Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [332]
36 “Sinatra’s my pal”: Ibid.
37 “Speaking of getting laid”: Ibid.
CHAPTER 29
1. True to egocentric and vindictive form, for several weeks Frank ended every show by looking the camera straight in the eye and saying, not in a warm and fuzzy way, “I leave you with two words … SHELLEY WINTERS.” He continued the practice until Winters’s lawyer sent CBS and Sinatra’s lawyer a cease-and-desist letter threatening a large lawsuit (Winters, Shelley, p. 323).
2. Of course in real life, Bing too was the anti-Crosby, but that, as they say, is another story.
3. This seems as good a place as any to note that for whatever unknown reason, almost all Sinatra books, including some of the most trustworthy and authoritative, insistently misspell Sacks’s surname with an h instead of a k. The mistake is so widespread that during the course of my research I kept having to refer back to photocopies I had made of letters from Sacks to Sinatra, on the record executive’s stationery, with typed and handwritten signatures, to assure myself that the majority opinion, in this case at least, was wrong. The moral being that any and every convincing assertion about Frank Sinatra’s life should always be examined carefully.
4. And still retains a weird charm after fifty-plus years.
SOURCE NOTES
5 “Everything is a racket”: Associated Press, Dec. 14, 1950.
6 “spotty, taking full”: Jim Davidson’s Classic TV Info, www.classictvinfo.com/Sinatra/SinatraShow1.htm.
7 “a very real”: Jack Gould, “C.B.S. Presents Its No. 1 Competitor to Milton Berle in the Person of Frank Sinatra,” New York Times, Oct. 12, 1951.
8 “The wedding is off”: Gardner, Ava, p. 284.
9 “Now the bedlam began”: Ibid.
10 “They were giggly”: Wilson, Sinatra, p. 96.
11 “How did those creeps”: Kelley, His Way, p. 187.
12 “Frank was so angry”: Summers and Swan, Sinatra, p. 161.
13 “Wonderful designer”: Ibid.
14 “Well, we finally”: Ibid.
15 “This marriage is blessed”: Kelley, His Way, p. 189.
16 “Who sent this”: Shaw, Twentieth-Century Romantic, p. 154.
17 “Look after him”: Kelley, His Way, p. 190.
18 “All I had with me”: Gardner, Ava, p. 286.
19 “It was a chilly day”: Shaw, Twentieth-Century Romantic, p. 154.
20 “Naturally a photographer”: Gardner, Ava, p. 286.
21 “We drank a lot”: Ibid., p. 287.
22 “Frank and I didn’t start”: Summers and Swan, Sinatra, p. 162.
23 “SNARLING FRANK”: Shaw, Twentieth-Century Romantic, p. 155.
24 “WHAT A BORE”: Ibid.
25 “Frank Sinatra evidently”: Wilson, Sinatra, p. 97.
26 “By every ordinary standard”: Swan, Twentieth-Century Romantic, p. 158.
27 “Come on-a my house”: Lyrics from “Come On-a My House,” words and music by Ross Bagdasarian and William Saroyan (1939).
28 “Chief beef hinges”: Friedwald, Sinatra! p. 196.
29 “Kidding each other’s”: Jim Davidson’s Classic TV Info.
30 “Mr. Gardner”: Summers and Swan, Sinatra, p. 163.
31 “We’re going to redecorate”: Shaw, Twentieth-Century Romantic, p. 155.
32 “I lost control”: Ibid., p. 157.
33 “Even the most”: Bosley Crowther, “Six Newcomers on Holiday Fare,” New York Times, Dec. 26, 1951.
34 “a tiny curly-headed”: James Jones, From Here to Eternity, p. 37.
35 “Cohn’s Folly”: Zinnemann, Life in the Movies, p. 171.
36 “No wonder Sinatra”: Santopietro, Sinatra in Hollywood, p. 138.
CHAPTER 30
1. The practice prevented a studio from losing money on a contract player temporarily lying fallow: when studio A had nothing going for a star, it would loan said star to studio B for one picture, at a rate above the salary it was paying the player, and pocket the difference.
2. An intriguing parallel is Dean Martin, Ava’s male counterpart as a (platonic, of course) love object for Frank, who possessed many of these same qualities, and whose extreme masculine beauty was not dissimilar to hers.
3. And who would drop dead of a heart attack eleven years later, at fifty-eight, just a couple of years too soon to see his daughter Mia become Frank Sinatra’s third wife.
SOURCE NOTES
4 “It was like”: Gloria Delson Franks,