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By Root 2466 0

—especially with Frank so busy on the Coast. The phone calls were misery: with the three-hour difference, they always came at the wrong time, and since he hated being alone, there were usually other voices, even festive sounds, in the background, forcing her to imagine whom he was spending his evenings, not to mention his nights, with. Sometimes, when she was expecting his call, it wouldn’t even be him, but that goddamn Hank Sanicola instead, going through his usual rigmarole about how long and hard Frank’s days were, what with shooting the picture and broadcasting the radio shows and all. Frankie was dead tired, Hank would say; he never slept enough, couldn’t keep any weight on—he made her husband sound like a candidate for Vimms himself …

It had been Frank who’d phoned the night of the birth—or rather, very early in the morning of the next day, most likely with the sounds of dishes and glasses and feminine laughter in the background.

How was she doing? How was their boy? Was he handsome? He missed her … He’d better go now—she needed her sleep … He missed her …

The hell of it was that she knew it was true—that he did miss her. In his fashion. And she missed him. With all her heart.

For the second Vimms show, on January 12, the fans began lining up at 6:45 a.m. outside the CBS Radio Playhouse at 1615 North Vine. By 5:00 p.m., an hour before broadcast time, more than a thousand of them—the vast majority girls, of course—queued around the block. The CBS studio seated 350. When Sanicola came in and told him most of the girls were about to be turned away, Sinatra saw red. How would 350 girls, as opposed to 1,500, sound to the American radio audience? Like a goddamn classical string recital, that was how.

He let the nervous-looking CBS executive hovering nearby have it. Then he turned to Hank. Was there a bigger studio?

Vine Street Playhouse seated fourteen hundred.

Sinatra pointed to the executive. Vine Street.

The man began to splutter. It would take hours to set up in another studio; they were scheduled to go on live in one hour. The sound levels were completely different in the other theater. The engineers …

The singer cocked his head and narrowed his lips.

Vine Street.

Dolly could have done no better.

The executive went to an office and stood by a telephone for a panicky moment before realizing he didn’t have to put the impossible matter before his boss at all. A minute later, he leaned out the door, summoned Sanicola, and handed him the phone. It was not CBS but the chief of the local chapter of AFRA, the American Federation of Radio Artists, on the other end.

“Tell your boy either he goes on from the CBS studio or he’s through as far as AFRA’s jurisdiction is concerned,” the stern voice said.

Sanicola went back to Sinatra, whispered to him behind his hand. Frank raised his eyebrows. Should he call Saul Jaffe? In a rare moment of forbearance—the exception proving the rule—Sinatra decided to pick his battles. He squared his shoulders and turned to Stordahl. Time to rehearse.

Back at Margaret Hague Maternity, the nurse turned on the radio just before nine. Now, as Nancy held the milky-warm little bundle close, Frank was talking to her: “I’d like to sing one of my favorite songs to my little son in New Jersey. So pull up a chair, Nancy, and bring the baby with you. I want him really to hear this.”

It was hard having his tender voice so near and yet so very far away. That voice! Goddamn it, she knew it worked on a million other women, and it worked on her, too …

He sang his theme song, the schmaltzy number he’d written with Sanicola:

This love of mine goes on and on

Though life is empty since you have gone.

Goddamn him—he could sound closer when he was far away than when he was standing right next to her. Sometimes, when George called to see how she was doing—he was far more attentive than Frank—she would start to cry.

Lately, Evans had begun to tell her, in his calm, decisive way, that she must move out there.

She thought about it. It was the only thing that made sense—except that her whole family was