His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [255]
With that syndicated review, Rex Reed earned Frank’s undying enmity, and his animosity scraped new depths. He had never forgiven the critic for once saying that Nancy, Jr., dressed like a pizza waitress, and Sinatra now unleashed his fury in attacks that were usually too crude to be printed.
Since his comeback, it seemed that Frank’s strained relationship with the press had suffered even greater stress, as if he were blaming reporters and critics for the shortcomings of his aging voice.
He seemed to think that if he flung enough acid, journalists and critics would see the error of their ways and pay him homage the way they had done in earlier years. Nothing less than adulation would suffice. Criticism of any kind produced attacks that were unsparing in acrimony and, at their worst, alarmingly irrational.
He barred Women’s Wear Daily from covering him after its critic savaged one of his performances: “The Voice is now the Void … a performance of self-destructive vulgarity. The ego-infested arrogance of a man who has made the sentiment of ‘My Way’ stand as his musical epitaph has totally surrendered any musical relevance by catering to the coarse and useless windbag within.”
When an entertainment writer in Reno, Guy Richardson, expressed a lukewarm attitude toward Sinatra, he was flabbergasted to receive a telegram from Frank calling him a “bigot,” and saying that he was “yellow from top to bottom.” He was even more stunned when Frank warned Harrah’s Club that he would walk off the stage if anyone from the Reno newspapers dared to attend one of his shows. When the publisher and editor of the Reno Evening Gazette and the Nevada State Journal appeared for one of his performances, they were barred.
In Toronto, Frank made the critics pay for their tickets to review him, an extremely rare thing for a performer to do. When one of his bodyguards punched a free-lance photographer from the Toronto Star, the newspaper wrote about it, causing Frank to roar onstage that evening, waving a copy of the paper, which described his “squad of menacing bodyguards.”
“I have only two uses for newspapers—to cover the bottom of my parrot’s cage and to train my dog on,” he told his audience.
He was incensed at Mike Royko of the Chicago Daily News for writing about his “army of flunkies” and “full-time police guard” while in the Windy City. He called the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist “a pimp because you are using people to make money just as [pimps do].”
So he used his concert series in Chicago to berate the columnist. “At least, we didn’t invite Jerko or whatever his name is,” he told one audience of six thousand. “Do you know he was our lookout at Pearl Harbor? I’d like to hire Chicago Stadium and box him for charity. We’ll pay him a thousand dollars for every round he lasts. He won’t make two dollars.”
Violence had accompanied Frank for years, but most people were reluctant to fight back. One who did was Frank J. Weinstock. An insurance agent from Salt Lake City, he sued Sinatra for assault and battery, claiming that Frank had ordered him beaten up by Jilly Rizzo and Jerry “The Crusher” Arvenitas in a Palm Springs restaurant. In his complaint, he said he had been in the men’s room of the Trinidad Hotel on May 5, 1973, when Frank entered with his bodyguards and said, “There’s the wise ass and smart son of a bitch who’s going to intercept my woman.” Frank had been having dinner with Barbara Marx and others. Weinstock was in the restaurant with his wife and some relatives. His complaint described what happened next.
“You’re kidding,” said Weinstock. “You can’t believe what you’re saying. I don’t know your woman. I’ve never seen her before in my life. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Look, Sinatra, aren’t you the Sinatra I read about in books who can have all the girls he wants, a great well-known, notorious lover? Do you really mean you’re afraid of me, a hick from Salt Lake City, Utah, bothering a man of your obvious prowess?”