"1960" And Joe Kennedy Vs Frank Sinatra!...

Chat Unlimited ^ | May 22, 2010 | Michael Welch

[statestreet]

Discussion has so slowed here lately that I'd like to amuse myself (and you I hope) by recommending yet another book. It's titled 1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies by a guy who mainly writes baseball biographies (of Ted Williams and Kenesaw Mountain Landis, first baseball commissioner) and is a trustee of the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation (!), one David Pietrusza.

The book is chock full of unflattering but arresting material concerning every candidate and would be candidate for prez that year and includes both appalling and appallingly funny stuff which is nonetheless immensely entertaining.

There's a fascinating chapter titled "Why do you think they did that, Sammy?" which has more to with Frank Sinatra and his "rat pack" and their association with John F. Kennedy and his run for the roses and how finally Joe Kennedy put the kabosh on Frank as a JFK "insider" who believed he too was "going to the white house" with his new buddy Jack.

"Sammy" in the chapter title of course is Sammy Davis Jr, a black singer and actor and member of that "rat pack" with Dean Martin, Joey Bishop, Peter Lawford (married to Jack Kennedy's sister Pat at the time) and various others "in and out" of the Sinatra circle.

What had happened is that at the convening of the Democratic convention at the Los Angeles Sports Arena Sammy Davis was to sing "The Star Spangled Banner"; he just started when a chorus of boos began in the Mississippi delegation and was taken up by enough other delegates to stop Davis altogether. He was devastated and could not continue so the convention delegates themselves sang the rest of the national anthem. Davis was encouraged by Sinatra who was standing behind him but he was so crushed that he immediately left the convention and flew east.

Why did the southerners (and maybe other than southerners) boo him? Well racism of course and that Davis was planning to marry a Swedish actress May Britt who had appeared in a few American movies (most notably Murder Inc in which she is brutally raped by Peter Falk as a New York mobster) and who as a Swede was unsurprising eh very blond and very white.

In fact the prospect of Davis' marriage, scheduled in October with Sinatra as best man and only a few weeks before the November election, was deemed so possibly detrimental to Kennedy that Davis postponed it. (Davis and Britt were by the way eventually married.) That was strike one against Frank.

Strike two was that Sinatra in 1960 was planning a directorial debut bringing to the movie screen William Bradford Huie's poignant account of Eddie Slovak (to be played by Sinatra also), a hapless WWII draftee who was executed for desertion when he got separated from his infantry unit and attached himself to a Canadian headquarters company as a cook's helper and then when discovered subsequently refused to rejoin his American unit as an infantry soldier.

Huie's book was The Execution of Private Slovak and that was to be the title of the film too -- Slovak was in fact the only American soldier shot for desertion although not the only to desert of course. So the problematic subject (Sinatra could be an a*****e sure but he had a genuine sympathy for the abused shmucks of this world) was not the greatest deemed "theme" to be connected with a candidate advertising his own heroic war exploits.

But then Sinatra engaged to write the screenplay Albert Maltz, one of the "Hollywood Ten," i. e., a screenwriter who had been a member of the American Communist party and was eventually "blacklisted" and unable to work but via an "alias" or without credit at all. (Maltz had by the way written parts of the screenplay for The Robe, a popular film about the Roman soldier who throws dice for Christ's garment at Golgotha.)

Now Kirk Douglas had hired Dalton Trumbo, another of the "Hollywood ten," an admitted party member and talented writer, to adapt his epic Spartacus and had even given Trumbo the screen credit under his own name. (As "Richard Rich" Trumbo had previously won an Oscar for a movie titled The Brave One.)

But when Sinatra announced Maltz the political gyrations went wild in that Frank was so closely associated with the Kennedy campaign. Producers and others begged him not to hire Maltz but FS' response was uh typical "Sinatran" -- **** you. Right wing Repubs like actors John Wayne and Ward Bond excoriated Sinatra in ads in Hollywood trade papers like Variety and a very inebriated five feet seven 150 pound Sinatra even attempted at a charity function to "have it out" with the six feet four 200+ lb Wayne -- an incident forewent by Wayne's discretion and others' grabbing Frank by his arms and shoulders.

But what got Sinatra to finally drop Maltz as his writer (and the whole movie project then collapsed) was Jack's father, the super rich, also mafia connected, Joseph P. Kennedy who telephoned him with this ultimatum: "It's either Maltz or us [i. e., his socializing with a president pal]; make up your mind." Old Joe reputedly snarled at Sinatra: "What is this commie Jew [Maltz was Jewish] s***?! You stupid guinea!" ("Guinea" is like "wop" as a slure against Italians.)

As it turned out the whole mess led to the end of Frank's ambitions to have a "rat pack" at the white house and "the pleasure of his company" (plus his ability to procure a number of comely showgirls and starlets for the libidinous JFK) was eventually curtailed completely.

One irony may be that in 1972 Sinatra and his aging rat packers (including Sammy who appeared unbooed at the Miami GOPper convention and hugging President Nixon from behind -- startling the president to say the least) segued from the Democratic party (Sinatra had backed Humphrey against Nixon in '68) to the Repubs and in the 1980s he actually became a presidential "pal" of sorts as an occasional guest of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, the latter who was it was rumored somewhat inordinately enamored of Sinatra while he was of course very circumspect. He had "learned his lesson"?... _________________ "You can say all you want to about foreign policy but what's really important is the price of hogs in Chicago and St Louis." -- Republican governor of Illinois William "Wild Bill" Stratton at the Repub convention in Chicago, July 1960...

[razorback-bert]

Well, the rats have always been good at throwing their friends under the bus.

[MIlle]

That attitude of the whoremonger, Joe Kennedy, helped get his sons assassinated. You simply don’t dis the mafia.

[MIlle]

That attitude of the whoremonger, Joe Kennedy, helped get his sons assassinated. You simply don’t dis the mafia.

[Frantzie]

I rarely read stuff like this but this book might be worth checking out. Frankie was building a White House West for JFK in Palm Springs and tore it down when Peter Lawford gave him the news to stay away.

The only Rat Packer I liked was Dino.

[kabumpo]

I agree — I ADORED Dean Martin — a better singer than Sinatra — got to see him in Vegas years ago — a dream come true.