Frank Sinatra advocated for many things over the course of his life. He was a man of great integrity and intense personal conviction. If he believed in something, he was unafraid to stand up and speak out. Sinatra was never politically correct, instead fighting against racism and anti-Semitism and providing substantial financial assistance to friends who fell on hard times.
When a Las Vegas casino refused to allow Sammy in the front door in the 1960s, Sinatra famously said, “Let him in or I’m out.” He provided financial help to boxers Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson when they fell on hard times, and gave them use of his plane when they needed it for medical treatment. I borrowed his plane to pick up Liza in Minneapolis when she completed her first stint in rehab at the Hazelden drug rehab center.
He was an avid reader of the newspaper in every town and city we went to. When he read a story about someone in need, especially if it was a policeman or fireman, he would have someone call Golden and send anywhere from $5,000 to $25,000 anonymously. Frank’s father had been a fireman and he had great admiration for their service.
He had the capacity for deep, fierce emotions and that often made him empathetic to both friends and strangers. When Gregory Peck presented Sinatra with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1971, he said, “No one within the range of him who has needed his support has ever been refused it. Ladies and gentlemen, a man who pays his dues, Frank Sinatra.”
Sinatra was a roller coaster of emotions. His mercurial nature was part of his mystique. Over the years I learned to pay attention to whether he was ill or had fallen into a state of melancholy. While we never discussed it, I knew that when he suddenly became quiet and pensive, I should leave him alone. His intense mood swings also fueled his talents.
“I don’t know what other singers feel when they articulate lyrics,” Sinatra said in an interview with Playboy magazine in 1963, “but being an 18-karat manic-depressive and having lived a life of violent emotional contradictions, I have an overacute capacity for sadness as well as elation. I know what the cat who wrote the song is trying to say. I’ve been there—and back. I guess the audience feels it along with me.”
I can’t help but believe that if Sinatra were alive today, he would speak out about depression. In 2016, the U.S. suicide rate surged to a thirty-year high, with stunning increases regardless of gender and in virtually every age group, except for the oldest Americans, over age seventy-five. The increase for middle-aged women alone was 63 percent. While Sinatra was intensely private, if he had seen those figures and thought he could save lives by removing a stigma about depression and encouraging people to seek treatment, I believe he would have done so.
Some of our greatest artists and thinkers in all of history are thought to have suffered from depression and/or manic depression. Michelangelo, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, even Abraham Lincoln and Isaac Newton. I would argue that Sinatra was a talent of similar extraordinary ability.
As I mentioned, he was on a first-generation antidepressant for all the years I knew him. Elavil, or amitriptyline, is a tricyclic antidepressant that impacts neurotransmitters like serotonin in the brain. It was the first line of treatment in the 1960s and ’70s, and over the years, doctors told me it was best for short-term use. Sinatra, though, had used it for many years, and that always concerned me, especially when I understood the side effects could include vision difficulties and memory loss. I was told by his doctors that long-term use of Elavil required a careful weening off of it, which could lead to anger, agitation, and violent behavior.
Sinatra himself was not fond of doctors, and persuading him to keep an appointment was always a struggle. I’m sure his refusal to undergo extensive medical workups contributed to the long-term use of amitriptyline and that in turn contributed to many difficulties in his performance.
I didn’t know how long he would be able to handle a rigorous schedule, but I was working on what was expected to be a sold-out tour, so there was no turning back.