His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [8]
“Don’t do me no favors, Frank.”
She said that there were no fights or arguments over her pregnancy and that Frank did not suggest an abortion. But Dolly bore down so hard on him for continuing to see Toni that the anxiety contributed to her miscarriage in her third month.
“When I told Frank, he was real sweet. ‘Gee, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ll do anything to take care of you.’ Later, he said he would marry me anyway. But his mother kept up her screaming about us, and after a while Frank started to get real snippy. He told me that I was standing in the way of him being a big singer and he didn’t come around anymore.”
Toni called Frank one night at the Rustic Cabin. Nancy Barbato answered the phone and announced, “He’s my boyfriend and I want to know why you want to talk to him.”
Toni was so angry that she jumped into her car and drove to the Rustic Cabin. Frank saw her walk in and quickly got off the bandstand and walked the other way. She grabbed him.
“I told him that I was going to make such a scene in that place that he would probably get fired. Then Nancy Barbato tried to grab me to help him, but I screamed at her. ‘Get your hands off me.’
“ ‘What is this? Another whore?’ Nancy asked.
“ ‘Get away from me or I’ll hit you,’ I yelled. Then I tore her dress. Frank had been standing there without saying a word. Finally he spoke up.
“ ‘Is that necessary?’ he said.
“ ‘If you didn’t want to see me anymore, why didn’t you let me know?’ I said.
“ ‘No,’ he said. ‘I want to see you.’
“ ‘You what?’ screamed Nancy.
“ ‘Will you get the hell out of here,’ Frank said to her.”
Taking Toni by the hand, Frank led her into the lounge. “That’s where he said, ‘I have to marry Nancy. Otherwise her father will kill me. She’s pregnant.’ ”
“So what?” said Toni. “I was pregnant and you didn’t break your neck for me.”
“Yeah, but my mother. …”
“Never mind about your mother.”
“You were a fighter, but Nancy won’t stand up to her.”
Toni stormed out of the Rustic Cabin and drove home, wondering how she would ever tell her friends in Lodi that Frank wasn’t going to marry her.
Determined to punish him for publicly embarrassing her, she swore out a warrant for his arrest on a morals charge, stating that on November second and ninth, 1938, Frank Sinatra, “being then and there a single man over the age of eighteen years, under the promise of marriage, did then and there have sexual intercourse with the said complainant who was then and there a single female of good repute for chastity whereby she became pregnant.”
Frank’s first arrest was on November 27, 1938. He was taken to the Bergen County jail and held for sixteen hours. The news made the papers, and Dolly called Toni Francke in tears.
“If you cared for him, you would not have done this,” she said.
“Frank was going out with Nancy the whole time he was going with me,” said Toni.
“Not that I know of,” said Dolly. That was a lie.
“He made a fool out of me.”
“Please get him out of jail.”
“I’ll get him out when I’m good and ready,” said Toni, slamming the receiver down.
Dolly called back begging for her son’s release and even offered Toni money, but she got nowhere. In desperation, Dolly sent Marty to Lodi to talk to Toni’s family.
“Marty came to my father’s house, and he was shaking,” she said. “He walked real slow and quiet, like he was a beaten man. Dolly made that man so low. He said, ‘Frank should respect his mother but when he doesn’t, she takes it out on me.’ You never embarrass an Italian man and make him low like that. As soon as I saw him I felt bad. He looked like a hobo at the door begging for something to eat. He didn’t even ask for help right away, but his face said it all. He was stunned when I let him in. He thought I was going to swear at him. My father came out and said, ‘You look bad. You want a shot of liquor?’
“ ‘Yeah,’ said Marty. ‘Today I feel tired.’ ”
The two men talked for a couple of hours, and then Toni’s father asked her to get Frank out of jail. “Why?” she asked. “So