Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [198]
He hated to rehearse and refused to discuss the weekly format. Usually, he ignored the guest shots entirely. Once he wanted to book Jackie Gleason, who was very hot at the time, but Frank would not rehearse. Even though he and Jackie were pals, Jackie refused to go on the air without a rehearsal, and we ended up having to pay him $7,500 [almost $70,000 today] plus expenses for being the guest star who did not do Frank’s show. Another time I came to work and was told by [Sinatra’s entourage] that Brian Aherne was the guest star for the following week. “Frank wants to class up the show,” they said. What could I do? Aherne was a B actor with a mustache and no flair for television. He was a disaster, and Frank was furious afterwards. “Why’d you put that bum on my show?” he screamed. “It wasn’t my idea,” I said. “It was yours.” He refused to talk to me again for days.
As was so often the case, Frank was furious because he felt out of control. His movie career was DOA; his concert and nightclub bookings were flatlining. The one place where he felt most dominant, the recording studio, was increasingly dominated by another. His response was not only disengagement and petty tyranny but also a spike in his obsessive-compulsive symptoms. “Frank was always washing his hands, constantly washing, washing, washing, as if he was trying to wash his life away or something,” Mansfield said. “When he wasn’t washing his hands, he was changing his shorts. He would drop his pants to the floor, take off his drawers, and kick them up in the air with his foot. Some flunky would chase those dirty shorts around the room while Frank put on a clean pair. He must’ve changed his shorts every twenty minutes. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”
He felt unclean. Unworthy.
He also grew obsessed with the idea that Ava was cheating on him. Three thousand miles away, who knew what she might be up to? The main suspect was Artie Shaw. According to Mansfield, “Frank was insanely jealous of Shaw. Whenever he couldn’t get her on the phone he’d start screaming on the set that she was having an affair with Artie. ‘I know she’s with that goddamn Artie Shaw,’ he’d yell. ‘I know she’s with that bastard. I’ll kill her. I’ll kill her. I’ll kill her.’ ”
He was in a dangerous state of mind: the world seemed to conspire against his every move. The condition is all the worse for its circularity. Jackie Gleason, riding high, understood that rehearsal brought polish, which brought success, which brought more confidence. Sinatra, feeling like a failure, was ensuring nothing but more failure for himself.
The new radio show, on Sunday afternoons, was a blip. Some programming genius at CBS had come up with a weird formula for Meet Frank Sinatra: Frank wouldn’t just sing, he would engage in repartee with his studio audience and guests. The talk felt scripted, forced. The singing was another matter: he was backed by a five-piece rhythm combo, a format that always made him feel comfortable and spontaneous. The only problem was, nobody was listening.
That same month, Columbia released Sing and Dance with Frank Sinatra, his first album specifically conceived as a ten-inch LP—and, as it turned out, his last for the label. The record consisted entirely of George Siravo–arranged, up-tempo numbers, seven of them from the overdubbed April sessions, and even if there was a slight disconnect between Frank and the Frank-less musicians, the album was—and still is—joyous, swinging Sinatra.
But Sing and Dance failed to even graze the Billboard charts.
He flew to Los Angeles for Christmas, to bring his kids presents and remind them who he was, but mainly to see Ava. It had been over three months, yet the reunion was ambivalent. She was thrilled at her gift: he’d bought her a puppy, a Pembroke Welsh corgi; they named it Rags. And she was thrilled with Show Boat, which was close to wrapping at Metro, the studio that had fired him. Frank’s smile slowly chilled. He had scant patience for listening to Ava enthuse about her