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By Root 1952 0

the break with Frank], I thought I’d write a book about those funny times and I sat down with Joe Hyams. We got about thirty-two pages written before the word got out and oh, God! Rudin hit me with a letter you wouldn’t believe. I told him I’d never hurt Frank. I loved the guy. I just wanted to write about the good things. Not the bad stuff; nothing about the Mafia, none of that stuff. I even said they could have the galleys and if there was anything they wanted to take out of the book, it would be cut out, but Rudin wouldn’t hear of it. Man, when that word got around, I couldn’t get anybody to hang out with me. They all thought they’d be shot in the knees because Frank was mad.”

The night the divorce was granted, Johnny Carson announced the news to his Tonight Show audience by saying: “Hear about the trouble at Frank Sinatra’s house? Mia Farrow dropped her Silly Putty in Frank’s Poligrip.”

During this time, Sinatra was seriously involved in Hubert Humphrey’s 1968 presidential campaign. Lyndon Johnson had announced that he would not seek a second term as President. Senator Robert F. Kennedy declared his candidacy, which only caused Frank to intensify his efforts for Humphrey.

“Bobby is just not qualified to be president of the United States,” Frank said.

Kennedy’s candidacy rekindled Sinatra’s hatred for the man who had put Sam Giancana in prison and sent Jimmy Hoffa, another good friend, to the penitentiary for mail fraud and jury tampering.

“I remember Frank saying if Bobby Kennedy got elected, he will point his finger at all of us and say: ‘You are under arrest,’ ” said Mrs. Ted Allen, wife of one of Frank’s favorite photographers.

In May 1968, Frank flew to Washington with his Chicago Mafia friend, Allen Dorfman, to attend a party for Humphrey in columnist Drew Pearson’s Georgetown garden. Seeing Dorfman, a mob-connected associate of Jimmy Hoffa, socializing with Sinatra and the Vice-President made a Washington Post reporter curious about the relationship among these three men. Approaching Dorfman, the reporter asked if he was there to make a deal: Humphrey’s pardon of Jimmy Hoffa in exchange for helping get Humphrey elected. Dorfman replied bluntly. “Yeah … we’re here to buy everybody in town who’s for sale.” After the party, Frank met Mrs. Jimmy Hoffa and Teamster Vice-President Harold Gibbons for dinner.

The next night, following a Big Brothers benefit, Drew Pearson and Humphrey took Sinatra to the White House for a late night visit with Lyndon Baines Johnson. Frank’s animosity toward Bobby Kennedy was the only thing that made him partially acceptable to the President, who had never forgotten Sinatra’s rebuke to his fellow Texan, House Speaker Sam Ray bum, at the 1956 Democratic National Convention, nor his idolatry of John F. Kennedy in 1960. Johnson showed his disdain when Sinatra was ushered into the Lincoln bedroom well past midnight.

Lady Bird was already in her nightgown and the President was lying on a table getting a massage. Humphrey stopped by the canopied bed to talk to Mrs. Johnson while Frank walked over to the famous mantelpiece on which Jacqueline Kennedy had placed an inscribed plaque before leaving the White House. He looked closely at the inscription: “In this room lived John Fitzgerald Kennedy with his wife Jacqueline—during the two Years, ten months and two days he was President of the United States—January 20, 1961-November 22, 1963.”

President Johnson watched him examining the plaque. He then jumped off the massage table, grabbed an old souvenir booklet about the White House dating back to the Kennedy administration, and thrust it in Frank’s face.

“I don’t suppose you read, but this has lots of pictures. Here’s something else,” he added, handing Frank one of the presidential souvenirs he gave to his women visitors. “It’s a conversation piece,” he said of the lipstick with the White House seal on it. “It’ll make a big man of you with your women.”

Reeling from the insults, Frank turned and walked out of the room in a quiet rage, not realizing that he had seen his mirror image in the