His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [235]
“Dolly just didn’t know what to do,” said Al Algiro. “She worried about moving away from her friends, but Frank promised that she would never be homesick because he’d fly any of us out there anytime she wanted. She told him she didn’t want to live in the desert during the summer when the temperature soars to 120 degrees before noon, so he promised her a condominium in La Jolla or Del Mar near the racetrack, which she loved. After a while, she just couldn’t keep saying no.”
When Dolly finally gave in, Frank built her a five-bedroom house, bought her every piece of Italian Provincial furniture she wanted, plus every kitchen appliance available. For her staff, he hired a cook, a gardener, three maids, and a team of security guards.
The most persuasive reason for Dolly’s move to Palm Springs was simply to see her son, because come October 1969 Frank could no longer visit her in New Jersey without being arrested. He had refused to appear before the State Commission on Investigation to answer questions about organized crime and was being threatened with possible contempt for declining to answer a subpoena. In return, he had sued in federal court, contending that the commission’s subpoena was illegal and that the State Commission was unconstitutionally created. “… Notwithstanding the fact that I am of Italian descent,” he stated, “I do not have any knowledge of the extent or the manner in which ‘organized crime’ functions in the State of New Jersey or whether there is such a thing as ‘organized crime.’ ”
By this time, Frank had assumed a permanent defensive stance about his Cosa Nostra relationships. In large part, he blamed Mario Puzo for his uncomfortable position in society, because of Puzo’s Mafia novel, The Godfather, which had been published in 1969. There were so many similarities between the fictional Johnny Fontane and Sinatra that little was left to the imagination, especially Frank’s.
“How close do you want to get to a singer who knew a president who was assassinated?” he asked angrily. “I read off Puzo one night in Chasen’s. What phony stuff! Somebody going to the mob to get a role in a movie. Puzo turned out to be a bum. He prostituted his own business making up such a phony story. I screentested for Cohn, and he hired me for the role [in From Here to Eternity]. Period.”
Jilly Rizzo, who was present at the Chasen’s confrontation, said he thought Frank was so angry he wanted to kill the author, but was restrained. Instead, he berated Puzo, who was so humiliated by Frank’s shouting that he walked out of the restaurant. Frank yelled after him, “Choke. Go ahead and choke, you pimp.”
Days later, Frank’s suit against the New Jersey State Commission on Investigation was dismissed by Federal Judge Coolahan, who ruled that the investigative body was indeed legal and valid.
Frank appealed the verdict to the U.S. Supreme Court, but by a 4-3 vote, the court rejected Frank’s arguments and refused to prevent his arrest for declining to answer the commission’s subpoena. His lawyer’s argument that Frank would be caused irreparable harm by appearing before the commission was not persuasive. Senator Clifford Case (R-N.J.) introduced a bill in the United States Senate, called “The Frank Sinatra Amendment,” which would make it a criminal offense to flee across a state line to avoid testifying before a state crime investigative commission.
Frank still refused to bow to the subpoena. The commission announced that it was prepared to seek his indictment on a criminal contempt charge, an extraditable offense that could return him to the state in handcuffs. At that point, he gave in.
“Can you imagine what the headline would have been?” asked his lawyer. “Frank simply couldn’t afford that kind of publicity, even though we felt that the commission moves against him were unconstitutional.”
His lawyer agreed to produce Frank for questioning only if the commission would hold a secret session in Trenton at