Sinatra’s Mafia ties ‘coincidence’
Biographies, memoirs and a good many FBI files have cast lingering glances over Frank Sinatra’s connections to the Mafia, but the latest account of his life takes a novel approach.
According to Sinatra and Me, a book by the singer’s last road manager and late-night drinking companion, Sinatra merely happened to perform at nightclubs owned by mobsters, where simple courtesy induced him to shake their hands and pose with them for photographs.
He never carried US$2 million to Havana for the Florida mob, and if he happened to holiday in Cuba with a Chicago mobster named Joe Fischetti at the time of a mob convention there, this was just an unfortunate coincidence. His Italian-American surname and the stories spun by a newspaper columnist and aspiring songwriter, who was aggrieved that Sinatra disdained his efforts, led to the singer being defamed as a gangster.
All this comes from Tony Oppedisano, who offers Sinatra’s own outraged defence of his name, as heard in long late-night chats the two had within striking distance of a well-stocked bar.
‘‘I didn’t know any bishops, cardinals or monsignors who owned nightclubs. Otherwise I would have ended up rubbing elbows with them,’’ Sinatra complained, according to Oppedisano.
Part of Sinatra’s problem, according to Oppedisano, was that mobsters loved his work. In the 1950s, when Sinatra’s career took a nosedive and he was dropped by his radio show, his agent and film studio MGM, mobowned clubs kept booking him.
‘‘It’s that Sicilian loyalty,’’ Oppedisano writes. As his career revived and he was again able to fill arenas, he kept playing at their clubs. ‘‘As Frank said, those guys fixed it so he could take care of his kids,’’ Oppedisano writes.
Sometimes the mob would try to help him, and sometimes Sinatra wished they wouldn’t, he writes, adding that ‘‘if Frank wanted to punch somebody, he did it himself’’.
Oppedisano’s account broadly tallies with that of Eliot Weisman, Sinatra’s former manager, who also got entangled with the mob via the entertainment business.
Weisman, an accountant and investor, had founded a theatre in the New York suburbs with a man he had met on the golf course. When the theatre became the target of an FBI fraud inquiry, he discovered that his business partner was a member of the Gambino crime family.
Weisman said the prosecutors appeared to hope that he would give them evidence of Sinatra’s involvement. He did not – and after he got out of prison, he began working for the singer, who was apparently grateful for his discretion.