Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [322]
6. Very chivalrous of Frank, as long as he was fudging his age by two years, to make Nancy two years younger, too!
7. One of which, Harold Adamson and Jimmy McHugh’s “I Couldn’t Sleep a Wink Last Night,” was nominated for an Oscar.
8. Though the general hoity-toitiness was somewhat ruffled by the highly conspicuous ringside presence of Dolly (attending not with Marty but with a gaggle of Hoboken girlfriends). Mama Sinatra cheered lustily throughout Frankie’s performance, then came backstage afterward to pose for pictures and brief reporters: “You know, my son has broken just about every record that bastard Bing Crosby ever set. Write that down in your goddamn notepad” (Taraborrelli, Sinatra, p. 67).
9. Some men reluctant to go into military service during World War II are known to have had an eardrum punctured. However, the FBI file on Sinatra notes that “the perforation of the drum (tympanum) was a disease perforation so far as Captain WEINTROB could tell and not the result of an incision by human hands” (Kuntz and Kuntz, Sinatra Files, p. 19).
10 The following year he would acknowledge his fears, with only partial irony, by recording a novelty number called “Dick Haymes, Dick Todd, and Como.” The V-Disc, a unique collaboration among Sammy Cahn, Johnny Burke, and Jimmy Van Heusen, contained lines such as “I’ll soon become a wreck/they’re breathin’ on my neck” and “They’re really comin’ fast/Who knows, I may be past.” Where Haymes and Como were concerned, Sinatra’s fears were not misplaced. One suspects Todd, the so-called Canadian Crosby (he sounded exactly like Bing played at a slightly slower speed), was thrown in for joke value. And as always with Frank, his best jokes were written by others.
SOURCE NOTES
11 “You better push”: Kelley, His Way, p. 72.
12 “SPECIALLY ADDED”: Shaw, Twentieth-Century Romantic, p. 43.
13 “Frank was in”: Wilson, Sinatra, p. 44.
14 Many years later: Frank Sinatra, interview with Sidney Zion, Yale University, April 15, 1986.
15 “If you’re not scared”: Jerry Lewis, in discussion with the author, March 2008.
16 “Three times an evening”: George Frazier, “Frank Sinatra,” Life, May 3, 1943.
17 “When I came”: Summers and Swan, Sinatra, p. 81.
18 “I’m flying high”: Kelley, His Way, p. 79.
19 “was a sensation”: Cahn, I Should Care, p. 132.
20 “He had them”: Friedwald, Sinatra! p. 130.
21 “Jimmy Van Heusen once canceled”: Kelley, His Way, p. 574.
22 “He was a very unusual-looking”: George Avakian, in discussion with the author, Oct. 2006.
23 “He is acutely aware”: Goddard Lieberson, liner notes for Frank Sinatra Conducts the Music of Alec Wilder (Columbia Records, 1946).
24 “Traveling by train”: Nancy Sinatra, American Legend, p. 57.
25 “SECRET OF LURE”: Isabel Morse Jones, “Secret of Lure Told by Crooner—It’s Love,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 12, 1943.
26 “Noah Webster forgive”: Parsons, Tell It to Louella, p. 147.
27 “Dear Sir”: Kuntz and Kuntz, Sinatra Files, p. 4.
28 “It’s Dorsey”: Friedwald, Sinatra! p. 112.
29 “The next day”: Puzo, Godfather, p. 43.
30 “The man who straightened”: Sinatra, interview.
31 “Frank told me years”: Lewis, discussion.
32 “Bergen Record entertainment”: Levinson, Tommy Dorsey, p. 161.
33 “vividly remembers her”: Ibid.
34 “not real underworld”: Taraborrelli, Sinatra, p. 65.
35 “It wasn’t much”: Ibid.
36 “Hey, Wop”: Wilson, Sinatra, p. 79.
37 “Frank Albert Sinatra is physically”: Kuntz and Kuntz, Sinatra Files, p. 11.
38 “Dear Mr. Winchell”: Ibid., p. 5.
39 “The diagnosis”: Weintrob to Commanding General, Dec. 28, 1943, FBI, 25-244122-7.
40 “stated that no one”: Kuntz and Kuntz, Sinatra Files, p. 20.
41 “What physical or mental”: Ibid., p. 11.
CHAPTER 13
1. It must have been a different group of soldiers and sailors who attended a show at the Hollywood Canteen in January 1944. Not just Sinatra, but Hope, Crosby, Ginger Rogers, and Fibber McGee and Molly were present. “When it was [Sinatra’s] turn to sing,” Nancy Sinatra writes, “the ovations kept