Sinatra

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Because of his success at the Paramount, Frank hired a new press agent, forty-one-year-old George Evans, who had been introduced to him by their mutual friend Nick Sevano. Evans, an enthusiastic PR man, represented a host of show-business icons, including Lena Horne, Duke Ellington, and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. “Make me the biggest star there is,” Frank told him. “Whatever it takes. I got the talent, now you do what you gotta do.”

  The first idea George Evans had was to have one of his assistants hire a gaggle of girls to scream like mad whenever Frank sang one of his romantic ballads in any theater anywhere. Each youngster was paid five dollars for her services. It was hardly necessary, though. The audience was already so enthusiastic, they practically drowned out Evans’s employees. To make Sinatra’s performance even more interesting, though, Evans decided that some of the girls should actually faint during one of Frank’s numbers. (Of course, only members of Sinatra’s camp knew that these youngsters had been planted throughout the theater.) Much to Evans’s amazement, thirty girls fainted one night. But only twelve had been hired. Then the girls started throwing their little brassieres onto the stage.

  “Jesus Christ, can you believe this?” Frank asked his pals backstage after one show. He remembered those days in an interview years later. “I was feeling everything,” he said. “Happy? I don’t know. I wasn’t unhappy, let’s put it that way. I never had it so good. Sometimes I wonder whether anybody had it like I had it, before or since. It was the damnedest thing, wasn’t it? But I was too busy ever to know whether I was happy or even to ask myself. I can’t remember for a long time even taking time out to think.”

  “Frank was flying high, and we were proud of him,” said his longtime friend Joey D’Orazio. “After all, he’d worked hard to get where he was. We still had a lot of laughs. He was the same ol’ Frankie. I don’t think he changed a bit. He was cocky, but hell, he was always cocky. But one thing was for sure: We liked him more when he was happy, and he was pretty happy during this time.

  “He was spending money like crazy, I remember. He bought all of his pals from Hoboken watches and sweaters. ‘Anything you need, you come to me,’ he said. ‘And if your mother or father need something, you tell ’em to call me too.’ I mean, he wasn’t the kind of guy who ever forgot his buddies from the old neighborhood, you know?” (Frank’s wardrobe had also become quite impressive: fifty suits, two dozen sports coats, over a hundred pairs of dress pants, sixty pairs of shoes. His floppy bow ties, which became a trademark, were handmade by his wife, Nancy.)

  To make sure Frank stayed a sensation, George Evans gave away free tickets to other youngsters, just to be sure the house was always packed, no matter the time of day, no matter the city. He also contacted the press and made certain that photographers were present to document Sinatra’s effect on young people. Soon all of the country was reading and talking about the singer in the floppy bow tie, the one now being referred to by some of the media as “the Voice.”5

  Evans also arranged press interviews, photo sessions, autograph parties, radio-station visits—whatever it took to spread the word that young Sinatra had arrived. In press releases Evans actually rewrote Frank’s history, lopping two years off his age, having him “graduate” from high school, making him athletic and his parents native-born. Dolly was even transformed into a Red Cross nurse! Eagerly, she played along with the hype. In fact, when Frank was rejected for military service because of a hearing problem—likely the result of the forceps used during his difficult birth—Dolly lamented to a reporter, “Oh, dear, Frankie wanted to get in so badly because he wanted to have our pictures taken together in uniform.” (Though he rarely if ever complained about it, Sinatra would always suffer some degree of hearing loss, which makes his success in the music business all the more amazing.)

  Evans also passed the word that Frank was a slum kid, born into an impoverished family that had struggled with financial woes in a gang-infested neighborhood. Frank played along. It was just public relations, he figured, and all a part of the game. Indeed, Evans’s successful campaign was largely responsible for the wide scope of Sinatra’s early fame. That Frank had been working for years to invent himself as a vocalist and entertainer helped significantly, but Evans certainly made the most of Frank’s talent.

  “Dolly was calling everyone she knew in Hoboken and bragging about her kid,” Joey D’Orazio remembered. “To hear her talk, he was the biggest thing since Moses.

  “A bunch of us drove Dolly and Marty and some other family members to one show, and Frank asked me to bring Marty backstage afterwards. Frankie was extremely nervous. ‘My old man never wanted me to sing,’ he told me. ‘What do you think he’s gonna say now? You think he’ll be proud, Joey boy?’ I said, ‘Jesus Christ, Frank, you’re the hottest thing in show business. Of course he’s proud.’ Frank looked sad and said, ‘I’m not so sure. You don’t know my old man. This isn’t his thing, this whole singing jazz. If it was up to him, I’d be workin’ on the docks.’

  “I got the feeling that a lot depended on Marty’s reaction,” D’Orazio continued. “Even though Frank was a star, I felt that if Marty didn’t have the proper response, it would have ruined everything.”

  When Marty remained a bit quiet during the show, D’Orazio was concerned. “I can’t hear a goddamned thing over the noise in this joint,” the senior Sinatra complained during one ballad. “Is he any good or not? I can’t hear him.”

  After Frank’s final bows, Joey escorted Marty to the backstage door.

  “It was madness there,” D’Orazio said. “We couldn’t get in. I remember that there was some kind of mix-up on the guest list. Frank’s paisano Hank [Sanicola] forgot to put our name on it, and I was about to take Marty away rather than have him be embarrassed. Suddenly, Marty says to this big guy at the door, ‘Hey, pal, that was my kid up there on that stage. I’m his ol’ man, and if you don’t let me back there, I’m gonna knock you out. You got that?’ I was amazed. Marty was usually pretty quiet, but he really wanted to get backstage to see his kid. The guard was convinced, and he let us through.”

  Backstage, Frank’s small dressing room was crammed with excited well-wishers. When Marty walked into the room, all eyes turned to him. It was as if everyone somehow knew that a significant moment was about to occur. “Hey, Pop,” Frank greeted his father as he cut through the crowd and headed toward him.

  “Well, what’d ya think, Pop,” he asked with a cautious smile.

  “Who could hear?” Marty responded. “Nobody could hear anything. How do you hear what you’re doing?”

  Frank had to laugh. “So, I’m still a quitter? Or what?”

  Marty’s eyes teared up. “My son ain’t no quitter,” he said as he embraced Frank. “My son’s a big shot.”6

  Making Do

  Frank’s hotheaded personality would often get the better of him and he was often disagreeable and unreasonable. “A real prick,” George would say when describing Frank to intimates. “The worst kind there is, because not only does he have to prove you wrong, he has to make you agree that he just proved it.”

  Plagued by insomnia his entire life, Frank—always an erudite, socially conscious man—would read into the early hours of the morning. He would devour a wide variety of books, his particular interest having to do with racial tolerance. His favorites included An American Dilemma by Gunnar Myrdal; History of Bigotry in the United States by Gustavus Myers, and the novel Freedom Road by Howard Fast. It would take him hours to fall asleep; he rarely got enough.

  In the morning, he was tired and irritable, and by the afternoon he was giving everyone hell, in part because he was so sleep-deprived. Evans, however, could somehow always deal with the irascible side of Sinatra’s personality. He thought of it as a combination of artistic temperament and Italian stubbornness. The one problem he and Sinatra could not reconcile, though, was a more serious one: Frank’s philandering.

  “George had a meeting with Frank one afternoon in his office at 1775 Broadway—th
e first of many on the subject—and it turned into a screaming match,” recalled Ted Hechtman, who was a New York friend and business associate of George Evans’s. (The two would become partners when Evans opened his West Coast office.) “He told him flat out, ‘You have to stop with the dames.’ And Frank was adamant. ‘That’s got nothin’ to do with nothin.’ That’s my own private business, George. So keep your nose out of it.’

  “ ‘But it does have to do with your career, Frankie,’ George told him. ‘If word gets out you’re cheating on your wife, how do you think those kids who idolize you are gonna feel? I’m telling you, you could be ruined.’

  “ ‘It’s your job to make sure it doesn’t get out,’ Frank insisted. ‘That’s what I’m paying you for. And not only that, if it does get out, you’re fired, hear? So keep it out of the press, simple as that.’

  “‘I can’t guarantee that,’ Evans said angrily. ‘Keep your trousers zipped, Frank. That’s all I ask.’

  “Frank yelled at him, ‘Listen, pallie, do what you gotta do to keep it out of the papers, and I’ll do what I gotta do to keep myself happy. Because if I’m happy, I sing good. If I sing good, we all make money,’ he stated. ‘I don’t have to explain this to my own wife. Why am I talkin’ to you about it? Now get out of here.’

  “ ‘Hey, this is my office, Frankie,’ George reminded him. ‘You get out.’ ”

  Frank stormed off.

  In the spring of 1943, Nancy Sinatra became pregnant again; this news was the subject of a press release that George was thrilled to disseminate to the media. George’s worries were over—for about a week.

  Ted Hechtman recalled, “Then Nancy called George—which would be the first of many calls like this one—and said that she couldn’t find Frank and she needed him because little Nancy was sick with some baby illness.

  “George made some calls and tracked Frank down at a seedy hotel outside Jersey City. Upset, he went down there and pounded on the door. When there was no answer, he just let himself in; the door was unlocked. No one was in the room, but George heard something going on in the bathroom. He walked in, and there was Frankie and this stripper whose name was—I’ll never forget it as long as I live—‘Lips Luango.’

  “ ‘Frankie,’ George blurted out, ‘What about Nancy? You ever give her even a second thought? Jesus, look at you, with Lips Luango of all people!’

  “And, as George told me, the dame burst out into tears and whined, ‘But I thought you said you and her was gettin’ a divorce, Frankie. And that you and me, we was gettin’ married. How could you lie to me after all we’ve meant to each other?’

  “And while Frank was scrambling around looking for a towel, he shouted, ‘Shaddup! Like I’m gonna marry a broad named Lips?’ ”

  George Evans was appalled by his client’s immature behavior. But in fact, Frank couldn’t have cared less about George’s opinion. He was just angry with him for breaking in on him and his paramour. Once again, when he and Frank discussed “Lips” over a drink, he said, “Keep your nose out of my business.” Then he threw a half-filled glass of Dubonnet at him. “Your job is just to keep me in the papers. Nancy’s fine with what’s going on.”

  But she wasn’t fine with it.

  “By the end of 1942, the only reason Frank and Nancy would ever be intimate was to possibly procreate,” said Patti Demarest. “I think she wanted children because she wanted to be loved and needed by somebody, since she was not getting that from Frank. In fact, she began to resent him, not even want him anymore. He had changed her, made her bitter, made her sometimes even hate herself for the choices he was forcing her to make. She had gotten tougher, angrier. She wasn’t the same naive girl he had married, that’s for sure.”

  Frank was not up to the task of being a good father. He loved Nancy Jr., but always had something else on his mind, and as much as he wanted to be with the baby, he was too preoccupied to really be present in the moment. Nancy began to understand that if she was going to continue having children, she would have to accept Frank’s limitations as a father. But she would, as she put it at the time, “make do.” After all, without Frank, Nancy was an unmarried mother with no prospect of a well-paying job. With him, she was the wealthy wife of a major star. At the time, the choice seemed clear, if not easy.

  1943

  The year began on a high note for twenty-seven-year-old Frank Sinatra. With his career now taken off, he was featured on the cover of practically every show-business-related magazine on the newsstands.

  In January he was back at the Paramount, this time with Johnny Long’s band, in another successful monthlong engagement there. In February, he became a regular (along with Beryl Davis and Eileen Barton) on the radio show Your Hit Parade. Also that month, Columbia Pictures released his first film without the Tommy Dorsey band, Reveille with Beverly (in which Frank just had a cameo role singing “Night and Day”), starring future MGM costar, tap dancer Ann Miller.

  Early in the year, Frank and Nancy bought a seven-room home on Lawrence Avenue in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, for about $25,000. Because there was no fence around the property, the home became a favorite stalking site for Frank’s eager fans. Indeed, the Sinatras soon grew used to having little privacy.

  George Evans, Hank Sanicola, and others in his management/booking team realized that Frank’s longevity depended on his appeal to a wider audience than just the youngsters who had been causing such a sensation. They wanted him to play the Copacabana at 10 East 60th Street in Manhattan, a new club that featured major adult-oriented performers like Jimmy Durante and Sophie Tucker. The Copa manager, Jules Podell, decided not to hire him, though, fearing he wouldn’t draw an adult crowd. Instead, in late March 1943, Frank was booked into the Riobamba, on East 57th Street, another venue that catered to adults. Frank was unhappy, however, when he learned that he was billed as an “Extra Added Attraction” in a nightclub that was about to go out of business. Still, the engagement at the Riobamba was a major success, and was standing room only. Sammy Cahn was present on opening night, and he recalled that “the audience was not [a bunch of] bobby-soxers. This was an adult, mature, sophisticated, two-o’clock-in-the-morning Manhattan audience.”

  Earl Wilson reported, “Frank was in a dinner jacket, and he was wearing a wedding band. He had a small curl that fell almost over his right eye. With trembling lips—I don’t know how he made them tremble, but I saw it—he sang ‘She’s Funny That Way’ and ‘Night and Day’ and succeeded in bringing down the house. It was a wondrous night for all of us who felt we had a share in Frankie. The New York Post’s pop-music critic, Danny Richman, leaned over to me and said, ‘He sends me.’ ”

  After the engagement at the Riobamba, it seemed that Frank could do no wrong. For his next engagement back at the Paramount, he was paid $2,500 a week; his initial gig there, with Benny Goodman, earned him $150 a week.

  In June, Frank recorded his first sides at the Columbia studios, with the Bobby Tucker Singers. (Because of a long-running musicians’ strike, he was forced to record nine songs a cappella, including “You’ll Never Know,” “People Will Say We’re in Love,” and, most notably, “The Music Stopped.”) Later in the year, “All or Nothing at All” (which Frank had recorded in 1939) would be reissued by Columbia during the musicians’ strike. It would become a major hit for him. (Frank would go on to record this song three more times, in 1961, 1966, and 1977.)

  On August 12, 1943, Frank and his entourage—including Hank Sanicola and arranger Axel Stordahl—arrived in Pasadena, California. Frank was scheduled to appear as himself in Higher and Higher, his first acting role in a movie, and also at the Hollywood Bowl in a series of concerts. Hysterical fans nearly caused a riot when he got off the train in Pasadena.

  Breaking the Dorsey Contract

  While in Los Angeles, Frank finally decided to confront Tommy Dorsey about the contract he had signed when he first began to sing for his band. Thirty-three and a third percent of his gross earnings to Dorsey? Forever? And another 10 perc
ent for Dorsey’s agent? “That’s the most fucked-up thing I ever heard of,” Frank told Hank Sanicola, who was now officially managing him. Frank was supposed to have been paying Tommy from all engagements, including those at the Copa, Riobamba, and Paramount, but he was way behind in his payments, much to Dorsey’s indignation.

  Bing Crosby suggested that he had better find a way out of the situation soon, before he started making millions. Frank agreed, and he actively pursued a strategy of trying to get out of the contract. He began giving press interviews claiming that Dorsey was cheating him out of money. Immediately, Frank’s fans started a letter-writing campaign against Dorsey. Then George Evans organized a campaign of Sinatra fans to picket Dorsey’s opening at the Earle Theatre in Philadelphia.

  Soon, Sinatra and Dorsey filed lawsuits against each other. Dorsey was unwilling to budge. He didn’t care that the deal was grossly unfair—Frank had agreed to it when he was desperate for a job, and now Dorsey was going to hold him to it.

  In August 1943, attorneys for Sinatra and Dorsey attempted to work out a settlement whereby that contract would be canceled. Manie Sacks—Frank’s new friend from Columbia Records—found an attorney for Sinatra named Henry Jaffe, who also represented the American Federation of Radio Artists. Jaffe was able to use his connection with AFRA to convince Dorsey that if he continued to stand in Sinatra’s way, he might have “just a little trouble” continuing his lucrative NBC radio broadcasts. Frank had been represented at this time by the Rockwell-O’Keefe agency, but he wanted to be with the bigger, more established MCA, which was interested in him. Finally it was agreed that MCA would put up the money to get Frank out of his Dorsey deal. Dorsey was paid $60,000—$25,000 of which came from Frank, who borrowed it from Manie Sacks. (That’s more than $825,000 in today’s market.) For its investment, MCA got the services of Frank Sinatra and agreed that it would split its commission on Sinatra with Rockwell-O’Keefe until 1948.