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His world on a string

By DAVID WALTON
Published May 15, 2005

SINATRA:

The Life

By Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan

Knopf, $26.95, 576 pp

Reviewed by DAVID WALTON

So much has been alleged and assumed about Frank Sinatra, it's hard to say whether Sinatra: The Life offers any real surprises. Earlier this month, news stories treated as a shocking revelation the claim by comedian Jerry Lewis that Sinatra had "volunteered" to be a bagman for the mob in the late '40s. Lewis' allegations appeared in an excerpt from the book reprinted in the June issue of Vanity Fair, now on newsstands. But Sinatra's connections to organized crime have long been suspected.

In the biography of the man they call "the greatest popular singer of the century," Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan have even more eye-popping tales to tell about Sinatra's mob connections, but, like the Lewis interview, they fall more into the category of corroboration than confirmation. In a hundred different ways, they show that Sinatra's ties to organized crime were "woven into the fabric of his life and career."

Sifting through discrepancies in Sinatra's account of his Italian background (he always denied any connections to the Mafia), the authors unearth, for example, the "coincidence" that Sinatra's grandfather was born in the same Sicilian town, on the same street, as Lucky Luciano, the mob boss who was a model for Godfather Vito Corleone. Sinatra always maintained he knew Luciano only "in passing." The biographers also credit Sinatra with deliberately pairing mob courtesan Judith Campbell with presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, and they see a direct mob role in the 1960 presidential election result, and later in the assassination of JFK - which they depict as retribution over the Kennedy family's betrayal of its obligations.

Sinatra's supposed Mafia connections, however, aren't the only eye-opening disclosures unearthed by Summers and Swan, nor are they necessarily the most interesting. Their detailed portrayal of Sinatra's glamorous - and promiscuous - life in the '40s and '50 may surprise even those who thought they knew about Sinatra's liaisons.

In 1955 alone, for example, Sinatra, still deep in his famously obsessive pursuit of Ava Gardner, was also after Dinah Shore, Gloria Vanderbilt, ingenue Jill Corey and actor Eva Bartok, who secretly bore him a daughter Sinatra later refused to meet or write to. In addition, he was having an affair with Marlene Dietrich, their second, after a break of 10 years. He was 39; she 54.

Dietrich, meanwhile, was passionately involved with Yul Brynner, Adlai Stevenson, broadcaster Edward R. Murrow and playwright William Saroyan.

"People are the lifeblood of biography," Summers and Swan write, but what they've provided in Sinatra: A Life is more than simple disclosure. They show the artistry and professionalism, the musicianship of Sinatra evolving over the years, often masked by the melodrama of his public behavior and reputation.

Summers and Swan credit veteran editor Jim Silberman with the "simple idea" that was the genesis of their biography. The time had come for a "substantial, rounded book on the life of Frank Sinatra," Silberman said, "a book that sought out the truth about the artist whose talent and goodwill was accompanied by decadence and delinquency."

As that very freighted sentence suggests, a truthful, detailed, fair and balanced biography of the entertainer, movie star, fabled lover and full-time lout is anything but a simple undertaking. Francis Albert Sinatra, 1915-1998, remains a controversial presence in many people's minds - the good and bad of his music, movies and conduct still part of living memory. A life like Sinatra's, like Cellini's or Napoleon's, probably needs a century or two to settle.

Even so, it's safe to say Sinatra: The Life will remain a definitive biography for years to come. Its 576 pages include almost 200 pages of notes and sources, bibliography and permissions.

Summers is a former BBC investigative reporter, celebrated for smuggling cameras into the former Soviet Union to interview Nobel physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, then under house arrest. He has written well-regarded investigative books on Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover and Marilyn Monroe, and on the deaths of John F. Kennedy and Czar Nicholas II of Russia and his family. His wife Robbyn Swan's name appears on the cover of Sinatra: A Life on a second line and in smaller type. It's not clear who did what in authoring the biography, but the pairing provided the necessary ingredients for understanding an artist whose music and reputation suffered - and profited - from crossing boundaries of professional and private behavior. They bring superb investigative skills and the truthfulness and accuracy necessary to any worthwhile biography of Frank Sinatra.

They also bring an even more essential skill: that of a listener. They have given Frank Sinatra his due.

David Walton is a reviewer who lives in Pittsburgh.

[Last modified May 13, 2005, 12:24:03]