His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [64]
9
With a draft classification of 4-F, Frank did not have to worry about military service until 1945, when he was suddenly called up for a reexamination. “I’m awfully upset right now,” he told reporters. “I’m going to visit my New Jersey draft board to find out my Selective Service status.”
After three days of medical exams Frank was declared 2-AF, meaning that his punctured eardrum disqualified him from serving and that he was “necessary for the national health, safety, and interest,” which would exempt him even from a war job. This new classification had been created when Congress passed a “work-or-fight” bill.
Then a newspaper headline asked, “Is Crooning Essential?” which stirred a national debate over Frank’s draft status. An investigation was ordered by the New Jersey Selective Service Board, which announced that it was referring the matter to the appeals board in Washington “under a recent ruling governing the reexamination of outstanding athletes and stage and screen stars.” This triggered bitter letters to the editor throughout the country.
“Can you tell me why athletes and stage and screen stars are so important that there must be some special dispensation concerning their war status?” the mother of an American soldier asked the New York Sun. “When the sons of ordinary citizens like myself go before a draft board, they go or not depending on the word of the local examiners, and that’s that.”
One of the most damning letters came from the men of Ward 47-4, Hospital Plant 4118 in England, who had read that the girls back home were jumping into snowbanks and threatening to take their lives if Frankie were drafted.
“There are millions of GIs in the Army, so I don’t see why there’s so many tears for one man,” wrote Pvt. Jerry M. Porcilli. “I am beginning to doubt if the girls back home are still civilized. My buddies agree with me that something should be done. Would you print this letter to show how the boys in the European Theater of Operations feel about the matter?”
On March 5, 1945, the New Jersey draft board declared there had been a “mix-up” and that Frank’s 4-F classification was to be continued. Not everyone was satisfied. George E. Sokolsky wrote in the New York Sun: “The 4-F explanation is emotionally unsatisfactory. A few devils might be psychoneurotics, but surely that generalization does not explain all the exemptions, deferments, and 4-Fs that one notes on stage, screen, and radio. Nor do pierced eardrums. If it is policy to retain a number of actors at home to entertain the public on the theory that it is sound to spread good cheer, then that should be stated and explained. But how would that include Frank Sinatra, regarding whose induction there was so much publicity and then a silence? It gives the impression that his opportunity to continue his private business pursuits while other men of his age are forced to give up their careers and fight, even to death, for their country is a result of his political activities. Certainly, no man would want to be put in that position and no man would want to take advantage of it.”
George Evans could not ignore this kind of public sentiment. He announced that Frank planned an immediate national tour of Army and Navy hospitals and that he would go overseas to entertain the troops in June.
“When Frank’s manager asked me to put together a show to tour Europe with Frank for six weeks, I was torn apart,” Phil Silvers recalled. “I was still on my honeymoon with Jo-Carroll. Yet Frank was a pal—if he needed me, I had to help. Jo-Carroll lost out to the tour. Frank left the details of the show in my hands because of my stage and USO experience.”
Jo-Carroll Silvers, a former Miss America from Tyler, Texas, was most understanding about that USO tour. “All the stars had been going overseas except for Frank, who was getting a lot of bad publicity because of it. He knew that he finally had to go, but he was scared,” she said. “He had heard the rumors from the Victory Committee that the guys were really going to let him have it. There were reports that they were