His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [49]
“At the Paramount, we sent his shirts to the laundry every day because of all the makeup he wore, and we always wrote in indelible ink ‘no starch.’ One day they came back starched, and Frank hit the ceiling. He threw the shirts at me and started kicking them all over the floor, yelling and screaming and cursing. ‘Fuck you,’ he hollered. I threw the shirts right back at him and yelled, ‘Fuck you, too, Frank. What the hell do you think you’re doing? Are you crazy or something? It isn’t my fault. I didn’t starch the damn things.’ He stormed out of the room and didn’t speak for hours.”
Behind Frank’s back, his friends started referring to him as “the monster,” and calling George Evans “Frankenstein.” They knew better than ever to speak to Frank in the morning.
“It would take him two hours to wind up, and nobody talked until he was ready,” said Nick. “Nobody would even go into the room until they knew what kind of mood he was in that day.”
Axel Stordahl and songwriter Jimmy Van Heusen stood the best chance of eliciting good humor, but Frank screamed even at them occasionally. The two men were part of the entourage called The Varsity. It included his gofer/assistant Nick Sevano; his music company partner, Ben Barton; manager Hank Sanicola; bodyguard/boxers Tami Mauriello and Al Silvani; Jimmy Taratino, who wrote for the boxing magazine Knockout; along with lyricist Sammy Cahn and record company chief Manie Sacks.
The Varsity headed for cover the day that Frank read the review saying that he was nothing more than a love object of girls swept away by war hysteria. The reviewer dismissed his success as the result of “wartime degeneracy.” Frank exploded. “The war has nothing to do with it. It just so happens that I am the greatest singing sensation of the last ten years.”
The mere mention of the war galvanized Evans into action. He understood the resentment of those who felt that Frank had no right to be making thousands of dollars at home while so many brave American boys were dying for forty dollars a month, so he sent him to Philadelphia to sing for the boys in the naval hospital. Then he began volunteering him for as many war bond rallies as he could find. At a war bond auction at Bonwit Teller’s in Manhattan, which Evans arranged and publicized, Frank sang songs for the highest bidders. The top bid of $10,000 was for “The Song Is You”; “Night and Day” brought $4,500. A Frank Sinatra kiss brought one hundred dollars.
Everyone seemed to be getting into uniform except Frank. Buddy Rich, Dorsey’s drummer, joined the Marines. Ziggy Ellman, Dorsey’s trumpeter, and Paul Weston, the arranger, joined the Army. Eddy Duchin was in the Navy and Glenn Miller was leading the Air Force band. Joe DiMaggio and Hank Greenberg, two of the biggest baseball stars of the day, also joined. And so did Frank’s good friend, Tami Mauriello, the heavyweight boxer.
Evans kept telling reporters that Frank was a father before Pearl Harbor and his wife was expecting another baby soon, both legitimate reasons to disqualify him from the draft. In 1943 it seemed almost shameful for an able-bodied man to be seen at home. Already Frank had fought with a couple of soldiers who had seen him in a nightclub and yelled out, “Hey, Wop. Why aren’t you in uniform?” A variation of that same question began popping up in the press. “I’ll go anytime they say,” said Frank publicly. ‘I’d like to join the Marines.’ Privately, he confided to columnist Earl Wilson that he would lose more than $300,000 worth of contracts if his career were interrupted with a stint in the service.
He was classified 1-A after his preliminary medical and said that he was “restless and ready to go.” A month later, he was called back for a second examination and rejected for service as 4-F.