Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [323]
2. The “Franklin” was, of course, for FDR; “Emanuel” was in honor of the soon-to-be-dishonored Manie Sacks. The “Wayne” remains a mystery—perhaps a tribute to a New Jersey town where Frank once spent a pleasant hour? In any case, the emotionally snakebit and eternally paternally disregarded F. W. E. Sinatra would eventually—in a classic case of identifying with the oppressor—change his name to Frank junior. (And would be immortalized, on The Sopranos, as the Chairboy of the Board.)
3. “The artist agrees to conduct himself with due regard to public conventions and morals and agrees that he will not do or commit any act or thing that will degrade him in society, or bring him into public hatred, contempt, scorn, or ridicule, that will tend to shock, insult, or offend the community or ridicule public morals or decency, or prejudice the producer (MGM) or the motion picture industry in general” (Leff and Simmons, Dame in the Kimono, p. 5).
4. Proser was Frank Costello’s legit partner, and would gradually—and then not so gradually—be edged out.
SOURCE NOTES
5 “There’s a lot of griping”: Summers and Swan, Sinatra, p. 93.
6 “It is not too much”: Manchester, The Glory and the Dream, p. 309.
7 “Take a minute”: Vimms Vitamins radio advertisement, MP3, www.oldtimeradiofans.com/old_radio_commercials/vimms_vitamins.php.
8 “Dad was on the air”: Nancy Sinatra, American Legend, p. 59.
9 “This love of mine”: Lyrics from “This Love of Mine,” words and music by Sol Parker, Hank Sanicola, and Frank Sinatra (New York: Barton Music/Warner Bros. Music, 1953).
10 “Who wants to hire”: White, You Must Remember This, p. 304.
11 “I was at Lockheed”: James Kaplan, “The King of Ring-a-Ding-Ding,” Movies Rock (a supplemental publication of Vanity Fair), Dec. 2007.
12 “Niggers all work”: Lyrics from “Ol’ Man River,” words by Oscar Hammerstein, music by Jerome Kern (New York: T. B. Harms, 1927).
13 “I want that boy”: Nancy Sinatra, My Father, p. 64.
14 “I have just received”: Columbia Records Archive, Sony Music Corporation.
15 “it was in complete innocence”: Ibid. 204 “Joe E. Lewis, the only”: Ibid.
CHAPTER 14
1. There was also the far from negligible matter of broad new sexual horizons. From the beginning of Sinatra’s tenure at Metro springs the legend—impossible to substantiate but too delicious to ignore—of the to-do list of female fellow luminaries he posted on his dressing-room wall and checked off one by one as he proceeded through.
2. The effect of Lady May’s unique child rearing on her son’s maturing psyche was understandably complex. Getting wind that the young Englishman had certain sexual eccentricities, Mayer assumed that Lawford was simply gay and, with fatherly concern, sent him to get testosterone injections. Lawford, whom the author knew slightly, told the story on himself with great amusement.
3. And Hope and Crosby both belonged to the ritzy Lakeside Golf Club, just across the street: No Jews Allowed, and as for Italian-American entertainers, why, the question had never even come up before, but now that it was being asked … Despite Bob and Bing’s sponsorship, Lakeside turned Sinatra down, and he thereby became the first gentile ever to join the ranks of Groucho Marx, Jack Benny, and George Burns at Hillcrest Country Club, in Beverly Hills.
SOURCE NOTES
4 “Sinatra 1-A”: Spencer Leigh, “What Did the FBI Make of Top Pop Stars?” Independent, Dec. 13, 2005, www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/what-did-the-fbi-make-of-top-pop-stars-519323.html.
5 “bugle-deaf Frankie-boy”: Kuntz and Kuntz, Sinatra Files, p. 21.
6 “Even I grow humble”: Shaw, Twentieth-Century Romantic, p. 78.
7 “Dateline New York”: Columbia Records Archive, Sony Music Corporation.
8 “On the golf course”: Lyrics from