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COURTESY OF BERLINER STUDIO/BEIMAGES

Clint Eastwood always makes my day.

COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

With Tony Bennett and Jolene Schlatter at John Kluge’s ninety-fifth birthday party at Cipriani in New York, September 2009.

COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

With my best friend.

COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

ELEVEN

With Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco at the anniversary

party we threw for them at our Palm Springs home.

COURTESY OF BERLINER STUDIO/BEIMAGES

Come Rain or Come Shine

It is no secret that New York held a special place in Frank’s heart. He loved having an apartment in Manhattan and always relished performing in the city and in nearby New Jersey, his home state.

One year he took me on a rare visit back to Hoboken on the west bank of the Hudson River. He showed me the site of the cold-water flat at 415 Monroe Street where he’d been born. Walking hand in hand in that square mile not far from what is said to be the birthplace of baseball, Frank showed me the streets where he grew up among gangs of Irish, Italians, and Germans. Within sight of the Lower Manhattan skyline, the Sinatra connection was recorded everywhere, from a bronze star on the sidewalk to a small museum next to the house he bought for his parents on Hudson Street. He took me to see the homes on Park Avenue and Garden Street where he’d lived as a teenager, and he drove me past the A. J. Demarest High School, from which he’d dropped out. At the local library, he told me, there was a collection of his books, paintings, and memorabilia he’d gifted in honor of his mother.

At the Hoboken jail, he told me a story that made me laugh out loud. The singing heroes of Frank’s childhood had been Bing Crosby and Billie Holliday, so when Bing was arrested for being drunk in his neighborhood, Frank couldn’t believe his luck. He hurried over to the jailhouse, which had its cells in the basement, their windows at street level. Getting down on all fours, Frank peered in at his incarcerated idol desperate to talk to him, sing for him, or get any professional advice he could. Sadly, poor Bing was so loaded he could barely respond and yelled at “the kid” to go away. Frank ribbed Bing about that years later when they became buddies in Palm Springs.

Frank showed me the saloons that he knew as a scrappy kid. He drove me to the site of the Rustic Cabin in nearby Englewood, where he’d been “discovered” singing songs and telling jokes in between waiting tables. Everywhere we went there were signs claiming that Frank Sinatra was here or Frank Sinatra worked there. There was a Sinatra Drive and plans for a Sinatra Park. The local diner sold a “Frank Sinatra Steak,” and almost every Italian restaurant offered “Pasta Sinatra.” It was his town, but just as I’d escaped Bosworth and made a better life for myself, Frank had gotten out of Hoboken. His legacy was the hope for those he left behind that they might escape too if that was what they wanted. “When I was there I just wanted to get the hell out,” he once said. “It took me a long time to realize how much of it I took with me.” With his strong sense of community, loyalty, and devotion to things Catholic and Italian, Frank was a Hobokenite through and through, and the place rightly claimed him as its own.

Despite his great love of New Jersey and New York, Frank didn’t have a song that summed up his feelings about the place. I’d long thought that he should. When Martin Scorsese directed the 1977 musical New York, New York, starring Liza Minnelli and Robert De Niro (who Frank always hoped might play him in a movie one day), I had an idea. The title song written by John Kander and Fred Ebb and belted out by Liza was such an incredibly powerful number that I suddenly realized it was perfect for Frank. It would be great for him because of his connection with New York, but I was convinced it would be a huge hit internationally too. When I first suggested that he record it, though, he dismissed my idea out of hand. “Naw, that’s Liza’s song,” he said.