His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [297]
“When a folk hero like Frank Sinatra exhibits himself as an obnoxious bully, forcing working men and women to commit infractions which cause them to be reprimanded and to lose significant amounts of income, to fear the loss of their job, it may very well be time to reconsider the question of licensing entertainers.”
Blaming the “merciless media,” Golden Nugget chairman Stephen Wynn defended Frank. “He’s the only major entertainer who works more nights for charity than for money.”
Jacobson retorted: “Mr. Sinatra’s volatile temper and his intimidating, abusive behavior [showed] no evidence of compassion or humanitarianism. There was no charity [in his actions].”
Feeling insulted and demeaned, Frank slashed back in anger, calling Jacobson a parasite and vowing never to appear again in New Jersey.
Mickey Rudin made the announcement: “Mr. Sinatra has instructed me to limit the number of his performances and, therefore, has decided that he will not perform in a state where appointed officials feel the compulsion to use him as ‘a punching bag.’ … It is difficult to believe that Mr. Jacobson was not well aware of the fact that the obnoxious remarks he made for the benefit of the television cameras would result in headlines throughout the world.”
The lawyer berated all New Jersey officials for not springing to Frank’s defense and for not chastising Jacobson. Expressing outrage that Sinatra had not heard “from any of the prominent citizens of the State of New Jersey who have called upon him to render his services for charitable causes, or even from the board of governors of a hospital that has insisted on putting his name on one of their buildings,” Rudin canceled Frank’s coming engagement in Atlantic City with Dean Martin.
New Jersey Assemblyman Michael Adubato proposed that the state make an official apology to “our native son … for unwarranted and obnoxious criticism of him.… Let’s plead with him to return to New Jersey, the home of your parents, Dolly and Marty Sinatra. Frank, come back to your roots. Come home to New Jersey. I love you.”
When Adubato stood up with his resolution, Assembly members from the southern part of the state walked out of the chamber while others called him out of order and ended the discussion.
The New York Daily News expressed its sentiments in an editorial entitled “Old Sore Eyes” which said: “Sinatra is not only an arrogant, offensive bully, he is also a whiner. He can dish it out but he can’t take it. He’s a snob who has repudiated the people who paid his way to celebrity hood. Las Vegas can keep him.”
35
Before he issued his edict against New Jersey, Frank made a pilgrimage to Hoboken to make peace with his Irish godfather, to whom he had not spoken for almost fifty years. The death of his mother had left him bereft of his past, his roots. All of his parents’ relatives were dead, with the exception of a ninety-year-old aunt in a nursing home. There was no one left to connect him with his mother and father except for Frank Garrick, once Marty Sinatra’s best friend and the man Dolly had chosen to be her son’s godfather. But the two men had not spoken to each other since Garrick had fired Frank, when his teenage godson tried to preempt a dead reporter’s newspaper job.
“Oh, the temper and the names he called me,” Frank Garrick recalled. “Words you have never heard. That temper was something in those days. Murderous. He never spoke to me again and neither did Dolly. Marty still came around, but it was never the same. I wasn’t invited to Frankie’s wedding to Nancy Barbato. I never met his kids. I wasn’t even asked to the fiftieth anniversary party he had for his folks in Jersey City. But a while after his mom died, he called me up and said he would like to come over. He never made it, though. Then he called a couple of times more,