Chapter 2: The Matriarch

WHILE DOLLY SINATRA was furthering her ambitions for her family, young Frank was looked after each day by his grandmother, Dolly’s mother, Rosa. When he began elementary school she collected him every day, obsessive about her grandson. Marty retired from his ignominious career in the ring after breaking both his wrists, but with no culture of men as child minders in those days, he would spend his days drinking coffee in various joints with men in a similar position of unemployment. To label Marty as a bum may be a little unfair, but it’s clear he had no ambition, was held back significantly by his illiteracy, and, with a forceful, go-getting wife, was happy to take a backseat.

To complicate domestic matters further, a cousin of Marty’s, Vincent Mazolla, had arrived from Italy and joined the household. A veteran of the First World War, he had sustained injuries, which left him with a limp and, possibly, a mild case of PTSD. All in all, he was a poor candidate for employment and therefore held in low regard by Dolly. For a while “Chit U,” as he was known, was given the housework Dolly didn’t have time to do. She had a superhuman appetite for work, but even she could not carry two adults as well as a child, and tapped her political masters to find the two some gainful employment and additional revenue for the household.

She found Chit U a job as a steward’s assistant on the docks. Next stop was the mayor’s office at city hall, where she informed an assistant that she wanted a job in the fire department for her husband. When she was told there was no vacancy, her reply was, “Make one.” Dolly’s attitude was simple: she never said no when asked to deliver votes, and she was not prepared to accept a negative when she needed delivery of a favor in return.

On August 1, 1926, Marty was appointed to the fire department, where he joined the predominantly Irish workforce on a salary of $2,000 per annum plus a pension. With three sets of wages coming in, and the addition of another role to her own portfolio—that of a weekend chocolate dipper in an ice cream parlor—after a tenancy of over a decade she was ready to think very seriously of abandoning the co-op in Monroe Street.

She found what she was looking for ten blocks away: a three-bedroom apartment at 703 Park Avenue for the not-inconsiderable-at-the-time sum of $65 a month. But it bought the respectability that Dolly craved, and the family moved there in September 1927. She was by now also compensating for being an absent mother by lavishing Frank with clothes and pocket money. He was shy and quiet by nature, but being the best-dressed kid in the neighborhood ensured that he got the attention that his character might not have attracted. Kids twelve years of age are naturally drawn to a contemporary whose pockets jingle, and Frank became popular among the boys from the Park Avenue Athletic Club as he shared his mother’s spoils with them and as she slipped them the occasional treat at the ice cream parlor. If Dolly’s parenting methods were coming up short, they simply reflected the theory and practice of her own life: everyone had their price, and most people could be bought. But the money was no substitute for love and attention, nor would it lessen the effects of the outbursts of her famous rage.

When that rage was focused on Frank she would beat him with a stick, on one occasion pushing him down the stairs, knocking him out. She alternated these displays of violent cruelty with hugs and kisses, which often followed directly after the beating. It left him in a constant state of confusion and alert, never knowing why or when she would turn on him. Dolly could have not chosen a better type of parental misbehavior to send a message of confusion to her only child. Her love was mixed with a liberal dose of hate, her generosity was tainted by cruelty, her attention was crossed with neglect, and it was all salted with desperately unpredictable emotive explosion, leaving psychological scars to match the physical ones he had received at birth. In later life, Frank would be prone to similar emotional explosions.

Love, in his experience, was already equated with an impermanent elation and hatred, the other side of the emotional coin forming an alliance with depression. And in his early adolescence, relentless spoiling further complicated this psychological maelstrom. The trouble was amplified by the fact that Frank was not like his father, the calm, almost laid-back Marty. He was, in temperament, anyway, the reflection of his mother. The adult Sinatra would later relate the emotional impact his mother had left on his younger self to Shirley McLaine: “She was a pisser. She scared the shit outta me. Never knew what she’d hate that I’d do.” He told Pete Hamill, the author of Why Sinatra Matters, “When I would get outta hand she would give me a rap with that little club; then she’d hug me to her breast.” It is well documented that the child who is a victim of such parental abuse can in later life turn full circle and become the abuser, and this is certainly true of Frank. And yet, to further confuse this tangled relationship, there is no doubt that without the help of Dolly, Frank Sinatra would have quickly faded into the shadows of anonymity and would never have gotten beyond the borders of Hoboken. Having assumed the singular role of carrying the family along her chosen path on her tiny but not frail shoulders, she was determined to see it through.

In June 1931 Frank graduated from junior high and lasted just two months as a student in A. J. Demarest High School. In the midst of the worst depression in the country’s history, he had abandoned his education, the one thing that might help him ride with the economic tide, whenever that came. The Great Depression, which was putting millions out of work across the country, doesn’t appear to have bitten too deeply in the Sinatra household, however. Dolly had just purchased a Lincoln convertible for $65 but didn’t need a hungry, unemployed mouth to feed, so in her usual fashion, she decided to chase down a favor.

It was not for nothing she had chosen Frank Garrick, by then the circulation manager of the Jersey Observer newspaper, to be her son’s godfather. Arriving at his office, she asked him for a job for Frank, and he was given one bundling newspapers on a delivery truck, a stark contrast to driving the convertible around Hoboken. Tiring quickly of this lowly occupation and believing that he was destined for greater things, Frank decided he wanted to be on the editorial staff as a sportswriter. But the manner in which he attempted to achieve this ambition was blatantly and ludicrously insensitive and showed the sense of entitlement that his mother had knocked into him.

A vacancy arose when a member of the sportswriting staff was killed in an automobile accident. Frank abandoned the delivery truck and sat in the office, in the seat previously occupied by the late-departed writer. Spotted by the editor who, understandably, inquired about his presence, he replied that Frank Garrick had appointed him to the position. When Frank was called and asked what had prompted the circulation manager to make an editorial appointment, the editor dispatched him to fire the disrespectful and insensitive employee. When Garrick imparted the bad news to Frank, he was met with a tirade of foul-mouthed abuse proving he was indeed his mother’s son, whose curses would bring a blush to the cheek of the most experienced of stevedores.

Garrick would recall many years later to Kitty Kelley in her 1986 biography His Way, the verbal abuse he was subjected by the spotty, skinny little teenager: “Oh the temper and the words and the filthy names he called me, like he was going to kill me. He called me every name in the book and then he stormed out.” Dolly never spoke to her son’s godfather again, which was entirely typical. The most innocuous of slights was sufficient to see someone permanently dismissed, persona non grata. That was Dolly, and it would become Frank.

Insofar as a career was concerned, Dolly wanted Frank to follow convention. In the immigrant world of northern New Jersey, decent employment meant factory work or, if you were Irish (or Italian if you had a wife like Dolly), a fireman or a policeman or a government worker. These positions were respectable, they were permanent with the protection of a strong union, and they were pensionable. By these criteria, being a singer did not constitute a job. By her own standards, education was not a prerequisite to gaining a profession as she had proved with midwifery, and Frank’s forty-seven days in the New Jersey High School system clearly took him out of the running for any employment that required any form of advanced education. The fact that this view fitted perfectly with a singing career escaped Dolly at the time, as did the huge rewards then available for those who achieved success.

The temptations and the incentives that a career in entertainment could bring had certainly not escaped her son. As he began to dabble in the singing world, he was keenly observing those beginning to carve out careers. At the top of the list was Bing Crosby, who had moved from performing with the Rhythm Boys to the Gus Arnheim Orchestra, and made his national radio debut with CBS, having signed with Brunswick Records in 1931. By 1932 he had appeared in his eighth movie, The Big Broadcast, a film in which he played himself, such was his notoriety. Crosby’s delivery was a soft, conversational tone, leading to the labeling of crooner-sentimental as a singing genre. While Crosby was the king, inspiring the young Sinatra to reflect the great crooner’s image by sticking a pipe in his mouth, Rudy Vallee and Russ Columbo also provided role models for the aspiring singer. So incensed was his mother with the idea of his following a professional singing career that Dolly completely lost the plot one evening upon seeing a picture of Crosby on Frank’s bedroom wall, throwing a shoe at it and screaming that he was only a bum.

From the outside it might have been hard to disagree with her. After all, the United States was in the midst of the Great Depression with large-scale unemployment, misery, and poverty. This teenage layabout, as she saw it, was fantasizing about singing and refusing to take on a job that might involve the minimum of drudgery. Her son wanted to be a star but was refusing to dirty his hands on the way. The irony was that, in his own way, he had an even greater sense of entitlement than Dolly. The urge to get Frank to take onboard the concept of employment was normal but was now amplified by the fact that at the end of 1931 the family had taken another step up the social ladder, having purchased a house at 841 Garden Street for the then-enormous sum of $13,400. Dolly’s view was that the least she might expect was a financial contribution from the youngest and, herself excepted, most-energetic member of the household.

Frank knew she would eventually capitulate, and she did, giving him money for sheet music, which he used to ingratiate himself with local musical combos, a favor that was returned by occasionally letting him onstage to sing a song. And she could see that he was hustling all the time to get a break, so she helped him by getting him into the Union Club on Hudson Street in Hoboken. Afterward, he did stints in Italian social clubs. It was small-fry stuff, but he had to start somewhere. The other, less-obvious work he did was to assiduously study the methods of the singers he admired, namely Crosby, Columbo, and Vallee, and the routes they had chosen to stardom. The map appeared to be fairly straightforward: get the singing spot with a band or orchestra, and do some touring and nightclub spots; exposure on radio was essential, and from there, to Hollywood. The key ingredient was talent, and, as the world would eventually discover, Frank had plenty of that. The skinny, young singer was doing the fieldwork and, in common with any such player, he needed a good bounce of the ball to get a break.

Given the financial disasters and general hardship caused by the depression, Sinatra’s timing might have been considered questionable. But, although he had no idea at the time, in fact it could not have been better, as critic and author John Lahr observed, “While record sales had collapsed to $5.5 million in the early years of the depression as the 1930s progressed they would rise and rise to $48.4 million at the end of the decade and by 1945 to $109 million. By 1938 half of all broadcast programs were recordings of, mostly live, popular music.”

In addition, between 1933 and 1939 the number of jukeboxes grew almost tenfold and, three years later, to close to half a million. There would be no quick fix; Frank would have to serve an apprenticeship, which was by his standards long, but, in reality, pretty short. As Lahr put it, “By the time he emerged from his apprenticeship as a dance band ballad singer with touring bands, the technology for success was all in place.” Dolly eventually came to realize that there was no point in resisting her son’s aspirations, so she subsidized his drive to break into a band by buying him portable speakers and a microphone.

Combined with the Lincoln convertible, Frank was suddenly a very attractive ally to any struggling band, and Dolly got him spots at roadhouses, nightclubs, and Democratic Party meetings. In 1934 there was an unexpected vacancy at the top table of crooners with the unexpected death of Russ Columbo, and while Frank was not then in a position to exploit the opportunity, he certainly would be later. In more than one way he had a closer affinity to Columbo than Bing Crosby. Like himself, Columbo was born to Italian immigrants in 1908, the twelfth child of a musician who then lived in Camden, New Jersey, about a hundred miles from Hoboken.

Like Sinatra he possessed both talent and drive and knew what he wanted from an early age. He left school at seventeen to travel the country with various bands in which he doubled on violin and vocals. He also played nightclubs and progressed to running one of his own. He had also starred in a few movies and would go on to have a relationship with the movie star Carole Lombard before being shot in a bizarre accident, at twenty-six, by the well-known celebrity photographer Lansing Brown. He was a classic example of the phrase “the beautiful and the damned.” While the young Sinatra could not have avoided taking in an event that matched the passing of Valentino, Columbo’s life and career probably spurred him on, as opposed to his wondering about the efficacy of pursuing a dream that might translate into a nightmare.

One way or another Frank was pursuing his journey. From pestering radio stations in New Jersey for appearance spots (without any immediate success) to pushing himself at every band that came his way, he was not behind when it came to putting himself forward. Local outfit The Three Flashes, made up of youngsters Jimmy Petrozelli, Patty Principe, and Freddy Tamburro, was just one of the groups Frank targeted.

Since 1922, regular entertainments were broadcast live, and in the later part of the decade the sponsored musical feature was the most popular program format, with the shows called after the name of the sponsor. As an indication of just how influential these shows were, in the same year that Sinatra was pushing himself, George Gershwin had been hosting his own program. It was vital for any aspiring entertainer to get on the airwaves, and the composer of the American classic “Rhapsody in Blue” was no exception. The programs at the time were almost always live because the inferior quality of phonographic discs discouraged the radio networks from making recorded programs. As a result, prime-time shows would be performed twice, once for each coast of the country. For fame, wide reach, and promotion of the orchestra, band, and individual artist, radio was the biggest game in town.

The biggest radio act of the time was the talent show. As if to demonstrate the obvious that there is nothing truly new in any era, including the entertainment business, Major Bowes Original Amateur Hour was the America’s Got Talent of its time. Edward Bowes had been a hugely successful real estate investor who had lost his fortune in the California earthquake of 1906. Moving to New York, he reinvented himself as a show-business impresario, becoming managing director of the famous Capitol Theatre in the city. He had brought his amateur-hour talent show to New York City station WHN in April 1934, and the program had become a phenomenon. Every week Bowes talked to contestants and listened to performances, and his short attention span, interjections, and the use of a loud bell or gong to get rid of acts earned his title of “Major,” like the clichéd bully in the playground. With a keen eye for talent and an ability to cash in on the success of the show, he was not averse to exploiting the successful acts, many of whom he sent off on franchised tours around New York, New Jersey, and beyond.

In 1935, the first year of the network broadcasts of the show, more than thirty thousand acts were auditioned. The Three Flashes had been performing at a venue called the Rustic Cabin, in Englewood Cliffs, half an hour north of Hoboken, in a spot with Harold Arlen and his orchestra. The Rustic Cabin had a wire link to WHN, which took live broadcast segments of the performances. The group had been using Frank as a chauffeur (using the Lincoln) while resisting his constant entreaties to sing, but they didn’t reckon on Dolly, who visited the Tamburro family, and a deal was done for Sinatra to join.

The odds of getting anywhere from the talent pool on the Original Amateur Hour were quite staggering. Over ten thousand applied weekly and of that number five hundred to seven hundred were auditioned. This number was whittled down to twenty, who would appear on the night of the show. Even then, an act could be the victim of the infamous gong even before the performance had finished. Edward Bowes had auditioned the Flashes on April 9, 1935. On the foot of the application form, their act was described, in a fairly far-fetched way, as “singing, dancing, and comedy.” Whatever Dolly promised the Tamburros had obviously worked, because the name submitted on the form was “Frank Sinatra and the Three Flashes,” a rapid promotion for the most recently recruited member of the group. The leader’s address was given as 841 Garden Street, Hoboken, telephone number supplied, followed by the others: Freddy Tamburro (Freddy Tamby), Adam Street, Hoboken; Jimmy Petrozelli (Jimmy Skelly), 214 Monroe Street, Hoboken (Frank’s old neighborhood), and Patty Principe (Patty Prince), West New York.

The song submitted and chosen was “Shine,” a recent hit for black quartet the Mills Brothers, who had also appeared with Crosby in The Big Broadcast in 1932. Bowes, unilaterally deciding that the name of the group didn’t work, changed it to the Hoboken Four. The competition date was set for September 8, 1935. Whatever the outcome, Frank Sinatra must have felt that destiny was calling and that the opportunity to prove that his avoidance of respectable employment was justified, was about to present itself. On the evening of the show, the Hoboken Four trouped on stage to be met by the imperious Bowes: “Four boys in fine-looking suits, singing and dancing fools.” He went on to say, “they seem so happy I guess and they make everyone else happy.” He asked who would speak for the group, and Frank said he would, adding, “We’re lookin’ for jobs, how about it?” Tamburro introduced himself and the others and said where he, Petrozelli, and Principe worked. “What about that one?” inquired the Major, pointing at Sinatra. “Oh, he never worked a day in his life,” came the reply to roars of laughter from the audience.

It was clear even before they got to sing that the Hoboken Four had made an impression on the audience and, most importantly, on Bowes. The group and their song not only elicited the best audience reaction of all the acts but also won in great style with forty thousand call-in votes, the largest to date in the show’s history. Bowes remarked that they had “walked right into the hearts of their audience,” and he promptly signed the group on a six-month contract to one of his lucrative touring shows. Within weeks the Hoboken Four had realized that the touring was lucrative solely for Bowes and that they would have to be content with the exposure. The tour involved long hours on the road, staying in dives, doing singing promotions in grocery stores, and generally adding to the already-stuffed coffers of their mentor. The grueling apprenticeship quickly knocked the sheen off their newly won celebrity, and that life-changing night in the Capitol Theatre increasingly seemed like a very pleasant dream.

The drudgery was worse for Frank than for the others. They were happy to ditch the menial jobs they had abandoned for the short-term glamour of singing. Sinatra, on the other hand, had never ever really worked and, used to being cossetted by his mother, was unhappy to be pushed around, particularly when the “contract” with Bowes turned out to be outrageously one sided. The only consolation was that the females in the audience zoned in on him, and he was having the time of his life bedding as many as possible while the other group members got to sign autographs. Internal tensions increased, and there were fights, including a physical one in which Tamburro knocked Frank out for getting a fit of giggles with the others onstage. The honeymoon was over for the Hoboken Four, and after three months Sinatra left the tour and returned home. He was keen to progress his career in a direction he could have some control over. He was also keen to spend time with Nancy Barbato, a local girl he had been intermittently dating, much to the disapproval of her parents, who wanted her to find a nice guy with a proper job.

While the touring had been a bit of a disaster, the victory on Bowes’s hugely popular radio show and the subsequent publicity was something Frank could exploit to his own advantage. He now knew he wanted to be a professional singer, to be heard, to be admired, even adored. He had glimpsed it briefly on the tour, and it was clear to all who met and heard him that he had something, not just the voice but also an unforced charisma. Exploiting his talent was something he would have to do quickly, because as long as he was living at home he would have his mother to deal with, and the fifteen seconds of fame would soon disappear from Dolly’s consciousness. It was hard to know if the fear of Dolly or the fear of failure was worse, but he was staring both in the face.