Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [263]
A week or so later, Sinatra had yet another on-set visitor at Columbia: the syndicated columnist Harold Heffernan, whose prose style was as clunky as his byline. “Salient factors that keep the pugnacious Frank Sinatra’s career from wallowing are a dogged tenacity and an enthusiasm about whatever he attempts,” Heffernan thesaurused, in his April 2 column.
No one could be more hopeful about a movie role than the bean-pole singer is over his non-warbling, unromantic part in Columbia’s “From Here to Eternity.”
“I play Montgomery Clift’s pal,” explained Frank on the set. “No girls for me. I just adore this fellow, and eventually give up my life, indirectly, for him. It’s a complete change from anything I have ever done.”
It would have occurred to nearly anyone who read Heffernan’s piece that Thursday that Sinatra hadn’t done much warbling in a while. This day was to be different. All morning and afternoon Frank worked hard on his scenes at the Columbia-Gower studios, then he showered and put on a dark suit and grabbed a quick bite with Monty at the Naples. At about 8:30 p.m., Sanicola picked him up, and they took the short drive over to Capitol’s recording facility, KHJ studios, a former radio station next to Paramount.
Excited, Frank walked into Studio C, where Stordahl, Livingston, and a putty-faced, high-pantsed producer named Voyle Gilmore were waiting for him. Record producers ran the gamut from control freaks like Mitch Miller to mere knob turners: the soft-spoken Gilmore fell somewhere in the middle. He knew how to get a good sound from a session, but also knew that Sinatra had a thorough understanding of what did and didn’t work for him. Gilmore was also aware that Alan Livingston had originally picked Dave Dexter to run the control room that night, and that Frank had vetoed him. In fact, at the mention of Dexter’s name, Frank had frozen, his phenomenal memory for slights and insults having instantly clicked onto a mildly critical review in Down Beat that Dexter had written years before.2
Gilmore was an amiable and gentle man, as quiet and thoughtful as Stordahl. Frank saw other friendly faces there: the reedman Skeets Herfurt and the trumpeter Zeke Zarchy, old pals from the Dorsey days; Bill Miller at the piano. In fact, he knew almost every musician in the room, since most of them had worked on Hollywood sessions for Columbia. Total pros, all of them. He was in good hands.
Frank sang happily that night, recording four songs: “Lean Baby,” an infectiously jivey Billy May blues about a skinny girlfriend; a sappy ballad called “I’m Walking Behind You” and an equally sappy waltz, “Don’t Make a Beggar of Me”; and one standard, Johnny Mercer and Rube Bloom’s great “Day In, Day Out.”
It was an odd session. Sinatra was in excellent voice, but the material didn’t quite rise to the occasion. True, “Lean Baby”—arranged not by Stordahl but by his (and the bandleader May’s) musical deputy Heinie Beau, in the bright and brassy Billy May style—was thoroughly charming. And “Day In, Day Out” was magnificent, if somewhat sedate—but Sinatra, for reasons of his own, would eventually decide not to release it. Of greatest concern were the middle two numbers, “Walking” and “Beggar,” both of them outright dogs.
But he was recording again, and he was pleased. After the session, Livingston took Sinatra across the street to Lucey’s for a celebratory drink. Sanicola lagged a few paces behind. The record executive noticed that Frank was walking taller, looking more alert, smiling. “It was late and we were sitting in the bar having a drink,” Livingston recalled.
Nobody else was in the place except for a man who was sitting across the bar. Frank and I were talking. I said, “Why don’t you take it easy? Get a better image.” He said, “Alan, I don’t do anything.” All of a sudden, the man says [to Livingston], “What are you doing, buying a drink for your leech friend?”
Frank said, “Knock it off.” The guy said, “Knock it off, knock it off …” And Frank didn’t do a thing, but his kind of a bodyguard went up and grabbed