaché to the U.S. embassy in London; “FRANK SINATRA, FOREIGN POLICE COOPERATION” was the subject line.
ON MARCH NINE LAST JOHN WALDRON, COMMISSIONER, METROPOLITAN POLICE, NEW SCOTLAND YARD, ADVISED SINATRA AND COUNT BASIE ORCHESTRA ARE APPEARING AT ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL, LONDON, ON MAY SEVEN AND EIGHT NEXT IN A CHARITY PERFORMANCE FOR BENEFIT OF SOCIETY FOR PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO CHILDREN. SOCIETY HOLDS ANNUAL PERFORMANCE, IS ONE OF ROYAL FAMILY’S FAVORITE CHARITIES, THEY ARE USUALLY INVITED AND USUALLY ATTEND.
THE COMMISSIONER IS EXTREMELY CONCERNED OVER RECENT PUBLICITY AFFORDED SINATRA OVER TESTIFYING RE MAFIA CONNECTIONS IN NEW JERSEY. COMMISSIONER MUST MAKE RECOMMENDATION FOR OR AGAINST APPEARANCE OF QUEEN AND OTHER MEMBERS OF ROYAL FAMILY. IF QUEEN ATTENDS SINATRA WILL BE PRESENTED TO HER AND HE FEARS UNFAVORABLE PRESS MAY RESULT.
COMMISSIONER WOULD BE MOST APPRECIATIVE FOR SUMMARY OF PERTINENT AVAILABLE INFO RE SINATRA TO INCLUDE IDENT RECORD, WHY HE HAD TO DISPOSE OF LAS VEGAS INTERESTS, RECENT NEW JERSEY MATTER, ETC. HE ASSURES ANY INFO WILL BE TREATED AS CONFIDENTIAL AND BUREAU POSITIVELY NOT IDENTIFIED AS SOURCE. HE NEEDS INFO AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AS ROYAL FAMILY HAS RECEIVED INVITATION.
The FBI willingly supplied the info: a memorandum from the bureau’s A. Rosen stated, “Sinatra’s affiliation over the years with such well-known hoodlums and members of the La Cosa Nostra as the late Willie Moretti, Paul Emelio D’Amato, and Salvatore ‘Sam’ Giancana.” For good measure, Rosen added “the results of a security-type investigation conducted regarding Sinatra in 1955, which disclosed that his name had been associated with or lent to approximately 16 organizations in the early and middle 1940s which were either communist fronts or communist infiltrated.”
A little regretfully, the FBI’s Rosen then admitted, “This investigation did not uncover any actual Communist Party or front membership on Sinatra’s part.”
In other news from Great Britain, on April 10, Paul McCartney formally announced his departure from the Beatles, making the group’s breakup—John Lennon had told his three bandmates months earlier that he was leaving—a fait accompli. Much of the world mourned, but few tears were shed in Las Vegas.
—
Another week, another hundred grand. At the end of April, after wrapping Dirty Dingus Magee, Frank did six nights at Caesars; attending the premiere on the night of the twenty-second, Variety’s Duke was predictably wowed:
As a cabaret blockbuster, Frank Sinatra continues his ascent, and from the looks and sounds of his fifth surge into the Circus Maximus—populated at preem by a new high in bulk of blue chip celeb ringsiders—the coasting is nowhere in sight.
Tossing his songs and hard-boiled but charming patter better than ever, Sinatra is well worth—and more—what they are paying him.
On April 24, Hank Greenspun, the publisher of the Las Vegas Sun and Sinatra’s ever-reliable booster, wrote an “editorial,” which read, “Frank Sinatra at Caesars Palace is equivalent to booking a 25,000-delegat
e convention. He is the king and his appearances here are marked by Strip and airplane traffic jams and crowded showrooms. Entry to a Sinatra performance is becoming a Las Vegas status symbol.”
It was all true, and a powerful enough statement that Caesars ran the quotation as a full-page ad in Variety, Greenspun’s words in white type floating dramatically on a stark black background. It was smooth synergy in the new, corporatized Vegas—except that secretly, the main gear in the grand machine was broken. Frank was tired, and his right hand, the one that held the mike as he tossed his songs and hard-boiled but charming patter, hurt like hell. More and more he wondered how much longer he could keep the whole circus going.
—
The trip to England, though, restored his spirits. The Brits always lifted him. His voice had carried them through the dark days of the war, while the Jerries bombed the daylights out of them, and they had never forgotten: they greeted him as a hero each time he returned. Lacking the Yanks’ Puritan streak, the English saw his bad-boy side as lovable rather than reprehensible: our Frank. He’d thought of all this in the wake of the New Jersey hearing as the bad publicity mounted. How great would it be to play the Royal Festival Hall, in front of royalty and for a noble cause? He would take Basie and his great band and would pay all expenses himself. He would, of course, accept no fee. It would be the kind of public relations money couldn’t buy—except, of course, he was buying it.
