There was always so much preparation whenever he had to be rushed to the hospital; Frank didn’t want the media to know what was going on, and Barbara made sure his wishes were honored. She would have sheets raised in front of him to protect him from the paparazzi lurking about the property. She would tape aluminum foil to the windows of the ambulance before he was wheeled into it. She would ask that the emergency workers not use their sirens, at Frank’s insistence, meaning they would have to actually stop at red lights, which only added to her stress. She would also make sure he was checked in as “Charlie Neat” or “Albert Francis” to protect his anonymity. “He was fighting for his life,” she would recall. “I was fighting for his privacy.”
For the next year and a half, the family would call a truce. Tina, Nancy, and Frankie would spend more time than ever at the Beverly Hills mansion as Frank convalesced, and Barbara would welcome them with open arms. Of course, there would always be problems, but this was not the time to dwell on them. Everyone wanted to get as much out of these precious family moments as possible.
The doctors had told the family that it was possible Frank could live another two years, and the thought of that lifted their spirits. However, they also knew that they could wake up tomorrow and he could be gone. There was simply no way to predict it. All they could do was hold fast together and create as many new memories as possible.
On December 12, 1996, Frank celebrated his eighty-first birthday. This time, there was no familial conflict about the celebration. The entire family was at his side for the celebration.
In January 1997, Sinatra would find himself back in the hospital with erratic blood pressure and arrhythmia. Again, he survived. Things weren’t the same, though. Everything seemed darker, a sense of foreboding informing each moment at the manse.
At the end of April, Congress voted to give Frank a Congressional Gold Medal, which had been sponsored by New York Democratic representative José E. Serrano (with a push by Republican senator Alfonse D’Amato), who first heard English listening to Sinatra as a two-year-old in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico. The first Congressional Gold Medal was issued to George Washington by the Continental Congress in 1787. One of the oldest awards in the country, it predates even the Constitution; the 320 past honorees include Robert Frost, Bob Hope, Thomas Edison, John Wayne, Louis L’Amour, H. Norman Schwarzkopf, and Colin Powell.
“It’s more than just an honor from his country as far as I’m concerned,” said Frank’s daughter Nancy. “It’s like the country saying, ‘Okay, Frank, we know the truth, and we love you.’ ” Certainly, as Nancy suggested, the timing was right for such an honor in that there was a prevailing national nostalgia for a cultural icon who seemed to be nearing the end of his life.
Whether Frank would be able to personally accept the honor from President Bill Clinton remained to be seen; he was extremely sick during the summer of 1997. “I think he’s wishing he were about twenty years younger,” Nancy said. “But then, so am I. Aren’t we all? I don’t know if he’d sell his soul to the devil, but he would certainly try to make a deal to get more time,” she concluded. “He ain’t goin’ easily.” (In the end, he would not attend.)
On Thursday, November 27, the entire family enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner together: Barbara; Nancy Sr.; Nancy Jr. and her daughters, Amanda and A.J.; Tina; Frank Jr.; and Bobby Marx were all present, just as it should have been. They had all been through a lot. Just before the meal was to be dished out by a uniformed servant, a nurse wheeled Frank into the room. Still, no one was used to seeing this once-vital man sitting in a wheelchair, a colorful blanket draped across his knees; there was something incongruous about it. The nurse pushed him up to the table and then applied the brakes to the chair. “Hello, family,” Frank said as he surveyed the room. Never had he looked more frail, his body ravaged by the recent years of debilitation. Yet there was still something about those blue eyes and the way they danced when he looked at those he loved.
As Nancy Sr. gazed across the table at Frank, she beamed. What a turbulent history she had shared with him, almost fifty years of their lives, some good, some bad, but all of it memorable. Somehow she had persevered, and today, at the age of eighty, Nancy seemed serene and content. She had none of the infirmities of the aged; she was vital and totally in command.
Frank Jr. stood up. “Let’s have a toast,” he declared. “To Pop,” he announced, raising his glass of wine. “We love you very much, Dad. But I think you know that by now.”
“And I love you back,” Frank said with a weak smile. “Each and every one of you.” When he raised his glass of wine, there was a noticeable tremor.
Everyone smiled and clinked glasses all around the table. It was a moment they would always remember. Frank wasn’t what he used to be. Nothing about him, in fact, was what it used to be. But for now, it was enough.
Frank took just a sip of wine, swished it around in his mouth, and then put the glass down before him. “Italian Barbera,” he said, a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes. “Now that right there?” he remarked, nodding his head with approval. “That’s one fine wine.”
Fine
It happened quickly. On May 14, 1998, Frank was taken to Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles. He died shortly thereafter.
Frank’s doctor, Rex Kennamer, called Tina at home a little after 11 p.m. “We lost him.” Just three words. But they changed everything for the entire Sinatra family, indeed the entire world.
Tina had many questions, but once she learned that Frank was at Cedars, she threw on some clothes, got into her car, and raced over there. She called Nancy on the way, and then picked up her tearful sister. When they got to the hospital, there was Frank, on a gurney. He was gone, eyes closed, hands over his chest. Barbara was sitting stoically on a chair in a corner, as if in shock.
Barbara had been at dinner at Morton’s restaurant in Beverly Hills after a very uneventful day at home with Frank. He was convalescing as usual, adjusting to new heart medication, and for the most part spent the day in a very groggy state. Barbara planned to check with his doctor the next day to make sure the medicine was at the proper dosage. Frank was lying in bed in his pajamas when she went in to say good night to him. The television was on very loudly; his hearing had been seriously compromised in the last year or so. She turned down the volume and then kissed him on the forehead. “Good night, darling,” she said. “Sleep warm.” She nodded at the nurse at his bedside. “I’ll be back in a few hours,” she told her. “Vine has the number to the restaurant in case you need me. Be sure to call me the second anything unusual happens,” she said.
Barbara had only been at Morton’s for a short time when a waiter approached. “There’s a telephone call for you, madam,” he told her. Instantly anxious, she rose and went to the front desk. It was Vine. “You’d better come right away,” she told her. “The paramedics are here. They’re going to take Mr. S. to the hospital.” Less than an hour had passed since Barbara left the house; she couldn’t believe things had taken such a bad turn in such a short time. “They can’t find a pulse,” Vine said.
One of the household staff drove Barbara to the hospital at record speed. After making her way through a maddening maze of hallways, she finally found her husband surrounded by doctors working on him. She raced to him and held his hand in hers. He looked weak, very close to death. “You must fight, my darling,” she told him. “You have beaten greater odds than this. Please fight.” He looked up at her, his blue eyes still somehow shining through his pain and suffering, and he began to move his lips. “I can’t,” he whispered. And then he died.
Endnotes
1. Today, in the Hudson County courthouse, there are no official records of Dolly Sinatra’s arrest in Hoboken in the summer of 1937. It is whispered among certain residents that she was able to use her influence to have those records “misplaced.” There is, however, a record documenting an arrest, on February 27, 1939, when Dolly was arraigned in Hudson Special Sessions Court for performing another illegal surgery.
She pleaded no contest before Judge Lewis B. Eastmead.
2. Frank would also record this wonderful song for Capitol Records on May 14, 1959 (for the No One Cares album), and for Reprise on October 11, 1965 (available on A Man and His Music). There is also a recording of the song from April 23, 1940. However, it is not known whether or not that version of the song was actually issued. Sinatra historians insist it was not.
3. It’s noteworthy that Sinatra would return again and again over his recording career to the early numbers he’d sung, and each new version presented new insights, reappraisals, and artistic growth. Much of his later Capitol repertoire repeated that of Columbia, sometimes in similar arrangements, but the Capitol versions achieved a depth of artistry and feeling that those of Columbia only foreshadowed. Though much of Sinatra’s recording repertoire consisted of remakes, in fact he was never known as a remake artist. He could literally fashion new songs out of old ones, as he did with “Night and Day,” which he recorded seven times between 1942 and 1977.
4. The uniform of the day often was a sweater over a pleated knee-length skirt, white socks, and saddle shoes or penny loafers. After school and on weekends, skirts and sweaterswere exchanged for dungarees (today known as jeans), rolled up to just over the ankles, along with a man’s cotton or wool buffalo-checked shirt.
5. Though George Evans’s friends credit him with nicknaming Sinatra “the Voice,” it has also been reported that the appellation actually came from Sinatra’s agent, Harry Kilby, who dubbed Sinatra “the voice that thrills millions.”
6. Every Monday for years,Marty Sinatra received a one-hundred-dollar check from “Sinatra Enterprises,” mailed to the Hoboken Fire Department where he worked—a secret gift from Frank to his father, “for him to do with whatever he wants, without Ma knowing,” Frank explained to one friend with a wink.
7. Years later, in early 1961, Lucky Luciano was planning a movie about his years in exile, with a screenplay written by Martin Gosch. Though Luciano wanted Cary Grant to play him in the film, Gosch had a better idea: Dean Martin. Gosch didnft know Dean, however, and wondered how they would go about getting the script to him. “Don’t worry about that,” Luciano told him. “I’ll take care of it.” Luciano airmailed a copy of the 175-page script to Frank Sinatra and asked him to present it to Dean. When Frank did so, Martin turned it down, explaining he didn’t want to play such a shady character.
8. In 1951, after twenty-seven years as head of MGM, Mayer was fired by the board of directors of Loew’s, Inc., MGM’s parent company. And Sinatra returned to MGM five years later in Meet Me in Las Vegas, in an unbilled guest appearance, and in High Society, billed third (after Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly).
9. Curiously, in May 1953, Sinatra recorded a song entitled “From Here to Eternity” for Capitol, obviously anticipating the success of the film that shared that title.
10. It bears noting that Dean Martinfs wife, Jeanne, didn’t remarry either after her twenty-four-year-long marriage to Dean ended in 1973. She told her stepdaughter Deana, “It’s not like men were beating down my door. They were too afraid of upsetting your father. The word was, ‘Dean Martin isn’t someone whose wife you play around with, even if they are no longer married.’ Once you’ve been married to Dean Martin, no one else compares, anyway. How do you follow that act?”
11. Sinatra Swings was originally entitled Swing Along with Me, but the title had to be changed after Capitol filed an injunction claiming it was too close to their own Sinatra album Come Swing with Me.
12. On January 10, 1958, Sammy Davis married African-American dancer Loray White, though, as he remembered it, he was not in love with her. He was dating KimNovak at the time and the interracial relationship had so angered egomaniacal and racist studio head Harry Cohn that, Davis said, Cohn put a contract out on his life. While Davis was appearing at the Sands in early January 1958, Sinatra warned him that he should not go back to Los Angeles until “I straightened things out with Cohn.” Davis then married White just to get out of the tight jam with Cohn and the mob. The marriage lasted two months.
13. Apparently it was part of the culture these men lived in to be secretive. In a few years, his daughter Deana would find out he was engaged to his third wife, Cathy Mae Hawn, when she accidentally got a bill from Bonwit Teller for $11,000 for two fur coats.When she called the store to inquire about it, she was told, “Oh, that was meant for your dad’s new fiancée.”
14. Some thirty years later, a movie, The Night We Called It a Day, was produced about this ill-fated Australian tour, starring Dennis Hopper as Frank and Melanie Griffith as Barbara.
15. It’s worth noting that ten years later, when Dean Martin’s son Dean Paul’s plane went down in the same mountain range and no one knew whether he was dead or alive, his brother, Ricci, and best friend, Scott Sandler, had a session with Hurkos to find out what he could glean. Hurkos, upon touching one of Dean Paul’s flight suits, instantly announced that the young man was dead.
16. Frank was very generous to Vine Joubert, who was at his beck and call twenty-four hours a day. Not only did he buy a house for her in Palm Springs, but he put her kids through college. For Christmas every year, he would give her at least $10,000.
AFTERWORD: A FINAL CONSIDERATION
I crashed Frank Sinatra’s funeral.
Allow me to explain . . .
Frank Sinatra’s death occurred just about six months after the first edition of this book was published. In fact, since I was still promoting the work when the entertainer passed away, I covered his funeral for MSNBC, reporting on the events live as they took place on Wednesday, May 20, 1998, at the Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Beverly Hills. However, I had no intention of actually attending the church service. I knew I wouldn’t be granted access since it was reserved strictly for close friends and family members.
Wearing my press credentials, I was standing at the bottom of the steps of the church, speaking to the always vibrant Debbie Reynolds, who was wearing a black pillbox hat and diamond earrings. “You’re coming in for the service, aren’t you?” she asked me. I told her I wasn’t invited. She laughed. “Oh please,” she exclaimed. “You wrote a whole book about Frank. Do you think not being invited ever stopped him from attending anything? Now, march in there,” she told me, “and if one of those Sinatras kicks you out, so be it! At least you will have tried. This is history,” she told me, “and you are an historian. So . . . don’t miss out.” I told her no, I wasn’t willing to risk news reports about Frank’s biographer getting tossed out of his funeral by his grieving family members. “Fine, suit yourself!” Debbie said, a flicker of annoyance crossing her face. “You big chicken!” As she left my side, she winked at me conspiratorially and slipped something into my hand. I looked at it. It was a glossy white ticket. Printed in purple on it were the words “Francis Albert Sinatra Funeral Mass,” along with the date, the time, and the address of the church. “But how will you get in?” I asked Debbie. As she walked away from me, she laughed and said, “Oh please!”
Dare I? I couldn’t imagine doing it, but I did it anyway. I gathered my courage and walked up to the top of the stairs where security guards were taking the tickets, and I handed one of them mine. Then I quickly glided into the church behind someone else before anyone had a chance to ask me any questions. It all happened so fast, I actually couldn’t believe it. Now that I was in the church, I knew I had no choice but to follow through and commit myself to my pretense.
As I looked around the church, I saw so many of Sinatra’s famous friends, such as Paul Anka; Sophia Loren; Robert Wagner; Jack Lemmon; Kirk Douglas; Vic Damone; Larry King; Ed McMahon; Sidney Poitier; Jack Nicholson; Tony Curtis; Joey Bishop; Liza Minnelli; Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé; Anthony Quinn; and Nancy Reagan. At the altar, Frank’s closed coffin was covered with a blanket of white gardenias. Next to it was a large portrait of the man himself, on an easel. Up front in the first row sat his grieving children—Nancy, fifty-seven; Frank Jr., fifty-four; and Tina, forty-ni
ne—along with Frank’s widow, Barbara, seventy-one. Behind them was Frank’s wife, Nancy, eighty-one. I listened as “Ave Maria” was sung by a choir, followed by remembrances by Kirk Douglas (who speculated that “heaven will never be the same” once Frank showed up at its gates); Gregory Peck, Robert Wagner, and, most emotionally, Frank. Jr.
“My father’s whole life was an anomaly,” Frank Jr. said in his eulogy. “His birth was so difficult that the fact that he lived at all was an anomaly. That he even became a singer, that he became a great singer, and that he made such wonderful movies, all this was an anomaly . . . And how did he live to such a ripe old age? Which was certainly not because he took care of himself. That’s the greatest anomaly.” He finished with the same words his father had spoken at bandleader Harry James’s 1983 funeral. “Thanks for everything,” said Frank Jr. “So long, buddy, and take care of yourself.”
Toward the end of the ceremony, Frank’s velvety voice wafted in through the sound system singing, “Put your dreams away for another day / and I will take their place in your heart.” While listening, it was difficult for me to contain my emotion. If anything, it reminded me that even though he was gone, the Voice would most certainly live on.
After the ceremony, I watched as the pallbearers—Don Rickles, Steve Lawrence, Tony Oppedisano, Bobby Marx, and Frank Jr.—carried Frank’s casket down the middle aisle and out of the church. A regal Barbara, her head bowed, followed with the cardinal at her side. She looked bone tired, her grief seeming to have exhausted her. In her hand were a few crucifixes she’d had made to give out to friends at the service. Following her were Frank’s first wife, Nancy, and the rest of the family, including Frank’s three children, all struggling to control their emotions. I noticed that Frank Jr. in particular appeared to be drained, an empty expression in his sad, dark eyes. Before getting into their limousine, Nancy and Tina—both still somehow beautiful and elegant even in their aching sadness—seemed to have the same instinct at the same time; they turned and embraced their bereft brother and held him close. “Poor kid,” Vic Damone said to no one in particular as he walked by me. “Losing the old man like that. At least he’s got his sisters, though.” Later, the limousines carrying Sinatra’s casket and his family members would be en route to Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, where Frank’s parents, Dolly and Marty, are also interred.
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