His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [271]
In Egypt, he performed before the pyramids in a benefit for President and Mrs. Anwar Sadat and received international press coverage for his generosity.
Caesars Palace staged a sixty-fourth birthday party for Frank, which also commemorated his fortieth anniversary in show business. The affair was videotaped by Sinatra’s Bristol Productions and sold to NBC-TV for a two-hour show entitled Sinatra—The First 40 Years. In saluting Frank, Dionne Warwick presented him with a special Grammy from the recording industry; Jule Styne presented him with the Pied Piper Award from ASCAP; Caesars Palace announced that the fountain in front of the casino would be called the Frank Sinatra Fountain and the coins tossed in would go to the John Wayne Memorial Cancer Clinic at UCLA; the Egyptian ambassador read a message of congratulations from President Anwar Sadat; the Israeli Consul General read a similar one from Menachem Begin; and Dean Martin presented Frank with an honorary diploma from Hoboken High School to compensate for the one he never earned.
In Hollywood, the show was hailed as “the greatest event of the decade in the world of entertainment,” but the East Coast wasn’t so complimentary. The Washington Star published an editorial entitled “The King and His Court,” which disparaged the spectacle and the “seemingly endless procession of sycophants who celebrated it for him, in a display of public groveling that would have embarrassed anyone except the gentleman in question, Mr. Frank Sinatra.…
“What was puzzling, as the festivities ground on and on, was the fear that seemed to quiver just beneath the gaiety. That wasn’t love emanating from the TV set; it was obsequiousness. Some of the most celebrated men and women in entertainment marched across the stage—in Las Vegas, of course—in a parade of abjection. Has Mr. Sinatra really accumulated so much wealth and influence that he can reduce Orson Welles, once a great actor and film-maker, to a sycophantic blob?
“Even more puzzling than the groveling was all the blather about Mr. Sinatra’s humanitarian enterprises. There were even emissaries from Israel and Egypt, in Camp David lock-step, on hand to present Mr. Sinatra with awards for his benevolence. Well, Mr. Sinatra’s charities are rather like Mr. Rockefeller’s dimes—good for the old blue-eyed image. They are not to be taken seriously by any except those who receive them.”
Praising Frank as “the best singer of American popular music who ever walked down the pike,” despite a voice “that may have lost much of its timbre,” the Washington Star editorial expressed wonder and awe at his performance. “That such beautiful music should emerge from such vulgarity is one of the great mysteries of the age; but we must count our blessings, no matter how peculiar.”
Then William Safire wrote a column in The New York Times about Frank’s “lifelong gangland friendships.” Having already called Safire “a goddamn liar,” Frank now went on a rampage against all the press. He sent letters to President Jimmy Carter, to his Cabinet, to every member of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, every governor, to publishers, business leaders throughout the country, and deans of every journalism school in America, begging them to join him in a crusade to restrain the nation’s “runaway press.” He asked them to remind “the press that there is more to the Constitution of this great nation than the First Amendment it so frequently hides behind.” Then he banned press coverage of him as the grand marshal in New York’s Columbus Day parade.
Frank continued his association with Ronald Reagan, and campaigned for him in the 1980 presidential race. He sponsored the first major Reagan fund-raiser in the Northeast and raised more than $250,000 in Boston.
“Why do I support Governor Reagan? Because I think he’s the proper man to be the president of the United States,” said Frank. “It’s so screwed up now, we need someone to straighten