His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [313]
CHAPTER 18
Some of the information in this chapter was obtained from published sources, including the New York World-Telegram and Sun, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Examiner, Chicago Sun-Times, and The Star.
Lester Velie reported in the Reader’s Digest that Capone gangster Charley “Cherry Nose” Gioe once introduced Sidney Korshak to Willie Bioff, panderer and labor racketeer, this way: “I want you to pay attention to Korshak. When he tells you something, he knows what he’s talking about. Any message he might deliver to you is a message from us.” Bioff testified to this introduction in a million-dollar movie shakedown trial of 1943 that sent seven Capone mobsters to jail.
The author also interviewed Richard Condon, Bill Davidson on May 23, June 12, 1983, and April 9, 1984, and the publicist on June 13, 1984. In an interview on August 4, 1984, Mrs. Griffin Dunne told the author: “It was at a party upstairs in the Bistro for the authors of Is Paris Burning? Frank was very drunk and insulting everyone. He told me to lose my husband [writer Dominick Dunne]; he called Gloria Romanoff “Miss Busybody” and told her to stay out of his life. Then Betty Bacall let him have it and he said, ‘I never liked you anyway. I was never in love with you.’ He was just awful.”
CHAPTER 19
The author interviewed a number of people who contributed information in this chapter, among them Maurice Manson on July 14, 1983, Sandra Giles on July 12, 13, 20, 1983, Peter Lawford, Joseph Shimon on November 5, 6, 1984, and January 5, 1985, Doug Prestine on June 21, 1983, Rona Barrett on May 10, 1983, and George Jacobs. Articles in the New York Post, Chicago Sun-Times, New York Times, and Variety were also consulted, along with several books.
CHAPTER 20
The material concerning Sinatra’s relationship with Sam Giancana and with the Kennedys was obtained from a wide variety of Justice Department and FBI files, surveillance records and wiretaps, interviews, and published books and sources.
The author obtained Sam Giancana’s Justice Department file through a Freedom of Information Act request. She also read William Brashler’s book, The Don: The Life and Death of Sam Giancana, New York: Harper & Row, 1977; Antoinette Giancana and Thomas C. Renner’s Mafia Princess, New York: William Morrow and Co., Inc., 1984; My Story by Judith Exner as told to Ovid Demaris, New York: Grove Press, 1977; The Boardwalk Jungle by Paul “Skinny” d’Amato as told to Ovid Demaris, New York: Bantam Books, 1986; John Davis’s The Kennedys: Dynasty and Disaster, New York: McGraw Hill Book Co., 1984; Michael Hillman and Thomas C. Renner’s Wall Street Swindler, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1977; Collier and Horowitz’s The Kennedys: An American Drama, New York: Summit Books, 1977; and Kenneth O’Donnell and David E. Powers’s Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, New York: Pocket Books, 1973.
Transcripts of federal wiretaps and Justice Department files on John F. Kennedy were examined by the author as were oral histories of David McDonald, president of the Steelworkers Union, and Representative Tom Rees (both available at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, Mass.).
The author conducted extensive interviews with many people, including Peter Lawford, Victor LaCroix Collins on June 4, 1984, William Reed Woodfield on July 9, 10, 19, 1983, Joseph Shimon, Dave Powers on January 22, 1982, George Jacobs, former Senator George Smathers on February 22, 1978 (who told the author, “Jack used to tell me how much Frank liked making it with colored girls”), Judith Exner on June 5, 1983, Albert Maitz on May 9, 1983, Nick Sevano, John Sigenthaler on February 4, 1986, Paul Corbin on March 24, 1985, and Shelly Davis on July 5, 1983. In an interview on April 3, 1985, Professor Paul Blakey of Notre Dame told the author, “I was a trial attorney in Justice and defending a case in Reading, Pennsylvania, against another attorney from New Jersey, Angelo Melandra, who said during the recess: ‘Tell