Not too long ago I published an article about what happens when musicians decide to become actors. In it, I mentioned that very often this is a good idea, but more often it is bad medicine. One of my examples of when it goes off the tracks was Frank Sinatra. Naturally enough, the Frankophiles attacked my taste. I stand by it. After all, Sinatra won his one and only Oscar in a movie in which he had his superior Montgomery Clift giving him acting lessons in-between scenes.
As much as I admire The Manchurian Candidate, let’s face it: Frank is the weakest part of that masterpiece. I’ve never been a big fan of Sinatra, but even more distressing to me is the cult that has surrounded this man who, it has to be admitted by even his admirers, was hardly worth, well, admiring. And so, in what may well prove to yet another target for personal attacks against me, I humbly offer some of the Frank Sinatra trivia that you don’t usually find on those sites dedicated to whitewashing the man.
In her biography, Mia Farrow claims that ex-husband Frank Sinatra came to her following the infamous incident that resulted in Woody Allen taking a powder with Farrow’s adopted daughter Soon Yi with the offer to have Woody’s legs broken. Of course, he wouldn’t be the person actually breaking the legs of Woody. That would require guts. Something lacking in the Chairman of the Board’s history.
When Frank Sinatra finally broke off the mortal coil and descended into hell, he left behind his will. Part of that will stipulates that anyone who dares threaten the benevolent goodness contained within will be disinherited should they believe that Mr. Sinatra had been unfair in posthumously dispersing his singularly ill-gotten wealth.
Remember that scene in The Godfather where Robert Duvall has a talk with the movie producer, a horse’s head winds up in bed and a second rate Italian singer gets a part in a movie that saves his career? Well, that’s all based on an event in which a member of the mob supposedly held a gun to record producers head to get Frank Sinatra either in or out of a contract, depending on who is telling the story. Frankie’s supporters like to point to this as a good thing.
I prefer to see it as another example of Frank getting much tougher people to do his dirty work for him. By the way, Sinatra confronted Godfather author Mario Puzo about the character of Johnny Fontane. Was Sinatra upset that the cat had been let out of the bag over his underworld connections? No, Sinatra was furious that Puzo had Fontane crying, something Mr. Bigshot would never do. Except for about five years consecutively after Ava Gardner dumped his sorry ass.
A Hungarian actress whose last name was not Gabor but whose first name was Eva, claimed that Frank fathered a daughter with her in 1957 while she married to German actor Curt Jurgens. The standup guy that he was, Sinatra refused to ever acknowledge that his daughter was his own.
You know that scene in The Manchurian Candidate where the Laurence Harvey candidate is seen talking with Sinatra who appears out of focus? Well, that’s not supposed to signify the Harvey character’s admittedly skewed mental perspective. The truth is that director John Frankenheimer didn’t realize Sinatra was fuzzy until the dailies. They tried shooting the scene again, but the master actor Sinatra was unable to reproduce his performance. What they had in the reshoot was so unusable that Frankenheimer was forced to leave the unfocused footage in.
