His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [101]
A: No, of course not. I heard about the Mafia.
Q: Well, what did you hear about it?
A: That it’s some kind of shakedown operation; I don’t know.
Q: Like the one you were involved with in the case of Tarantino?
A: I’m not sure that one was anybody’s idea but Jimmy’s.
The secret session broke up at 5:48 A.M. Nellis handed Sinatra a subpoena and said that he might want to question him at another time.
Later that morning, Nellis recommended to Kefauver that the singer not be called upon to testify publicly.
“Even though I recognized the inconsistencies in Sinatra’s testimony and knew that he was lying at times, I also knew that he wasn’t going to admit any complicity concerning Luciano or the Fischettis in terms of being a bagman or courier for them. Besides, we weren’t out to destroy anyone or to sensationalize the hearings with Hollywood celebrities,” he said.
Although Frank escaped congressional scrutiny in 1951, the case against him and his organized crime connections was far from closed. Five grand jury subpoenas would follow, along with two Internal Revenue Service investigations, a congressional summons, and a subpoena from the New Jersey State Crime Commission that he would fight all the way to the Supreme Court, and lose.
12
Encouraged by the public support she received from the Catholic Church as well as from the Hollywood press, Nancy Sinatra continued to refuse Frank a divorce, convinced that he would eventually come back home. She saw how physically drained he was by his tempestuous relationship with Ava Gardner, following her back and forth to New York, to Europe, to California. She knew of their ugly fights and Ava’s resentment toward Frank’s cronies, who were always hanging around. She also knew how much Frank missed the comforts of home, where she kept things as neat and clean as he liked, where there was always a jar of the homemade spaghetti sauce he loved in the refrigerator, and where she had always been uncomplaining about his male friends coming and going any hour of the day or night, and eating and drinking as much as they wanted. She saw how guilty he felt about leaving the children, especially Little Nancy, his favorite child. Besides, although Frank had walked out of the house in January 1950, he kept coming back, thereby prompting Nancy to drag out the legal proceedings as long as she could in hopes of outlasting Ava Gardner.
Ava, too, sensed Frank’s ambivalence about a divorce, and after eighteen months she issued an ultimatum, stating that she would not see him again until he was a free man. Many of his friends hoped that this would bring him back to Nancy, believing that his career would be revived if he returned home to his wife and children.
Frank had finally managed to snag the lead in Meet Danny Wilson, a Universal movie starring Shelley Winters, Alex Nicol, and Raymond Burr, for which he was being paid $25,000. Sinatra’s friend Don McGuire had written the original screenplay about the rise of a brash but likeable young crooner who was backed by a gangster demanding fifty percent of all his future earnings. Frank played Danny Wilson, sang nine songs, and received lukewarm reviews.
“Frank Sinatra is obviously unfair to himself in Meet Danny Wilson. For Danny’s rise to fame and fortune as crooner and bobby-sox idol is so much like Frankie’s that the parallel is inescapable,” said the Los Angeles Times.
Time magazine agreed. “The story cribs so freely from the career and personality of Frank Sinatra that fans may expect Ava Gardner to pop up in the last reel.”
“This forgettable picture began shooting in chaos and ended in disaster,” recalled Shelley Winters. “Frank was in the process of divorcing Nancy to marry Ava Gardner—I think he thought that’s what he wanted. His children were quite young and there were always psychiatrists and priests and his kids visiting him on the set or in the commissary.… Sometimes the children would come to the commissary