Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [254]
Puzo, who was of southern-Italian ancestry, was steeped in his subject. Yet he was also a writer of considerable imagination, a novelist, not a journalist. And while the lecherous and tyrannical Woltz bore a strong similarity to Harry Cohn, comparisons could also be drawn to other studio heads and producers.
But strong narratives seduce us: we want them to be true. And while The Godfather was a powerful novel, the movie version (whose screenplay Puzo also wrote) was even stronger. The sum of the film’s parts—the dark and haunting beauty of Gordon Willis’s cinematography, Nino Rota’s score, and Dean Tavoularis’s production design; the majesty of Francis Ford Coppola’s direction and the actors’ performances—all the components, taken together, had a great and somber force that made the world feel absolute faith in its truth, whatever the messy and ambiguous facts of real life.
Numerous writers and would-be authorities have put considerable effort into cobbling up a case that the Mob really was behind Frank Sinatra’s getting the role of Maggio. Various commentators have constructed elaborate scenarios based on the second-and third-and fourth-hand testimony of unreliable witnesses, many of them definitively unreliable career crooks. And all the mass of speculation rests on two simple assumptions, as neatly expressed in All American Mafioso: The Johnny Rosselli Story, a work taken as gospel by many in the Mob-conspiracy-hunting business: “Cohn hated Sinatra, and felt he was wrong for the part to boot.”
Or, as fictionally expressed by Jack Woltz (as played by John Marley) to Don Corleone’s consigliere Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) in The Godfather: “Now listen to me, you smooth-talking son-of-a-bitch! Let me lay it on the line for you and your boss, whoever he is. Johnny Fontane will never get that movie! I don’t care how many dago guinea wop greaseball gumbahs come out of the woodwork!”2
Harry Cohn, no shrinking violet, was certainly capable of such an explosion. But Jack Woltz is a fictional character and Harry Cohn was not. And Harry Cohn did not hate Sinatra. In fact, as Cohn’s biographer Bob Thomas wrote, “Frank Sinatra and Harry Cohn became good friends during the years when Sinatra was enjoying his initial burst of fame in Hollywood.” And the friendship had legs. In the fall of 1949, after Frank allowed the premiere of Miss Grant Takes Richmond to occur during his stint at the Capitol, Sinatra came down with strep throat so severe that an oxygen tent had to be set up in Manie Sacks’s apartment. “It was the first time since his rise to fame that he had been seriously ill, and he was surprised to learn how few of his so-called friends responded with offers of sympathy and aid,” Thomas writes.
A singular exception was Harry Cohn. Cohn flew to New York and spent the morning with Sinatra from 10 o’clock to 1:30. Cohn went off to business appointments and returned at 5 in the afternoon. He remained with Sinatra until his time for sleep at 9:30. Cohn read to the patient, reminisced of his early days in films, told jokes, and delivered numbers recalled from his early days as a song plugger. Cohn continued the daily routine until Sinatra recovered.
Cohn’s parting remark was in character: “You tell anybody about this, you son of a bitch, and I’ll kill you!”
Cohn was a businessman with a soft heart and a hard head. He had flown to New York on business, and gone to Frank’s bedside less out of love than gratitude: Sinatra’s