His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [240]
Frank agreed with Agnew about “the disease of our times” being an artificial and masochistic sophistication, and said that was what concerned him most about American life.
“It’s the amorality,” said Frank. “And so much restlessness. I guess we just got used to a way of life in my age bracket. Things are confusing a lot of Americans. Take the protestations, called for or uncalled for. I’m not against protestations, if they’re for a cause. But I don’t like rebellion without a cause. It’s frightening.”
He felt secure and comfortable with Agnew, who decried student protestors, antiwar demonstrators, flag burners, rioters, draft dodgers, narcotics, and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).
Vic Gold, Agnew’s press secretary, commented on the shared politics of the two men. “After Frank and the Vice-President became friends, Shirley MacLaine, who was one of the radical liberals the Vice-President was talking about, was quoted as saying, ‘I wonder what Frank Sinatra and Spiro Agnew talk about,’ ” he said. “Frank heard that and said, ‘Tell her: We talk about you, dear. We talk about you.’ ”
“There was instant chemistry—personally and politically—between Sinatra and Agnew,” said Peter Malatesta, special assistant to the Vice-President and a nephew of Bob Hope, “and because of that we started spending a lot of time with Frank in Palm Springs. He treated the Vice-President like royalty, even named the guest house he had built for JFK after him and filled ‘Agnew House’ with specially mono-grammed matches and stationery.
“Life on the Sinatra compound was full of excitement and luxury. Every night was a party, with regulars that included the Ronald Reagans, Roz Russell and Freddie Brisson, Jimmy Van Heusen, the Milton Berles, the Bennett Cerfs, Dr. Michael DeBakey, Jilly Rizzo, and Barbara and Zeppo Marx. Of course, after Frank and Barbara started dating, we didn’t see much of Zeppo, which kind of upset Mrs. Agnew, who saw Barbara slipping out one morning and realized that she had been sleeping over. Judy Agnew thought Zeppo was a great friend of Frank’s and that was quite unsettling to her. I mentioned to him that the Veep’s wife was a little undone by the Barbara business, but Frank just shrugged and said he couldn’t let her go home at night because a coyote might get her!
“His setup in Palm Springs was perfect. There was enough security to satisfy the Secret Service and enough luxury to satisfy everybody else. Every bedroom had two bathrooms so that husbands didn’t have to share with wives, and each had medicine cabinets perfectly stocked at all times. There were also ‘his’ and ‘her’ closets in the bedroom, each with a new pair of slippers arid a bathrobe. The guest suites all had a hotline to the full-service kitchen on the compound, which provided twenty-four-hour service, and yet if you wanted privacy, you could use the Pullman kitchen in the bedroom that was fully stocked with food and liquor.
“Life with Frank was sweet, which is why the Vice-President made eighteen trips to Palm Springs in a year and a half. The Agnews spent Easter, Thanksgiving, and New Year’s there, and after Frank’s retirement, things really started to swing!”
Frank’s March 1971 announcement of his retirement came after a year of dwindling record sales and miserable movie reviews. On his album of Rod McKuen songs A Man Alone, Frank had sung splendidly, but his recitation of McKuen’s mawkish poetry might have contributed to the meager 63,500 copies sold, which compared poorly with his previous average of 150,000. When he listened to his voice on his next album, Watertown, even he was chagrined. Some critics felt it was too progressive for his traditional audience, but not enough so to attract the children of Woodstock. The album sold only 35,000 copies. Sinatra & Company, released in 1971, showed Frank trying to stay contemporary,