His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [182]
Close identification with the dynamic young President had given Frank a special aura in Hollywood, where people asked him, “What do you hear from Washington?” “How’s Jack?” “Have you been to Hyannisport lately?” To be cut off from this power was to have the gates of heaven slammed in his face. He was so deeply humiliated by Kennedy’s decision to stay at Bing Crosby’s estate instead of his own that he left town for the weekend. To close friends, he damned Peter Lawford and denigrated Bobby Kennedy, talking about the hypocrisy of accepting hoodlum money to get elected and then refusing to accept hoodlum friendship, but Frank never said a negative word about the President.
No one understood the importance of a good public image better than the Kennedys, who lived by the creed of their father: “You must remember—it’s not what you are that counts, but what people think you are.”
As President, Jack Kennedy cared intensely about the image he projected. So much so that when Warner Bros, started to cast the movie, PT 109, based on his World War II exploits, he insisted on seeing the tests of the stars being considered to portray him.
“When he learned that they were making the movie, we asked that the President be allowed to approve the man chosen to portray him,” said Pierre Salinger. “Especially since the picture would be shown overseas and could disseminate an image that might be very bad for the U.S. if not handled with dignity.”
This attention to image was not lost on Frank, who admitted that his own was lacking. He called a meeting with his lawyer, Mickey Rudin, and his two publicists, Henry Rogers and Warren Cowan of Rogers and Cowan, to deal with the problem.
“What the hell is wrong?” he asked them. “I have the worst image in the world. The press keeps rapping me. My reputation is going downhill more and more every day. I have the best public relations men in show business working for me, and my image stinks. What the hell is wrong?”
“The only thing wrong with your image is you,” said Henry Rogers. “You have been doing outrageous things, you have been making outrageous statements, you have been offending the press outrageously.”
Rogers and Cowan had been handling Frank’s public relations for seven years, trying to mollify the reporters and photographers he periodically abused, but Frank had frequently disregarded their advice and called his own shots.
When Samuel Goldwyn arranged for some of the stars of Guys and Dolls to be on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1955, Frank discovered that he was to appear without pay while Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons were receiving fees. He took the matter to the Screen Actors Guild, and Sullivan bought a full-page ad in The Hollywood Reporter to protest. He commented on Sinatra’s low TV rating and added: “P.S. Aside to Frankie boy: Never mind that tremulous 1947 offer: ‘Ed, you can have my last drop of blood.’ ”
Rogers and Cowan cringed when Frank insisted on responding with full-page ads in the Hollywood trade papers: “Dear Ed: You’re sick. Frankie. P.S. Sick, sick, sick!” And they were no happier when he walked into the Stork Club one night and saw columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, who was wearing sunglasses. Getting up from his table, Frank walked past her and dropped a dollar bill into her coffee cup, saying, “I always figured she was blind.”
Rogers and Cowan tried to stop Frank from sending angry telegrams, but he persisted. When Time magazine reported that he was about to buy a Palm Beach estate and nightclub to get even with a nightclub owner who had refused to offer him five thousand dollars for one appearance, Frank wired Time: I AM GLAD TO SEE THAT YOU ARE STILL BATTING A THOUSAND REGARDING ANY INFORMATION CONCERNING ME. AS USUAL YOUR INFORMATION STINKS. I NEED A HOUSE AND A NIGHTCLUB