Afterthoughts: Chasing Frank Sinatra

I never met Frank Sinatra when he came to Cleveland in 1975 and stayed with Jimmy at the Keg. I thought I’d get that chance five years later at a shindig he hosted, Valentine’s Day, February 1980 at the Canyon Hotel in Palm Springs, CA: a $1,500-a-plate benefit to raise a few bucks for a brand new 5-story tower for the Desert Hospital there.

Sinatra has a home in Palm Springs. He likes the hospital and likes what it does for the community. The PR firm of the host hotel invites me to cover the benefit. PR guy says, “He’ll be cooking some of the food, right there in the hotel kitchen. I think you should write about it.” 

I spend three days covering the event—as best I could. Let me put it this way: I’ve been invited to a fundraiser, a Valentine’s Day dinner where Frank Sinatra is not only the main attraction, but one of the cooks. I’m to write about the event and him and why he’s there and why and how he’s cooking. Wherever he goes I will go and once he gets to where he is going I will note what he does when he gets there, especially when he is in the kitchen. My media credentials give me following privileges. A chance encounter to exchange a few words would be nice. And when that happens, I’ll ask him how he liked The Keg and coming to Cleveland and all. I’ll even tell him how I’ve been a fan ever since I was a kid. We’ll have a few laughs about that; and then I’ll ask him about cooking the food right there in the hotel kitchen; and will he, really, be there in the kitchen doing that and would he mind signing my menu,  if he wouldn’t mind.

At a press function where I am prepared to ask a couple of questions (neither of which gets asked because it’s not that kind of a press function), the president of the Board of Governors of the hospital presents Sinatra with a miniature copy of the cornerstone of the tower that, he announces to no one’s surprise, will be named in Sinatra’s honor. Sinatra has a few choice words. He says he likes the official name of the fundraiser, inscribed on the invitation (above): Frank, His Friends and His Food. But he prefers something simpler: something that captures the spirit of the event. “Why not call it, ‘A Love In,’?” he asks. “After all, this is Valentine’s Day we’re talking about.”

The press kit contains a menu. It says, “Prepared from Sinatra Family Recipes. There will be ravioli, meatballs, chicken Sinatra, broccoli, roasted potatoes, a salad, assorted Italian pastries.”  Press function over, guests and media exit one way, Sinatra and his entourage another. Encounter? Not a chance.

Matter of fact, no chance for an encounter later in the kitchen when he’s cooking. I’m not allowed in there. Sinatra has left word that he is not to be disturbed. One of the cooks tells me, “Come on, kid. Try to imagine if we let all you media types in there; I mean right there in the kitchen where he’s cooking, when he’s cooking, staring at him, asking questions. You want he should be nervous or what?” I’m trying to imagine Sinatra nervous.

Sinatra does the math. He’s hoping for 1000 guests. At $1500 a head, supplemental bucks from donations, and in-kind donations from host Canyon Hotel, Sinatra guesses the event will net more than a million and a half dollars. His guess is half a million short, so is his head count. Only nine hundred attend, but $600,000 in donations added to ticket sales of $1.35 million net a bottom line of nearly $2 million, every dollar to the hospital.

Three days at the hotel, a few minutes at the press function, wandering the halls of the hotel I’m still hoping to bump into him. Why not? I’m enamored. By the same token, I think, “Get over it. You’re a reporter and reporters rise above the hoopla. He’s just another singer. Your job is to be detached, disinterested, indifferent.”  

I never meet him. Well, that’s not exactly true.  

It’s the afternoon of the event. I’m at the rehearsal for the program, a deferential distance from Sinatra, yet close enough I’m hoping so that my super-sensitive tape recorder set on “record” inside a soft-sided briefcase, can record sneakily some serious out-takes of the rehearsal.  Doesn’t quite work out that way. Yes, it is Sinatra and yes, it is Les Brown. They run through song charts—just a piano guy tinkling a few bars. Sinatra doesn’t sing a note; he just wants to make sure he and Brown are on the same page. I’m off to the side, recorder recording, sneakily recording not very much. 

Now done rehearsing, Sinatra beckons to Stephen Stearns, Canyon’s general manager, who has been standing a few feet from me. They exchange pleasantries and some other stuff. I find out later there’s something about bowls of shredded cheese that if placed on the table ahead of time will stink up the joint and Sinatra tells Stearns to not let that happen.

Stearns leaves Sinatra, walks over to where I’m standing. I’m dressed casually. My hair is done up in a rather impressive Afro and I’m sporting a mustache that would spook Gene Shalit.  

I shake hands with Stearns. “Hi, how’re you doin’ What’s going on? What’s up?” Small talk. “How’s Frank,” I ask. “He wants to know ‘who the fuck the asshole is with the Afro and the dumb mustache?’ I told him you were OK.” OK or not OK, I back off fast, head for the lobby, and forget any thoughts of a chance encounter.

By the way, in case you wondered: the “chicken Sinatra”? No big deal. Just a grilled chicken with a spicy red sauce, cooked—it says here—by Sinatra.