His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [253]
The tour ended with an international incident in Australia when Frank insulted the country’s press corps. Darting past reporters in Melbourne, he spat at the reporters waiting to interview him before his rehearsal at Festival Hall. One newsman had managed to reach him by phone earlier in the morning to ask what he had eaten for breakfast and Frank slammed the phone down without responding.
“The idiot,” Frank said. “What the hell does he care what I had for breakfast? I was about to tell him what I did after breakfast.”
He refused to be interviewed after his rehearsal, and when he returned to his hotel and found more television cameramen waiting for him, he exploded, a signal for his bodyguards to fly into action.
According to one of the cameramen, one of Frank’s bodyguards wrapped an electric cord around his throat and warned, “Things are going to get physical.”
Reporter Hilary Sexton emerged from the fray with cuts on her face.
“Sinatra’s goon squads blocked the way and then attacked the newsmen,” said Jim Oram of the Sydney Daily Mirror.
That evening, Frank appeared at Melbourne’s Festival Hall before a sold-out house of eight thousand people, who clapped, cheered, and stamped their feet with approval.
“Too much booze, too many smokes, too many long, long nights have taken the glow from his voice, but no one gave a damn,” wrote the Sydney Daily Mirror. “For Sinatra still has the phrasing which cannot be surpassed, the timing, the splendid arrogance of remarkable talent.”
During his “tea break,” Frank sat on a stool to talk to the audience and castigated Australia’s reporters.
“They are bums and parasites who have never done an honest day’s work,” he said of the men. “Most of them are a bunch of fags, anyway.” He called the women “broads and buck-and-a-half hookers.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m a little tired tonight. I had to run all day because of the parasites who chased us.… They won’t quit. They wonder why I won’t talk to them. I wouldn’t drink water with them, let alone talk to them. It’s the scandal men that bug you and drive you crazy, and the hookers—the broads of the press are the hookers. I hope I don’t have to explain to you the word hooker,” he said, “but I’m not particular, I’d give them a dollar fifty.… We who have God-given talent say to hell with them. …”
The next day, the country was in an uproar. “Who the hell does this man Sinatra think he is?” demanded Neville Wran, leader of the Labor party in New South Wales.
A member of the National Parliament reproved Frank’s “goon squads masquerading as security guards.”
Jim North of the Australian Journalists Association said, “I will call on 114 affiliated unions and ask them to blackball Sinatra unless he apologizes for calling our women journalists whores.”
The Stagehands Union refused to work, so Frank’s $650,000 Australian concert tour was canceled.
The Waiters Union refused to serve him, so room service at his hotel was cut off.
The Transport Union workers refused to refuel his Gulfstream jet, blocking his departure until he said he was sorry.
Refusing to apologize to members of the press, Frank demanded that they apologize to him “for fifteen years of abuse I have taken from the world press.” Then he retreated to his hotel while Mickey Rudin called the president of the Australian Labor Party, Robert Hawk, to ask whether the singer would be allowed to leave the country.
“If he can walk on water,” said the labor leader. “There will be no boat and no plane leaving until your man apologizes.”
With Jim Mahoney playing golf in Scotland—an absence that would cost the publicist his job a few weeks later—Rudin was forced to handle the press himself. He called a press conference to say that his client was regretful but unrepentant, and wanted him to investigate the possibility of taking legal action against the unions.
“I’d like to believe this is not Fascist Spain or Germany in Hitler’s time,” said Rudin. “We are astounded that the decisions of a few union leaders can apparently deprive a man of his living, can