Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [108]
Still, Frank had shaken his hand, looked in his eyes … Death was such a strange thing: it gave him the creeps. Best not to think about it.
Less than a month later, with the nation still in mourning, the war in Europe was over, and grief turned to joy. It would still be months before the hundreds of thousands of troops came home, and George Evans and Jack Keller agreed that the time had come at last for Sinatra to go over and entertain them. It would quell the jingoistic newspapermen—not to mention the gossip columnists.
Frank’s daughter Nancy has written that her father was unable to travel overseas before the end of the war because the FBI, suspicious of his left-wing activities, prevented him from getting a visa. In fact, J. Edgar Hoover didn’t get really interested in Sinatra until after the war, and when he did, it wasn’t just because of the singer’s liberal sympathies.
The truth is that Sinatra hadn’t gone abroad during the war because he’d been scared.
As he had every right to be. He read the papers. He had seen Stars and Stripes, even after Evans and Keller tried to keep it away from him. He had seen the tomatoes speckling his picture on the Paramount marquee, had heard the catcalls in the street, had felt it when he did USO shows Stateside: not all of the servicemen hated him (he could win them over when he was in a room or a theater with them)—but an awful lot did. He was the ultimate cuckolder: He might not have actually screwed their women (still, who knew? rumor had it the guy really got around), but he was in their heads. Their wives and girlfriends wanted him, and that was bad enough.
For the troops overseas, it was much worse. Missing home and missing nooky most of all, they were convinced their women were stepping out on them—and in many instances, of course, they were right. Sinatra the draft dodger was the lightning rod for their insecurity. When Evans and Keller floated the idea of a post V-E Day Sinatra tour, the Hollywood Victory Committee, the group of Screen Actors Guild worthies who ran the Canteen, weighed right in. “There might be some unpleasantness,” they said. Frank had heard rumors that the troops would throw eggs at him, maybe worse … These guys had guns, for God’s sake.
Evans and Keller had a brilliant idea.
They’d seen Phil Silvers doing shtick with Sinatra at the Hollywood Canteen: making fun of Frank’s skinniness, pinching his cheeks and pulling his ears, teaching him to sing. This last bit was particularly funny—the droopy-eyed comedian would go on and on about how Sinatra’s tones weren’t round enough, would play with his mouth to get his lips to form just the right shape … and no matter what Sinatra did, it was wrong. Silvers, who had come up through baggy-pants vaudeville, was brilliant, and the bit was hilarious.
Evans called Phil and asked him to oversee Sinatra’s USO tour, introduce him at every stop. Do the same stuff he did with him at the Canteen. Make plenty of fun of him. Push him around a little. Silvers would be doing everything those GIs really wanted to do to him, and he’d be getting them on Frank’s side in the process.
It worked like a charm. In June, Sinatra and Silvers flew to Casablanca on an Army C-47, along with the pianist Saul Chaplin, the actress and singer Fay McKenzie, and the dancer Betty Yeaton. At every dusty camp they played, Silvers slapped Sinatra’s cheeks, and the soldiers roared. He ordered him offstage—“Go away, boy, you bother me. The Blood Bank’s down the street”—and they guffawed. By the time the comedian was done with Frank, the GIs were begging to hear him sing. Not an egg was thrown. “The singer kidded himself throughout