His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [31]
After food and rent, most of their money supported Frank’s mania for clothes so he would always be well-dressed when he performed. He needed to dress rich to feel important, and admitted that new clothes bolstered his ego.
“Every time I felt insecure I used to go out and get ten more suits,” he said. In 1939, his clothes addiction ran to $35 Woodside suits, $12.50 Johnston & Murphy shoes, and $2.50 broadcloth shirts. He insisted on all-silk bow ties for $2.50 and silk hose for sixty-five cents a pair. Frank spent whatever he wanted on clothes, charging them when he was broke. He once bounced a check to his tailor, Louis Stoll, who lived in their apartment building, but made good the next month.
Still, his excessive spending terrified Nancy, who was so frugal she deprived herself of any extravagances. She sewed her own dresses and suits, and bought only an occasional jabot blouse for $3.50. Everything else she put toward Frank’s wardrobe.
“She used to sew a lot for Frank so he’d look nice when he went on auditions and jobs,” said her friend Andrea Gizza. “She’d make him things like scarves and socks. Once, when he needed a new tie to match an outfit he was wearing on a job, she even cut up a dress of hers and made him a tie out of the material. Another time—it was his birthday—she didn’t have much to give him so she took an old glove of his and stuffed a quarter into each of the fingers. She said he cried when he opened the gift and said, ‘Honey, someday we’re going to be rich, you’ll see.’
“But Nancy didn’t care about being rich. She wanted nice things, sure. But above all she wanted to have a nice family and settle down to a nice normal life. Or at least near-normal, since she was married to a singer.”
But Frank continued to spend money whether he had it or not.
“I remember visiting Nancy on Audubon Avenue after she and Frank got married,” said Adeline Yacenda. “Frank was away a lot. One day Nancy brought out this beautiful bag that Frank had bought her for thirty-five dollars. You have no idea of how expensive that was in those days. Nancy held the purse like a sacred relic, and I was absolutely wide-eyed. ‘You better tell him to hang on to his money,’ I said. ‘That kind of money won’t come along that often.’ ”
Nancy was so grateful to be Mrs. Frank Sinatra that she did anything she could to make him happy. She cooked his favorite meals—spaghetti and lemon pie. She tolerated the odd hours that he kept as he raced from one radio station to the next begging to sing free simply to be heard. She waited patiently for him to come home from the Rustic Cabin every night. She encouraged him constantly, saying he was going to be a bigger star than Bing Crosby. And she tried to get along with her mother-in-law, which required great effort on her part because she did not like Dolly and bitterly resented her hold over Frank. Dolly insisted on her son’s visiting her in Hoboken at least once a week, and he dutifully did as he was told. Usually, he went by himself.
“Frank visited his mother often after he was married because she demanded it,” said Nick Sevano, Frank’s Hoboken friend. “If he didn’t come to see her, she’d go looking for him in New York!”
Nancy was thoroughly humiliated by her mother-in-law’s abortion business, which had become even more publicized after she and Frank returned from their honeymoon. On February 27, 1939, Dolly was arraigned in Hudson Special Sessions Court for performing yet another illegal operation. She pleaded non vult (does not wish to contest) before Judge Lewis B. Eastmead. The story was