Asbury Park Press from Asbury Park, New Jersey • Page 24

Lifestyle 6 Arts Leisure 11 Weddings 6, 8, 10 Movies 12 Books 13 Doonesbury 16 Television 18 Advice 19 B5 Asbury Park Press June 20, 1980 Frank Sinatra A li vie i legend mti 1 EDITOR'S NOTE: At 64 Frank Sinatra if making film, "The First Deadly Sin," and proud of his first new album in five years, "Trilogy." His fame survived a voice in and out of tune, good and bad movies, friendships with Presidents and mobsters. Pete Hamill chornicles here the highs and lows of a legendary life. I k. tl'f r''-- -J wmm '0 a has By PETE HAMILL Special to The Press AT 64, FRANCIS ALBERT SINATRA Is one of that handful of Americans whose deaths would 'certainly unleash a river of tearful prose and much genuine grief. He has worked at his trade for almost half a century and goes on as if nothing at all had changed.

He is currently in New York making his first feature film In 10 years, "The First Deadly Sin." His first new studio album in five years Is In the record stores, a three-record set called "Trilogy," which reveals that what Sinatra calls "my reed" is in better shape than It has been In since the 1960s. In concert halls and casinos he packs in the fans, and the intensity of their embrace remains scary. But his work and its public acceptance are now almost incidental to his stature. Frank Sinatra, from Hoboken, has forced his presence Into American social history; when the story of how Americans in this century played, dreamed, hoped and loved is told, Frank Sinatra cannot be left out. He is more than a mere singer or actor.

He is a legend. And the legend lives. THE LEGEND HAS its own symmetries. Sinatra I. can be unbelievably generous and brutally vicious.

He can display the grace and manners of a cultured man and turn suddenly Into a vulgar two-bit comic. He can offer George Raft a blank check "up to one million dollars" to pay taxes owed to IRS; he can then rage against one of his most important boosters, New York disc jockey Jonathan Schwartz, and help force him off the air. In his time, he has been a loyal Democrat and a shill for Richard Nixon; a defender of underdogs everywhere and then a spokesman for the Establishment. He" has given magical performances and shoddy ones. He has treated women with elegance, sensitivity and charm, and then, in Lauren Bacall's phrase, "dropped the curtain" on them in the most callous way.

He acts like royalty and is frequently treated that way, but he also comes on too often like a cheap hood. He is a good guy and a bad guy, tough and tender; a Jekyll and Hyde. "Being an 18-karat manic-depressive," Sinatra said once, "I have an over-acute capacity for sadness as well as elation." OVER THE YEARS, those wildly fluctuating emotions became a basic component of the Sinatra legend accepted, even demanded by his audience. The hard-core fans are Depression kids who matured in World War II, or part of the '50s generation, who saw him as a role model. In some critical way, Sinatra validates their lives as Individuals.

He sings to them, and for them, one at a time. These Americans were transformed by the Depression and the war Into unwilling members of groups "the masses," "the poor," or "the Infantry" and their popular music was dominated by the big bands. Sinatra was the first star to step out of the tightly controlled ensembles of the white swing bands to work on his own. I Sinatra has never been a big single seller (one gold record more than a million sales to twenty IJor the Beatles), but his albums continue to sell steadily. One reason: Most radio stations don't play Sinatra, so that younger listeners never get to hear him and go on to buy his records.

As a movie star, he had faded badly before van- ishlng completely with the lamentable "Dirty Dingus Magee" on 1970. Part of this could be blamed dlrect-. ly on Sinatra, because his Insistence on one or two I takes had led to careless, even shoddy productions. A strong TV performer; he needed Elvis Presley, or Bing Crosby, to get big ratings. Yet Sinatra remains a major star in the minds of most Americans, even those who despise him.

"WHAT SINATRA has is beyond talent," director Billy Wilder once said. "It's some sort of magnetism that goes in higher revolutions than that of anybody else, anybody in the whole of show business. Wher-; ever Frank is, there is a certain electricity permeat- ing the air. It's like Mack the Knife is in town and the action is starting." And make no mistake: Danger is at the heart of the legend. At his best, Sinatra is an immensely gift- ed musical talent, admired by many Jazz musicians.

He is not a Jazz singer, but he comes from the tradi- tion. As a young band vocalist, he learned breath control from trombonist Tommy Dorsey; after work, he studied other singers, among them Louis Arm- strong, Lee Wiley, Mabel Mercer, and another per- former who became a legend. ft II ft mmm have some understanding of the shadows. In "The Godfather" Mario Puzo used some of the elements in the singer he called Johnny Fontane; other novels have used Sinatra-like figures in various ways; yet no fictional account has truly defined the man in all of his complexity. We only know that the mob runs through his story like an underground river.

He is the most investigated American performer since John Wilkes Booth, and although he has never been indicted or convicted of any mob-connected crime, the connection is part of the legend. THE FACTS INDICATE that he did know some shady people. He was friendly with Jersey hoodlum Willie Moretti until the syphilitic gangster was shot to death. He was friendly with Joseph "Joe Fisher" Fischetti, traveled with him to Havana in 1947, where he spent time with Lucky Luciano. A 19-page Justice Department memorandum prepared in 1962 said that its surveillance placed Sinatra in contact with about 10 of the country's top hoodlums.

Some had Sinatra's unlisted number. He did favors for others. One of them was Salvatore Giancana, sometimes known as "Momo," or "Mooney." A graduate of Joli-et prison, he ducked World War by doing a crazy act for the draft board, which labeled him "a constitutional psychopath." He rose through the wartime rackets to the leadership of the Chicago mob in the 1950s. During that period he and Sinatra became friends and were seen in various places together. The star-struck Momo later began a long love affair with singer Phyllis McGuire, and the friendship deepened.

In 1962 Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis played a special engagement at a Giancana joint called the Villa Venice, northwest of Chicago. When the FBI questioned the performers, Sinatra said he did it for a boyhood friend named Leo Olsen, who fronted the place for Momo. Sammy Davis was more to the point. "BABY, LET ME SAY THIS," he told an FBI man. "I got one eye, and that one eye sees a lot of things that my brain tells me I shouldn't talk about.

Because my brain says that if I do, my one eye might not be seeing anything after a while." "It's ridiculous to think Sinatra's in the mob," said one New Yorker who has watched gangsters collect around Sinatra for more than 30 years. "He's too visible. He's too hot. But he likes them. He thinks they're funny.

In some way he admires them. For him it's like they were characters in some movie." That might be the key. Some people who know Sinatra believe that his attraction to gangsters and their attraction to him is sheer romanticism. The year that Sinatra was 15, Hollywood released W.R. Burnett's "Little more than 50 gan-ster films followed in the next 18 months.

And their view of gangsters was decidedly romantic: the hoodlums weren't cretins peddling heroin to children; they were Robin Hoods defying the unjust laws of Prohibition." Somewhere deep within Frank Sinatra, there must still exist a scared little boy. He Is standing alone on a street in Hoboken. His parents are nowhere to be seen. His father, Anthony Martin, is probably at the bar he runs when he Is not working for the fire department. The father is a blue-eyed Sicilian, close-mouthed, passive, and, in this own way, tough.

He once boxed as "Marty O'Brien" in the years when the Irish ran northern New Jersey. THE BOY'S MOTHER, Natalie, is not around either. The neighbors call her Dolly, and she some times works at the bar, which was bought with a loan from her mother, Rosa Garaventi, who runs a grocery store. Dolly Sinatra is also a Democratic ward leader. She has places to go, duties to perform, favors to deny or dispense.

She has little time for traditional maternal duties. And besides, she didn't want a boy anyway. "I wanted a girl and bought a lot of pink clothes," she once said. "When Frank was born, I didn't care. I dressed him in pink anyway.

Later, I got my mother to make him Lord Fauntleroy suits." Perhaps the most important thing to know about him is that he was an only child of Italian parents. And they spoiled him. From the beginning, the only child had money. He had a charge account at a local department store and a wardrobe so fancy that his friends called him "Slacksey." He had a secondhand car at 15. And in the depths of the Depression, after dropping out of high school, he had the ultimate luxury: a job unloading trucks at the Jersey Observer.

Such things were not enough; the boy also had fancy dreams. And the parents didn't approve. When he told his mother that he wanted to be a singer, she threw a shoe at him. "In your teens," he said later, "there's always someone to spit on your dreams." STILL, THE ONLY child got what he wanted; eventually his mother bought him a 65 portable public-address system, complete with loudspeaker and microphone. She thus gave him his musical instrument and his life.

She also gave him some of her values. At home she dominated his father; in the streets she dominated the neighborhood through the uses of Democratic patronage. From adolescence on, Sinatra unflorsio.od patronage. He could give his friends '1 rides in his car, and they could give him i and loyalty. Power was all.

Power attracts and repels; it aphrodisiac and blackjack. Men of power it in others; Sinatra has spent time with Fmr.jtan Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson, John F. Kennsi'y, ard Nixon, Splro Agnew, Walter Annenbcr, Carey, Ronald Reagan; all wanted his approval, and he wanted, and obtained, theirs. He could raise' millions for them at fundraisers; they would always take his calls. BUT TALENT is essential, too.

During the period of The Fall, when he had lost his voice, he panicked; he could accept anything except impotence. Without power he is returned to the streets of Hoboken, a scared kid. That kid wants to be accepted by powerful men, so he shakes hands with the men of the mob. But the scared kid also understands loneliness, and he uses that knowledge as the engine of his talent. When he sings a ballad listen again to "I'm a Fool to Want You," recorded at the depths of his anguish over Ava Gardner his voice haunts, explores, suffers.

The scared kid, easy in the world of women and power, also carries the scars of rejection. His mother was too busy. His father sent him away. "He told me, 'Get out of the house and get a he said about his father in a rare TV interview a few years ago. "I was shocked.

I didn't know where the hell to go. I remember the moment. We were having breakfast. I think the egg was stuck in there about 20 minutes, and I couldn't swallow it or get rid of it, in any way. My mother, of course, was nearly in tears, but we agreed that it might be a good thing, and then I packed up a small case that I had and came to New York." He came to New York, all right, and to all the great cities of the world.

The scared kid, the only child, invented someone named Frank Sinatra and it was the greatest role he ever played. In some odd way he has become the role. There is a note of farewell in his recent performances. One gets the sense that he is now building his own mausoleum. Sinatra could be around for another 20 years, or he could be gone tomorrow, but the jagged symmetries of his legend would remain.

dancing and dinner beginning 7:15 p.m. tomorrow, -at Rova Farms Resort, Route 571, Jackson Township. Admission is $15 per person. Proceeds will be used for the purchase of bullet-proof vests for local police. Five-mile run Runners will compete for prizes including portable televi-.

sion sets in the Ocean County Mall open five-mile run. The run begins at 10:30 a.m. Sunday on Schenck's Mill Road near the mall, Dover Township. Registration for runners wanting an official T-shirt is regular registration is $3. Proceeds benefit the New Jersey Amateur Athletic Union.

Square in Jersey City in 1933, vowing to become a singer. We can follow him as he wins an amateur contest and crosses the river to appear for the first time on a New York stage at the Academy of Music the following year. The hero then sings with a group called the Hoboken Four on the "Major Bowes Amateur Hour" in 1935, plays local clubs, begs in the hallways of radio stations for the chance to sing for nothing on live remotes. And, of course, there will be the familiar story of how Harry James heard him late one night and gave him a job in the big time. And then how Sinatra went to work for Tommy Dorsey and played the Paramount and became a star.

And because this is a story with a hero, it must tell the story of The Fall. The hero hurtles into love with Ava Gardner, and his career becomes a shambles: He loses his voice, his wife, his children; he gets into public fights; he wins the love goddess; he loses her; he hits bottom. AND THEN THERE is The Great Comeback: He pleads for the part of Maggio in "From Here to Eternity," is paid $8,000, gives a stunning performance, wins the Academy Award, and comes all the way back. He leaves Columbia Records for Capitol, then starts his own company, Reprise, and makes his greatest records. At the same time he consolidates his power in Hollywood, investing his money brilliantly, producing his own films, using power with the Instincts of a great politician.

These are the years of the private jets, the meetings of the Clan on the stages of Las Vegas, the friendships with Jack Kennedy and other politicians, and the house at the top of Mulholland Drive, where the wounded hero heals his ruined heart with girls and whiskey and friends. It's a good story. But as autobiography it Is not enough. We must "It Is Billle Holiday, whom I first heard in 52nd Street clubs In the early '30s, who was and still remains the greatest single musical influence on me," he wrote once. And in the saloons of the time, the young Sinatra learned a great secret of the trade: "The microphone is the singer's basic instrument, not the voice.

You have to learn to play it like it was a saxophone." AS HE MATURES, Sinatra developed a unique white-blues style, supple enough to express the range of his own turbulent emotions. And like the great Jazz artists, he took the banal tunes of "Tin Pan Alley" and transformed them into something personal by the sincerity of his performance; Sinatra actually seemed to believe the words he was singing. But Billy Wilder is correct: The Sinatra aura goes beyond talent and craft. He is not simply a fine popular singer. He emanates power and danger.

And the reason is simple: You think he is tangled up with the mob. Sinatra Is now writing that autobiography and preparing a film about his own life. Alas, neither form seems adequate to the full story; autobiographies are by definition only part of the story, the instinct being to prepare a brief for the defense and give yourself the best lines. And a two-hour movie can only skim the surface of a life that has gone on for six decades. The novelist can come closer to the elusive truth than an autobiographer as courtly as Sinatra will ever allow himself to do.

Both would, deal with the public career, the rise, fall, rise again of Frank Sinatra. WE CAN SEE THE high school dropout watching Bing Crosby sing from the stage of Loew's Journal Beer Can Swap. The swap is co-sponsored by the Beer Can Collectors of America, Jersey Shore Chapter, and the Greater Asbury Park Chamber of Commerce. Traders can pre-register to reserve a table. Tables are $5 and $7.

Admission is $1. Olney Orchestra The Olney Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Philadelphia's Martin Knoblauch, will play show tunes from "Carousel," "The King and and "State Fair" as well as light classics beginning at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow in Bicentennial Park, Engleside and Beach avenues, Beach Haven. Thr- concert is free. Listeners must provide their own chairs.

In the event of rain, the program will be' moved to Eighth Joe British and his from his Sharp," Celebration" and 11 Great Jackson $10.95 for The New 100-voice Philadelphia This Weekend outdoor furniture, insulation and other fixtures are included, as well as bathroom and kitchen re-builders. Both shows run today through Sunday. the Ballet's original production of Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana." Performances will be given at 8:30 p.m. tomorrow and 7:30 p.m. Sunday in the main tent, Waterloo Village, Stanhope.

Tickets are $8 and $7 in the tent; $4 for lawn seating. Children under 12 years old are admitted free on the lawn. the Beach Haven Elementary School, Beach Avenue at Street. Jackson band rock artist Joe Jackson band will play hit songs gold album, "Looking in two "School's Out concerts at 7 p.m. p.m today at Six Flags Adventure, Route 537, Township.

Admission is theme park tickets. N.J. Ballet New Jersey Ballet, the Jersey Symphony and the Mendelssohn Club of will join forces in Irish Festival The Tenth Annual Irish Festival which will include a stage show, piping bands, Gaelic football competition and cultural and historical exhibits will be held Sunday at the Garden State Arts Center, Holmdel Township. Activities will begin at 9:30 a.m. and continue until sunset.

Tickets for the stage show are from $3 to other activities are free. Picnic facilities are available. Beer can swap Beer can collectors can meet from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. tomorrow and Sunday at Convention Hall, Asbury Park, to trade cans and other brewery-related items at the Fourth Annual East Coast, Magic and jazz The Monmouth County Park System will present magician Dennis Kowal at 1 p.m.

and the Sam Waldman Jazz Band at 3 p.m. Sunday at Shark River Park, Schoolhouse Road, Neptune, weather permitting. The program is free. Cabaret night Jackson Rotary Club is sponsoring a night of entertainment, i Summer Living Show The Summer Living Show featuring exhibits and displays suggesting recreational and entertainment ideas for the summer season opened today at Monmouth Mall, Route 35, Eatontown. A summer home improvement show highlights ways of cutting energy costs and beautifying the home.

Exhibits on solar energy,.