Medford mail tribune., March 08, 1959, Image 42

Oar Hollywood reporter turns front-line correspondent
when he dares to interview the explosive battler from Hoboken.
I felt like I was against the wall, waiting for the
firing squad to ready arms. Or, remembering back,
like a kid waiting to see the school principal on a
hooky charge.
"Call him Mister," I kept saying to myself. "Call
him Mister."
I was in the Cardozo Hotel in Miami Beach, pencil
and paper ready for an interview. I've interviewed
hundreds of celebrities plenty tough ones, too.
Why, then, should the pencil shake so?
"If he takes a swing at me, I'll swing back," I told
myself. "But I'll call him Mister when I do."
A flunky approached me. "Mister Sinatra will see
you now." So here it was. The den of lions. I went forth.
Frank Sinatra has a quick smile and a likable
manner. After talking to him, you understand why
many people label him "a great guy." But you never
forget to call him Mister, and you never refer to his
unhappy loves or public brawls.
If you play it Frankie's way, an interview goes
smoothly, if dully. Never lower your guard, though.
The Voice has so many hot spots, you might ignite
him without realizing it. Sinatra considers questions
about his career, if respectfully asked, fair game, so I
bravely sallied forth along this front.
"You've been criticized, Mr. Sinatra, for not re
hearsing your scenes before actual shooting. In your
new film, 'A Hole in the Head,' I hear you sort of
unnerved Edward G. Robinson, who likes plenty of
rehearsing before a take."
"We all have different ways of working," Frankie
replied serenely. "I don't believe in exhausting my
emotions before the take. On the other hand, I read
the script 50 times before I ever go to work. So you
can't say I'm unprepared."
As for acting itself, Frank, an Academy Award
winner, appears sincerely humble. He says he has
private prints of almost all his films, which he renins
to learn what he must do to become a better per
former. He seems genuinely happy to be cast with an
actor of Robinson's stature. Someday, Sinatra wants
to direct movies. But Broadway holds no lure.
"No matter how successful we'd be on opening
night," he said, "I'd probably say, 'Be seeing you,
boys . . .' and take off. No, sir, I wouldn't want to be
tied down like that!"
For a moment Sinatra sounded like Sinatra. For
the most part, our talk had been like a tea with Ethel
Barrymore. Yet the fire that makes Sinatra the most
hot-tempered person in Hollywood, and at times the
most captivating, is never fully hidden. Frank has
spent too much time bringing it to a fine flame to have
a few moments of tranquility put it out.
iihy the belligerence? Well, through the years
" the answer has changed. Considering Frank's
mercurial career, it probably will change again.
When Frank was a boyish crooner sending bobby
soxers into swoons, the press heard that he was a
tough kid from a hoodlum neighborhood in Hoboken,
N. J. He had fought poverty all his life and seemed
headed for a life of crime until his interest in music
saved him. If he seemed bellicose, it was this rough-and-tumble
background.
1
Persistence won Frank the role of Maggio
(above) and a wife, Ava Gardner
(right) but not any lasting happiness.
12
Family Weekly, March I. I9S9
f wmp
by Peer J.Oppenheimer
The story was the kind America liked to read. And
it was the kind Frankie wanted to believe. Next to
being known as a "ladies' man," he was striving to be
acknowledged as a "tough guy," and in the following
stage of his unpredictable career he determined to
prove both points.
When his popularity on the screen and on records
nose-dived, Sinatra compensated by turning his per
sonal attention from his wife, Nancy, and their three
children to a score of Hollywood beauties. His two
year courtship of Ava Gardner was front-page news
and spelled the end of his first marriage and the open
ing of an all-out war with anybody in the world who
dared question his values.
Sinatra thought it shocking that newsmen should
snoop on his three-continent love affair with beau
teous Ava, and in 1951 his car almost ran down pho
tographers and reporters some extremely friendly
toward him who tried to get an interview with the
couple at a Los Angeles airport.
There were also night-club brawls with gossip
columnists and public-relations men and an endless
series of childish name-calling duels with anybody
who questioned Sinatra's behavior.
Reporters became more curious. Who is this guy
who runs us over and calls us liars and other
things? they asked. A tough young punk? A poverty
soured kid striking back blindly?
Investigation indicated otherwise. The Sinatra
family of Hoboken was dominated by a politically
powerful mother who saw to it that her husband had
a steady job on the city fire department and that her
son had the best, if most "sissified," clothes available.
Gangsters? Well, Hoboken was no place for a skinny
kid in Lord Fauntleroy clothing, which Frankie
sometimes wore. But it was no spawning ground for
Dead End kids, either.
No, Frankie's dream world of life-and-death
among the slum-dwellers didn't hold up. It was
amusing then to see him surround himself with in
ternationally known- hoodlums, strong-arm punks,
and alleged fight-fixers. It was not amusing to see
him use his associates' bully-boy tactics on everyone
from waiters to columnists, studio flunkies to big
shot executives.
Nancy divorced her husband of 12 years in 1951
and Frankie immediately married Ava. But Ava, one
of the world's most desirable women, is no cure-all
for a man's problems. There followed two years of
marital explosions and finally a breakup.
Frank, however, was battling more than women
and the world press. He was battling for his career,
and it's to his credit that he turned almost certain
defeat into a glorious victory on this front, at least.
He camped at the doorstep of producer Harry Cohn,
demanding to do the part of Maggio in "From Here
to Eternity." Against all odds, he won the part at a