Frank: The Voice (115 page)

These were musicians talking, they were speaking of Sinatra as a musician, and they spoke with awe—of his pitch, his incomparable way with a lyric, his transcendent professionalism, his collegiality. And even his vulnerability. At one point Vinnie Falcone, who was Sinatra’s conductor and accompanist toward the end of the singer’s career, spoke of his fruitless efforts to get Frank to record the great and legendarily difficult Billy Strayhorn classic “Lush Life.” “Come on, Boss, just you and me and a piano,” Vinnie said. Sinatra shook his head. Even the gods know their limits.

The evening stayed with me. Here was a vision of Frank Sinatra as a man and an artist, without the traps and trappings of celebrity, without a trace of the bad behavior for which he was so celebrated and which so often seemed to be the main, if not the only, topic of conversation. Sinatra lived and breathed in the talk of these awed colleagues. And so when yet another major biography of him came out just months after that dinner at Guido’s—an apparently
exhaustively researched book, in which, remarkably, the subject (and certainly the great artist) neither lived nor breathed—my interest was piqued.

The book you hold in your hands would have never existed without Phyllis Grann, great editor and—I am proud to say—great friend. To encourage a first-time biographer to take on Sinatra—not only a gigantic subject but also, perhaps, the most chronicled human in modern history—might have looked like sheer folly to most people (including, often, the biographer himself) but never to Phyllis, who evinced a mysteriously deep and abiding belief in me from the first time we met.

From the word go with
Frank
, it was starkly clear to me that I was far out of my depth, miles out at sea where my limited expertise was concerned. I proceeded with maximum misgivings, even with terror. But I worked hard at it, slowly and steadily; and the one thing I never lost sight of was that dinner at Guido’s. Here was a genius and a great artist, a man who had changed—shaped—the twentieth century, and I owed him his due. If I wasn’t qualified to provide it, I owed it to Sinatra to qualify myself. My affection for him may have wavered—he had a genius, too, for making himself dislikable—but the one note I could never find within myself was the condescension, even the contempt, on which so many other writers based their narratives. Frank always brought me back. I dreamed of him, spoke to him, even, saw him plain in all his electric variability.

Idolatry, too, was out. Idolatry was fine for the idolators, but, once again, I felt I owed my subject more: I owed him a biography he deserved. If he continued to hold my affection despite his considerable, even spectacular, flaws, that was all well and good. It would sustain me. It did sustain me.

But I had help, and I needed every bit of it.

There are four men whose loyalty and perspicacity lifted me from sloughs of despond and ignorance and gave Bernoulli-like loft to a much-heavier-than-air project. First I must single out Peter Bogdanovich, a man who, quite simply, I am lucky to know, and who, luckily for me, knew Frank Sinatra. As my earliest reader, and as a first-rate writer himself, Peter literally kept me going, chapter by chapter, with his heartfelt enthusiasm and incomparable cultural-historical perspective.

That Will Friedwald and Michael Kraus, who both know as much about Sinatra as anyone has a right to know, gave freely of their time and steadily approved of what I was doing still amazes me. I will always remember their generosity. I was wildly fortunate to have these two frighteningly learned, gimlet-eyed men parsing every sentence of the book.

To a great editor of another sort, my brother and friend, Peter W. Kaplan, I owe more than I can say.

As I do to my longtime literary agent, Joy Harris, my ally, advocate, and friend through thick and thin—and sometimes a lot of thin. From our first day working together, I have felt that Joy understood me completely and was able
to wait almost indefinitely for me to do what we both felt I could do. She also has never put a foot wrong. A writer can ask for no more.

To Karen Cumbus, and to Aaron, Avery, and Jacob Kaplan, I owe the greatest debt of all: the blessing of having someone for whom to do my work and to whom to give my work; a safe harbor in a tempest-tossed world.

I would also like to extend deep gratitude to Damian Da Costa, Ted Panken, and Katherine Bang.

And to the following: Monty Alexander, Peggy Alexander, Bette Alexander, Iris Hiskey Arno, Ajay Arora, George Avakian, Brook Babcock, Jean Bach, Adam Begley, A. Scott Berg, Tony Bill, Bill Boggs, Ernest Borgnine, Shannon E. Bowen, Laurie Cahn, Mariah Carey, Jeanne Carmen, Christopher Cerf, Iris Chester, Jonathan Cohen, Jeffrey Collette, Frank Collura, Kenny Colman, Peggy Connelly, Stan Cornyn, Neil Daniels, Houstoun Demere, Angie Dickinson, Frank DiGiacomo, John Dominis, Renée Doruyter, Todd Doughty, Bob Eckel, Chris Erskine, Vincent Falcone, Michael Feinstein, John Fontana, Dan Frank, Gloria Delson Franks, Mitchell Freinberg, Bruce J. Friedman, Drew Friedman, Gary Giddins, Vince Giordano, Steve Glauber, Irwin Glusker, Starleigh Goltry, Bob Gottlieb, Chuck Granata, Mary Edna Grantham, Connie Haines, Betsy Duncan Hammes, Bruce Handy, Bill Harbach, Lee Herschberg, Suzanne Herz, Don Hewitt, Rebecca Holland, Anne Hollister, George Jacobs, Bruce Jenkins, John Jenkinson, Jack Jones, Mearene Jordan, Robert Kaplan, Kitty Kelley, Ed Kessler, Steve Khan, Andreas Kroniger, Suzy Kunhardt, Theodora Kuslan, Andrew Lack, Claudia Gridley Stabile Lano, Joe Lano, Peter Levinson, Jerry Lewis, Richard Lewis, Abbey Lincoln, George Lois, Mark Lopeman, Carmel Malin, Karyn Marcus, Gene McCarthy, Barbara McManus, Sonny Mehta, David Michaelis, Bill Miller, Mitch Miller, Jackeline Montalvo, Pat Mulcahy, Leonard Mustazza, Eunice Norton, Dan Okrent, Ed O’Brien, Tony Oppedisano, Neal Peters, Saint Clair Pugh, Mario Puzo, Alison Rich, Jenny Romero, Andrew Rosenblum, Frankie Randall, Adam Reed, Mickey Rooney, Andrew Rosenblum, Ric Ross, Steve Rubin, Mike Rubino, Jane Russell, George Schlatter, Gary Shapiro, Mike Shore, Liz Smith, Tyler Smith, Ted Sommer, Joe Spieler, William Stadiem, Jo Stafford, Nancy Steiner, Karen Svobodny, Laura Swanson, Gay Talese, Bill Thomas, Thomas Tucker, Sarah Twombly, Roberta Wennik-Kaplan, Tim Weston, Virginia Wicks, Bud Yorkin, and Sidney Zion.

And, it does not go without saying, effusive thanks to the great team at Doubleday, from copy editing to design to marketing to production.

If I have inadvertently omitted anyone from the list, I ask them to forgive me and know that they reside in my heart, if not my short-term memory.

Grateful acknowledgment is given to the following for permission to reprint:

Cover: Ken Veeder/Capitol/MPTV

Frontispiece: Bill Dudas/MPTV

  
1.
The filial proxies for Mrs. Sinatra and Mrs. Puzo (also in a sense representing the two visions of godfatherhood) would have a memorable encounter in a Santa Monica restaurant in the 1970s, not long after the release of the movie version of
The Godfather
. In the film, of course (as in the novel), a down-on-his-luck Sinatra-like singer wins a crucial movie role through the vivid intercession of Don Corleone. Horse’s head and all, it made for a terrific story—one that, naturally enough, Sinatra resented. The worlds-colliding confrontation between the singer and the novelist/screenwriter was colorful enough that Puzo recounted it afterward in a letter to his close friend the novelist Bruce Jay Friedman. “As told to me by Mario,” Friedman recalled, “he was having dinner with a female acquaintance—and spotted Sinatra at a distant table. Thinking he might impress his friend, he decided to walk over and introduce himself. ‘The second I got to my feet, I saw that I had made a mistake. Sinatra was surrounded by “necks.” For insurance, I stuck a fork in my pocket.’ Thus fortified, he walked over, introduced himself to Sinatra, who cursed him out for five minutes straight. ‘I accepted this calmly,’ said Puzo, ‘and noted that he never once looked me in the eye. And what amused me was the preposterous notion of a skinny
Northern
Italian daring to curse out an Italian from the South.’ ” (Friedman to author, e-mail, Jan. 15, 2007).

  
2
“The only two”:
Peter Bogdanovich, in discussion with the author, Feb. 2009.

  
3
“I really don’t think”:
Peggy Connelly, in discussion with the author, May 2006.

  
4
“Sometimes I’d be”:
Hamill,
Why Sinatra Matters
, p. 83.

  
5
“When I would get”:
Ibid., p. 84.

  
6
“She was a pisser”:
MacLaine,
My Lucky Stars
, p. 82.

  
7
“I think my dad”:
Tina Sinatra,
My Father’s Daughter
, p. 14.