In 1953, George
Jacobs became Frank Sinatra's valet, when Sinatra
'stole' him away from super-publicist Swifty Lazar. To be 'valet' to
Sinatra meant being more than his butler. It encompassed being
his aide de camp, his enabler, his babysitter, his beard, his bitch,
his alibi, his whipping boy and perhaps his closest friend while
keeping in mind he was always and ever Sinatra's employee. A
tightrope at best but by Jacobs' account, he loved his job and his
boss and was adept at wearing the many hats it took to be that close
to Mr. S. He stayed with Sinatra for fifteen years until 1968 when
he was shown the door because he danced with Mia Farrow, then
Sinatra's wife, at a club in Los Angeles.
Those
fifteen years saw Sinatra at the absolute height of his considerable powers,
beginning with a career rebirth in '54 with his Academy Award for
From Here to Eternity. As
you might imagine, Jacobs saw it all--the fabulous wealth and
splendor of Palm Springs and Reprise Records alongside the vanity and
hypocrisy that was Frank Sinatra, he of the shoe lifts and hairpieces
and hookers (man, were there a lot of hookers!). Often while
reading Mr. S,
it seemed as
though a dumptruck pulled up and left a load on my lawn littered with
Kennedys, mobsters, showgirls, and many of the biggest names in
Hollywood.
Considering
the wealth of existing biographies about Sinatra, what I found most
interesting about Mr.
S was
the first-person account by Jacobs. He was there when Bobby
Kennedy boxed Mr. S out of Camelot and Jack stopped returning his
calls, when Sam Giancana 'relieved' Sinatra of his precious Mob
connections, when Ava and Betty Bacall and Marilyn all were in the
picture and then abruptly out of it.
As
has been written in the past too, Sinatra was two people much of the
time: the bully who loved to pull sophomoric pranks on his friends
(cherry bombs were a Frank favorite) and the Sinatra who bought
people cars because he genuinely appreciated their talent or
friendship. This was the guy who thought he'd have access to
the White House but whose casino was as mobbed up as the Copa scene
in Goodfellas.
Jacobs also shows the failure of Sinatra's
persona, a man afraid to be alone but who had to be the life of the
party, an outright bigot but who felt persecuted for being a "Jersey
dago" among the Hollywood elite. Jacobs also describes just how
cruel and cowardly Sinatra could be and his description of his own
ex-communication by Mr. S. is just heartbreaking.
Mr.
S is a
quick and dirty read with heavy emphasis on the dirty.
Ring-a-ding-ding indeed.
