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Angles Again. After the Avalanche, there wasn't much left of Frank Sinatra. He was down from 132 to 118 lbs., his voice was shot, his record sales had practically stopped. His relations with the press were in shreds. Church groups were fighting him because of all the scandal. The Government was after him for $110,000 in back taxes. "Anyone know of a bigger bore just now," the Daily News inquired, "than Frank Sinatra?" Frankie, said the boys in Toots Shor's and in Chasen's, was done.
They underestimated Angles. Frankie loosened his ties to MGM. "Then," says he, "I started all over again with a clean slate." He changed his agent, from M.C.A. to William Morris; he changed his record company, from Columbia to Capitol. His voice came back, better than ever; record sales began to climb. He started to freelance in TV on a larger scale, and to look around for roles he really liked in the movies. Along came Eternity. "That's me!" said Frank Sinatra when he read about the roistering, ill-starred little Italian named Maggio. He wanted the part so badly that he offered to play it for only $1,000 a week, made only $8,000 on the picture.
Almost magically, humpty-dumpty was together again. What was he like after his great fall, and his miraculous bounce back to the high wall of fame? In recent months, Frank Sinatra has managed to irritate a crowd of 10,000 in Australia, sue a well-known producer for breach of contract and make it widely known that he "would rather punch him in the face," display scorn in public for Marlon Brando, alienate the affections of Sam Goldwyn, mount a wide-open attack on another entertainer in a prominent newspaper ad ("Ed Sullivan, You're sick . . . P.S. Sick! Sick! Sick!").
But many of Frank's friends insist that he has matured of late. He shows intense devotion to his children, visiting them almost every day and taking them with him wherever he can. He has buttressed the flimsy walls of present success with long-range business enterprises—five music companies, an independent film outfit, a 2% chunk of the enormous Sands gambling hotel in Las Vegas, and eleven shares "of the Atlantic City Racetrack. In movies, he picks his parts as carefully as he has always picked songs that suit both his talent and his taste. He works as fiercely as he plays.
Box Lunches & Cadillacs. The Sinatra day usually begins about 10 a.m. with a mug of hot coffee and a grandiose scattering of transcontinental telephone calls. A dozen people crowd around him as the makeup-man goes to work, all trying to outshout each other and a blaring radio. Off to the set in a bevy of Cadillacs, where the mob grows to 50 or 100 until Frank suddenly stands alone against a sky-blue set and moves his mouth expressively, while his voice drifts out of a distant amplifier. At the first break he piles into a box lunch, then takes a catnap. There are some dialogue loops to make, and then across town in his colossal Cad ("I like lots of armor around me"), with brooding on the way about "them Giants," happy cackling about "Rocky" Marciano or the fun he will have with the boys at Toots Shor's on a scheduled trip to New York.