Put Your Dreams Away: FRANK SINATRA, 1915-1998

(3 of 4)

He was a formidable public personality and retained an outspoken interest in politics. He was, at the start and for a long time, an out-front liberal, and--surely swayed by charm and power--eventually added some deep shadows to J.F.K.'s definition of executive privilege. He passed along a mistress to the President, Judith Exner, who was also a favorite of Giancana's. Kennedy used her, but eventually froze Sinatra out of Camelot. Sinatra responded bitterly and swung right. He golfed with Spiro Agnew, sang (wonderfully) at the Nixon White House and partied with the Reagans.

He lived out all the vagaries of celebrity, knew their value as well as their curse and could manage the trade-off, although he insisted on certain terms and boundaries. He dismissed purveyors of some of the seamier press gossip about him as "pimps and whores. Because they can't write their own name to earn a living properly. They got to lean on somebody else." But Sinatra in those years was natural tabloid fodder, doing the clubs with Ava Gardner (wife No. 2) and Juliet Prowse, and courting Mia Farrow, who became, fleetingly, wife No. 3. And scandal, spurious as it may have been, exerted its own fascination, deepened the dark edge of danger that Sinatra could use like a blade, to provoke when he wanted, to protect what he wished.

He was a superb actor, but he pretended not to take acting seriously. "I just felt that if you learned the words like you know your name...you're a cinch," he told Larry King. "If you have any brains at all, you should be able to do it very well." He was notoriously impatient on the set, wanted to get his job done with little fuss and less time, and often wouldn't hang around for the other actors in a scene to finish up. But in a film career that spanned some 40 years, he gave an impressive number of unforgettable performances. On the Town had good sport casting the kid who used to jump the Hoboken ferry to sneak into Manhattan. From Here to Eternity, which won him an Oscar, put his stalled career back into overdrive and led, through rumor and myth, to a memorable subplot in The Godfather.

And there was Suddenly, The Man with the Golden Arm, Some Came Running, Pal Joey, A Hole in the Head, The Joker Is Wild, The Manchurian Candidate. These are not the credits of a dabbler. Despite his professed approach to the craft, which was breezy to the point of gale force, he kept company with junkies for Golden Arm and hung around with cops whenever he had to play on the cool side of the law. He did his homework. He just didn't want anyone to see his notes.

Notes were for singing, and on the subject of music, Sinatra could write a book. He was generous to his singing contemporaries, maybe because he knew he had no serious rival, but probably too out of a genuine respect for musicianship. He would speak fondly and knowledgeably of Billie Holiday, Mabel Mercer, Tony Bennett. And if he heard you had an ear and were ready to lend one, and if the mood was right and there was a bottle of Scotch in the neighborhood, he could talk about music far into the night. "A Johnny Mercer lyric," he said once, casually, "is all the wit you wish you had and all the love you ever lost." Music was the one subject that could make Sinatra drop his guard. He talked about music as he sang it: with diligence and respect and a passion that left no doubt that this above all was what mattered most.