Sinatra Read online

  J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Sinatra

  Behind the Legend

  PAN BOOKS

  For Rose Marie Taraborrelli

  CONTENTS

  Author’s Note to the 2015 Edition

  Preface

  Part One

  BEGINNINGS

  L’America

  Marty and Dolly

  Frank Is Born

  Young Frank

  Hoboken Days

  Early Aspirations

  Nancy

  Early Singing Days

  Midwife

  “Let Frankie In”

  Toni

  Frank and Nancy Marry

  Part Two

  FIRST BLUSH OF SUCCESS

  Harry James

  Tommy Dorsey

  Self-Invention

  Marital Weakness

  Dorothy

  Dispute with Dorsey

  “Sinatra-Mania”

  Making Do

  1943

  Breaking the Dorsey Contract

  Anchors Aweigh to Los Angeles

  Part Three

  BIG TIME

  The Voice: 1945–46

  The House He Lives In

  Marilyn Maxwell

  Lana Turner

  Family Intervention

  The Diamond Bracelet

  Frank and the Mob

  Nancy Makes a Decision

  In Cuba with the Boys

  Regret

  The FBI and the Reporter

  Part Four

  THE AVA YEARS

  Ava Gardner

  1948–49

  The Affair Begins

  Lana’s Warning to Ava

  “Absolutely Not”

  A Take-Charge Kind of Woman

  Empty

  Ava: “Nancy Will Thank Me One Day”

  Frank at the Copa

  Gunplay

  Brink of Despair

  Need

  Nancy Files for Separation

  1951

  The Suicide Attempts

  Ava Comes to Dinner

  Frank and Ava Marry

  Part Five

  DOWNWARD SPIRAL

  His Only Collateral Was a Dream

  Mogambo

  Ava’s Pregnancies

  Filming From Here to Eternity

  Frank Signs with Capitol

  Part Six

  BACK ON TOP

  Success

  The Final Straw

  Vegas Investment

  Conflicted Christmas

  Marilyn Monroe—Take One

  After Frank?

  1954: Academy Award

  Sammy Davis’s Accident

  Golden

  Pack Master

  Lauren “Betty” Bacall

  Which Is the Real Dad?

  1957–58

  Betty’s Heartbreak

  Part Seven

  THE RAT PACK YEARS

  The Rat Pack

  JFK

  Stark Duality

  The Execution of Private Slovik

  On the Way to the White House

  The Kennedys Worry About Frank and Sammy

  Part Eight

  AND MARILYN MONROE

  Reprise

  Sinatra’s Preinaugural Gala

  Sinatra Makes a Deal with the Devil

  The Return of Marilyn Monroe

  Sinatra Betrays Giancana

  The Problem with Marilyn

  Publicity Stunt Engagement

  JFK Snubs Sinatra

  Elvis

  Frank’s Plan to Marry Marilyn

  Memories of Marilyn

  Swinging ’63

  Frank and Ava Redux

  Sinatra Surrenders His Gaming License

  Part Nine

  THE KIDNAPPING OF FRANK SINATRA JR.

  Planning a Kidnapping

  Frank on Frank Jr.: “I Got a Good Kid Here”

  Delusional Thinking

  Kidnapping Frankie

  “Kidnapping My Kid?”

  Close Call

  “Shoot Me and See What Happens”

  The Ransom Demand

  Frank: “You Know You’re a Dead Man, Right?”

  Frankie Is Released

  Capturing the Kidnappers

  The Trial

  Kidnapping Postscript

  Growing Up Sinatra

  Prelude to the Best

  Part Ten

  THE MIA YEARS

  Mia

  First Blush of Romance

  Mia and Frank in Palm Springs

  Getting to Know You

  Red Flag

  Fish Out of Water

  The Other Side of Frank

  Confronting Sinatra

  Nancy’s Marriage Ends

  Dolly on Mia: “This Is Trouble. Mark My Words.”

  The Walter Cronkite Interview

  What to Do About Mia?

  “No More Little Girl”

  Boots and Strangers

  Mia Meets the Family

  Frank and Mia Marry

  Mia Meets Ava

  Unkind

  “Somethin’ Stupid”

  Personality Disorder

  Rosemary’s Baby

  Divorce—Sinatra Style

  Frank Fires George Jacobs

  Cycle of Pain

  Coda

  Part Eleven

  TRANSITION

  Changing Times

  My Way

  Marty Sinatra—Rest in Peace

  A $22.5 Million Deal . . . at Dolly’s House

  More Mob Questions

  Surprising Political Support

  Another Vegas Showdown

  Retirement?

  Nixon-Agnew

  Part Twelve

  THE BARBARA YEARS

  Barbara Marx

  Barbara: Trying to Fit In

  Cheshire Contretemps

  Spiro, Barbara, and the Aussies

  Finding Her Way

  End of an Era

  Jackie? Or Barbara?

  Or Maybe Ava?

  Frank and Barbara Get Engaged

  Surprise Prenup?

  Frank and Barbara Marry

  Dolly Sinatra—Rest in Peace

  “Who Died and Left Barbara Boss?”

  Adopting a New Sinatra?

  Frank’s Secret Annulment

  Sammy’s Fall from Grace

  Trilogy

  Barbara Meets “the Boys”

  “Who Took That Shot?”

  Sinatra Sets the Record Straight—His Way

  Frank and Nancy Tour Together

  As If She Had a Choice

  Part Thirteen

  THAT’S LIFE

  The Kitty Kelley Matter

  Frank and Barbara Separate

  Sick over the Kitty Kelley Book

  Prudent?

  The Sinatra Sisters Reach Out to Barbara

  Rat Pack Redux?

  The Trouble with Dean

  The Sinatra Daughters’ Revolt

  Ava: “I Always Thought We Would Have More Time”

  Sammy—Rest in Peace

  Dinner with the Sinatras

  Father-and-Son Detente

  A Sad Ending for Jilly

  Prodigal Daughters

  Tina’s Miniseries

  Frank’s Secret Daughter?

  Duets

  One More for the Road

  Sinatra: Eighty Years—Her Way?

  Part Fourteen

  AND NOW THE END IS NEAR . . .

  Eightieth Birthday Family Showdown

  “Goodbye, Dag”

  A Fourth Wedding Ceremony

  Surrounded by Love

  Fine

  Afterword: A Final Consideration

  Source Notes and Acknowledgments

  Index

  List of
Illustrations

  AUTHOR’S NOTE TO THE 2015 EDITION

  I wrote the first draft of this book almost twenty years ago. It was November 1996 when I finished the manuscript. A year later, in November 1997, the first edition of Sinatra: Behind the Legend was published.

  I had met Mr. Sinatra four times backstage at concerts in Los Angeles and Las Vegas in the 1980s. While those sorts of meet-and-greet moments after a performance are never fully satisfying, the four opportunities I had to shake the man’s hand and tell him how much he meant to me and my Italian-American family were nevertheless thrilling. “Thank you for saying that,” he told me after his show that opened the new Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles on July 30, 1982. The concert also starred his daughter Nancy. “I really appreciate it. Always a pleasure to meet another dago,” he added with a chuckle. “Dad!” Nancy exclaimed. “How do you know this guy’s not gonna write that you called him a dago?” She was kidding; Frank laughed at the joke. “’Cause the little dago knows better than to go dere,” he said, winking at me. (I did know better, which is why I waited thirty-two years to share this anecdote!)

  Immersing myself in his life and times for this book made me feel an even closer connection to Frank, but of course I wanted a full interview with the man himself. I tried in 1996 and again in 1997 while I was writing the book, but he was so ill during that time, it proved impossible. “It’s just not going to happen,” his first wife, Nancy, told me. “I think maybe you’re a few years too late.” I understood, of course.

  There’s no telling where a biographer’s quest for information will take him, and what sorts of characters will cross his path in the course of that adventure. Working on this book led me to interview a number of bizarre and colorful figures, including the man who kidnapped Frank Sinatra Jr.

  I was about seven when I heard that Frank Sinatra’s son had been kidnapped. Maybe because I’d also heard a little about Sinatra’s alleged mob ties from my Italian-American grandparents, I recall thinking to myself, “What kind of dope would kidnap Frank Sinatra’s kid?” As a youngster, I couldn’t quite grasp the seriousness of the situation. But as a grown man, I was determined to better understand it. When I found Barry Keenan, he had never before told his story, other than in the form of testimony at his trial. It was a powerful experience for me to hear a blow-by-blow account of one of the most high-profile crimes of the 1960s from the kidnapper himself—all of which you will find in these pages.

  In May 1998, about six months after Sinatra: Behind the Legend was published, I was still promoting it on television programs when Frank passed away. The book was reissued at that time, again in hardcover, as Sinatra: A Complete Life. After the publication of that reissue, many people contacted me to tell me that I’d “missed” them in my research. While the goal of any biographer is to interview as many sources as possible, it’s impractical to locate every person who ever had contact with a subject. (As it was, my researchers and I found more than four hundred.)

  Happy that so many new sources had reached out to me, in January 1999, I began working on a revised edition, interviewing individuals such as Frank’s longtime valet, George Jacobs (with whom I conducted three interviews). Additionally, I went back to the tapes of interviews from years ago and extracted new material from them. However, before that edition (which would have been issued in paperback) had a chance to see the light of day, my publisher went out of business. Therefore, other than the hardcover edition from 1998, this book has not been available since that time. Now, eighteen years later, I am proud to finally bring forth a fully revised and updated edition of Sinatra: Behind the Legend, published to coincide with what would have been Frank Sinatra’s centenary birthday.

  J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Summer 2015

  PREFACE

  I think I would like to be remembered as a man who brought an innovation to popular singing, a peculiar, unique fashion that I wish one of these days somebody would learn to do so it doesn’t die where it is. I would like to be remembered as a man who had a wonderful time living his life and who had good friends, a fine family, and I don’t think I could ask for anything more than that, actually. I think that would do it.

  —Frank Sinatra to Walter Cronkite, November 16, 1965

  Frank Sinatra was like a flawed diamond—brilliant on the surface, imperfect beneath. Of course, it was those flaws, those hidden complexities, that made him human, and in many ways defined his persona. If one really wants to understand Frank, though, one must travel from lower Manhattan across the Hudson River to Hoboken, New Jersey, where Sinatra is a hometown hero.

  Everyone in Hoboken seems to know someone who knew someone else who once knew Frank or his family. Every Italian bartender, delicatessen owner, dry cleaner, pizzeria worker, and thrift store proprietor over the age of fifty seems to have a good Sinatra story, a juicy Sinatra rumor, or an inconsequential Sinatra anecdote about that time he or she ran into the man himself and rubbed shoulders with greatness. In Hoboken, the Sinatra tales flow freely.

  Frank Sinatra was the most famous person who ever came from Hoboken. They still love him there and they’re still proud of him. One can see it in their eyes when they speak of him, when they pull from their wallets a dog-eared photograph they took “at Frankie’s brilliant concert at the Latin Casino in Cherry Hill, New Jersey,” or when they play that special Sinatra tune on the bar’s jukebox, the one they danced to at their wedding and that their own children and grandchildren will dance to at theirs . . . the one that still brings tears to their eyes.

  When in Hoboken—a city whose Park Avenue library has a glass-encased second-floor shrine to Sinatra filled with an impressive trove of memorabilia—a Sinatra biographer has to sift through the legends to find the real facts of his life. There are endless stories that have been repeated so often—handed down from one generation to another—that today no one can even remember whence they originated, let alone whether or not they’re accurate.

  All of it—the truth, the legends—says something about the endurance of Frank Sinatra and the impact he had on not only the people of Hoboken but on our culture as a whole. One thing is certain: There is nobody as popular, as respected, and as adored as the man the people of Hoboken will forever lovingly refer to as “Frankie.”

  Part One

  BEGINNINGS

  L’America

  In the late 1800s, Hoboken, New Jersey, a former resort area for the New York wealthy, was a run-down and destitute city. However, it was also a place of expectation and promise for many ambitious newcomers. With hope in their hearts, if not money in their pockets, they had come to the New World on crowded, rat-infested passenger liners and disease-ridden cargo ships. The Dutch, Swedes, Finns, English, Irish, and Scottish were all represented before 1700. The Germans and French Huguenots had arrived by 1750.

  The Irish came in 1845 because of the great potato famine in Ireland; many of them went into the booming factories rather than return to the uncertainty of farming. The Germans arrived in 1848 after a revolution failed to produce a democracy. They were the most educated of the tide of immigrants and quickly became the aristocracy of the cities in which they settled.

  By then, although there was still plenty of farmland left, New Jersey—sometimes called “the Foreign State” because it was home to so many immigrants—was rapidly becoming industrialized, a process that had started in 1830 when canals and railroads started to crisscross the state. Factories produced glass, iron, leather, oil, and munitions (Colt made his revolver in New Jersey until he went bankrupt and moved to Connecticut), clothes, hats, coaches, cabinetware, and chairs, among other day-to-day items. From New York City, just across the river, came a steady supply of immigrants to work in those factories.

  Although manufacturing brought prosperity to the state, it also resulted in a lack of zoning. In 1861, one enterprising developer, Charles K. Landis, envisioned Vineland, a planned business and industrial area to be run by New Englanders. But he needed labor to clea
r the woods and later raise crops for the residents. Landis considered the Italians to be hardworking and industrious, so he sent printed notices to Italian cities extolling Vineland’s wide streets, shady trees, and Mediterranean climate, none of which actually existed. So the Italians—the first group in New Jersey to actually be solicited for immigration—came with great eagerness to this new land of transformation, a country they called l’America. Among them were John and Rosa Sinatra, born and raised in Agrigento, Sicily. After the birth of their son, Anthony Martin (Frank’s father, Marty), they migrated to the United States and settled in working-class Hoboken.

  In this town, a person could reshape his life, embrace good fortune, and in the process make previously unimaginable sums of money.

  At least that was the dream.

  The reality was that with only so many available opportunities, life in America would be a constant struggle for many of its adoptive children; every day would pose a challenge to spirit and dignity as they attempted to find ways to earn a living. The work was hard; newcomers toiled in poorly equipped factories or in menial jobs as street cleaners and garbage collectors. Some of the lucky ones became barbers, a tradition of self-employment that would be passed down from generation to generation of Italian Americans. After arriving from Sicily, John Sinatra, who couldn’t read or write English, supported his family by making pencils for the American Pencil Company. He earned eleven dollars a week.

  Some immigrants would soon come to the conclusion that they might have been better off in their homeland. Defeated, many of them would return to their native lands; others would stay in the United States and lead sparse, desperate lives, cursing the day they had ever left the old country.

  However, some would make it. Some, like the Sinatras, would see the realization of their dreams. They would be the lucky ones, as would their children.

  In 1910, New Jersey had a higher percentage of immigrants than any other state. The census that year showed that less than two-fifths of the population had native-born parents, and Hoboken was no exception. In one five-block section of West Hoboken lived Armenians, English, French, Germans, Greeks, Italians, Spanish, Turks, Syrians, Romanians, Poles, Russians, Chinese, Japanese, Austrians, Swiss, Jews, Belgians, and Dutch.

  As each new group arrived, they were looked down upon by those who had already established themselves; often even their own assimilated countrymen treated them with scorn. In Hoboken, since the Germans were the social elite, they could boast of several German-language newspapers, Biergärten, and brass bands. Their reign in Hoboken would last until the beginning of World War I, in 1914, when their pro-German sympathies led several to be arrested as spies and many more to be kept under constant surveillance until the end of the war. During that time, the Irish would ascend to the ruling class.