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By Root 1827 0

Michaud, John J. Miller, Mitch Miller, John Mitchell, Ellen Moesch, Bill Moran, Chuck Moses, Jim Murray, Muriel and Joseph Nellis, Gerry Nettieton, Charlotte Newcorn, Tracy Noble, Rudy Pacht, George Pappas, Betty Burns Paps, Jacqueline Park, Ben Pearson, Celia Pickeil, Milt Pickman, Aldo Poncato, Beans Ponedel, Dave Powers, Doug Prestine, Ed Pucci, Anthony Quinn, Nancy Siedman Rapapport, Dan Rapoport, Matt Reese, Ed Reid, Sue Reilly, Nancy Clark Reynolds, the late Nelson Riddle, Kenny Roberts, Kendis Rochlin, William Roemer, Bahman Rooin, N. Joseph Ross, Barbara Ann Rowan, Barbara Rudd, China and Mort Sahl, Jeannie Sakol, Ralph Salerno, Tommy Sands, Yvonne Sangiacomo, Nadine Sauer, Frank Saunders, Chuck Scardina, Madeline Schapp, Barbara Schick, Mrs. Edward Schisser, Arthur Schurgin, Dr. Maxine Schurter, Carolyn See, John Seigenthaler, Mary Lou Watts Setylmayer, Nick Sevano, Artie Shaw, Julie and Bob Sherman, Norman Sherman, Joseph Shimon, Donna Shor, Mike Shore, Jo-Carroll Silvers, Phil Silvers, Antoinette Spatolla Sinatra, Frank Anthony Sinatra, Frank Sinatra, Jr., Marilyn Sinatra, Robert Slatzer, Pearl Similly, Glen Spencer, Penina Spiegel, Sam Spiegel, Arlene Stern, Raymond Strait, Elaine Stritch, the late David Susskind, Lee Sylvester, Johanna Tani, Daniel Taradash, Josephine Tingley, Mel Tormé, Fred Tredy, Maureen Tretick, Renee Valente, Rudy Vallee, Ted Van Dyke, Bethel Van Tassel, Michael Viner, Olga von Loewenstein, Karen Von Unge, Walter Wager, Eli Wallach, Mary Wallner, Bob Warren, Steven Weisman, Michael Whalen, Suzanne Wickham, Dr. Joan Willens, William Reid Woodfield, Yabo Yablonsky, Mickey Ziffern, Sybilla Zinsser, Tony Zoppi.

My special thanks to Mervin Block, who is the best friend and mentor a writer can have. From the beginning he helped to shape this book, which he later edited, trying to impose grammar, punctuation, and correct spelling. In the four years I worked on the book, he battled bureaucracy in several cities to scour court records and retrieve secret documents. He pored over microfilm, persuaded reluctant people to talk, and opened slammed doors. All with unflagging persistence and rollicking good humor. By example, he taught me to shun mediocrity, to strive for excellence.

There would have been no book without the efforts of my agent, Lynn Nesbit of I.C.M., Wayne S. Kabak, General Counsel of Josephson International, Inc., and Jeanne Bernkopf, an editing genius.

And finally, my love and my thanks to my husband, Mike Edgley, whose solid support lifts the wings I fly on.

Kitty Kelley

February 1986

1

On the night of December 22, 1938, two constables from Hackensack, New Jersey, headed for the Rustic Cabin in Englewood Cliffs to arrest Frank Sinatra.

Armed with a warrant charging adultery, the two officers walked into the dim little roadhouse looking for the skinny singer who waited tables and sang with Harold Arden’s band over the radio line to WNEW in New York.

They waited until Frank finished his midnight broadcast and then sent word that they wanted to give him a Christmas present from one of his admirers. Falling for the ruse, Sinatra walked over to their table, where the criminal court officers arrested him and took him off to the courthouse. After posting five hundred dollars bail, he was released on his own recognizance.

The next day a Hoboken newspaper carried a story headlined: SONGBIRD HELD IN MORALS CHARGE, but no one in Hoboken paid much attention. They were accustomed to seeing the Sinatra name in print for getting into trouble with the law. Frank’s uncle Dominick, a boxer known as Champ Sieger, had been charged with malicious mischief; his uncle Gus had been arrested several times for running numbers; his other uncle, Babe, had been charged with participating in a murder and had been sent to prison. His father, Marty, was once charged with receiving stolen goods, and his mother, Dolly, was regularly in and out of courthouses for performing illegal abortions. And Frank himself had been arrested just a month before on a seduction charge.

Frank’s relationship with the