Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [0]
Dean & Me
(co-written with Jerry Lewis)
You Cannot Be Serious
(co-written with John McEnroe)
Two Guys from Verona
Copyright © 2010 by James Kaplan
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto
www.doubleday.com
DOUBLEDAY and the DD colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Kaplan, James, 1951–
Frank : the voice/by James Kaplan.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Sinatra, Frank, 1915–1998. 2. Singers—United States—Biography. I. Title.
ML420.S565K35 2010
782.42164092—dc22
[B] 2009031046
eISBN: 978-0-385-53364-5
v3.1
FOR MY MOTHER
What is a poet? A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music … And men crowd about the poet and say to him: “Sing for us soon again”; that is as much as to say: “May new sufferings torment your soul.”
—Kierkegaard, Either/Or
Just because you asked for your contract back, there’s no reason why you should get it. We don’t do business that way. I don’t know who has been putting these ideas into your head or where you’re getting them from. They don’t sound like Sinatra … I had an operation, it took a lot out of me, I’ve had family difficulties of which you’re well aware. But nothing has hurt me as much as the wire I received from you. Don’t friendship and sincerity mean anything to you? Or is it that, when you make up your mind to do something, that’s the way it has to be? I’m telling you, I’ve seen it happen and so have you. If this is the attitude you want to adopt, it’s got to hit you—you just can’t get away with it; life itself won’t permit it [italics mine]. Love, Manie.
—August 1945 letter to Sinatra from his close friend Emanuel Sacks, manager of popular repertoire at Columbia Records
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
—Francis Bacon
CONTENTS
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Act One | FRANKIE AND DOLLY
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Act Two | HARRY AND TOMMY
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Act Three | HIGHER AND HIGHER
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Act Four | ICARUS
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Act Five | THE PHOENIX
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PHOTO CREDITS
NOTES AND SOURCES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Act One
FRANKIE
AND
DOLLY
The only two people I’ve ever been afraid
of are my mother and Tommy Dorsey.
—Frank Sinatra
1
The child is the father to the man: a beautifully formed mouth, an avid blue-eyed gaze. Undated photo of Frank at about six months. (photo credit 1.1)
Araw December Sunday afternoon in 1915, a day more like the old century than the new among the wood-frame tenements and horse-shit-flecked cobblestones of Hoboken’s Little Italy, a.k.a. Guinea Town. The air smells of coal smoke and imminent snow. The kitchen of the cold-water flat on Monroe Street is full of women, all gathered around a table, all shouting at once. On the table lies a copper-haired girl, just nineteen, hugely pregnant. She moans hoarsely: the labor has stalled. The midwife wipes the poor girl’s brow and motions with her other hand. A doctor is sent for. Ten long minutes later he arrives, removes his overcoat, and with a stern look around the room—he is the lone male present—opens his black bag. From the shining metallic array inside he removes his dreaded obstetric forceps, a medieval-looking instrument, and grips the baby with it, pulling hard from the mother’s womb, in the violent process