• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Rudin spent the next three hours negotiating with the Labor leader Hawk over a public statement that would satisfy the Australians while preserving Frank’s pride. He said that the singer “accepts that working members of the Australian media would be doing less than their professional duty if they did not make every effort to keep the public informed about the visit of an international celebrity.” The union leader recognized “the unique international stature of … Sinatra and his understandable desire to be protected therefore from an uninhibited exposure to the media.”

The final result was a joint statement that without an explicit apology said Frank “did not intend any general reflection upon the moral character of working members of the Australian media. …”

U.S. editorials cheered the Australians for forcing Frank to his knees.

“Americans by now are pretty well inured to the antics of their elderly, ill-mannered and foul-mouthed matinee idol, Frank Sinatra,” said the Washington Star. “Australians, to their credit, are not.… [They] … have a refreshingly direct and forthright manner of handling such things, and we heartily applaud their actions in this case. If American unions—and audiences—showed the same resolution, we might spare ourselves a great deal of unnecessary unpleasantness.”

“The Aussies, being the nice people they are, passed up their golden chance, which was to find a nice, slow freighter and send [Frank Sinatra] to sea with ample time to reflect on the ingratitude of people who refuse to accept wealth and fame as reason to excuse pigpen manners,” said the New York Daily News. “They let him continue his tour and so he will come back to his homeland under his own momentum, where nearly everybody understands what an honor it is to be kicked in the groin by so famous and talented a man, and where bulky henchmen can help Frank impart the wisdom to any who may need persuading.”

Bob Hope regaled audiences with his account of the episode: “They finally let Frank out of the country right after the head of the union down there woke up one morning and saw a kangaroo’s head on the next pillow.”

Back in the United States, at a nightclub engagement at Lake Tahoe, his first since the Gal-Neva days with Sam Giancana, Frank offered a mock apology to the prostitutes of the world for putting them in the same category with female journalists:

“I want to apologize to all the hookers, who are the Madonnas of the Evening, for comparing them to news-women,” he said. “Newswomen sell their souls. Who’d want their bodies?”

Proceeding to New York, where he performed on live television before a capacity audience at Madison Square Garden, he again spewed hateful venom at the press, but held himself in check until the commercial breaks.

“A funny thing happened in Australia,” he said. “I made a mistake and got off the plane. You think we’ve got trouble with one Rona Barrett, but they’ve got twenty in Australia and each one’s uglier than the other.… Those nickel-and-dime garbage dealers make Rona Barrett look like a nun.”

The audience screamed its approval, but the ratings were abominable. Frank’s show, ballyhooed as “a once in a lifetime event ‘live’ at Madison Square Garden,” fell to number forty in the week’s ratings, an indication that most of the country preferred watching Kojak and reruns of Father Knows Best. Even the critics were disparaging, especially Rex Reed, who said that Frank was sloppier than Porky Pig, with manners more appalling than a subway sandhog.

“All of which might be tolerable if he could still sing,” wrote Reed. “But the saddest part, the hardest part to face about this once-great idol now living on former glory, is that Frank Sinatra has had it. His voice has been manhandled beyond recognition, bringing with its parched cloak only a painful memory of burned-out yesterdays. Frank Sinatra has become a bore.”

Berating him for “spitting libelous insults at the female members of the press when he should be arrested,” and telling offensive racial