Authors: George Jacobs
Mr. S (30 page)
I wish I could say as good things about the three kids of my first wife, Dorothy, my Louisiana childhood sweetheart, who went back home and remarried several times. She never let me see my kids, so I could say it wasn’t my fault, but I won’t. Once they grew up, in the
years after I left Mr. S, the kids’ lives all went to hell. Our daughter became a dope dealer, had six husbands and six kids and was murdered. Our second son became a transsexual and killed himself when his gay male lover wouldn’t marry him. And our first son is nearing the end of a long prison term for armed robbery. He has a son, my grandson, who is also in prison. I hadn’t seen any of these kids since they were babies, so the pain I feel is fairly abstract. I wish now I could have had my hand in raising them. Maybe I could have helped.
Just this last year, I got a letter from my first born and namesake George. He’s now fifty-four, which seems amazing. He had tracked me down and wrote me from prison. Now we have a correspondence going. I’m going to see him soon. And maybe then I’ll see my grandson. It’s a beginning, and it’s never too late to begin. I’m not sure how my own Sicilian superstitions come into play here, but there’s enough tragedy for Shakespeare. My mother, on the other hand, had a full, rich life and died at ninety in 2001. Throughout all my years with Frank Sinatra, she expressed no interest whatsoever in either meeting him or attending one of his concerts, though he frequently asked me to invite her. He never impressed her as a singer. She was old New Orleans, and she preferred old New Orleans jazz and blues, and that was her way.
I still live in Palm Springs, which is absolutely nothing like the exclusive Hollywood hideaway it was when Swifty Lazar tried to house me in the stables of the Racquet Club. Native American casino gambling is on the way, and I’m sure the place will become the new Las Vegas. Almost the whole Sinatra crowd is gone. Jack Entratter died young, Jilly Rizzo died in a freak auto accident, Jimmy Van Heusen passed on, too, in 1990, still happily married, believe it or not.
I never saw Mr. S again face to face. He rarely left the compound in Palm Springs, and in L.A. the only place he liked to go was Matteo’s, with its ever-chugging electric trains, the sole survivor of the Rat Pack
scene. For some reason, I stayed away. I had my life. I didn’t want to get tempted by the siren call of the past, no matter how faint it had grown.
In 1998, when Mr. S died at eighty-two, I couldn’t believe he was gone. One of the highest livers of the twentieth century had failed at making it into the next, a goal he often talked about. Because he had lived so hard, played so hard, tried to love so hard, many of those who had shared his life felt that he had indeed been on borrowed time. However, because I knew how much he dreaded the idea of dying, and, despite his prayers for an Oscar and for his son’s return, how little faith he placed in the hereafter, I personally thought he’d summon up the power to go “all the way,” or at least to one hundred. He was a century kind of guy. At his later concerts, I saw how he toasted the audience with the Italian phrase
“Cent’anni.”
He’d say, “May you live a hundred years, and may the last voice you hear be mine.”
I tried to go to Mr. S’s funeral, but Barbara cut me from the list. I wept for him on my own, across the street from the old Romanoff’s on the Rocks, and thought about the great times that we had. What did I learn from the man? That life was but a dream, that it could change on a dime, that you should nail your lines on the first take and move on to new ones. Every few months I’ll go for a walk and lay a desert flower on Mr. S’s simple gravestone.
FRANCIS ALBERT SINATRA
. 1915–1998. “
THE BEST IS YET TO COME
.” Let’s all hope so.
We would like to extend special thanks to the following people who have helped us with this book with valuable recollections and insights: Josephine Abercrombie, Sheila Allen, Sidney Beckerman, Baby Bryan, Jeanne Carmen, Olivia de Havilland, Rob Fentress, Sidney J. Furie, Nadia LaCoste, Betty Lussier, Deborah Markland, Stuart Phelps, Rick Ross, Penn Sicre, Chris Silvester, Ed Walters, and Sandy Whitelaw. Special thanks to Henry Bushkin and Walter Seifert, who introduced us and made this book a reality; to our tireless agent, Peter Miller; and to our inspired editor, Mauro DiPreta, whose passion for Frank Sinatra helped ignite our own.
—George Jacobs and William Stadiem
Los Angeles, December, 2002
G
EORGE
J
ACOBS
has refused countless offers to tell his story. Until now. A master chef and carpenter, he lives not far from the old Sinatra compound in Palm Springs, California, where he continues to be one of the toasts of that star-filled town.
W
ILLIAM
S
TADIEM
was a Harvard JD-MBA and Wall Street lawyer before embarking for Hollywood, where he has written the screenplays for such films as Franco Zeffirelli’s
Young Toscanini
, starring Elizabeth Taylor. He wrote the bestselling
Marilyn Monroe Confidential
, and
Lullaby and Good Night
with Vincent Bugliosi. Formerly the Hollywood columnist for
Interview
magazine as well as a food critic for
Los Angeles
magazine, Stadiem lives in Santa Monica, California.
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Praise
for
Mr. S
from Around the Globe
“Set[s] your heart aflutter…. With its improbably witty prose, this exercise in deep dish never makes you feel like taking a shower. It’s the one Sinatra tome that doesn’t stint on rageaholism or sexual addiction or the affection this kind of split personality still engenders. A.”
—
Entertainment Weekly
“I doubt you will find anything as memorable all year…. Almost every page contains some jaw-dropping vignette…. So wittily and stylishly written that it goes straight to the top of my showbiz memoir league.”
—
Daily Telegraph
(London)
“Graduates in Sinatra studies will appreciate the many intimate revelations that this memoir has to offer…. [A] remarkable story in an authentic voice.”
—
The Times
(London)
“A juicy tell-all book that entertains mightily…. The book runs with the kind of spicy details that make for the most captivating cocktail hour chatter…. While much has been written about Sinatra’s life and times, Jacobs adds more with his intimate personal spin on the legendary man.”
—
Denver Rocky Mountain News
“A complex portrait of two complex men at a crossroads in history…full of the expected tantalizing tidbits about Sinatra, his women, the mob, Joe and Jack Kennedy, Dino and Sammy…. The requisite sex and drink and dusk-to-dawn parties are in there.”
—
Los Angeles Times
“A unique, gossipy perspective on Sinatra’s relationships with some of the glossiest women and dodgiest men mid-century Hollywood has to offer.”
—
The Observer
(London)
“Deliciously gossipy, yet Sinatra is recalled with affection rather than spite.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
“Promises to make the recent rash of tell-all books on Princess Diana look tame in comparison. It’s bursting at the binding with great characters, if not people of great character.”
—Michael Gross, New York
Daily News
“The cascade of filth, gossip and chuckles never stops in Jacobs’ book.”
—
Vegas Magazine
“A bombshell…blows the lid off the seedy side of Ol’ Blue Eyes’ long and colorful connection with the Kennedys.”
—
New York Post
“The Sinatra described in the book is even darker than I remembered him…. [Jacobs] has got some good stories to tell.”
—Peter Bart,
Variety
“Enough betrayal, seduction, and intrigue for a decade’s worth of soap opera plots….
Mr. S
offers a curious sort of double voyeurism, with Jacobs inviting readers to vicariously experience his own vicarious access to the life of one of pop-culture’s preeminent icons…. Packs a powerful punch.”
—
The Onion
“A hip patois worthy of a cool-jazz film noir…. Sinatra, of course, had more facets than the Hope diamond—a neat-freak who was harder on hotel rooms than Keith Moon, a man who tried to bed every starlet in Hollywood yet made unrequited yearning the center of his art, a close friend who cut people out of his life forever.”
—
New York Times Book Review
“A vivid account of [Jacobs’] many years serving The Voice….
Mr. S
is a curious and convincing portrait not only of Sinatra but of Mr. Jacobs himself, and of the kind of mentality that breeds such passionate attachment to a man so spectacularly unworthy of it.”
—Robert Gottlieb,
New York Observer
“One of the year’s most applauded books…. High-octane show-business gossip is mixed with psychological insights in an authentically hip-sounding voice.”
—
Sunday Times
(London)
“I can’t help myself…. I read one page and I’m hooked…. A wickedly entertaining, unashamedly low-down, raunchy, titillating, tell-all memoir in which the author gossips in salacious detail about the sex lives, foibles, and hijinks of Sinatra and his friends…. I love this kind of thing. If I had my way, that’s all I’d read.”
—
Washington Times
“A memoir devoted to deep dish on the life and times of the Chairman of the Board and those who loved him….[It] has gone from being one of this summer’s guiltiest pleasures to this fall’s.”
—Alex Witchel,
New York Times Magazine
“Many examples…give this yarn more vibrancy and candor than other Sinatra books…. Jacobs’ open, honest style and his mix of adoration and abhorrence at his boss’s behavior brings the Sinatra kingdom to life…. That Jacobs (with journalist collaborator William Stadiem) waited until after Sinatra’s death to write this tell-all account of his period in the fast lane has perhaps as much to do with his ex-boss’s tyrannical influence as it has with respect. Even so, this is not a bitter book. In fact in one sense it’s a celebration of Sinatra’s legend—one that is true—and how a poor boy from the back streets of New Orleans grew up to be a part of it.”
—
The Weekend Australian
“
Mr. S
…isn’t just dish, it’s a whole set of china. The book is crammed with juicy, scurrilous, jaw-dropping, lay-it-on-the-line gossip on just about every page. Jacobs takes no prisoners, naming names, movie star sexual preferences and even crimes. Serious trashophiles will be in scandal-mongering heaven.”
—
Times-Picayune
(New Orleans)
“Anyone with a taste for gossip will enjoy this book.”
—
Irish Time
s
“Titillating…. Believe it or not—and Liz Smith believes most of it—this is great hot-weather gossip, a beach book that comes with its own grit and cool.”
—
Dallas Morning News
“Intriguing…. Pleasantly vicious…. Jacobs doesn’t disappoint…. This is no classic celebration of a great musician. This is Jacobs dishing dirty on his Master.”
—
Sunday Tribune
“Wonderfully racy…. George Jacobs paints an unforgettable picture of Ol’ Blue Eyes…. Reading it is like being at a terrific A-list party with a charming companion who has the dirt on everyone there—a great if guilty pleasure.”
—
Sunday Telegraph
(London)
“An insider’s account of life with Sinatra that’s as cool as the man himself.”
—
Sunday Mirror
(London)
MR. S
. Copyright © 2003 by George Jacobs and William Stadiem. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition April 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-191388-4
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