This American Life; Sinatra; Part 2

Ixnay on the midway. Excuse me now while I disappear. Coming up, Gay Talese on the road with Sinatra in 66 and a restaurant full of cabbies and club kids. That's in a minute when our program continues. It's this American Life, I'm IRA Glass. Each week, of course, we choose a theme, invite a

variety of writers and performers to take a whack at that theme with fiction, nonfiction, radio monologues, whatever we can think of. And the subject of today's show. What what was his name again? My name is. Yes, you cannot have a career as long and distinguished as Frank Sinatra is without some experiments that fail, witness Frank Sinatra's cover of Bad Bad Leroy Brown or the Rod McEwan poetry he recorded. I can just about get through the day. But tonight makes me nervous. Not for any reason, except maybe that it catches you

unawares. And follows you the way a woman follows. When she wants something, what what is that? The knight makes Frank Sinatra nervous, Frank Sinatra, didn't he just say that he does most of his singing at night, insulin's Frank Sinatra. John Connors, who provides a lot of music for our radio program and has a huge, huge Frank Sinatra collection, was paying me some of these Sinatra turkeys when we had them. We had this odd little moment he was playing me. Sinatra's cover of the Simon and Garfunkel hit Mrs. Robinson. So. Mrs. Robinson, daddy, Mrs. Robinson, you say, hey, hey, hey. It's hard for me to think it's bad because for me, bad is

boring, is boring, and none of this is boring. I still like it's really weird and it's it's really weird because these are the songs that made me like him. You know, I'm just I'm just thinking of this now because, like, when I was growing up, I didn't hear the Beatles. I heard the Chipmunks doing the Beatles. I post Baby Boom and post baby boom. But when my mother was going out and was buying Sinatra singing Mrs. Robinson. So this is the song. This is Mrs. Robinson to me. When I hear the Simon and Garfunkel version of Mrs. Robinson. It's the new version. It's the cover. This is the original. The Simon and Garfunkel version is the cover. So it's. Act three is what makes Sinatra so special anyway, from the time of

his big breakthrough as a solo singer in 1942, Frank Sinatra simply was more emotionally expressive, more vulnerable, more openly sensual than any male pop singer to that point. But the Frank Sinatra that we think of as Frank Sinatra did not appear until the 1950s after a career slump after his second marriage with Ava Gardner broke up. He went to the studio to record songs with a much more tough, more swinging sound than he had done before. His public image was becoming the character who we know now, half tough guy, half sentimental saloon singer. And Nelson Riddle invented the sound for these albums with heavy input, apparently from Sinatra, the 50s of the era of nearly everything we think of today as a Sinatra standard. Those fingers in my. That sly come hither. That strips my conscience bare, it's witchcraft. Music writer Will Friedwald says that the sound that Riddle invented for Sinatra is built

around bass, trombone, flute, muted trumpet and strings, and there's this lightness to the orchestration with a much more complicated mix of melodies and countermelodies on different instruments than other composers were using that on pop records. Witness, for example, how reduced used trumpeter Harry Sweets Edison. Essentially, he was not hired as a trumpeter to sit in the section, but he was hired strictly as a soloist or an obligate and he would not sit in the section. But he has his own. He would sit to the side. It had his own special microphone. And so Sweets would just improvise these little trumpet fills here and there on the muted trumpet. And when he plays, he's only playing almost in between the breaths. While Gary Giddins points out the sweets essentially plays three kinds of solos. Beep, beep, beep and beep, beep, beep. Let me let me play a little bit of this. He comes in here, if I understand, right? Right after a Sinatra sings with people she'd hate. She loves the theater, but never comes

late. Never bother with people she'd hate. That's why the lady is a tramp who's going to come back again in a couple of seconds. She'll have no crap games with Sharpies and Frau. Go to Harlem and Lincoln is off for. She walked the dirt snatchers at his peak in the 50s and the early 60s, these are the years of his greatest recordings of his movies, of the Rat Pack. And this all brings us to our next act act for Sinatra has a cold if we want a glimpse into the life that Sinatra led during his heyday. One of the most famous accounts is by journalist Gay Talese, first published in Esquire magazine in 1966 called Sinatra Has a Cold.

It's this long, funny, sad story with many, many, many scenes. We only have time for an excerpt here, which Gay Talese agreed to read for us. Frank Sinatra holding a glass of bourbon in one hand and a cigaret, and the other stood in a dark corner of a bar between two attractive but fading blonds who sat waiting for him to say something. But he said nothing. He had been silent during much of the evening, except now in this private club in Beverly Hills, he seemed even more distant, stepping out to the smoke in the semidarkness into a large room beyond the bar where dozens of young couples sat huddled around small tables or twisted in the center of the floor to the clamors clang of folk rock music blaring from the stereo. The two blonds knew, as did Sinatra's four male friends who stood nearby, that it was a bad idea to force conversation upon him when he was in this mood of sullen silence. Irmo that had hardly been uncommon during this first week of November, a month before his fiftieth birthday, Sinatra had been working in a film that he now disliked and could not wait to finish. He was tired of all the publicity attached to his dating

the 20 year old Mia Farrow, who was not in sight tonight. He is angry that a CBS television documentary of his life to be shown in two weeks was reportedly prying into his privacy, even speculating on his possible friendships with Mafia leaders. He was worried about his starring role in an hour long NBC show entitled Sinatra A Man in His Music, which would require that he sing 18 songs with a voice that at this particular moment, just a few nights before the taping was to begin, was weak and saw an uncertain. Sinatra was ill, he was a victim of an ailment so common that most people would consider it trivial, but when it gets to Sinatra can plunge him into a state of anguish and deep depression, panic, even rage. Frank Sinatra had a cold. Senator with a cold is Perkasa without pain, Ferrare without fuel, only worse for the common cold Rob Sinatra of that uninsurable Joe, his voice cutting

into the core of his confidence. And it affects not only his own psyche, but also seems to cause a kind of psychosomatic nasal drip within dozens of people who work for him, drink with him, depend on him for their own welfare and stability. A senator with a cold can in a small way send vibrations through the entertainment industry and beyond as surely as a president of the United States. Suddenly sick can shake the national economy, for Frank Sinatra was now involved with many things involving many people his own film company, his record company, his private airline, his missile parts firm, his real estate holdings across the nation, his personal staff of 75, which are only a portion of the power he is and has come to represent. He now seemed to be also the embodiment of the fully emancipated male, perhaps the only one in America, the man who can do anything he wants, anything can do it because he has the money, the energy and no apparent guilt.

All the way, all or nothing at all. This is the Sicilian in Sinatra, he promised his friends, if they wish to remain, that none of the Anglo-Saxon outs, but if they remain loyal, then there is nothing Sinatra will not do for them. Fabulous gifts, personal kindnesses, encouragement when they're down, adulation when they're up are wise to remember. However, one thing he is Sinatra, the boss il padrone. Or better still, he is what in traditional Sicily have long been called Romanee. Respectable men of respect, men who are on both majestic and humble, men who are loved by all in a very generous by nature, men whose hands are kissed as they walked from village to village, men who would personally go out of their way to address a wrong. Frank Sinatra does things personally. At Christmas time, he will personally pick dozens of presents for his close friends and

family, remembering the type of jewelry they like, their favorite colors, the size of their shirts and dresses. The same Sinatra can, within the same hour explode in a towering rage of intolerance, a small thing being correctly done for him by one of his paisanos, for example, when one of his men brought him a frankfurter with ketchup on it, which Sinatra apparently abhors, he angrily threw the bottle at the man, splattering ketchup all over. In Las Vegas, after the last show at The Sands, the Sinatra crowd, which numbered about 20, all got into a line of cars and headed for another club. It was three o'clock. The night was young. They stopped at the Sahara, taking a long table near the back and listen to a bald headed little comedian named Don Rickles, who was probably more caustic than any other comic in the country. His humor is so rude in such bad taste that it offends no one because it's too offensive to be offensive.

Spotting Eddie Fisher among the audience, Rickles proceeded to ridicule him as a lover, saying it was no wonder that he could not handle Elizabeth Taylor. And when two businessmen in the audience acknowledged that they were Egyptians, Rickles cut into them and their country's policy toward Israel. And he strongly suggested that the woman seated at one table with her husband was actually a hooker. When the Sinatra crowd walked in, Don Rickles could not be more delighted, pointing to Sinatra, pal, Jilly Rizzo recalls yelling, How's it feel to be Frank's tractor? Yeah, yeah. Gelee keeps walking in front of Frank, clearing the way, then nodding to Leo Dorotea, a former baseball player. Rickles said, Stand up, Leo, show Frank how you slide. Then he focused on Sinatra, not failing to mention Mia Farrow, not that he was wearing a toupee, nor to say that Sinatra was washed up as a singer. And Sinatra laughed. Everybody laughed, and Rickles pointed to where Joey Bishop and said Bishop keeps checking with Frank to see what's funny.

Yeah. Then after Rickles told some Jewish jokes, Dean Martin stood up and said, hey, you're always talking about the Jews is never about the Italians and Rickles cut them off. What do we need the Italians for? All they do is keep the flies off our fish. Sinatra laughed. They all laughed. And Rickles went on this way for nearly an hour until Sinatra standing up said, All right, all right, come on, get this thing over with. I got to go. Shut up and sit down. Rickles yelled, I had to listen to you sing. Who do you think you're talking to? Sinatra yelled, Dick Cames, Rickles replied, and Sinatra laughed again. And then Dean Martin pouring a bottle of whiskey over his head, entirely drenching his tuxedo, pounded the table. By 4:00 a.m., Frank Sinatra led the group out of the Sahara. Some of them carrying the glasses of whiskey with them, sipping it along the sidewalk and into the cars and then returning to the sands, they walked into the gaming casino. It was still packed with people. The roulette wheels were spinning. The crap shooters were screaming in the far corner.

Frank Sinatra holding a shot glass of bourbon in his left hand walk through the crowd. He, unlike some of his friends, was perfectly pressed. His tuxedo tie precisely pointed his shoes on, smudged. He never seems to lose his dignity, never lets his guard completely down, no matter how much he is drunk, nor how long he's been up. He never sways when he walks like Dean Martin, nor does he dance in the aisles or jump up on the tables. Like Sammy Davis. A part of Sinatra, no matter where he is, is never there. There's always a part of him, sometimes a small part that remains in padrone. The crowd that had gathered around him now opened to let him through, but a woman stopped in front of him, handing a piece of paper. He signed it and then he said, thank you. In the river, the Sands large dining room was a long table reserved for Sinatra. The dining room was fairly empty at this hour, with perhaps two dozen other people in the room, including a table of four unescorted young ladies sitting near Sinatra. On the other side of the room, at a long table sat seven men shoulder to shoulder against

the wall, two of them wearing dark glasses, all of them eating quietly, speaking hardly a word, just sitting and eating and missing nothing. The Sinatra party, after getting settled and having a few more drinks, ordered something to eat. The table was about the same size as the one reserved for Sinatra. Whenever he's at Jilly's in New York. And the people seated around this table in Las Vegas were mainly the same people who are often seen with Sinatra Jilly's Restaurant in New York or at a restaurant in California or in Italy or New Jersey, wherever Sinatra happens to be. When Sinatra sits to dine, his trusted friends are close and no matter where he is, no matter how elegant the place may be, there's something of the neighborhood showing because Sinatra, no matter how far he has come, is still something of the boy from the neighborhood. Only now he can take his neighborhood with him. In some ways, the quasi family affair at the reserve table in a public place

is the closest thing Sinatra now has to home life. Gay Talese. At five percent, nature affects us. We have this account of everyday life from came to Joy in New York recently, a room full of people were almost killed by Frank Sinatra. I was there. I know the scene was a Turkish kebab house in lower Manhattan. This is my neighborhood hangout, the sort of place where only the employees are permitted to smoke. I go there because so do a lot of others, Muslim cabbies on their breaks, fashion students from Kyoto, elegant immigrants from Tehran. So there we all were the other day, eating grilled lamb and deep fried balls of chickpeas, Styrofoam plates with plastic forks and knives.

When suddenly we heard a new sound, a television. Now, many of you have already seen televisions and most of us had to, but the surprise of it in my local Carbonari is that thus far we'd only heard Turkish radio. So with all due respect, we turned to look at it as tradition tells you to do whenever anyone switches on a television in your presence. There was a black and white movie. There was a man twitching on a train. There was a woman wearing pearls and a great deal of mascara, hairspray and lipstick. There was Janet Leigh and there was Frank Sinatra. There are moments in a crowd when America makes so much sense. When you want to scream, bring me your tired, your poor, your hungry. And let's all dig Frank Sinatra. I mean to say this was one such moment.

So all of us fell silent, as, again, custom holds is the courteous thing to do when a television plays in a public setting and through the steam of onions, browning and olive oil, we watched The Manchurian Candidate. Now, I've always wondered why you can ever go into a place and hear my favorite Sinatra albums, his sad albums, like No One Cares or in the Wee Small Hours. And instead you only hear songs like New York, New York. Well, there's a reason, and it's the same reason restaurants have to be careful when his movies are on TV, it's a possible health code violation. You can die from Sinatra. In the movie, Sinatra is coming apart, he sets a cigaret between his lips and it falls into his scotch and water. He looks around embarrassed. Only Janet Leigh is watching.

He tries to light a match, drops it, manages to light one, but his hands shake too badly in the match goes out. He asks Janet Leigh whether she minds if he smokes and their eyes meet and they fall in love. She tells him she doesn't mind at all, please do. He tries to light one up again, looks like he's going to vomit, bursts out of his chair, knocks over his drink and runs. There in the Turkish kebab house, our mouths were full of baba ghanoush and hummus and baby lamb, but all of us had stopped chewing. We were too struck by what we were seeing, a man we all recognized was on the television about to break down. Sinatra has tried to flee the woman, but she follows him, she is clever and gorgeous. Her eyes are dark as Turkish coffee and her voice like baklava.

She asks him where his home is, he can't look at her. His voice catches on every syllable as he tells her he's in the army, his eyelids flutter, he sucks on the cigaret, she has lit for him softly. He has genitally for her name in such a way that it's clear her name is the one thing he's always had to know. But he's even more confused by her answer, he sighs apparently at everything. We all know people who hate Frank Sinatra for all sorts of reasons, mostly for how he treats other human beings in so-called real life. And they dismiss the undeniable beauty of his talent because of his undeniably sick soul. I wonder if these people had been in the Turkish kebab house with us, what they would think seeing this scene in which Janet Leigh acting entirely on our behalf.

Reaches out to save this fragile bird boned by. As with his best albums, Sinatra doesn't seem to be going from any script, there aren't printed up lyrics and dialog for this kind of thing. It's the real stuff. In this scene, he says almost nothing. He exhales and sweats and looks away, he's standing before us, letting his feelings utterly overwhelm him. It's scary. It's time I mentioned what else was happening in our Turkish kebab house, and that was that all of us employees, bike messengers, cabbies, felt Sinatras confusion so completely that we ourselves were about to cry. We would have been crying, that is, if our throats weren't clogged up with Turkish cuisine.

Sinatra can barely talk, we could barely breathe. On the television, Janet Leigh starts to tell Sinatra who she is, then she stops. Instead tells him her address, tells him the apartment number, her phone number, she gently asks him if he can remember it. His larynx closes up as he tells her yes. You aren't sure how to take this response because he still can't look at her. Genitally repeats the phone number and he turns even further from her, shakes his head slightly, closes his eyes and weariness. In that moment, finally, after attentively watching this, the whole group of us in the carbury began to cough. Most everyone was choking back tears, but by this time, many of us were choking on shish kebab, too. We were gagging into napkins, downing our sodas, poking ourselves

in the ribs, crossing our hands at our throats. The look of serious injury was on everybody's face and then abruptly, just like that. It was gone, we were OK. We would be fine. We looked up at the television. Sinatra, our would be killer, you was breathing easier to we're drinking, my friend. To the end of a brief episode, make it one for my baby and one more. I got the routine put another

nickel. And the machine feeling so bad. Care to make the music easy and so. I could tell you a lot. But you got to be. True to your code, make it one for my baby. And one more for the room. Our program is produced by Peter Clowney and myself with Alix Spiegel and Nancy Updike, contributing editors Sarah Vowell, Paul Tough, Jack HItt, and Margy Rochlin. Special thanks today to Billy May, Bob Carlson, Rennie Sparks, Charles Pignon and the Sinatra Society of America. Christina Stephens, Salon magazine.

For Sarah Vowell's column, you can write the Sinatra Society of America at Box 275, Toluca Lake, California, nine one six one zero. If you like a copy of this program that only cost ten dollars, call us at WBC in Chicago. Three one two eight three two three three eight zero. Funding for this American life has been provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Elizabeth Cheney Foundation and the listeners. Whitby's Chicago WPEC Management Oversight by Tony Malatya. Who went to you to help spread the word? TV Producers of America. I beg you for all of us. For Frank. Ixnay on the My Way. I'm IRA Glass Beck next week with more stories of this American Life, my band. But this torch that I've found. It's got to be drowned or it soon might explode,

so make it one for my baby and one more. It's.