Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [195]
“You should sing a lot of songs like that,” Heller told him.
“Don’t hold your breath,” Sinatra said.
Life was getting more and more peculiar for Frank Sinatra. Later that week he dispatched an intermediary to the New York office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation with an extremely unusual offer. An FBI memo reveals:
DATE: SEPTEMBER 7, 1950
TO: MR. TOLSON
FROM: J. P. MOHR
SUBJECT: FRANK SINATRA
___________ [name deleted] called at my office today after having endeavored to arrange an appointment to see the Director. I explained to ____________ that the Director was extremely busy, that he was fully committed and would be unable to see him. stated that he had been requested by Frank Sinatra to contact the Director with … a proposition that Sinatra had in mind. ___________ said he was a friend of Sinatra, that he considered him to be a sincere individual and that he has known him for six years. ___________ described Sinatra as a “Dago who came up the hard way” and said he is a conscientious fellow who is very desirous of doing something for his country. ___________ stated that Sinatra feels he can do some good for his country under the direction of the FBI.
___________ stated that Sinatra is sensitive about the allegations which have been made concerning his subversive activities and also his draft status during the last war. Sinatra feels that the publicity which he has received has identified him with subversive elements and that such subversive elements are not sure of his position and Sinatra consequently feels that he can be of help as a result by going anywhere the Bureau desires and contacting any of the people from whom he might be able to obtain information. Sinatra feels as a result of his publicity he can operate without suspicion …
___________ stated that Sinatra’s principal contacts are in the entertainment field in Hollywood and New York City. ___________ further advised that he didn’t know whether Sinatra has any current information with respect to subversives. He said that Sinatra understands that if he worked for the Bureau in connection with such activities it might reflect on his status and his standing in the entertainment field but he is willing to do anything even if it affects his livelihood and costs him his job.
___________ said that Sinatra is willing to go “the whole way.”
… I told ___________ that I wasn’t aware of Sinatra’s activities other than what I had read in the papers. I told him further that I wasn’t aware of Sinatra’s possibilities and that that was something we would have to analyze and determine. I further told ___________ that we would not ask Sinatra or any other individual to engage in any activities that would reflect on the individual and that any action taken by the individual would have to be a voluntary decision on his part. ___________ was also informed that I was not aware of the fact that Sinatra could be of use to us but that I would call to the Director’s attention ___________ ’s visit to me and that we would consider Sinatra’s request and that if he could be utilized we would communicate with him.
On the bottom of the letter is a handwritten notation by Tolson: “We want nothing to do with him. C.”
Then one by Hoover: “I agree. H.”1
What had possessed him? The Communist witch hunts were in full swing; guilt by association was guilt presumed. Sinatra knew the FBI was sniffing around him—in June he’d requested permission to go abroad to entertain U.S. troops, but had been denied a security clearance because of “subversive activities”: namely his mid-1940s idealism, reconsidered in the hard light of 1950. The bureau was even watching his Manhattan dentist, Dr. Abraham Weinstein. In a typical screed that May, Westbrook Pegler managed to lump Sinatra, George Raft, Leo Durocher, Frank Costello, “the Hollywood–Los Angeles underworld,” and President Truman’s supposedly lax Department of Justice into one subversive-smelling ball.
However hopeful Frank may have been