Frank: The Voice (41 page)
Authors: James Kaplan
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #General, #United States, #Biography, #Composers & Musicians, #Entertainment & Performing Arts, #Singers, #Singers - United States, #Sinatra; Frank
Frank Sinatra’s old Hasbrouck Heights neighbor Willie Moretti was one such. Another was Benjamin Siegel, who grew up on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the early twentieth century, a remarkably bold and clever and comely youth who quickly saw crime as the only chance he would ever have to get rich. Siegel turned thirteen—bar mitzvah age—exactly at the beginning of Prohibition and, around the same time, met seventeen-year-old Meyer Lansky, who was little and ugly and tough and brilliant: he could memorize and calculate great strings of numbers, useful skills. The two boys appreciated each other’s qualities. Soon they were literally thick as thieves: running numbers and rum together, stealing cars, breaking heads. Lansky was fearless but not enamored of violence for its own sake; Siegel, whose pale blue eyes sometimes took on a crazed gleam, actually enjoyed bludgeoning, stabbing, and shooting.
Crazy as a bedbug
, they said. And so Benny Siegel acquired a nickname—Bug, or Bugs, or Bugsy.
Siegel and Lansky soon formed alliances with Charles “Lucky”
Luciano and Frank Costello. During the Castellammarese War among the New York gangs in the early 1930s, Siegel participated in the killing of the old-time Mob boss Salvatore Maranzano that elevated Luciano to supreme power. For this, Luciano was grateful. Having made an enormous amount of money from bootlegging, Siegel married, moved to Scarsdale, and began a family. For a while, he lived as a kind of commuter-gangster. But in 1937, when his partners asked if he might be interested in relocating to Los Angeles to set up a gambling operation, he jumped at the chance.
Most of the thugs connected to the various crime syndicates around the country were built along the lines of Lansky and Luciano: small, homely men, born in poor circumstances in the Old Country or in the teeming ghettos of the American cities to which their parents had immigrated. Undernourished as children, they were street fighters: short, big nosed, scar faced, fearsome. Benjamin Siegel was something else again, far more handsome and magnetic than anyone in his line of work had a right to be. He gravitated naturally to Los Angeles because Los Angeles meant Hollywood, and Siegel was good-looking enough to be a movie actor. He made show-business connections as soon as he got to town—most notably the tough-talking Harry Cohn, founder of Columbia Pictures, fellow Jew, and an inveterate racetrack gambler frequently in need of large sums of money. The two men were drawn to each other for symbiotic reasons. For Cohn it was the cash. For Siegel it was Cohn’s ready access to actresses. Siegel had moved his wife and two young daughters west, but he was also happy to acquire a string of glamorous mistresses.
Even before Frank Sinatra come to California, Siegel’s legend loomed large. He was a star in a town of stars, possessing something no movie actor had: an aura of real danger. Bogart and Cagney and Eddie Robinson were only tough on the screen. George Raft had shady connections, but he was a lover, not a fighter. Siegel looked as good as any of them, and—it was whispered—he really killed people. Then it was more than whispered. In 1939, he was tried for the murder of a fellow
L.A. hoodlum (and childhood friend) named Harry Greenberg; the newspapers covered the trial extensively, and though he got off, Siegel, who had been attempting to pass as a legitimate racetrack operator, was revealed as an authentic mobster. The papers loved to throw around his nickname, which he had come to hate. The word “Bugsy” alone could trigger the madness that had engendered the name.
When Sinatra came to town, there he was, the handsome criminal with the killer temper and the long-lashed blue eyes and clean jawline and slicked-back hair and beautiful sports jacket, sitting right across the aisle at Chasen’s, winking at
him
. The man who (Sinatra would have known from Willie Moretti) had personally pushed the button on Maranzano. Who had grown up with Luciano and Lansky. Who still ran the West Coast.
Which was better, to be loved or feared?
Both
.
Hello, Frank
.
Hello, Mr. Siegel
.
Please—Benny
.
Benny
.
“
Phil and Frank were enthralled by him,” said Phil Silvers’s first wife, Jo-Carroll, of Siegel. “They would brag about Bugsy and what he had done and how many people he had killed. Sometimes they’d argue about whether Bugsy preferred to shoot his victims or simply chop them up with axes, and although I forget which was his preference, I will always remember the awe Frank had in his voice when he talked about him. He wanted to emulate Bugsy.”
In the case of a competitor named Louis “Pretty” Amberg, Siegel covered all bases, setting Amberg’s car ablaze after shotgunning him and hacking him with an ax, not necessarily in that order.
Tough guy. Frank poses for a publicity shot in 1947, the same year he allegedly knocked down the virulently anti-Sinatra columnist Lee Mortimer with one punch.
(photo credit 16.2)
Manie Sacks, Sinatra’s rabbi at Columbia Records, with Frank in 1944. The singer’s high-handedness in business matters caused bitter divisions between the two close friends. “Don’t friendship and sincerity mean anything to you?” Manie wrote to Frank in 1945. “Or is it that, when you make up your mind to do something, that’s the way it has to be?”
(photo credit 17.1)
T
hroughout 1945, as Sinatra recorded up a storm in New York and Hollywood, he was building up a thunderhead of resentment against Columbia Records. Money was the ostensible cause—the singer was bearing costs, for music copying and arrangements and studio conducting, that he felt weren’t his to bear. (On the other hand, once he bought the arrangements, he owned them forever—a fact
that would aid him innumerable times over the span of his performing career.) But on the evidence of a remarkable correspondence between Frank and Manie Sacks in the late summer of that year, it seems as though something else, something deep and personal, was behind the fight.
The opening salvo was a relatively petty complaint: a late July telegram from Sinatra to Sacks, grousing that Columbia must not think much of him, since everybody except him, including Axel, was getting free records. “Oh, well,” he concluded. “After taxes I still have a few bucks.” He signed with a sarcastic thank you.
And then, an extraordinary reply, not from Manie, but from some suit:
AUGUST 1, 1945. MR. FRANK SINATRA, 1051 VALLEY SPRING LANE, NORTH HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA. RE YOUR BRUTAL WIRE TO OUR MR. SACKS. THIS IS YOUR AUTHORITY, ON PRESENTATION OF THIS TELEGRAM TO ANDREW SCHRADE, TO DEMAND ONE EACH OF ANY COLUMBIA RECORDS YOU WANT FOR YOUR COLLECTION
.
Brutal wire! A letter from Manie arrived a week or two later, attempting to clear the air:
Dear Frank. For the past six months, there seems to be a question in your mind about certain payments which I am at a loss to understand. I’ve discussed the matters with Nancy, Sol Jaffe, Al Levy, Eddie Trautman [
sic;
Sacks evidently means Sinatra’s business manager, Edward Traubner: see below]—in fact, with everyone except yourself. For some reason or another, the opportunity never presented itself, although I’d much have preferred talking to you in person rather than writing to you …
I want to preface my remarks, though, by telling you (and
this really goes without saying) that your interests are very important to me, and I wouldn’t permit anybody to take advantage of you. But in fairness to you, and also to Columbia, I want to point out and explain why we can’t do certain things.
In the case of Axel: You will recall standing on the corner of 51st Street and Broadway after we had finished lunch at Lindy’s, when we discussed what Axel should get [as a conducting fee]. The price of $300 [about $3,500 today] was agreed upon as being more than fair. At that time, I explained to you how it wouldn’t cost you $300: I would arrange with Axel to return to you the amount that he got from Columbia for each session, which is Scale, and that you would pay him $300. For example, if we have a record date and he received $80, you would pay him $300, the $80 would be turned over to you and actually would be a net [cost] to you of $220. There was never any question at that time that we should pay the full amount for Axel. In fact, I wrote Nancy on January 31st explaining this setup and sending her some of Axel’s recording checks.
Look, son, if anyone received compensation of that kind from Columbia, believe me, you would be the first to get it, but it’s never been done and we couldn’t start a precedent of that kind. It’s not good business, and I’m sure, if you’ll analyze it, you’ll agree with me. I’m not trying to bargain or be cheap because you know I’m not built that way. I’m only trying to point out a principle and also tell you that there was never any question about who was to pay Axel’s salary. To enlighten you, do you recall you asked me to speak to Axel regarding the money you were to pay him, and I told you the same evening that everything was okay and that he seemed very happy about it?
Now, regarding the second matter, which I don’t understand. Lately, I’ve been getting bills from Joe Ross for copying. What is that all about? His work is your
property … How could we set a precedent of paying for copying when we have nothing to do with it? …
Let’s take a Sinatra date—say the one of March 6th. There were 37 men and the cost was $1,905. This we paid for. In other words, the cost of the orchestra is not deducted from royalties—it’s a flat outlay by Columbia. You’re the only artist who has such an arrangement … If you’ll think about it for a minute, I’m sure you’ll understand that the conductor’s fee and the copying costs are not obligations of Columbia. If you want, I could go to Ted [Wallerstein, Columbia president] and ask him to advance these monies to you and charge them against royalties.
I don’t have to tell you about the way I worry and look out for your interests. I am certainly not trying to take advantage of you …
I miss you—come home soon. Love and kisses, Manie.
P.S.—I just got a letter from Traubner charging us $2100 for Axel’s services up to the last date, and $300 for the last date—ALSO $400 for
arrangements
! Are we supposed to be paying for arrangements, too? What’s this all about?
A couple of weeks pass, then Sinatra lets Sacks—or rather Columbia—have it. He begins the telegram with a complaint that he can’t reach Manie on the phone, then goes on to say that it’s not personal, but he doesn’t plan to pay
any
of the bills. Not one. If Columbia Recording doesn’t agree, Frank says, he will have to request an immediate release. He signs with love.
Sacks writes back immediately, in a letter of August 24, 1945:
Dear Frank: I received your wire and to say that I was taken aback and surprised is putting it mildly. I’m sorry we aren’t able to discuss this in person or on the ’phone, but since there is nothing else to do, I’ll have to write you my thoughts on this matter.
You said, “Whatever decision I arrive at does not concern you personally.” Well,
who else
does it concern? All the negotiations that had to do with records or anything else were worked out by the two of us. Why, ever since you walked into my office the first time, I have gone through everything with you. Your problems have been as much a part of my life as my own. No one, with perhaps the exception of George Evans, has lived Sinatra as I have. Many is the night I have gone sleepless thinking and worrying about your problems. I could write pages on how we sweated them out together. Everything of concern to you concerns me, too … So your unreasonable demands are actually a slap in the face to me … I explained in my last letter exactly what the situation was and why we can’t pay for arrangements, copying, and the fees for Axel … If you are doubting me or questioning my sincerity, that really hurts.
Do you think for a minute that, as head of the department you work for at Columbia, I’d let anyone take advantage of you—or do so myself? You have a better deal today than anyone else at Columbia. We can’t pay for the things you’ve requested—your demands are entirely out of proportion.
You’ve had pretty much your own way and have done the things you wanted to do. So far you’ve recorded 49 sides, and we’ve released 32 sides—more than any other artist. You’ve had the pick of songs, you’ve recorded anything you want to, you’ve had greater promotion than anyone else with Columbia. You told me yourself that our promotion was the most outstanding you’d ever seen. Every one of us here at Columbia, from Ted Wallerstein down, has gone out of his way to make you happy. What more do you want? Just because you’ve made up your mind that Columbia should pay for things that are strictly your obligations and I can’t tell you Columbia can’t pay for them, you become annoyed and try to convince me it doesn’t concern me personally, and you want your contract back.
As long as you’re talking bluntly, I will, too. We have no
intention of paying for all the abovementioned extras. Just because you asked for your contract back, there’s no reason why you should get it. We don’t do business that way. I don’t know who has been putting these ideas into your head or where you’re getting them from. They don’t sound like Sinatra … I had an operation, it took a lot out of me, I’ve had family difficulties of which you’re well aware. But nothing has hurt me as much as the wire I received from you. Don’t friendship and sincerity mean anything to you? Or is it that, when you make up your mind to do something, that’s the way it has to be? I’m telling you, I’ve seen it happen and so have you. If this is the attitude you want to adopt, it’s got to hit you—you just can’t get away with it; life itself won’t permit it. Love, Manie.