Wednesday,
January 17, 2007
"Sinatra: The Life" - Sinatra
Used Mafia to Help
The
ANNOTICO Report
Sinatra's
cozy relations with mobsters put him in a position to help Teddy Kolleck, a member of the Haganah,
the pre-state Zionist military organization, serving as a one-time $1 million
money-runner, that helped
Swan's book generally shines a light on Sinatra's life-long commitment to
fighting antisemitism and on his activism on behalf
of
Sinatra was one of the great champions of civil rights.
The singer spoke publicly about the need for racial tolerance beginning in the
1940s. He headlined National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
fund raisers in the 1960s and used his influence to ensure equal treatment for
friends and fellow performers who were black.
The
source of Sinatra great empathy came from his personal experience being
treated as a "Wop" in his youth.
Sinatra Bio Explores Icon's Jewish Connections
All About Jewish Theatre
By
Jennifer Siegel
Wednesday January 17, 2007
Frank Sinatra may have been
one of
The pendant was a gift from Mrs. Golden, an elderly Jewish neighbor who cared
for him during his boyhood in
"Sinatra was an only child whose mother alternatively spoiled and bullied
him," said Robbyn Swan, the Ireland-based
co-author of a new book, "Sinatra: The Life"
(Knopf). "He seems to have been a lonely little boy" and Golden
"offered him much-needed affection on which he could rely."
In an interview with the Forward, Swan said that he r! biography
breaks new ground on at least two new fronts: It gives a fuller picture of
Sinatra's tumultuous romances, including the one with fellow film-star Ava
Gardner, and explores his links to such Mafia figures as Sam Giancana and Lucky Luciano.
As it turns out, Sinatra's cozy relations with mobsters may have put him in a
position to help members of Haganah, the pre-state
Zionist military organization, smuggle about $1 million.
"The irony," Swan said, "is the intersection of those two
things: The Copacabana Club, which was very much run and controlled by the same
Luciano-related New York mafia crowd that Sinatra had
become enmeshed with, happened to be next door to Hotel 14... [which] the members of the Haganah
cell [were] operating out of. So it was a very small world, and Sinatra was at
the intersection."
Swan's book, co-written with her husband, Anthony Summers, generally shines a
light on Sinatra's life-long commitment to fighting antisemitism
a! nd on his activism on
behalf of
On a personal level, Sinatra protected his Jewish friends: According to
"The Life," he once responded to an antisemitic
remark at a party by simply punching the offender.
The authors of the new Sinatra book trace the singer's empathy for minorities,
including blacks and Jews, back to his childhood. In addition to his early
friendship with the coffee cake-wielding Mrs. Golden (whom he one day would
honor by buying a quarter of a million dollars' worth of
Italian Americans "were treated as badly in their own way and in their own
time and place" as the Jews, blacks and the Irish, Swan said. As a boy,
Sinatra "would walk those little streets" in
The entertainment legend played a Jewish pilot in "Cast a Giant
Shadow," the 1966 film starring friend Kirk Douglas as Mickey Marcus, a
real-life Jewish American colonel who fought and died in
It could be seen as a case of art imitating life: In one of the book's most
colorful passages, Summers and Swan describe how the real Sinatra helped Israel
win the war by serving as a one-time money-runner for Teddy Kolleck,
a member of the Haganah, who later s! erved several decades as mayor of
According to Kolleck's autobiography, in March 1948
he was trying to circumvent an arms boycott that President Harry Truman had
imposed on the Jewish fighters in
Swan said Sinatra's bold move was consistent with his gutsy and impulsive
personality. She noted that he also, on occasion, smuggled money for the
Italian mob.
The star's willingness to help the mafia and the Zionists alike is just one
example of how he was "this complex man... [with]
the good and the bad in him," Swan said. He was a "passionate human
being and having his own set of c! onvictions,
his own morality, [and a sense] for right or wrong, that's what he went
with."
Sinatra's independence turned him into one of the great champions of civil
rights as well as Jewish causes. The singer spoke publicly about the need for
racial tolerance beginning in the 1940s. He headlined National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People fund raisers in the 1960s and used his
influence to ensure equal treatment for friends and fellow performers who were
black.
Still, Swan said, even when Sinatra was fighting to help his friends in the
black or Jewish communities, he couldn't quite put away his volatile
personality. As is his signature song, the Hollywood legend did it "his
way" till the end:
"As late as 1979, Sinatra raged over the fact that [in California] a Palm
Springs cemetery official declared he could not arrange the burial of a
deceased Jewish friend over the Thanksgiving holiday," Swan wrote in an
e-mail message to the Forward. ! "Though in his mid 60s, Sinatra declared
that he was going to punch the offending official, [adding], 'and if he's too
old, I'll punch his son in the nose!'"
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