Sinatra

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Sammy Davis Jr. had been having trouble with his voice throughout 1989, and during a summer tour in Europe he began experiencing pain. When he got home, he went to see his doctor. The news was bad. Throat cancer.

  None of his friends wanted to accept the fact that Sammy was gravely ill, least of all Frank. It was possible to remove the tumor surgically, but that would prevent Sammy from ever singing again. He said he would rather die than not be able to sing. He chose radiation—a slow, agonizing death.

  Sammy lost his eight-month-long battle with cancer on May 16, 1990, at the age of just sixty-four. His death was almost more than Frank could bear, coming so soon after Ava’s. They had been such integral parts of each other’s lives for more than forty years, they thought of themselves as brothers. Frank sat in the front row at the church, next to Barbara and Dean.

  “It’s terrible when the people closest to you start dropping,” Frank told his longtime friend Joey D’Orazio. D’Orazio had come to California to visit Frank after Ava’s and Sammy’s deaths. The two were sitting at Matteo’s bar with Jilly. “I’m tired,” Frank told Joey. “This is taking the piss out of me. I’m seventy-five. Christ.” Joey, who had just turned sixty-five, told Frank he had to persevere and just take things one day at a time. Jilly, who was seventy-three, agreed. “What else can we do?” he said, throwing back a scotch. “We’re old men,” he exclaimed. “What the hell happened? My biggest fear at this point is, tomorrow, I don’t wanna wake up dead!”

  “Me neither,” Frank agreed.

  The three men stared silently straight ahead for a long time.

  “But we sure had some good times,” Frank finally said, with a smile. “Remember the Palm Springs airport?” he asked. Jilly and Joey laughed. Back in the 1950s, the airport in Palm Springs didn’t have a lit runway. So when Frank and Jimmy Van Heusen would land there in Jimmy’s little two-seated puddle-jumper, Jilly would park at the end of the runway in his car and flash the lights on and off to guide them in. It’s a wonder they never crashed! Now, almost forty years later, the memory of their youthful recklessness cheered them.

  “Well, pallies, see, this is what happens if you don’t die,” Frank finally offered. “Your friends drop dead. Your body starts falling apart. You can’t see. You can’t hear. You can’t piss. You can’t screw.” Then he raised a glass. “But you still got your memories, right?”

  “That is, if you still got all your marbles,” Jilly added, clinking Frank’s glass.

  “I gotta get back to Barbara,” Frank suddenly exclaimed, looking at his watch.

  “She’s gonna give you hell for being out this late at night,” Joey told him.

  “I know,” Frank agreed with a loopy grin. “Something to look forward to.”

  Dinner with the Sinatras

  I’m not who people think I am,” Frank Sinatra was telling his head butler, James Wright. “People see me onstage, they have this image of me. It’s all bullshit.”

  “People think you’re . . . how do they put it?” Wright asked in his clipped British accent. “Cool. Isn’t that correct, sir?”

  “Yeah, well, maybe it was thirty years ago,” Frank said with a nostalgic smile.

  James Wright had been hired by Frank in 1989, replacing Bill Stapely. At this time—the spring of 1990—Wright and Vine Joubert16 were the only two employees of the Sinatras who actually lived in their home with them. Wright was helping Frank get dressed, handing him his perfectly tailored black jacket, then tying his gray tie for him.

  The two were in Sinatra’s bedroom, which was very plainly furnished. The carpet was burnt orange, his favorite color. There was one cushioned chair, a queen-sized bed, two antique nightstands, a big-screen TV, and two large closets. On the bureau were silver-framed photographs of Dolly, Barbara, and his children. By day, the room was darkened by blackout drapes, a heavy material so that no light would get through. At night, just a couple of soft lights glowed. A stereo sat in the corner, but no music was ever played in this space, especially not Sinatra records. Frank’s bedroom and Barbara’s were separated by an adjoining bathroom, which Frank used. On the other side of Barbara’s room was her own private bath.

  Tonight the Sinatras were expecting company for a dinner party. “You still look good, Mr. Sinatra,” James Wright said, taking him in from head to toe.

  Frank regarded himself critically in the mirror. “I look like an old man,” he said. “Actually, come to think of it, I look like my father,” he added, studying his reflection more carefully. He said he’d been thinking about Marty quite a bit lately. He was just four years younger than Marty was when he died. He said that during stormy times when his wife and daughters were at each other’s throats, he sat back and wondered how Marty would handle things. “And I know what he would do,” Frank said. “He’d let them crazy broads fight it out among themselves, that’s what he’d do. He’d stay the fuck out of it,” Frank concluded as he adjusted his toupee.

  Frank usually didn’t wear the toupee at home, but tonight Barbara thought it would be a good idea. “How’s this thing look?” he asked James Wright, pointing to the hairpiece.

  “Perfectly natural,” Wright said approvingly.

  “Goddamn, I hate this thing,” Frank said of the toupee. Tonight—at home with friends—he didn’t want to wear it at all. However, Barbara had asked him to, and he wanted to make her happy. “She don’t got a lot of friends, know what I mean?” Frank joked.

  Frank sat down on the bed, and James knelt before him and put his shoes on for him. He tied the laces. Then he gave them a quick shine. Frank stood back up and winced, his back hurting him. “It ain’t easy being Frank Sinatra,” he said, rubbing his hip. He went to the dresser and found a bottle of prescription medicine. He opened it and popped two in his mouth, swallowing them without water. “Okay, let’s get this thing over with.”

  The Sinatra home in Palm Springs, for all its iridescent desert light and ornate furnishings, could sometimes be a sad, maudlin place. It’s no wonder Frank liked to get away from it and be on the road as much as possible. He simply had more of a life on the road.

  A typical day at home would begin with Frank rising at about 2:30 p.m. By that time, Barbara had already eaten breakfast and lunch and was off enjoying her day with her personal secretary, LaDonna Webb-Keaton. Meanwhile, Frank would venture forth from his bedroom and slowly start the day. He wouldn’t get dressed right away, and if he had no specific plans for the day, he wouldn’t get dressed at all, choosing to stay in his pajamas.

  He would have breakfast in the living room in his pajamas and robe. He always started with half a grapefruit, then pancakes, sometimes scrambled eggs or French toast, sometimes fried eggs, always with bacon. He liked to have his two Cavalier King Charles spaniels sitting with him in the kitchen for breakfast. Afterward, he would go outside on the patio and throw a ball around and play fetch with the dogs. He would then spend the bulk of his afternoon lounging by the pool, reading newspapers or speaking on the telephone with friends. James Wright would make him a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch pretty much every day. In the early evening, he would watch the television game show Jeopardy! and then Wheel of Fortune. He never missed either program. At eight o’clock, dinner was served. Afterward, Barbara would go to her room, watch television, and then retire for the evening. Meanwhile, Frank would go to his art studio and stay there until four or five in the morning, painting in watercolors, which he’d enjoyed for quite some time.

  The household only came to life when the Sinatras formally entertained, which was at least once a month. For dinner parties, the couple would hire additional help to cook and otherwise prepare the home.

  The guest list—sometimes as many as forty—would usually read like a who’s who of show business. Tonight, eighteen friends would be present, including Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé; Gregory Peck and his wife, Veronique Passani; and Merv Griffin and his companion, Eva Gabor. Even though Frank and Eva had a bit of a romantic history, it didn’t seem to matt
er to Barbara. She wasn’t threatened by her. Frank’s first wife was never present for these parties; Tina and Nancy Sinatra Jr. were also rarely on the guest list. Right now, of course, the Sinatra daughters were in the midst of their household boycott. Frank Jr. was often invited; he had no real beef with Barbara, and he was present this evening.

  The Sinatras’ Palm Springs dining room was decorated in an Oriental motif that night, with three large round tables in the middle of the room. Six people would be seated at each table.

  “The one thing I am particular about are my tables,” Barbara told Vine before the party. “I like the guests to be surprised by the tables.” Vine set drinking glasses, plates, knives, and forks in the right placement on the table, as well as candles and flowers—an arrangement of fresh roses perfectly centered on each table, all important details to Barbara. After everything was set with precision, Barbara went to each table and made subtle adjustments to the centerpieces. “Beautiful,” she finally announced, smiling. “Just lovely.”

  Tonight, as with every dinner party, the guests would not see the dining room until the moment of grand presentation. After everyone had a chance to mingle over drinks and appetizers served by the waitstaff, James Wright, dressed in black trousers, white shirt, black tie, and black jacket, his normal uniform, and another identically dressed employee walked to the double doors.

  “Dinner is served, madam,” the butler intoned.

  “Thank you, James,” Barbara said, sounding equally official.

  Then Wright and the other functionary opened the doors with a great flourish. As the guests filed in and saw the beautiful tables and settings, they smiled and oohed and ahhed to one another. “Always a class act,” Steve Lawrence said to Barbara. She smiled.

  As everyone found the setting with his place card, each person stood behind his chair, no one sitting down. Having been at the Sinatra home many times, the guests well knew the protocol. James Wright stood behind Barbara’s chair and pulled it out for her. She sat down and straightened her back, adopting her usual posture, which was contained and regal. Then he and his fellow employee went to each woman and pulled her chair away from the table. After each was seated, all of the men sat down en masse. The food served tonight wasn’t as ostentatious as the environment might suggest: pasta, chicken, potatoes, broccoli, and pork.

  After dinner, the guests rose from their tables and mingled for about a half hour in the living room. As the cocktails flowed, there was much laughter; everyone was having fun. The ladies then retired to the kitchen to enjoy coffee and desserts while the men proceeded to Frank’s den for cigarettes and shots of Jack Daniel’s. As Frank and his son, Frank Jr., spent time discussing sheet music with Steve Lawrence, Merv Griffin and Gregory Peck and some of the other male guests, such as Jilly Rizzo, sat talking quietly. Meanwhile, soft music played in the background, piped in through the entire household. However, it was Muzak—no popular vocalists.

  There was only one “scene.” Someone put a Kool cigarette on the bar in an ashtray and Barbara took a quick puff just as Frank happened to walk through the kitchen—unfortunate timing for her. “Put that down,” he ordered her. “You know I don’t want you to smoke.” Of course, Frank was a chain-smoker, but that wasn’t the issue. Barbara knew how he felt about her smoking; he had asked her to stop, and she had done so, for the most part, anyway. (Eventually she would give up the habit with the aid of hypnosis.) “I’m sorry, Frank,” she said dutifully rather than cause a scene in front of friends. She then quickly snuffed out the cigarette in an ashtray. As Frank exited the kitchen, he seemed wobbly on his feet and a little disoriented. Eva Gabor and Eydie Gormé shared a secret look.

  After about an hour, Barbara made another announcement, first to the men and then the women. “The movie is about to be shown,” she gaily declared. A day prior to the festivities, her secretary had a movie reel brought in from a Hollywood film studio, a first-run feature. The entire party noisily adjourned to the home’s theater.

  Frank would never go into the theater with the other guests; rather, he preferred either to go to his art studio and paint or to his “train room.” Tonight he chose the latter, the only difference being that he brought Steve Lawrence and Frank Jr. with him and asked James Wright to stay in case they needed anything.

  Frank had always been fascinated by toy trains. “At Christmas, when I was a kid, I’d leave Hoboken and take a four-cent ferry ride and a five-cent train and head for the New York stores,” he said. “I’d stand and look at the train displays for three to four hours. I wanted a train set so badly. One day, my mother pawned her fox fur piece to buy my first train set, a wind-up engine and oval track. I was old enough [age eleven] to understand the sacrifice she made.”

  Frank had an elaborate wood-paneled room built in his Palm Springs estate to house his enormous train collection. There were 250 expensive model train cars on an eighteen-by-thirty-foot train platform. The layout was based on the same Lionel train showrooms Frank used to visit as a youngster in New York. Along the track was a model of his Hoboken neighborhood, an Old West town, a New Orleans riverboat, and a billboard announcing a sold-out Sinatra concert. No kids’ toys, these were expensive models; a locomotive bore his initials (FAS) in diamonds. He also had a crystal replica of the 1025 Chattanooga Choo Choo.

  As Barbara and the other guests watched the film, Frank, Steve, and Frank Jr. smoked Camels while cleaning the tracks, oiling the engines, changing the cars, and admiring the trains—three sets this evening—as they moved along the tracks. Usually this was a hobby Frank did alone while others were in the theater. A kid all over again, he’d actually put on a bright red engineer’s hat with a visor and even blow a whistle while the trains chugged along the tracks. Very often the guests would leave after the film without even having the opportunity to say goodbye to him. But tonight was different.

  Anytime Frank had the opportunity for one-on-one time with Steve Lawrence, he took it. With Sammy gone and Dean no longer really in his life, Frank took Steve under his wing. A gifted vocalist in the tradition of Sinatra, Steve, who was fifty-four, and his wife, Eydie, sixty-two, had just agreed to go on the road with Frank on what would be called the “Diamond Jubilee World Tour,” in honor of Frank’s seventy-fifth birthday. It would be more than forty dates around the world and take almost a full year out of their lives, starting in New Jersey at the end of the year before circling the globe and then ending in New York in November 1991. It was difficult to imagine that Frank would be able to survive such a schedule, but he was determined.

  Father-and-Son Detente

  The fact that Frank Sinatra Jr., who was now forty-six, was going to conduct the thirty-one-piece orchestra on his father’s upcoming tour was an added plus, not only for the fans but also for father and son. It would be an opportunity for them to work together, and both were excited.

  A couple of years earlier, Frank Jr. had been in Atlantic City getting ready to walk out onto the stage when he got the call from his father. “I want you to conduct my band,” Frank told him. “Well, after my friends revived me with smelling salts,” Frank Jr. liked to joke, “I said to him, ‘You can’t be serious!’ ” Sinatra was indeed serious. When Frank Jr. asked him why he wanted him, Frank said, “Because maybe a singer can understand what another singer is trying to do.” What a great compliment.

  Of course, as we have seen, father and son had a difficult relationship. “He has been a good father as much as it was within his power,” Frank Jr. would say of his dad. Whereas Frank’s relationships with his daughters changed dramatically after he married Barbara, the one with Frankie had pretty much stayed the same: just fair. It actually got slightly worse after the controversy over adopting Bobby Marx. However, that Frank Jr. did not take issue with Barbara was appreciated by Frank. Junior loved his sisters, but he did not side with them in their disagreements with Barbara. He maintained that his father knew what he was doing when he married Barbara, that none of it was his business—and that if his father
needed his input he would ask for it.

  As Frank grew older—and with his daughters now boycotting the Sinatra household—more than ever, he needed his son. He knew he hadn’t been the best of fathers, and the gesture of entrusting Frank Jr. with the critical job of conducting his orchestra was his way of making it up to him. He realized his son loved music more than anything—like father, like son in that respect—and that he would always treasure the moments they would have together on the road.

  The timing was right; Frank just happened to be ready to enter his father’s world. It was as if somewhere along the line he had decided that in order to accept his father he first had to reject him. As he got older he seemed to have a deeper understanding of his dad and had decided to finally reconcile his relationship with him.

  The senior Sinatra actually had a lot more respect for him than Frank Jr. ever knew. “He has endured,” Frank would say of his kid. “Through all the shit I threw at him, he has endured. He’s like me that way. I think to myself, ‘If my old man had been as much a shit to me as I have been to my kid, I don’t know if I would have endured the same way’—and my old man was a real shit!”

  The Diamond Jubilee World Tour starring Frank Sinatra with Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé kicked off on December 11, 1990, at the Meadowlands Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey. As the tour wore along, the performances became more and more difficult for Frank. His memory fading, on some nights he couldn’t even remember Eydie’s last name. There were other nights when he couldn’t remember her first.

  Most Sinatra intimates agree that Frank would not have been performing at all at the end of the 1980s and into the 1990s if not for Frank Jr., who compensated for many of his father’s vocal shortcomings by adeptly rearranging certain orchestrations to make the singing of them much easier. It was hard work. “It was very hard. To be his conductor was like walking on a tightrope from the top of one eighty-story building to the top of another eighty-story building. I felt some footprints on my posterior on several occasions.” Indeed, the old man could be tough on Junior, but would anyone expect less? He knew he could count on him, and that’s what mattered.