His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [109]
(b)Should we not acquire the rights to “St. Louis Woman” or produce a photoplay based on this property, then we agree that at some time prior to the expiration of her contract, we will do a picture with her in which Frank Sinatra will also appear.
The next contractual battle was over inserting a pregnancy clause that would protect her from penalties should she be unable to work because of pregnancy. She had already announced that she and Frank wanted to have a baby. Actually, he wanted several. “I would like a dozen kids,” he said.
Ava was convinced that most of Frank’s misery was due to his rancorous press relations. She begged him to stop slugging reporters and cursing photographers, saying that he needed them to become a star again. But the last thing Frank wanted was to entrust his fate to the press.
“The newspapers—they broke up my home,” he said. “They broke up my family. They ruined my life.”
Shortly after his violent clash with reporters at the wedding, one of his publicists, Mack Miller, had conferred with him for three hours.
“Miller told Frank that if he didn’t stop fighting with the press, he’d have to give him up,” said a friend. “Miller said he wasn’t worth what Frank was paying him if this kind of thing continued. Ava backed Miller up. She’s no yes-woman.”
Months later, Ava turned to Manie Sacks and together they convinced Frank that he no longer had any choice but to make amends with the press. The apologia was written by Irving Fein under Frank’s name in a two-part series for the Hearst papers entitled “Frankly Speaking” in which Frank appeared to go down on his knees with his head bowed.
“The press generally has been wonderful to me, and I know that without their help I never could have become famous or earned more money than I ever believed existed when I was a slum kid in Hoboken,” he wrote. “My only excuse for being abrupt and curt … is that I was nervous and distraught from the events of the past year.”
He dragged out all the hoary tales of his so-called “slum” childhood in Hoboken with its “race wars” and “vicious gang fights” and his “poor, poor” parents who “needed whatever money I could bring into the house,” which drove him to “hooking candy from the corner store, then little things from the five-and-dime, then change from cash registers, and finally, we were up to stealing bicycles.”
This, of course, shocked Dolly Sinatra, whose abortion earnings combined with her husband’s wages had made her family one of the most comfortable on Garden Street. Having bought Frank’s shiny new bicycles as a child, his new clothes, his car, his phonograph, and paid his charge account at Geismer’s department store, and having given him an allowance which paid for presents for his friends, she was stunned by these recollections under her son’s name. “I didn’t know any of those things he said he did,” she said. “I brought him up right.”
Frank was equally imaginative about his Mafia friendships with Willie Moretti, Frank Costello, and Joe Fischetti. He asserted he barely knew Lucky Luciano, and despite the Italian police report of finding a solid gold cigarette case inscribed “To my dear pal, Charlie, from his friend, Frank Sinatra,” he denied ever giving Luciano any gift. He cavalierly dismissed his twelve-year marriage to Nancy, saying that he had mistaken friendship for love. And he strained people’s credulity when he said he had not dated Ava until after his separation from Nancy.
In a final grovel to the press he ended “his” series by saying, “Well, there it is. That’s my side of the story, and I must say I feel better for having gotten it off my chest. I know that I never meaningly hurt anyone, and for any wrongs I may have done through emotional acts or spur-of-the-moment decisions, I humbly apologize.”
“That should have told you right there that Frank didn’t write that thing,” said Nick Sevano.