The seven deadly sins of Hollywood (1957)

THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS OF HOLLYWOOD perhaps he was singing better now than two years ago. What did he think of Sophia Loren with whom he was going to co-star? "I don't know," he said suspiciously. "How should I know? I haven't met her yet." The parrying went on for another ten minutes or so. Then someone referred to a profile of him which had appeared in a magazine. Sinatra retorted that the whole of that article was untrue. Everything the Press said about him was untrue. Perhaps one day he would sit down with a trustworthy newspaperman and a tape recorder and tell the whole Frank Sinatra story, but so far everybody had got it wrong. How had they all managed to get it wrong? a reporter asked. "Because they don't bother to check their facts," said Sinatra bitterly. At this stage I felt obliged to say something. I said, "But you are not 'available' when somebody does want to check his facts." I was thinking of how, in Hollywood, I had tried not less than a dozen times to get in touch with him after our dinner together in order to clarify some of the things he had said that night. But not once could he be bothered to come to the telephone to answer the three or four questions I wanted to put to him. "Well, that can also happen. One can't always be available," said Sinatra sheepishly. Another questioner asked, Why was he always threatening to sock people on the jaw? Sinatra said he had never threatened to sock anyone on the jaw. If he was going to sock anyone he just did it. He did not talk about it. Sinatra has always had the appearance of a man who has been ill-treated by life. Wealth, fame, adulation and a life as privileged as a sultan's have not deprived him of the starved, hurt, bitter look of an under-privileged citizen who is going to get his own back one day. It is a useful look for someone in his line of business to have. 124