His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [185]
“I believe in you and me. I’m like Albert Schweitzer and Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein in that I have a respect for life—in any form. I believe in nature, in the birds, the sea, the sky, in everything I can see or that there is real evidence for. If these things are what you mean by God, then I believe in God, but I don’t believe in a personal God to whom I look for comfort or for a natural on the next roll of the dice. I’m not unmindful of man’s seeming need for faith; I’m for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers, or a bottle of Jack Daniels. But to me religion is a deeply personal thing in which man and God go it alone together, without the witch doctor in the middle.”
A few days later, Woodfield presented the synthetic interview to Frank, who was immensely impressed with what Mike Shore had written and was eager to have it appear as his own in the magazine.
Mickey Rudin objected, arguing that the content was much too controversial, especially the atheism.
“Rudin said, ‘Frank, you can’t say this. You can’t sign this piece,’ ” Woodfield recalled. “We all sat there and Frank looked at me, and Frank, Jr., was in the. room, and Hyams was sitting there. … I looked at Frank, Jr., and I looked at Frank and said, ‘Frank, it’s your decision. If you believe what this interview says, that these things are your beliefs, and you are afraid to say them in America, what are you saying to your son about America?’ Frank looked at me and said, ‘You’re absolutely right.’ He picked up a pen and signed [the release form].”
Mike Shore also signed a release, giving the copyright to Frank, and the interview appeared in the February 1963 issue of Playboy billed as “a candid conversation with the acknowledged king of showbiz.” The magazine received many letters commending Frank’s pacifist views about total global disarmament. Yet close friends knew him to carry a gun and be militant about a strong national defense. So much so that during the Cuban missile crisis he had put his pilot, Don Lieto, on twenty-four-hour emergency notice and equipped his private plane with enough water and canned food to survive for a month in case the crisis evolved into war and they had to fly to a safer place.
Among the impressed Playboy readers who read the intelligent discourse under Frank’s name was Kris Kristofferson, who was on the Gulf of Mexico agonizing over the end of a song he was writing.
“I was struggling with the last line,” he said, “but when I read Frank’s interview, I flashed on that part where he talks about being for anything that helps you get through the night. That’s where I got the last line and finished my song—‘Help Me Make It Through the Night.’ ”
While Frank worked at improving his public image, he continued to try to improve his relationship with Jack Kennedy. For JFK’s birthday in May 1962 he had sent him a huge rocking chair made out of flowers. A White House aide described the gift as “so gaudy and outlandish that we sent it out the same day and the President didn’t even look at the thing.” Still, Kennedy acknowledged the gift in a letter to Sinatra: “I was delighted with this lovely remembrance and thought you might like to know that the youngsters over at Childrens’ Hospital also had the opportunity of sharing, with me, your more than generous gift.”
A few months later, Frank wired the White House that he had arranged with United Artists to provide President Kennedy with a print of The Manchurian Candidate.
Although now removed from the Kennedys’ sphere, Frank remained politically committed to the Democratic Party and had campaigned hard in 1962 for Edmund “Pat” Brown, who won the governorship of California when he beat Richard Nixon.
“Frank traveled all over the state campaigning for me and raising money. Then he staged an inaugural gala in Sacramento like the one he did for Jack Kennedy in Washington,” said Pat Brown.
Of primary importance to Frank at the beginning of 1963 was the fiftieth wedding anniversary party he was planning for his parents in February. To celebrate their golden