Frank Sinatra and his wife, Ava Gardner
with Tony Curtis and his wife Janet Leigh
at a party hosted by the Duke of Edinburgh,
1951
Ronnie Kray,
George Raft,
Reggie Kray,
Rocky Marciano
and Charlie Kray (Older Brother of the Kray Twins)
and Charlie Kray (Older Brother of the Kray Twins)
circa. 1968
"When [his father, Ronnie Cromwell's] fraud went wrong he would come home at night, turn off all the lights, seize a big walking stick and walk around the garden. When my sister, Charlotte [the actress], was researching her role in the film about the Krays she visited their mother. Mrs Kray showed her the family album and there was a photograph of our father with his arms around the Kray twins.
You get my drift?"
******
"What I meant, is that when you get into the masonry of espionage it is such a little journey to the other side.
But no, I did not consider defecting."
Former MI5 Officer, Former MI6 Officer Richard Cromwell,
Aka John Le Carré
Interview with The Daily Telegraph,
In-House Organ of MI6,
2010
Lord Boothby with top gangster Ronnie Kray, centre,
who reportedly supplied boys to the elite.
Sir Cliff Richard was friends with the Kray Twins.
How the Krays ran a protection business for Sinatra and Co from behind bars
By Vanessa Allen for the Daily Mail
Updated: 01:50, 2 January 2010
The Kray twins ran a lucrative bodyguard and 'protection' business for Hollywood stars from behind bars which prison officials were powerless to stop, secret documents reveal today.
The gangland crime lords controlled the business from their cells while Reggie was in jail and paranoid schizophrenic Ronnie was in Broadmoor high-security hospital.
The brothers boasted on their business card that their clients included 'Hollywood stars and Arab Noblemen', such as singer Frank Sinatra, adding: 'We have never lost a client.'
'We have never lost a client' : While behind bars, Reggie (l) and Ronnie Kray ran a protection business for the rich and famous
The Krays, who had been jailed for life for murder [Note : This is not true - they were sentenced to 25 years, which, somehow (conveniently) got converted into an indefinite stay in hospital, served, 'At Her Majesty's Pleasure' (I'm not making this up), in the Secure Unit at Broadmoor, once they had been diagnosed as being 'Criminally Insane', and written off as suffering from 'schizophrenia' - an early example of the deliberate obsfocation by intentional confusion and misdirection that was the intended result of muddling up 'schizophrenia' (which is a symptom, not a diagnosis with 'Multiple Personalities' - again, also a symptom, and end-goal of Trauma-Based Mind Control methodologies] , said their services included bodyguards, security and 'house protection' – a chilling echo of the protection racket they ran in the East End.
Sinatra was said to have recruited an 18-strong team of bodyguards from the firm, Krayleigh Enterprises, before his June 1985 visit to the Wimbledon tennis tournament.
Before they were arrested in 1968, the Krays mixed with many stars of the era, including Sinatra, Judy Garland, Diana Dors, and Barbara Windsor.
Some even visited them in prison. Officials at Broadmoor raised the alarm to the Home Office in July 1985, after finding one of Ronnie Kray's business cards.
Frank Sinatra was said to have hired 18 bodyguards from the twins' company Krayleigh Enterprises in 1985
But amazingly they claimed they were powerless to ban the fledgling company, which the twins ran with their brother, Charlie, and another man who was not in prison.
The memo to the Home Office questioned whether the Krays should be allowed to run the business, but warned there were no provisions to stop Ronnie as he was held under the Mental Health Act. [I.E., He is not a prisoner, he is a patient - therefore not subject to prison rules, or prison discipline....]
The memo, written by an unnamed Broadmoor official, said: 'As far as I know there is nothing in the Mental Health Act to prevent people setting up companies but I know less about the regulations relating to prisons and the law relating to companies.
'Clearly, however, I do not want the Krays to be seen to be using Broadmoor and it may well be that if he is well enough to be the director of a company he is too well to be in Broadmoor.'
The memo, on headed Broadmoor paper, was contained in a prison dossier on the Kray twins released under Freedom of Information legislation.
The dossier did not include the Home Office's response to the memo, although an unnamed civil servant has scribbled 'Advice please!' on the top of the letter.
The file contained a photocopy of a Krayleigh Enterprises business card, which listed all three brothers as directors and added: 'Personal aides to the Hollywood stars and Arab Noblemen.'
The Kray twins were both held at Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight after they were convicted of the murder of Jack 'The Hat' McVitie and sentenced to life in 1969.
Ronnie was also convicted of the murder of George Cornell, whom he shot dead for calling him a 'fat poof'. A decade later he was transferred to Broadmoor.
He was never released from the high security unit, and died in 1995
'Powerless': Officials at Broadmoor (above) raised the alarm to the Home Office in July 1985, after finding one of Ronnie Kray's business cards - but were not allowed to ban the fledgling company
Reggie was released on compassionate grounds in 2000 after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, but died a month later.
The file described Ronnie as an 'active and predatory homosexual' in jail, and said officers had once found him in bed with another inmate.
His bed-mate was threatened with solitary confinement, but on other occasions prison officers appear to have turned a blind eye to Kray's relationships to keep him calm before his transfer to Broadmoor.
They said the paranoid schizophrenic's prison relationships were a 'stabilising' influence on him.
Kray was plunged into fits of despair when his prison 'passions' were thwarted and often became violent, according to his jailers' notes.
A 1977 report on Kray's progress at Parkhurst said: 'Ronald Kray remains an active and predatory homosexual, and cares little who knows it.
'He presents as a near moron in good physical condition but mentally dull. There are occasional glimpses in his behaviour of a latent violence.'
Circa 1962
"Sir Cliff has never once replied to any criticism that he allegedly entered the profession as a male prostitute, although rumours persist that many performers have refused to share a stage with him in the past.
"The Metropolitan police have security cameras trained on the Chelsea army barracks and have also allegedly complained unofficially of Cliff Richard’s car number constantly being flagged up on numerous occasions as Sir Cliff was rumoured to be trying to chat up the soldiers."
" At a big London railway station in the spring of 1970, a plastic carrier bag was found in the regular search for bombs before the station closed for the night. The contents were an odd assortment of letters and photos, which seemed to have been taken at kinky party attended by some well-known figures in entertainment. One in particular showed a pop singer who masquerades under a Christian persona; dressed in women’s underwear he was pictured with young boys.
The bag was duly taken to the station office and as a senior rail worker wrote out a report for the lost property office, two MI5 men and a Special Branch officer arrived and demanded the photos. They claimed that the pop singer was being blackmailed over them: the object being to coerce him into promoting socialism and homosexuality in Britain for the Soviet KGB.
The pop singer in question had even threatened to commit suicide if the photos were released.
However MI5 passed one particular letter from the bag to the tax authorities, because it seemed to indicate that the three brothers who had a virtual monopoly over Britain’s entertainment industry were short-changing the taxman.
The brothers – Bernard Delfont, Lew Grade, and Leslie Grade (Winogradsky) – had a stranglehold over stage and screen appearances in Britain and gave preference to Jewish stars and promoters. Such were the amounts involved that fellow Jews the Kray twins were asked to launder much of the money in clubs and fixed boxing matches, gambling and other dubious enterprises.
Meanwhile the Krays themselves had high-level protection from inside the police, which bought them immunity for a while with bribery and funny handshakes.
Another ‘entertainer’ connected to the underworld was comedian Bud Flanagan of the Crazy Gang. He was not actually an Irishman at all, but a Polish Jew named Reuben Weintrop, codenamed ‘Whisky’ who had told the authorities all about London’s East End criminal networks before World War II. This information had been filed in the ‘take no action’ category but suddenly reappeared and made jaws drop with its accuracy.
Interlude - I Quote The Enemy :
" Grade was born in Tokmak, Taurida Governorate, Russian Empire to Isaak and Olga Winogradsky. In 1912, the Jewish family emigrated to escape Cossack violence and anti-Semitism, from Odessa via Berlin to Brick Lane in Bethnal Green in the East End of London.
Isaak worked as a trouser-presser while his three sons (Grade and his younger brothers, Bernard (later Bernard Delfont) and Leslie) attended the Rochelle Street Elementary School near Shoreditch, where Yiddish was spoken by 90% of the pupils.
For two years the Winogradskys lived in rented rooms at the north end of Brick Lane, before moving to the nearby Boundary Estate.
At the age of 15, Grade became an agent for a clothing company, and shortly afterwards started his own business.
In 1926, he was declared Charleston Champion of the World at a dancing competition at the Royal Albert Hall.
Fred Astaire was one of the judges.
Grade subsequently became a professional dancer going by the name Louis Grad; this form came from a Paris reporter's typing error that Grade liked and decided to keep.
The octogenarian Lord Grade once danced the Charleston at a party Arthur Ochs Sulzberger gave in New York.
[And yet, he was able to recieve a full medical discharge from the British Army in 1943, in spite of already being assigned to serve in the Concert Party, with all of the obvious non-combat, non-frontline extremely light duties such a posting would obviously entail....]
Around 1934, he became a talent agent and went into partnership with Joe Collins (father of novelist Jackie and actress Joan Collins). Among Grade's clients were harmonica player Larry Adler and the jazz group Quintet of the Hot Club of France.
Following the start of the Second World War in 1939, Grade became involved in arranging entertainment for soldiers in Harrogate, and later joined ["joined"....? Or, was drafted into...] the British Army.
He was discharged after two years when an old problem with swelling of the knees, which had earlier ended his dancing career, re-occurred.
[GOLDBRICKING BASTARD...]
In 1945, the arrangement with Collins having been terminated, Grade formed a partnership with his brother Leslie (Lew and Leslie Grade Ltd., or the Grade Organisation) and travelled in the United States, where the brothers developed their entertainment interests.
His connections included, among others, Bob Hope and Judy Garland, who performed in Britain for the first time. "
PAYDIRT.
Leslie Townes "Bob" Hope, KBE, KC*SG, KSS
Honourary Brigadier-General, United States Marine Corps.
"Their motto is 'Semper Fideleis' - which means, 'Oh, it's alright doc, just sew it back on....' "
The distinction is currently bestowed solely by the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps to "individuals in the civilian community who have made extraordinary contributions to the Marine Corps."
It "carries no entitlement to pay or benefits."
Nominations may be submitted to the commandant by "commanding generals, commanding officers, and officers-in-charge" and "must be endorsed by a general officer within their chain of command."
Criteria include:
(a) A terminally ill child that has some unique or qualifying link to the military or the Marine Corps.
(b) An individual who has given extraordinary service or support to the Marine Corps, and for whom any lesser form of recognition would be insufficient.
(c) Deceased individuals whose actions or contributions on behalf of the Marine Corps would have merited consideration before their death.
Honorees
Two somewhat differing lists can be viewed on the official Marine Corps website, one at the Marine Corps Honorary Marine page (1992-2011), and the other in this document (1992-2007).
Among the notables on both lists are:
Joe Rosenthal (1996), the reporter who took the iconic photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima
Felix de Weldon (2001), the sculptor of the Marine Corps War Memorial, based on Rosenthal's photograph
combat veterans and United States Senators Max Cleland and Daniel Inouye (both 2001)
Jim Nabors (2001), star of the television comedy show Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.
actor Chuck Norris (2006)
actor Gary Sinise (2013)
Among the 2012 honorees were Cody Green, a terminally ill boy who loved the U.S. Marine Corps, and Ryan Crocker, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan.
Jacob Tyler Sprinkle was posthumously made an Honorary Marine on July 11, 2014 and the family was presented his honor on October 15, 2014. The ceremony was held at Lee High School in Jonesville, Virginia.
The presenting officer of the United States Marine Corps was Lt. General John A. Toolan, Jr., Commander, Marine Corps Forces, Pacific. Jacob lost a 13 year fight with congenital heart defects.
As of October 2014, there have been fewer than 100 Honorary Marine titles presented in the 239 years of the Marine Corps.
Other ad hoc honorees
Lon Chaney, Sr. was made an honorary member of the Corps for his portrayal of a Marine sergeant in the 1926 film Tell It to the Marines.
Cartoon character Bugs Bunny was given the rank of honorary Marine Master Sergeant for his performance in Super-Rabbit.
Actor and comedian Bob Hope, famous for his work with the USO, was named an honorary Brigadier General of the Corps.
Republic of Vietnam
c.1967
(May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003), was an English-born American comedian, vaudevillian, actor, singer, dancer, athlete, and author.
With a career spanning nearly 80 years, Hope appeared in over 70 films and shorts, including a series of "Road" movies co-starring Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour. In addition to hosting the Academy Awards fourteen times (more than any other host), he appeared in many stage productions and television roles and was the author of fourteen books.
The song "Thanks For the Memory" is widely regarded as Hope's signature tune.
Celebrated for his long career performing United Service Organizations (USO) shows to entertain active service American military personnel—he made 57 tours for the USO between 1941 and 1991—Hope was declared an honorary veteran of the United States Armed Forces in 1997 by act of the U.S. Congress.
"The Duchess" (Saville's Mother),
and
Sir James "Jimmy" Savile, OBE
Knight-Commander of the Papal Order of St. Gregory the Great
In 1937, the three year old Kray Twins were in hospital, separated from their mother.
In 1952, the Kray Twins were doing National service in the army. They spent much of their time locked up.
The man who seemed to exercise some kind of control over the Kray Twins was 'an aristocratic adjutant, a languid ex-public schoolboy".
('Villains' edited by Esme Hawes, 1994)
Brainwashing can give the victim more than one personality.
The Kray Twins were described by their local school teacher and by their local vicar as being polite, helpful, punctilious and respectful to their elders.
('Villains' edited by Esme Hawes, 1994)
The Kray Twins could have sudden changes of mood and become murderous.
Ronnie Kray claimed that while he was locked up, there were people who wanted to torture him.
('Villains' edited by Esme Hawes, 1994)
She also observed that anyone seeing Frank with his daughter, Nancy, “would
quietly walk away with a funny, gnawing feeling: If they weren’t father
and daughter, they could certainly pass for lovers. …”
Left
to right, Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner (1922–1990), Mrs C.J. Latta,
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and American opera singer Dorothy
Kirsten enjoying an after dinner joke at a Variety Club of Great Britain
benefit for the National Playing Fields Association, at the Empress
Club, London, 29th December 1951.
Mrs Latta is the wife of a co-founder of the Variety Club of Great Britain.
" The first step in remaking the Sinatra image was the European concert tour arranged by Mickey Rudin in 1962 to benefit underprivileged children and to introduce his client as a philanthropist with a social conscience.
“I was married to Mickey at the time, and together the two of us had to go out and get Frank concerts,” said Elizabeth Greenschpoon. “We went all over the world—to Rome and Tokyo and London, and I watched Mickey create an atmosphere of demand for Frank, that he was desirable. Never mind the henchmen and goons. Mickey made them book Frank. Because of my husband’s strong ties to Israel, he also managed to get a youth house named for Frank because supposedly this was a tour to benefit children and youth. I say ‘supposedly’ because the real purpose was to benefit Frank. He needed a good press at the time, and Mickey saw to it that he got one.”
In Tokyo, they gave Frank the key to the city and named an orphanage for him.
In Hong Kong, hundreds of children lined the streets waving garlands of flowers in his honor.
In Nazareth, they presented him with a silver-embossed Bible in a ground-breaking ceremony for the Frank Sinatra International Friendship Youth House. But this antagonized the Arab League, which promptly banned his movies and records.
In London, Princess Margaret shook his hand and Lord Snowden bowed in admiration.
In Paris, General de Gaulle made him an officer of the “Order of Public Health.”
Throughout the ten-week tour, the press coverage was outstanding because Moses had hired a still photographer, a three-man television team, and two publicity people to accompany Frank. Photographs of him holding blind children in Greece and talking with crippled children in Italy appeared around the world, inspiring newspapers to commend “the new Frank Sinatra.” In Japan, they hailed him as “a nice, gentle guest,” in Israel as “a tough dandy.”
His return to the United States was heralded as “Do-Gooder Frank Flies Back Home.” He was honored by the Variety Club of Southern California for “services in behalf of children everywhere” and was presented with a silver plate by the Columbian Foundation. He told reporters that as an overprivileged adult he wanted to help underprivileged children.
“I think we raised something like a million dollars for children’s institutions. I wish it was five million,” he said, noting that his most moving experience had occurred while visiting with a six-year-old blind child. “It was windy, and I brushed the hair out of her eyes and told her that the wind had been blowing up her hair. She stopped me cold when she said, ‘What color is the wind?’ ”
Chuck Moses designed new press kits with a biography of Frank that began: “Frank Sinatra’s life has moved into a new phase. …” Moses also arranged as many interviews as he could, believing that Frank would gain more by talking to reporters than by beating on them.
“Frank cared very much about the press and what they wrote about him,” said Moses. “He insisted that I take a nice big suite in every hotel we checked into so that I could have reporters up. I had to be very careful when I announced his engagement to Juliet Prowse because Frank was concerned about Nancy, Sr. He knew that she [still] expected him to come back to her, and he really didn’t want to hurt her. Six weeks later, I had to announce that the engagement was broken because of ‘a conflict of career interest.’ Juliet just refused to give up her dancing and be the kind of stay-at-home wife that Frank wanted, but I couldn’t go into that kind of detail with reporters. Because of the personal nature of those two announcements, they were probably the toughest I had to make.”
Frank’s image campaign suffered a slight setback a few months later when he fought with a photographer in a San Francisco nightclub because he had not asked for permission to take Sinatra’s picture. The photographer’s camera was smashed and the film ruined.
“It is true that Frank was unhappy with the way the picture was taken,” said Moses. “He likes photographers to ask his permission to take pictures and to address him as “Mr. Sinatra.’”
Extract from His Way : The Unauthorised Biography of Frank Sinatra
by Kitty Kelley
(1986)
Frank gave his usual performance of exceptional vulgarity and exquisite taste, a swine one minute as he lashed out at female columnists, and particularly graceful the next as he sang his soft, sad ballads, playing the audience like a sweet harp. Applauding the old insouciance, Charles Champlin in the Los Angeles Times praised his astonishing gifts of phrasing, control, and feeling, which he said proved beyond doubt the still youthful tenderness of his voice. “The night was not an unmitigated triumph, though,” Champlin wrote. “Midway along, Sinatra paused to sip a glass of wine … and revive his animosities towards the ladies of the press.… Whatever the distant provocations, the savagery of the attacks invited sympathy for his victims and put gall in a winy evening.”
To trumpet his comeback, Frank launched an extensive ten-city concert tour, his first in six years, to benefit Variety Clubs International. Every performance sold out weeks in advance as he made his triumphant march across the country, leaving spellbound audiences in his wake. The only criticism arose when he stopped singing and started talking. Skewering the press, he criticized Edwin Newman of NBC-TV, sneered at Eric Sevareid of CBS-TV, and ridiculed Barbara Walters, calling her “the ugliest broad on television.”
His most searing remarks were directed at Rona Barrett, who had recently published her autobiography. In it she wrote that she felt Frank, Jr., had staged his own kidnapping to get his father’s attention. She also observed that anyone seeing Frank with his daughter, Nancy, “would quietly walk away with a funny, gnawing feeling: If they weren’t father and daughter, they could certainly pass for lovers. …”
Frank’s rage could not be contained: “Congress should give Rona Barrett’s husband a medal just for waking up beside her and having to look at her.… She’s so ugly that her mother had to tie a pork chop around her neck just to get the dog to play with her.… What can you say about her that hasn’t already been said about—(pause)—leprosy. … I promise not to say anything about Rona Barrett tonight. I really mean that. A lot of my friends were upset about the fact that I was even bothering about her, so I’m not going to mention her name. I’m also not going to mention Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr, Adolf Hitler, Bruno Hauptmann, or Ilse Koch—she’s the other two-dollar broad—the one who made the lampshades.”
The success of his U.S. tour led to a five-country tour through Europe, his first since 1962. But Frank canceled his appearance in West Germany because of what he called “scurrilous attacks” by its press, and then flew to London, where he lambasted the Germans from the British stage.
“What gives with these Germans anyway? I’ve done nothing to them,” he said. “I could have answered and told reporters to ‘look to the sins of your fathers.’ I could have mentioned Dachau, the concentration camp. … I don’t understand the German press. They call me a super-gangster. What’s that? Al Capone? He wasn’t one. It’s ridiculous, who the hell needs it anyway?”
The British audiences gave him standing ovations, while the British press wrote rave reviews, but Prince Charles, the future king of England who had met Frank twice, said he was distressed by the “creeps” and “Mafia types” Sinatra surrounded himself with.
“He’s a pretty strange person,” said the prince. “He could be terribly nice one minute and … well, not so nice the next.”
In France, they referred to Frank’s bodyguards as “gorilles.”
The tour ended with an international incident in Australia when Frank insulted the country’s press corps. Darting past reporters in Melbourne, he spat at the reporters waiting to interview him before his rehearsal at Festival Hall. One newsman had managed to reach him by phone earlier in the morning to ask what he had eaten for breakfast and Frank slammed the phone down without responding.
“The idiot,” Frank said. “What the hell does he care what I had for breakfast? I was about to tell him what I did after breakfast.”
He refused to be interviewed after his rehearsal, and when he returned to his hotel and found more television cameramen waiting for him, he exploded, a signal for his bodyguards to fly into action.
According to one of the cameramen, one of Frank’s bodyguards wrapped an electric cord around his throat and warned, “Things are going to get physical.”
Reporter Hilary Sexton emerged from the fray with cuts on her face.
“Sinatra’s goon squads blocked the way and then attacked the newsmen,” said Jim Oram of the Sydney Daily Mirror.
That evening, Frank appeared at Melbourne’s Festival Hall before a sold-out house of eight thousand people, who clapped, cheered, and stamped their feet with approval.
Extract from His Way : The Unauthorised Biography of Frank Sinatra
by Kitty Kelley
(1986)
" Through marriage, the Sinatras had elevated themselves socially, so there were few traces left of the showgirl in a feathered headdress who danced her way across the Las Vegas stage, or the saloon singer with the grade school education. In their place stood a stunning wife bedecked with a queen’s ransom in jewels and a husband hailed around the world as a humanitarian. Hand in hand, they chased the rainbow of respectability that had eluded Frank for so many years. While they were not embraced by the pedigreed elite, they were crowned by the rich and nouveau riche who go to nightclubs, winter in Palm Springs, and appear in Suzy’s column.
As Mrs. Sinatra, Barbara began to do her part with charity work for the Desert Museum, the Desert Hospital, and the Sexually Abused Children Program in the Coachella Valley. She joined boards, volunteered her time, and contributed money, provided it was a considerable sum.
“We only deal in giving away millions,” she said to a woman who requested a mere one thousand dollars.
Together, the Sinatras traveled to the south of France to attend galas for Princess Grace of Monaco and Baron Guy de Rothschild; they promoted and accompanied a caravan to the Holy Land for one hundred seventy people who paid twenty-five hundred dollars apiece; they sponsored charity balls for the World Mercy Fund, which ushered them into the lofty circles of Laurance Rockefeller and Barron Hilton. The world hailed them as Lord and Lady Bountiful.
In California, they waved to thousands as the grand marshals of the Rose Bowl Parade. In Philadelphia, Frank received the city’s Freedom Medal while Barbara sparkled by his side. In New Jersey, he was hailed as a humanitarian for raising $600,000 for the Atlantic City Medical Center, and a wing was dedicated in his honor.
In New York, he helped raise one million dollars for Governor Hugh Carey’s campaign expenses, and the governor immediately defended him to the press against charges of ties to organized crime.
“I have yet to see anyone lay any criticism against Frank Sinatra excepting he’s very good to his friends,” he said. “I admire and respect him, and I think it’s a filthy assertion unworthy of comment.”
In Denver, where Frank raised money for the Children’s Diabetes Foundation, he was given the International Man of the Year award.
Italy presented him with its highest civilian honor—the Grande Ufficiale Deli Ordine Al Merito Della Republica Italiana—calling him “a great and meritorious official of the Italian Republic.”
In Egypt, he performed before the pyramids in a benefit for President and Mrs. Anwar Sadat and received international press coverage for his generosity.
Caesars Palace staged a sixty-fourth birthday party for Frank, which also commemorated his fortieth anniversary in show business. The affair was videotaped by Sinatra’s Bristol Productions and sold to NBC-TV for a two-hour show entitled Sinatra—The First 40 Years. In saluting Frank, Dionne Warwick presented him with a special Grammy from the recording industry; Jule Styne presented him with the Pied Piper Award from ASCAP; Caesars Palace announced that the fountain in front of the casino would be called the Frank Sinatra Fountain and the coins tossed in would go to the John Wayne Memorial Cancer Clinic at UCLA; the Egyptian ambassador read a message of congratulations from President Anwar Sadat; the Israeli Consul General read a similar one from Menachem Begin; and Dean Martin presented Frank with an honorary diploma from Hoboken High School to compensate for the one he never earned.
In Hollywood, the show was hailed as “the greatest event of the decade in the world of entertainment,” but the East Coast wasn’t so complimentary. The Washington Star published an editorial entitled “The King and His Court,” which disparaged the spectacle and the “seemingly endless procession of sycophants who celebrated it for him, in a display of public groveling that would have embarrassed anyone except the gentleman in question, Mr. Frank Sinatra.…
“What was puzzling, as the festivities ground on and on, was the fear that seemed to quiver just beneath the gaiety. That wasn’t love emanating from the TV set; it was obsequiousness. Some of the most celebrated men and women in entertainment marched across the stage—in Las Vegas, of course—in a parade of abjection. Has Mr. Sinatra really accumulated so much wealth and influence that he can reduce Orson Welles, once a great actor and film-maker, to a sycophantic blob?
“Even more puzzling than the groveling was all the blather about Mr. Sinatra’s humanitarian enterprises. There were even emissaries from Israel and Egypt, in Camp David lock-step, on hand to present Mr. Sinatra with awards for his benevolence. Well, Mr. Sinatra’s charities are rather like Mr. Rockefeller’s dimes—good for the old blue-eyed image. They are not to be taken seriously by any except those who receive them.”
Praising Frank as “the best singer of American popular music who ever walked down the pike,” despite a voice “that may have lost much of its timbre,” the Washington Star editorial expressed wonder and awe at his performance. “That such beautiful music should emerge from such vulgarity is one of the great mysteries of the age; but we must count our blessings, no matter how peculiar.”
Then William Safire wrote a column in The New York Times about Frank’s “lifelong gangland friendships.” Having already called Safire “a goddamn liar,” Frank now went on a rampage against all the press. He sent letters to President Jimmy Carter, to his Cabinet, to every member of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, every governor, to publishers, business leaders throughout the country, and deans of every journalism school in America, begging them to join him in a crusade to restrain the nation’s “runaway press.” He asked them to remind “the press that there is more to the Constitution of this great nation than the First Amendment it so frequently hides behind.”
Then he banned press coverage of him as the grand marshal in New York’s Columbus Day parade.
Extract from His Way : The Unauthorised Biography of Frank Sinatra
by Kitty Kelley
(1986)
“He’s one of the most investigated people in America,” argued Rudin.
“It would be ludicrous to avoid calling him in,” said Nevada Gaming Control Board Chairman Richard Bunker, who agreed to a time limit of nine months on the Sinatra investigation. He later declared that Frank’s “worldwide prominence” made it “important” to act “as quickly as possible.” He never explained why.
During those nine months, Frank burnished his image with good works and prestigious awards. His benefit for the Desert Hospital in Palm Springs raised $1.3 million. The district’s grateful congressman, Jerry Lewis, addressed the House of Representatives and said Frank “as America’s number one entertainer and philanthropist… has brought a song and a smile to the heart of a world that so needs a smile.”
A week later, Sinatra’s benefit for the University of Santa Clara raised $250,000, which the Catholic school announced would establish a Frank Sinatra chair in music and theater arts.
He hosted a benefit fund-raiser for Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal and received the Humanitarian Award of the Year from Variety Clubs International. He was named national chairman for the Multiple Sclerosis Society’s Hope Chest campaign. He volunteered to be the television spokesman for Chrysler for one dollar a year. He did a benefit at Carnegie Hall for the Police Athletic League and another in the Los Angeles Universal Amphitheater for St. Francis Medical Center. He performed for Danny Thomas’s St. Jude Children’s Research Center. He sang on the Jerry Lewis telethon for muscular dystrophy as well as for the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
By the end of the year his benefit performances had indebted to him politicians, educators, policemen, Catholics and Jews and Protestants, corporate America, the medical profession, and—on November 4, 1980—the fortieth president of the United States. Within days of his election Ronald Reagan showed his gratitude to the singer by naming him chairman of the inaugural gala.
“It’s a big thrill,” said Frank. “Somebody you love has made the big move. You don’t say ‘Hello, Ron’ anymore. You say ‘Hello, Mr. President.’ … I promise I will try to make it the greatest gala in history—a night America and the world will remember.”
The appointment drew worldwide coverage, setting off rumors that Reagan might appoint Sinatra U.S. ambassador to Italy—which drew scathing comment from Italian newspapers. Typical was that in La Stampa, the respected Turin daily: “Sinatra is welcome at any time for a singing engagement or to make a movie. But not in any other capacity. … If the American government thinks of Italy as the land of mandolins and La Cosa Nostra, then Sinatra would be the appropriate choice.”
While Frank concentrated on the gala, Barbara Sinatra worked secretly with Jilly Rizzo to plan a party for her husband’s sixty-fifth birthday on December 12, 1980.
“Please keep this under your Stetson, but I’m tossing a surprise birthday party for my blue-eyed cowboy,” said the invitations she sent to more than one hundred people.
High on her list was William French Smith, named by Reagan to be attorney general. Months before, the Los Angeles lawyer had privately contacted the Nevada Gaming Control Board to assure them of Ronald Reagan’s high opinion of Frank, adding that he knew Frank only socially, not in a business relationship, so he did not feel he could be a character reference. “However,” said Smith, “Governor Reagan finds him to be an honorable person who is extremely charitable and loyal.”
The Smiths were delighted to receive their invitation from Mrs. Sinatra, and flew to Palm Springs for the party at which another guest was Sidney Korshak, the Los Angeles labor lawyer linked to organized crime.
So the man scheduled to become the nation’s highest law enforcement officer shared a social evening with the Mafia’s lawyer at a party honoring a man with underworld connections. Puzzled, a reporter from The Washington Post called Smith’s office, where a spokesman said that the attorney general-designate “had never met Korshak and wouldn’t recognize him if he saw him on the street. … If he talked to him [at the party], it was purely accidental.”
William Safire of The New York Times was so revolted by Smith’s “rehabilitation of the reputation of a man obviously proud to be close to notorious hoodlums” that he risked Sinatra’s wrath again in a column he wrote a few days later saying the attorney general-designate had made “the first deliberate affront to propriety of the Reagan administration.” Safire mentioned records in the Department of Justice that contain “file after file on Sinatra’s liaison with mobsters, along with a vivid account of the first time the singer tried to curry favor with a president-elect.”
Years before, Safire had charged that Sinatra’s introduction of Judith Campbell to Jack Kennedy and Sam Giancana made “possible the first penetration of the White House by organized crime.” Now he wrote that Sinatra would be able to use William French Smith’s presence at his party to show that he is respected by the law. “Let birthday-party goer Smith review the FBI’s Sinatra file. Then let him tell the Senate to what extent he thinks it proper for a friend of mobsters to profit from being a chum of the chief executive and of the man who runs the Department of Justice.”
Smith called the column “scurrilous” and “a cheap shot,” saying through a spokesman that he was “totally unaware of any allegations about Frank Sinatra’s background.”
The Milwaukee Journal Found that reaction troubling. “Surely, a lawyer chosen to be attorney general should understand why his presence at the party was disturbing,” said the newspaper’s editorial.
During his confirmation hearings, the attorney general-designate surprised Senator William Proxmire (D-Wis.) by saying he was unaware of the FBI files mentioned in Safire’s column that detailed Frank Sinatra’s gangland associations. This made Smith sound either dumb or duplicitous.
“While I am aware of recent press reports setting forth such allegations,” Smith told Proxmire, “I have never had access to any FBI files concerning any citizen. I have no basis for assuming that allegations reported in the press [about Sinatra] are true or false.”
In a series of written questions, the senator asked: “When the Nevada Gaming Control Board checks Sinatra’s reference by writing to President Reagan, how would you as attorney general suggest the president respond?”
Smith wrote, “As I am not familiar with all of the facts referenced by the question, I cannot say whether the matter is one on which it would be appropriate for the attorney general to render advice.”
Senator Proxmire was annoyed. “Instead of telling us that he was not familiar with the facts, Mr. Smith’s clear answer should have been that he had already been asked and made the response he made. [Smith’s phone call for Reagan on behalf of Sinatra to the Nevada Gaming Board.] He was less than candid in his answer.”
Casting the sole dissenting vote, Senator Proxmire voted against confirming the Los Angeles lawyer as attorney general.
Despite the controversy swirling around Frank, President Reagan remained loyal. This wasn’t the first time that Sinatra’s ties to organized crime had been brought to his attention. During the campaign, he had received a note from an outraged citizen about those gangland associations and had responded with a personal letter, saying: “I have known Frank Sinatra and Barbara Marx for a number of years; I’m aware of the incidents, highly publicized, quarrels with photographers, nightclub scrapes, etcetera and admit it is a life style I neither emulate nor approve. However, there is a less publicized side to Mr. Sinatra, which in simple justice must be recognized. It is a side he has worked very hard to keep hidden and unpublicized. I know of no one who has done more in the field of charity than Frank Sinatra. A few years ago a small town in the Midwest had suffered a terrible calamity; he went there on his own and staged a benefit to raise funds. All expenses were paid out of his pocket. He’d be very upset if he knew I’d told you these things. …”
The letter later sold at auction for $12,500, the highest price ever paid for a letter from a living person. The secret buyer? Frank Sinatra.
Days before the inauguration, the president-elect again was asked about Sinatra’s involvement with gangsters. “We’ve heard those things about Frank for years,” he said. “We just hope none of them are true.”
Jubilant Republicans descended on Washington to stage the biggest and most expensive inaugural in history while the incumbent President from Plains, Georgia, tried frantically to negotiate for the release of the fifty-two Americans who had been held hostage in Iran by the followers of the Ayatollah Khomeni for 444 days after the seizure of the American embassy.
Columnist William F. Buckley, Jr., wrote that if the hostages were not released before Ronald Reagan took office on January 20, 1981, the new president should simply declare war on Iran. Frank Sinatra agreed, and immediately wired the editor of the National Review:
DEAR BILL-BRAVO BRAVO BRAVO. IT IS THE MOST SENSIBLE SOLUTION I HAVE HEARD OR READ SINCE THE INCEPTION OF THE PROBLEM.
Wearing a Philadelphia Eagles warm-up jacket, a gift from owner Leonard Tose, Frank worked in an opulent gold-carpeted office in inaugural headquarters. Here he made his calls, persuading Johnny Carson to be master of ceremonies, and recruiting Bob Hope, Ethel Merman, Jimmy Stewart, Donnie and Marie Osmond, Charlton Heston, Robert Merrill, Mel Tillis, Debbie Boone, Charlie Pride, Ben Vereen, and the U.S. Naval Academy Glee Club. He called the line-up of performers “the greatest talents America could offer to any audience.”
Intent on raising $5.5 million for the Reagan Inaugural Committee, Frank directed and produced a three-hour show for 20,000 people in the Capital Centre, which was edited for television. Before the show started, he took the spotlight in a $2,500 tuxedo to escort the Vice-President and his wife to their seats, and again to greet the Reagans, whom he had placed in thronelike chairs a few feet away from the stage.
He sang a lyrical revision of “Nancy with the Laughing Face,” retitled “Nancy with the Reagan Face.” Turning to the President’s wife, he said, “This is something special for our new first lady … I hope you like it, Nancy.” Craning to read the lyrics from a card in his hand, he made love to the music: “I’m so proud that you’re First Lady, Nancy, and so pleased that I’m sort of a chum/The next eight years will be fancy/as fancy as they come.”
Nancy cried.
So did the critics. With the exception of Clive Barnes in the New York Post, who pronounced the Sinatra gala gay and grand, most were repelled by what they saw.
“It looked like a cross between Dial-A-Joke and Hee Haw” said Rex Reed in the New York Daily News. “I feel America is the greatest country in the world and the greatest talents in our country should have been up there proving it. Instead, we got a parade of jerks, clowns, and no-talent mediocrities that made you look forward to the brassiere and toilet-cleaner commercials. Except for the Metropolitan Opera’s Grace Bumbry, the show had nothing to offer anyone with intelligence or a respect for quality.”
“For a celebration and cross-section of American bad taste, it was not all-inclusive, but not for lack of trying,” said Tom Shales in The Washington Post, dismissing the gala as “a tacky combination of a Hollywood awards show, a Kiwanis club talent contest, and a telethon stocked with fewer greats than near-greats and even more pure mediocrities.”
Mike Royko of the Chicago Sun-Times was stunned by the performance of Ben Vereen, whose painted-on blackface and big white lips jolted 1981 sensibilities.
“For sophistication, it would be hard to top having a shuffling, grimacing, bulging-eyed black man in bum’s clothing come out and do a minstrel routine in which he appeared to be brain-damaged,” Royko wrote. “You just don’t see that kind of sophisticated entertainment anymore—not since Stepin Fetchit died, and no other black actor came along who could so hilariously portray the dim-witted, gape-mouthed, obsequious black stereotype. It’s possible that this performance offended some black viewers, but it probably made many of the rich Republicans in the audience yearn for the days when you could get good domestic help.”
At the cocktail party before the show, Barbara Sinatra, wearing a black sequined flamenco dress, talked with her husband’s lawyer, Mickey Rudin, and Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, producer of the James Bond movies, saying that she thought politicians and actors were alike. “They’re both in a business under a lot of pressure,” she said. “Politicians need actors to help raise money. And it’s nice to be friends with somebody in office if there’s a problem in your hometown, in case you need a stoplight.”
The next day, wrapped in a new mink coat, Barbara, clutching her lawn ticket, took her designated place in front of the U.S. Capitol to watch the swearing-in ceremonies. Frank, enraged at being excluded from the chosen one hundred people given special passes by the Reagans, barged up the steps to take his place on the platform with members of the first family and select friends.
“Frank had not been invited to stand on the steps with the President and First Lady, but he bulldozed his way in anyway and took someone else’s place,” said a White House photographer. “He didn’t have an authorized ticket, but he ballsed his way through, ramming past the Secret Service and the Capitol police. No one had the nerve to stop him. No one!”
Wearing a Philadelphia Eagles warm-up jacket, a gift from owner Leonard Tose, Frank worked in an opulent gold-carpeted office in inaugural headquarters. Here he made his calls, persuading Johnny Carson to be master of ceremonies, and recruiting Bob Hope, Ethel Merman, Jimmy Stewart, Donnie and Marie Osmond, Charlton Heston, Robert Merrill, Mel Tillis, Debbie Boone, Charlie Pride, Ben Vereen, and the U.S. Naval Academy Glee Club. He called the line-up of performers “the greatest talents America could offer to any audience.”
Intent on raising $5.5 million for the Reagan Inaugural Committee, Frank directed and produced a three-hour show for 20,000 people in the Capital Centre, which was edited for television. Before the show started, he took the spotlight in a $2,500 tuxedo to escort the Vice-President and his wife to their seats, and again to greet the Reagans, whom he had placed in thronelike chairs a few feet away from the stage.
He sang a lyrical revision of “Nancy with the Laughing Face,” retitled “Nancy with the Reagan Face.” Turning to the President’s wife, he said, “This is something special for our new first lady … I hope you like it, Nancy.” Craning to read the lyrics from a card in his hand, he made love to the music: “I’m so proud that you’re First Lady, Nancy, and so pleased that I’m sort of a chum/The next eight years will be fancy/as fancy as they come.”
Nancy cried.
So did the critics. With the exception of Clive Barnes in the New York Post, who pronounced the Sinatra gala gay and grand, most were repelled by what they saw.
“It looked like a cross between Dial-A-Joke and Hee Haw” said Rex Reed in the New York Daily News. “I feel America is the greatest country in the world and the greatest talents in our country should have been up there proving it. Instead, we got a parade of jerks, clowns, and no-talent mediocrities that made you look forward to the brassiere and toilet-cleaner commercials. Except for the Metropolitan Opera’s Grace Bumbry, the show had nothing to offer anyone with intelligence or a respect for quality.”
“For a celebration and cross-section of American bad taste, it was not all-inclusive, but not for lack of trying,” said Tom Shales in The Washington Post, dismissing the gala as “a tacky combination of a Hollywood awards show, a Kiwanis club talent contest, and a telethon stocked with fewer greats than near-greats and even more pure mediocrities.”
Mike Royko of the Chicago Sun-Times was stunned by the performance of Ben Vereen, whose painted-on blackface and big white lips jolted 1981 sensibilities.
“For sophistication, it would be hard to top having a shuffling, grimacing, bulging-eyed black man in bum’s clothing come out and do a minstrel routine in which he appeared to be brain-damaged,” Royko wrote. “You just don’t see that kind of sophisticated entertainment anymore—not since Stepin Fetchit died, and no other black actor came along who could so hilariously portray the dim-witted, gape-mouthed, obsequious black stereotype. It’s possible that this performance offended some black viewers, but it probably made many of the rich Republicans in the audience yearn for the days when you could get good domestic help.”
At the cocktail party before the show, Barbara Sinatra, wearing a black sequined flamenco dress, talked with her husband’s lawyer, Mickey Rudin, and Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, producer of the James Bond movies, saying that she thought politicians and actors were alike. “They’re both in a business under a lot of pressure,” she said. “Politicians need actors to help raise money. And it’s nice to be friends with somebody in office if there’s a problem in your hometown, in case you need a stoplight.”
The next day, wrapped in a new mink coat, Barbara, clutching her lawn ticket, took her designated place in front of the U.S. Capitol to watch the swearing-in ceremonies. Frank, enraged at being excluded from the chosen one hundred people given special passes by the Reagans, barged up the steps to take his place on the platform with members of the first family and select friends.
“Frank had not been invited to stand on the steps with the President and First Lady, but he bulldozed his way in anyway and took someone else’s place,” said a White House photographer. “He didn’t have an authorized ticket, but he ballsed his way through, ramming past the Secret Service and the Capitol police. No one had the nerve to stop him. No one!”
Extract from His Way : The Unauthorised Biography of Frank Sinatra
by Kitty Kelley
(1986)
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