His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [61]
“I don’t know why I did it,” he said. “It just seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Frank did not press charges, so four policemen escorted Dorogokupetz to the safety of the subway and sent him home to the Bronx.
The next day’s papers carried headlines about the incident. “Sinatra Hit by Eggs; The Voice Scrambles Song,” said one. “Hen Fruit Hits Heartthrob,” said another. A group of sailors who read the stories of Dorogokupetz’s egging began throwing ripe tomatoes at Frank’s photographs on the theater marquee, leaving angry red splotches all over the boyish smile, the bow tie, and the curly forelock hanging down the forehead.
None of this diminished the bobby-soxers’ idolatry. Their rush to touch Frank after every show necessitated posting security guards outside his dressing room.
“That dressing room was always jammed,” recalled Mary Lou Watts, “especially when Frank’s mother was there. She was a great big bossy lady and towered over her husband, who was about the size of a mushroom. He was as little as Frank, but that mother of his was huge and very domineering. Scare you to death.”
On her regular pilgrimages to the Paramount, Dolly told reporters that Frankie was a fine boy. “He may be famous now, but he’ll always be a baby to me,” she said. “And I always told him to be nice to people as he goes up the ladder, because they’re the same people he’ll pass coming down. So far he has followed my instructions.”
Most of Frank’s friends from Hoboken waited in line to see him, including Tony Mac, who couldn’t get backstage after the show. “When Frank came to the Union Club with Jimmy Durante I asked him why I wasn’t allowed in to see him and he said, ‘The signal was to say you was my cousin.’ ”
Marion Brush Schreiber was ushered in right away without knowing the password. She had kept her friendship with Frank from their days together on Garden Street, and he was very pleased to see her again. “He introduced me to the Ink Spots,” she said. “He was a great host; afterwards, he walked me to the elevator and kissed me good-bye.”
Another backstage visitor was Fred “Tamby” Tamburro, who had moved back to Hoboken after turning down the job as Frank’s valet the year before. Now he needed five thousand dollars to buy a tavern. His arrangements for financing had fallen through at the last minute, so he went to see Frank at the Paramount. Knowing that his former singing partner was making more than a million dollars a year, Tamby felt confident that Sinatra would lend him the money, but Frank turned him down cold.
Minutes later, while Tamby was still in Frank’s dressing room, Buddy Rich, who was out of the service, stopped by and mentioned that he wanted to start his own band. Frank gave him forty thousand dollars on the spot. After Rich left, Tamby grabbed Sinatra and threw him up against the wall as he used to do when The Hoboken Four were touring for Major Bowes.
“He called the cops on me, but then changed his mind and told them to let me go,” said Tamby. “He knew how it would look if his old partner was arrested for beating on him.
“A lot of people in Hoboken hate him ’cause he made it big. With me—I praise him to the sky as an entertainer. I told him to his face: ‘Frank, as an entertainer, you’re the tops. As a man—you stink.’ ”
Frank continually posed challenges to the ingenuity of his press agents. George Evans accompanied him on a train from New York City to Boston, where Frank was to address an interfaith tolerance rally of sixteen thousand teenagers in the Boston Garden. Evans, who was a committed liberal, was all for building on the image of Frank’s wholehearted support for President Roosevelt.
But Frank had agreed to address the rally before he realized that it was the same night that Tami Mauriello was fighting in Madison Square Garden. By the time the train reached New Haven, Connecticut, he was getting restless. He told Evans he was going to the club car for a drink. An hour later, Evans went looking for him and discovered that Sinatra had got off