Books
Chairman of the broads
by Greg Fleming
THE LAST WORD ON FRANK SINATRA, by George Jacobs (MacMillan. $59.95).
Want to know more about Frank Sinatra’s acting, music or cultural legacy? Well, sorry, this isn’t the book for that. Want to know what really went on in the lives and times of the Chairman of the Board, however, and you’ve hit paydirt. Thanks to his long-time chauffeur and PA, we learn which hookers sported what is now termed a Brazilian wax, which celebs of the time had a big dick (Frank, of course), where Frank liked a girl’s lingerie (“on the floor”), who Frank truly idolised (Humphrey Bogart, Puccini, Billie Holiday, Bing Crosby), that Frank’s bedroom was plastered with photos of his one true love, actress Ava Gardner, a decade after she had left him, and that a young Mia Farrow existed on “yoghurt and trail mix”.
This funny, gossipy book opens with Jacobs near the end of his tenure with Frank in 1968: “The only man in America who was less interested than me in sleeping with Mia Farrow was her husband and my boss, Frank Sinatra.” From there it only gets better. Jacobs has a shrewd, if forgiving eye and, given his background as son of a poor black southern bar-owner, an endearing sense of the absurdity of the world he found himself in.
Although there’s mention of Jacobs’s own various failed marriages (often owing to his dawn-to-dawn hours attending to Sinatra’s needs), he wisely keeps the attention focused on the twilight world of Sinatra’s Ratpack set. At the height of his power and fame, remember, Sinatra’s world encompassed the Mafia, the Kennedys and Marilyn Monroe (who demanded a full-length mirror in every room so that she could see “how disgusting [I] look”).
Sinatra also ran head up against prejudice (he insisted that Sammy Davis Jnr, for example, be allowed to stay in his hotel when they played Las Vegas) and the paranoid, Cold War mindset of the time. Despite his boozing and skirt-chasing, and his political intransigence, Sinatra also had a tender side – we learn of many instances when he paid a waitress’s medical bills, and he would perform gratis at friends’ clubs when he was at the height of his stardom, to repay those who had supported him when it looked as if his music career was down for the count, before his Capitol Records comeback and his acting success in From Here to Eternity.
It’s an awesome ride, and Jacobs spares no one, least of all himself. While keeping an eye on Marilyn Monroe (whom Sinatra had put up at one of his LA pads), Jacobs is propositioned by the the blonde bombshell. Jacobs – always sensible – turns her down.
Marilyn has another try: “What if you didn’t work for Frank?”
Jacobs: “I’d be on Welfare.”
His book is a compelling, affectionate and brilliantly written portrait of one of the most vital figures in 20th-century showbiz. Recommended.
