His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [20]
The invitation to an Italian wedding was too tantalizing for Frank’s Irish friends to resist, so when his cousin, Frank Anthony Sinatra, married Anna Spatolla, Frank was the best man, Marie Roemer was a bridesmaid, and the gang from Park Avenue was invited to the festivities.
“The wedding was in an Italian house downtown,” said Agnes Hannigan. “It was so unusual for us to be going down there, and to be going to an Italian wedding was unheard of. We had never seen one before. There was so much noise you couldn’t hear, and so much dancing and thumping, you would have thought the floors would sink into the ground.”
Dolly provided their most memorable party in the summer of 1931, when she gave Frankie and his gang tickets to a political rally at Rye Beach for Lee’s father, Frank Bartletta, who was running for mayor of Hoboken. As part of the Hague machine, Dolly owed her allegiance to the Irish incumbent, Bernard McFeeley, but when her good friend Bartletta decided to run, she supported him secretly despite the fact that he was a Republican. He was an Italian, and that was more important to Dolly than his political affiliation.
Since she and Marty could not publicly endorse Bartletta, they bought tickets to his rally and gave them to Frankie to give to his friends.
“It was a political party, and firemen could not go because McFeeley would have fired them on the spot,” said Agnes Hannigan. “Dolly gave the tickets to Frankie and then sent a taxi to pick all of us up. She also sent along a huge picnic basket and a big bottle of wine. She even provided a porter to carry it all for us. It was really something.”
Dolly tried to help Frankie in his courtship of Marie Roemer, whom he took to his junior high school graduation dance after buying both of them splendid new outfits. For that occasion, Frank had his own Tin Lizzie, a green 1929 Chrysler without a top that he and his gang had bought for twenty dollars. Still, Marie was not too impressed.
“She was so much more sophisticated than Frankie that she finally dropped him and started going with an older man who had a big black Cadillac and took her into New York City a lot,” said Agnes Hannigan. “She later married him, and on her wedding day she wore a white lace dress with a black orchid and a black lace hat. That’s how sophisticated Marie was! She was just too mature for Frankie. She was more a companion for Dolly. Besides, Frank didn’t seem to be going anyplace. He didn’t have a job and he wasn’t doing well in school.”
Frank was graduated from David E. Rue Junior High in 1931 and entered A. J. Demarest High School, where he lasted only forty-seven days. He later admitted being expelled for “general rowdiness.”
“Frankie showed no real talent for anything,” said Arthur Stover, the high school principal. “It was possible for a student to leave school before sixteen in those days, provided he had permission from an authorized person. I had that authority.”
“He was a lazy boy,” said Macy Hagerty, Frank’s math teacher. “He had absolutely no ambition at all when it came to school … and he was so thin!”
Frank’s expulsion from school put an end to his formal education as well as to his mother’s dream of his becoming a civil engineer or a doctor. With no education and no skills, he now seemed destined for a lifetime of menial labor in odd jobs. Dolly was enraged when she found out about all the classes that Frank had cut, but he didn’t care. He told her that he would rather play pool all day in the Cat’s Meow than sit in a boring classroom.
Dolly screamed at him. “If you think you’re going to be a goddamned loafer, you’re crazy.” She insisted that he get a job, but Frank said that he didn’t know where to look.
“Call your godfather,” Dolly said. “Make him give you a job on The Jersey Observer.”
The next day Dolly phoned