His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [18]
“Frank would have dressed his dog in high heels if it would’ve made Marie happy,” said one of his friends.
“It’s true,” said Agnes Hannigan. “Frank gave Marie everything. He was just crazy about her, but she wasn’t all that interested in him because he didn’t seem to be going anyplace. He wasn’t very smart in school, and he never worked any jobs like the other guys, so we didn’t think that he would ever amount to much.”
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In Hudson County, Prohibition was a law to be flouted. Jersey City’s Mayor Frank Hague pleased his hard-drinking constituents by refusing to enforce the Eighteenth Amendment prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages. “It’s a matter of giving the people what they want,” he said.
Dolly Sinatra saw at once that the illicit liquor trade promised great profit, and she wasted no time getting involved. Convinced that a saloon would make her rich, she borrowed money from her mother so that she and Marty could open a tavern at Fourth and Jefferson. They called it “Marty O’Brien’s,” but it was in Dolly’s name because firemen could not own or operate saloons.
The ethnic caste system ruled the children as strongly as the parents.
“If you were Irish, you had no friends in Guinea Town, which is what we called the area west of Willow Avenue where the Italians lived,” said Agnes Carney Hannigan. “Our Lady of Grace Church would not even take them, and my father would have killed me if I had ever brought home an Italian boyfriend. Tony Mac and Ross Esposito and Frank Sinatra were the only Italians ever allowed in our home, and they were acceptable only because they came from Park Avenue and not down there on Madison or Monroe. They would never have gotten in our house if they’d lived down there. In those days we treated the Italians like we treat the Puerto Ricans today.”
Dolly had gotten her family onto Park Avenue, and now she dreamed of owning her own home and having an uptown address. She was also determined to send her boy to the Stevens Institute to study engineering. With enough money she could make Frankie the first college graduate in the family. And the money would come from the profits of the saloon.
“Anytime we saw a drunk in the streets, we’d say that he was part of the MOB, meaning Marty O’Brien’s pub,” said Tony Mac. “Us kids didn’t go around there a lot. We were a little afraid of Marty. He was a grouchy guy with a mad kisser on him. But he never said anything to hurt us. Dolly would have knocked him dead if he did. She was great, always laughing and joking and hollering, but Marty never said very much. Just grunted a lot.”
Even as youngsters, Tony Mac and the rest of Frank’s Italian friends understood that Dolly dominated the Sinatra family. That made the Sinatras very different from their own families, where the fathers were feared and respected and the mothers automatically assumed secondary roles.
“Marty was just a mouse,” said Doris Corrado. “Just a mouse.”
“He was a weak man,” said former mayor Steve Capiello. “Not physically weak but weak in the sense that he could never stand up to Dolly. Never.”
Fortunately, Marty Sinatra seemed perfectly content to let his wife be the boss. “He’s a quiet man,” said his brother-in-law, Frank Monaco. “Dolly was always the brains of the family. She was the go-getter. There never was any conflict, though. Marty just agreed with Dolly.”
Ignoring the local law that women could not be in a bar, Dolly became Marty’s barmaid. She also disregarded the statute prohibiting minors from the premises and frequently entertained Frank and his friends. Many years later, Frank would entertain people with stories of how he used to sit on top of the piano in his father’s saloon and sing.
“I still