From PEOPLE Magazine
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Earl Wilson
Sinatra:
An Unauthorized Biography
Very expensively, perhaps, if the agitated crooner has his way. No sooner had 75,000 copies of Broadway columnist Wilson's 357-page chronicle begun spilling into bookstores than Sinatra retaliated with a suit for $3 million in damages. Describing Wilson's Sinatra as "false, fictionalized, boring and uninteresting," the 60-year-old singer charged that it would hurt sales of his autobiography, which soon will be offered to publishers.
"I can't imagine my book cutting into Sinatra's bank account," retorted Wilson, who estimates his subject's wealth at about $55 million. "I wrote an honest book about a guy I've been covering for 35 years."
Ironically, Wilson, whose column "It Happened Last Night" is syndicated to some 300 newspapers, has never been a Sinatra antagonist. The 69-year-old columnist once received a gold money clip from Sinatra inscribed "Oil, youse is a Poil," which he treasured. He contentedly thought of himself as a fan.
Only after the breakup of Sinatra's marriage to Mia Farrow in 1967, says Wilson, did the singer add him to the long list of journalists whom he scorns. The feud, which Wilson attributes to the strain of Sinatra's failing marriage, "plus his manic-depressive makeup," began after Wilson reprinted an account of a Las Vegas brawl in which Sinatra allegedly threw a table, and a casino manager loosened two of his teeth. Later, when Wilson showed up to cover a Sinatra opening in Miami Beach, the singer had him barred from the show. Not until last summer, when Sinatra invited Wilson to another opening, did a temporary armistice begin to take shape.
Even during their estrangement, however, the wounded Wilson never thought of revenge. When Macmillan, his publisher, suggested he write a Sinatra biography, the columnist expressed his reluctance. "I thought they wanted a hatchet job," he explains. "I didn't want to do that. I didn't feel that way about Frank." Far from being a critical bloodletting, in fact, the book is written at a wistful and often admiring arm's length by an outsider who would like to be inside.
The attack on Wilson has apparently whetted Sinatra's appetite. Visiting Chicago recently for a four-night engagement, Sinatra jousted bitterly with columnist Mike Royko, who had questioned the performer's need for police protection. Retaliating with the kind of verbal overkill that has become his least endearing public trait, Sinatra brushed off Royko as "Mr. Jerko," and offered to box him in Chicago Stadium for charity. "We'll pay him $1,000 for every round he lasts," crowed The Voice. "He won't make $2."
By contrast, Sinatra's reaction to Wilson seems curiously lacking in fury, though the book is a minefield of potential embarrassments. Characterizing Sinatra as a moody dual personality—a charmer one moment, a brawler the next—Wilson recites a persuasive litany of the singer's good works and kindnesses, but also of his reckless vulgarities.
He dutifully compiles an all-star roster of Sinatra's romantic conquests, but describes him as desperate and near-suicidal during his roller-coaster affair with the volatile Ava Gardner. Coming at a time when Sinatra's career was on the skids, their 1950 courtship, says Wilson, was "a two-year soap opera, with screaming fights heard around the world." Trailing the footloose Ava to Europe and back again, an irascible Sinatra swung at photographers, threatened reporters and carried his torch like a cross.
After one lovers' row at Lake Tahoe, Sinatra was forced to deny rumors that he had taken an overdose of sleeping pills. Wilson writes: "The truth as I got it was that Frank was behaving strangely. In his Hampshire House apartment in New York, Frank was firing a revolver into mattresses. He couldn't figure why Ava was seeing other men. One night he was in an elevator in a friend's apartment building and blood was gushing from his wrists."
Eventually Sinatra and Ava were married, but the battling didn't stop. Two weeks before their first anniversary, Sinatra called the Palm Springs police to throw Ava and her friend Lana Turner out of his house. "I tried to reach Sinatra at the home of [songwriter] Jimmy van Heusen, where he'd gone after the quarrel," Wilson recalls. "'Where's Frank?' I asked Jimmy. He said, 'Frank's in the bathroom throwing up.' That was Frank's reaction to many emotional crises."
The marriage lasted less than two years, but 20 years later the nightclub singer Bricktop confided to Wilson, "I think they're still in love. Ava's still around Frank whenever she can be. I think she still likes to rub up against him—you know what I mean?"
Intensely loyal, and explosively resentful of any disloyalty he perceives in his friends, Sinatra once went on a chair-throwing rampage, according to Wilson, after Rat Pack pal Sammy Davis Jr. criticized him in a radio interview. He ousted Davis from a role in a movie they were making together and ordered him barred from the hotel where Sinatra was performing.
The two reconciled later, but Wilson says Sinatra has never forgiven Peter Lawford for a snub inflicted by his brother-in-law, President John F. Kennedy. Sinatra had raised funds for JFK's 1960 presidential campaign and was flattered by the late President's company. After the election, Kennedy accepted Sinatra's invitation to be his Palm Springs houseguest. Sinatra was so excited, says Wilson, that he began building a presidential wing for the Kennedys and guest houses for the Secret Service. Then suddenly the visit was canceled, allegedly for security reasons. A more likely explanation, says Wilson: Attorney General Robert Kennedy was concerned about Sinatra's relationship with Chicago mobster "Momo" Giancana, and discouraged his brother from going.
Today, though only his fiercest admirers insist that his voice has not deteriorated, Sinatra is in the third year of his escape from retirement. He remains capable of earning $50,000 or more for an hour's worth of crooning and banter, but it wasn't money that brought him back to the microphone. "He was simply bored," explains old friend Rosalind Russell.
Married and divorced three times, Sinatra has been seen more or less constantly since 1973 with divorcée Barbara Marx. Last week he confirmed reports that they were engaged and would be married. His Palm Springs compound has been up for sale for six months, but friends suspect the $1.4 million price tag is his way of not letting go. Sinatra owns another home in Southern California and has a suite at New York's Waldorf Towers.
Wherever he is, says Roz Russell, he is constantly on the phone with his son and two daughters. "He doesn't like me to say this, but he's such an Italian," she says. "His taste in food, his devotion to his children. He talks to them sometimes three and four times a day. He wants to know what they're wearing. They have to check with him when they cut their hair. And now he's a grandfather. He's crazy about those kids [daughter Nancy's Angela Jennifer, 2, and Amanda Catherine, born in March]. He likes to pat them on the head and he buys too many presents. He's a super-generous man!"
What about his war with the press? "I asked him about that once," says Miss Russell, "and he said, 'I detest bad manners. If people are polite, then I am; they shouldn't try to get away with not being polite to me.' And you know, people have no idea what life has been like for Frank Sinatra. He can't sit in a restaurant without some man coming up and asking him if he is as good a lover as all the women say. Then they want to pick a fight. It's very embarrassing for him. He's left many a place with an evening ruined. People forget his side."
Earl Wilson asks rhetorically in his book what is in Sinatra's future and answers: "My opinion is that Frank Sinatra will practice extreme self-control and attempt to gain total public esteem, to make everybody love Frank Sinatra." So much for Earl's exclusive prediction. Meanwhile, the book is selling briskly (at $9.95 list, of which Wilson may get as much as $1.50). "With that lawsuit," a rival columnist complains, "Frank may be handing Earl a best-seller."
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