If Frank Sinatra Lost His Temper
When you think of Frank Sinatra, who died on May 14, 1998, aged 82, you may think of the suave singer of sophisticated ballads. Away from the microphone, though, this wonderful singer was one of the most bad-tempered men in showbusiness. “Don’t get even, get mad,” he used to quip. He blamed his “Sicilian temper” for his violent and abusive outbursts. One wife, Barbra, said there was “a Jekyll and Hyde aspect to Frank,” another wife, the actress Mia Farrow, said he was a “24-Carat manic depressive”. One thing was for sure, once Sinatra took offence, you were frozen out for good. Here are the 17 examples of his explosive need for anger management.
He took a sledgehammer to his ‘JFK’ heliport
A sad case of what happens when you fall out with the president you once pimped for and provided with drugs. In March 1962, President Kennedy was due to say with Sinatra at his mansion in Palm Springs, California. Brother Bobby Kennedy got cold feet because of Frank Sinatra’s links to the mob and persuaded JFK to stay with Bing Crosby instead. Sinatra had installed a special suite at his house, with 25 extra phone lines and a helipad. When Sinatra’s actor friend (and Kennedy’s brother-in-law) Peter Lawford broke the bad news that JFK was instead staying with Bing Crosby, he paid the price. “He never forgave me. He cut me off just like that,” said Lawford. Sinatra stormed into the house, smashed up his JFK photographs, kicked in the door of the presidential suite he’d had built and tried to wrest the gold nameplate from the door. He even took a sledgehammer to the heliport he’d had built for JFK.
He threw a glass pitcher at jazz drummer Buddy Rich
The Tommy Dorsey band was full of tough characters. When Sinatra accused Buddy Rich of messing up drum solos, Rich called him a “silly f–k”. Sinatra picked up a pitcher of water and threw it all at Rich’s head, narrowly missing.
He punched a reporter
Sinatra hated New York Mirror journalist Lee Mortimer. When the pair exchanged words in Ciro’s Nightclub in 1948, Sinatra punched him (it was reported in Modern Television & Radio in December 1948 as a “sock on the jaw”, while Sinatra dismissed it as “a little fracas”). Sinatra ended up in court, agreeing a private settlement to end the assault and battery charges brought against him by Mortimer.
He refused to speak to Phil Silvers for 16 years
The pair had initially been friends. Phil Silvers had written the lyrics to a 1942 song called Bessie… with the Laughing Face. When they sang it at a birthday party for Nancy Sinatra and changed the lyrics to Nancy, the singer thought it was a song written especially for his daughter and recorded the song. Silvers and Sinatra then went on a 1945 United Service Organisations (USO) tour in the Mediterranean. But when CBS programmed The Phil Silvers Show opposite ABC’s The Frank Sinatra Show, Sinatra was enraged and rang the comedian shouting, “You had to go Fridays, huh?” Sinatra reportedly stopped speaking to Silvers for 16 years.
Light My Fire really lit his fuse
Sinatra bemoaned the rise of rock music in the Sixties and particularly hated The Doors and their song Light my Fire, calling it “ugly and degenerate”. When Sinatra was driving home one night it came on the car radio. He switched stations and found that channel playing the same song. He stopped the car and smashed the car radio to bits with his shoe.
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