What would the Holiday Season be without Old Blue Eyes? This year, it appears the Holiday Season began back around April, because since then I've been hearing a lot of that mellow old crooner in places like Barnes & Noble, Borders, McDonald's, Bob's Big Boy, and the County slammer. Yes folks, it sure looks like yet another lounge lizard revival is underway and in full swing.

Personally, I could get lost in those big blue bedroom eyes, so full of lascivious Las Vegas moneylust and RICO larceny. Oh, Frankie!

"Frank was always such a good boy," said his aged mother (now 145) in an exclusive interview with Chief Blogging Officer. "He never stole or cheated or treated the girls bad, like the rest of that Rat Pack scum he hung around with. And those Mafiosi!" she wailed. "He was never like that until he started going down to Havana with Mickey Cohen and Sam Giancana and Jack Kenn...," but here she burst into tears. Colin Wilson is less sanguine in Scandal! Private Stories of Public Shame, reviewed by Paul Newman (no, not that one) on the Abraxas & Colin Wilson Newsletter site...

"Frank Sinatra is another Spoilt Brat. Behind that superb singing voice, redolent with smoky evenings in nightclubs and bittersweet affairs, we find a petulant, hate-dealing tyrant who clothed his rancour in a suit of charm and vaulted obstacles like a pedigree. He was the kind of man to whom you dare not tell a small truth lest the next day you choke on it. His jolly aerial hit 'Come Fly With Me' must have had a special significance to that good and faithful servant who -- for some miniscule lapse -- was almost flung out of the door of his private aeroplane."

In Mr. S: My Life with Frank Sinatra, author George Jacobs...

...depicts the fabled sex-mad crooner as a racist, sexist, fame-crazy monster. And he should know, having worked as Sinatra's valet, confidant, pimp and general dogsbody from 1953 to 1968.

Paid to pander to Sinatra's every whim, to help him juggle multiple mistresses, cosy up to the Kennedys and placate Mafia thugs, Jacobs acquired a unique warts-and-all insight into the insane world of mega-stardom.... Jacobs informs us that Sinatra, prodigiously endowed, required a woman (or three) every night.... Jumping to attention every time Sinatra shouted 'Get me a goddam hooker', Jacobs's duties involved collecting the girls, organising the candlelit seduction dinners, paying them and returning them home afterwards. Sinatra liked to sleep alone after the fireworks were over.

from: If that's Sinatra's Way, he's welcome to it by Val Hennessy
source: The Daily Mail (London), 18 July 2003
via: HighBeam Research
Copyright © 2003 Solo Syndication Limited

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