His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [137]
Frank paid all the hospital bills not covered by Cobb’s insurance and then moved him to a rest home in the hills above Los Angeles for six weeks, again paying all expenses. He called him every day and visited regularly.
“That’s where I first met Lee,” said Cobb’s future wife, “and he was so grateful to Frank, so surprised, and so very touched. It was the kind of instant generosity you rarely see. The amazing thing is that Frank and Lee were not close friends at the time. They knew each other, but that was it.”
The two men had met as co-stars in The Miracle of the Bells in 1949. Both were gamblers and shared the same kind of liberal politics. Frank admired Cobb’s acting talent and said that he should have won the 1954 Academy Award for his performance as Johnny Friendly in On the Waterfront.
“After the rest home, Frank moved Lee into his own home in Palm Springs, and then he moved him into a beautiful apartment in Los Angeles,” said Mrs. Cobb. “It was one of those places that very rich people live in—clean and beautiful, with walls that are all quilted and comfortable. I don’t know if Frank picked it out, or someone on his staff, but he paid for everything. He was wonderful during those critical months, and yet very elusive. He was never there to be thanked or hugged or shown any kind of gratitude. He didn’t seem to like that or want that.
“He and Lee had long talks about life and death because Lee was so close to dying at one point. Frank seemed to understand how hard it was sometimes to keep on going, how elusive the will to live can be. He said that you really had to scrape bottom before you could appreciate life and start living again. Frank had been through bad times, too, and I think he sensed a soulmate in Lee. Maybe he was so grateful for having made a comeback that he extended himself to someone in need—the kind of need he himself had once known. I don’t know, but it was a felicitous life-saving moment for Lee, and maybe in its way it was for Sinatra, too.”
Frank’s comeback seemed to produce generosity in him that was not unlike his mother’s garnering votes by distributing food baskets to the needy while making her political rounds in Hoboken.
When Sammy Davis, Jr., lost his eye in an automobile accident in 1954, Frank drove seventy miles from Los Angeles to San Bernadino Community Hospital to see him, and insisted that Sammy use his house in Palm Springs to recuperate.
When Charlie Morrison, owner of the Mocambo in Los Angeles, died in 1957, leaving his widow with a stack of debts and no insurance, his creditors threatened to close the club, forcing his wife into bankruptcy.
“Charlie had thousands of friends, but we had about four dollars,” she said. “Then Frank called me up. He said, ‘Mary, I don’t have anything to do for two weeks. How about me coming into the Mocambo with Nelson Riddle’s orchestra?’ He had never sung at any club in Hollywood, and it was like New Year’s Eve every night. We took in over $100,000 in those two weeks, and I gave old Charlie a millionaire’s funeral. It kept me going for a year besides. Celebrities were shoving against celebrities, and the waiters were able to pay off the mortgages on their homes.”
When Bela Lugosi committed himself to a hospital because he was an addict, Frank wrote him a sympathetic note, accompanied by a huge package of delicacies. “It gave me such a boost,” said Lugosi in 1955. “It was a wonderful surprise. I’ve never met Sinatra, but I hope to soon. He was the only star I heard from.”
Even close friends had trouble understanding the extremes in Frank that could drive him to physical brutality one minute and sweet generosity the next.
“To this day Frank doesn’t know