Book World Live

Turning a Sharp Lens on Ol' Blue Eyes

Anthony Summers, a former BBC journalist and author of several best selling and controversial biographies (Marilyn Monroe, J. Edgar Hoover), and co-authorRobbyn Swanspent four years researching "Sinatra: The Life." They interviewed more than 500 people and gathered what must be a tractor-trailer's worth of documents (FBI files of Mafia-related material, transcripts of wiretaps and secret testimony, criminal and civil lawsuits, etc.), as well as reams of contemporary print media, 58 Sinatra books and scores of biographies and autobiographies by Sinatra associates in the arts world and the underworld. One can't help thinking of Hercules cleaning up the Augean stables.

Turning a Sharp Lens on Ol' Blue Eyes (Book World, May 15)

Summers and Swan were online Tuesday, May 17, at 3 p.m. ET to discuss "Sinatra: The Life."

Join Book World Live each Tuesday at 3 p.m. ET for a discussion based on a story or review in each Sunday's Book World section.

A transcript follows.

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Anthony Summers: It's a pleasure to be answering the questions this afternoon. As readers of the Post can imagine we have - we, that's me and my co-author Robbyn Swan - some fairly sharp retorts to the review "Turning a Sharp Lens on Ol' Blue Eyes".

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New York, N.Y.: I've read the various skewerings of the book and notice the reviewers seem very caught up in the fact that you apparently don't talk a lot about the music. The book is called Sinatra: THE LIFE not Sinatra: THE MUSIC. Anyway, was there a reason you opted to not focus on the music? And do you have any other comments on the reviews?

Anthony Summers: Thanks for asking that. To the extent we had a brief, it was to try to explain the dichotomy between Sinatra the "supreme talent" and the Sinatra whose life became entwined with the Mafia. Contrary to reviews that say otherwise, we do deal as much with the music as one can in a book that also has to cover his wide tapestry of a life. But this is a birth-to-death biography, and we leave the technical business of the music to the music critics. We hope that when you read it you conclude that we do indeed offer "The Life" in a fair and full fashion.

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Harrisburg, Pa.: What documents did you see and write about in this book that have never been revealed before?

Anthony Summers: It's generally true to say that one can't get at documents in Federal agencies until the person they concern has died. Sinatra has been dead 7 years, so we had access to his extensive FBI file. Never entirely buy the contents of an FBI file. But Sinatra's contained gems and numerous leads that led onto other things. Especially useful, too, were files of the Bureau of Narcotics, which no one had got to before us. That is not to say for a moment that Sinatra was ever involved in the drug business - he was adamantly opposed to the drug culture - but he was much involved with some of the mobsters that the Narcotic Bureau was pursuing.

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Washington, D.C.: Good afternoon. Did Sinatra ever try to convince Ava Gardner to come back after their divorce? Why was a man so blessed with talent, fame, and money so bitter?

Anthony Summers: He tried time and again from the 1950s almost until Gardner's death in 1990 to "try again." I think one has to try always to separate the personality from the artist. Sinatra was a very Italian Italian-American, and those of his generation simply did not leave their wives and children. That was simply not something allowable in the culture. Yet he'd done that because of his consuming love for Gardner. Only to walk into disaster after emotional disaster. "Bitter"? Perhaps that's not the word. Perhaps, rather, desolated by loss - which is exactly what comes through in so many of his songs.

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New York, N.Y.: Why did you focus on the mafia and the women so much? (Besides the fact that salacious details sell books.) Were you ever threatened by the mob or the Sinatra family?

Anthony Summers: We focused on virtually all aspects of his life, not just on the Mob and the women. It's true, all the same, that we found that people we met during the 4-year stint on the book ALL asked about those 2 angles. In particular, the world seems to want to know WHY Sinatra remained so entwined with the mobsters for virtually all his life. No one's pinned down that area before. But we think we have in Sinatra: The Life. No. We were not threatened - either by the Mafia or by Sinatra's children. Contrary to what some have said in the last week, however, we did go out of our way to secure interviews with the Sinatra family. We wrote letters, and when we got no reply we wrote again. We made contact through intermediaries, and had one letter hand-delivered to Sinatra's daughter Nancy. She never got back to us. Yet now, on her Web site, she's claimed that we're "clowns" who've written "garbage," and like all such authors did not ask for comment by her or her siblings. Oh, well . . . "That's Life."

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Arlington, Va.: Anthony -- it was a pleasure to meet you at the party for your book at Palette on Friday. What was your inspiration to write this book? There have been other biographies about Frank Sinatra -- how did you form your approach to the story of his life?

Anthony Summers: I wonder which of the many people we met at the party you are. We much appreciated the welcome people gave us. To answer your question, it seemed to us and our publisher that this was exactly the right moment to write THE Sinatra biography - a book that could not have been written before his death in 1998. And because people of his generation and a little younger will not be around very much longer, they won't be there to talk about him to authors of the future.

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Vienna, Va.: Dear Anthony and Robbyn,

I read a review of your book this weekend in the Post that focused on your treatment of Frank Sinatra's music. The reviewer clearly wanted more on the subject. But it seemed unfair since your book is entitled "Sinatra, The Life" versus "My Music", right? Do you think a non-music critic like myself might enjoy your new biography? And can you give tell me what sets your findings apart from other biographies on him?

Anthony Summers: I tackled the question about music content of the book in another answer. But, yes, I really do think someone like yourself would find a great deal to interest them in Sinatra: The Life. The music and the life of the human being called Sinatra can't be separated, anyway. They are intertwined, and there's no question that the way he reached people and identified with their emotions and moods grew out of his own life experiences. Not least love and loss, and folly.

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Arlington, Va.: I haven't read the book yet, but I did buy a copy today. The Notes section is unreal it's so extensive. Yet one of the reviewers said quotes and information wasn't backed up by other sources and that you were willing to listen to anything anyone had to say about Sinatra. Can you comment? How did you verify what sources said? What was the research like?

Anthony Summers: Thanks for buying the book. We always try to off our readers the source of every salient fact in the text, and it's especially important to do so when writing a book likely to raise hackles among those likely to doubt some of the darker facts. The pages in the text are keyed directly to the source notes, very easy to follow, and we tell our readers precisely where or from whom we got everything. The research trail was long indeed, 4 years virtually non-stop. Whenever we could, we verified what a source had said, of course. In almost all circumstances, we tried to track down more than one source. Sometimes - an example is the allegation that Sinatra carried huge sums in cash for the Mafia - we tracked several sources. On the other hand, as for example in the case of a woman who claims Sinatra forced sex on her, there was no secondary source. In that case, we simply grilled the poor woman on her story again and again. And then, having discovered that other (similar but less extreme) stories had been told by other women, we decided that the allegation earned its place in the book and told it in context.

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Bethesda, Md.: I've read several of the reviews on Sinatra -- aren't critics so, well, critical. One of the reviewers wrote that you didn't answer why Sinatra lives on. Why do you think he remains such a cultural mainstay?

Anthony Summers: Critics have every right to criticize. unfortunately, it's a free country and they're also entirely free to write unfairly or inaccurately. We hope we've been neither. As to why Sinatra lives on - I'd offer an answer of his own. He hoped that he "reached people" and that he certainly did. Bob Dylan, whom we quote in the book, thinks Sinatra sang "with the truth of everything in his voice". We can't answer you much better than that.

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San Ramon, Calif.: Why dig up all this garbage? Even in courts all this 'hearsay' is not evidence of the real truth. Have you ever listened to His Music? Why try to wreck His name with junk we've all heard before and could care less about. The MAN is Dead. I want to hear about the good things He did. So many stories about His fans and how He affected their lives in a positive way. Mine included. I, for one, am sorry you wrote this and I will NOT read it.

Anthony Summers: Your question sounds familiar after reading the blathering on the Sinatra family site over the last week or so. We didn't look for garbage and we were very careful not to use mere hearsay except - very occasionally - in context. If it's hearsay, but credible, we point that out to the reader. And, as I've said in another answer, you can go to the source notes at the end of the book and see exactly where we found every fact reported. Why do you write "Him" with a capital "H"? He would have laughed at the notion that he was being written about as though he were some sort of deity. As say in the book, he admitted that he was "not proud" of many of the things in his life. We've reported the good with the bad, and striven to give our readers the whole person. Not some impossible paragon. Suit yourself as to whether you read it, but it's hard to see why you think you have the right to criticize something you haven't read.

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Washington, D.C.: Are you doing any TV interviews? Where can we "see" more on the book's treatment of his life?

Anthony Summers: Yes. Robbyn, the co-author of Sinatra: The Life, and I will be on Extra tonight and Entertainment Tonight tonight too. We'll most probably be on CNN's American Morning tomorrow morning and at the weekend Fox and Friends on Sunday with an appearance on Weekend Today on Sunday, May 29. There's also a lot of radio, including Diane Rehm out of Washington on Friday. I hope you enjoy the book as well as hearing us talk about it.

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Washington, D.C. : I read your Marilyn Monroe book years ago. I'm looking forward to reading Sinatra. How do you pick your topics? What draws you into wanting to write a biography on a particular character? Who's next?

Anthony Summers: Glad to hear you've read and enjoyed my book Goddess. The topics I write about normally somehow pick themselves. But it's a fact that, having long covered US affairs for the BBC, my books have largely focused on American people and events. There have been books by me on JFK, Monroe, J. Edgar Hoover, and Richard Nixon and one way or the other they all intersect in the story of Sinatra's life. As to who's next, any suggestions?

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Washington, D.C.: You got a truly scathing review today from the legendary Michiko Kakutani at the NYT. Is that somewhat of a compliment? She seems to think you took a lot of your material from our local "poison pen," Kitty Kelley.

Anthony Summers: Some compliment. But I know what you mean. As to "poison pens," one has to say that there seem to be a lot of "poison" in that review. But she's entitled to her opinions. Nevertheless, it's not true to say that we took a lot of our material from Kitty Kelley's 1986 book. I'm familiar with Kelley's work, and the fact is that she did a lot of good pioneering work on Sinatra, in spite of (or perhaps because of) his attempts to stop her writing the book at all. We read her work, of course, and - double-checks showed - it was in general more reliable than some of the other work we studied. She put up some sign-posts that we were able to follow on the way to putting together what we hope is something much closer to the definitive life of a complex man.

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Linden, N.J.: Given that Ava Gardner seems to have been Sinatra's greatest love, who was No. 2 for him?

Also , being from Jersey, after he made it big, I wonder if he still stayed connected to his hometown and the people who he knew back before he became famous..

Thanks for doing this chat and for your response.

Anthony Summers: That's an interesting one. But I don't think there's much mystery there. Ava's predecessor, Sinatra's first wife Nancy was a steady, loyal, long-suffering woman and the mother of his 3 children. The problem was, as someone said, that she was and could only be a "Jersey neighborhood girl" and as he soared to fame Frank himself quit the neighborhood and left her behind. Nevertheless, she remained there for him through all the troubles and catastrophies in the years that followed. He appreciated that the older he grew, and she remains a grand old lady and the anchor of the Sinatra family. As to Hoboken, he came to talk of the place with scorn. We talked with one associate who remembered flying at Sinatra's side on a plane. When the pilot mentioned that the plane was flying over Hoboken, Sinatra spat in the direction of the window. Even so, it's said that on occasion he revisited the place, often at night, cruising through the empty streets in his limousine. He took his daughter back to take a look at the place too. And late in life he readily went back when he was awarded and honorary degree at the local college of engineering. Thanks for your questions. Enjoy the book.

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Clinton, Md.: Sinatra always seemed so lonely. I have heard that Dean Martin was his only true friend or at least the only one Sinatra respected and that the rest were hangerson and sycophants. Any truth to this?

Anthony Summers: We use the true "lonely" photograph of Sinatra on the back of Sinatra: The Life. He was a contradiction in this as in so much else. A man always amongst people who projected loneliness. It was a key part of him image, and of course he sang constantly of loneliness and loss. You mentioned Dean Martin, but our interview with Martin's former wife Jeanne gave us the impression that they were never really close, close friends. Closer, probably, was the composer Jimmy van Heusen. And towards the end of Sinatra's life a much younger music producer named Tony Oppedisano. If you were looking for a deep friendship among the famous names, you'd be more on target with Sammy Davis Jnr than with Dean Martin.

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Fairfax, Va.: Was he religious?

Anthony Summers: There's a famous Sinatra quote (actually put together on his behalf by someone else) for a Playboy Magazine Q and A: "I'm for anything that gets you through the night" - be it religion or Jack Daniels. He was brought up a Catholic, but rarely attended church until he was approaching old age. As the end approached, however, he prayed aloud every night.

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Poughkeepsie, N.Y.: What are some of the root sources of Sinatra's temper, anger, and rage?

Anthony Summers: You could say perhaps that having been a spoiled only-child was the starting point of Sinatra's temper-tantrums. The serious incidents, though, those that involved violence or real abuse of others, seem to have been linked almost always to alcohol. We submitted the parts of the book that deal with his alcohol use to 2 experts in the field. Alcoholism is famously hard to diagnose, but they concluded that he had many of the symptoms of an alcoholic.

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Fairfax, Va.: What do you say to people who accuse you of tarnishing Sinatra's name?

Anthony Summers: With respect, we'd suggest they find out for themselves whether the accusation is fair - by reading Sinatra: The Life.

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Munich, Germany: You mentioned Sinatra's FBI file earlier on in the chat. What does an FBI file look like on someone who doesn't have anything to do with drugs, but knows people who do?

Anthony Summers: The FBI file is some 2000 pages long. It does not deal with drugs, but deals with Sinatra's associations with mobsters - both senior Mafia bosses and the smaller fry. Many pages too, deal with his zealous efforts to promote civil rights during the racist years of the 1940s and 1950s. He really made a huge effort in this respect, a fact that made him the target of FBI Direct J. Edgar Hoover's wrath. The Right, moreover, used his civil rights activity to label him a Communist. He wasn't, of course.

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Boise, Idaho: Hi Mr. Summers,

$3.5 million in fifties would weigh slightly over 154 pounds. Do you really think Frank would schlep a 154 pound suitcase around in an airport?

Anthony Summers: Not sure where you get this specific weight from. I'm not sure, either, whether Jerry Lewis - the source of the allegation - that Sinatra once carried that sum in case through US Customs, intended to be specific. On the other hand, Sinatra famously challenged the allegation that he carried a similarly vast sum to Lucky Luciano in Cuba. "Picture me, skinny Frankie" he said, doing that. He said that if anyone could replicate the feat he'd give them the money in cash. The novelist, Norman Mailer, promptly did just that. So far as I know, Sinatra did not oblige by coughing up the promised money.

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Anthony Summers: Thanks for all your questions, and it's been interesting answering them. I hope that the answers to the questions we haven't got to will be found in the pages of Sinatra: The Life.

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Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.