‘Let big Frankie in’: Extract from new book reveals startling insights into Sinatra’s love life
OL’ BLUE Eyes was famous for being a charming ladies’ man but his dalliance with a very underage girl is truly scandalous.
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IN 1938, twenty-two-year-old Frank Sinatra was young, handsome, charming, and, as a result of his bravado, able to have sex with virtually any young woman he set his sights on. He had a girlfriend, but what he did on the side had nothing to do with Nancy Barbato, as far as he was concerned. He would always be good at compartmentalising his life in that regard. Most of his dalliances were with women she’d never become aware of anyway, at least not at this stage of their relationship.
“He had more broads around than you ever saw,” said saxophonist Harry Schuchman, who helped Frank get his audition at the Rustic Cabin.
“I used to sit there and watch the gals with Frank and think, ‘What do they see in him? He’s such a skinny little guy.’”
With a laugh, Joey D’Orazio added, “The older he got, he didn’t get any more good-looking, I’ll say that much for him. He was a skinny guy, ordinary-looking, gawky, his Adam’s apple protruded, and his ears stuck out. But he had more charisma and magnetism than anyone around. The broads — they swarmed all over him whenever he got off stage after a performance. He’d actually tie them to the bed and make love to them, man! They let him do that! No one did that kind of stuff in the thirties in Hoboken, no one I ever knew, anyway.”
“All I know is that he could get all the tail he wanted,” Fred Tamburro of the Hoboken Four once said.
“Part of it had to do with him being a singer. The girls, they liked that. This guy had an appetite for sex like no one I ever knew. He would screw a snake if he could hold it still long enough.”
“Yes, you could say he had sex on the brain,” said Nancy Venturi, one woman who dated Frank at this time.
“He would make love to any girl who came along, as I remember it. There was something intense about his lovemaking, at least it was with me. He was extremely erotic, sexy, an intense kisser. I’m an old woman now, but yes, I remember it, all of it.”
“Jesus, Frankie, you sure like having sex, don’t you?” Nancy recalled having asked him on their first date, just after he had finished pawing at her on her parents’ couch.
Frank was taken aback.
“Sex is something I can do myself, baby,” he told her. “In fact, I do it every day, all by myself, you know, that kind of sex. But what I want is to make love to you in a way you’ll never forget. So c’mon, let Frankie in,” he said as he unzipped her dress. “Let me love you, baby. Let big Frankie in.”
“Well, that just took my breath away,” Nancy Venturi recalled.
“Oh, my God, he had me. This was 1938; guys in our neighbourhood didn’t talk like that. They didn’t know how to sweet-talk a girl, but Frankie did. He wasn’t a love ‘em, leave ‘em type, either. He’d stay the night, or at least slip out early in the morning, before my parents awakened. I felt loved. But I was thirteen, even though I looked maybe eighteen. So what the hell did I know about love?
“One night, when we had sex, just as he reached that moment, he whispered in my ear, ‘I love you, Nancy.’ I was thrilled. My heart was beating out of my little chest.
“The next day I told one of my girlfriends about it. She said, ‘You fool. His girlfriend’s name is also Nancy!’ I suddenly knew he meant her, not me. So I called him and said we could never see each other again. I was getting so hooked on him, I was afraid I would get hurt.”
Frank’s reaction to Nancy’s telephone call? “Okay, baby. If that’s the way you want it. See ya ’round,” he said.
“Think of me the next time you have that kind of sex.”
Three months later, Nancy Venturi thought she was pregnant.
“I was upset,” she said. “I was just a kid, thirteen! Frankie was the only boy I’d ever let touch me. So I called him in tears and said, ‘Oh my God, Frankie, I think I’m pregnant.’ He said, ‘Oh no. That ain’t good.’”
“What are we gonna do?” Nancy asked, bewildered.
“I dunno. What do you want to do?” Frank asked.
“Pray, I guess,” she suggested. “Will you go to church with me?”
“Sure, if that’s what you want,” Frank agreed. “But I’m thinkin’ we should maybe think of something better.” Then, as a second thought, he added, “Okay, maybe you’re right. Maybe we should pray that Dolly doesn’t beat the crap outta me.”
Years later, Nancy recalled, “There was a church on Seventh and Jefferson. Frankie and I went there, and we knelt in front of the altar. He closed his eyes, bowed his head, and said, ‘God, you know what? If this girl here is pregnant, I’m in big trouble with Ma, and I don’t need no aggravation right now. So c’mon, God, gimme a break, will ya? Make her not be pregnant. Okay? So, uh ... thanks a lot, God, and ... uh. That’s it. So ... uh ... amen, all right?’
“I turned to him and said, ‘Frankie, what the heck kind of prayer is that?’
“And he got mad. He said, ‘What the hell you want outta me, Nancy? Jesus Christ! That’s the best prayer I can come up with on such short notice. You’re the one who dragged me down here, and now you expect me to be a priest? If you wanna add somethin’, go ’head.’ Then Frank motioned to the crucifix. ‘I’m sure he’s still listenin’. Go ’head!’
“I thought a lightning bolt was going to strike us both down before we even got out of that church, the way he talked. I said, ‘Oh my God! Let’s just get outta here. Quick.’ ”
While Frank’s prayer may not have been the most eloquent, it appeared to have done the trick, because the next morning Nancy Venturi had what she called her “monthly.”
“I called Frankie and said, ‘It worked! I ain’t pregnant,’ ” she remembered. “And he said, ‘Well, there you go, Nancy. Next time, don’t be questioning my prayers.’ We were about to hang up when he said, ‘If you need me to perform any other miracles, just call me.’”
Extracted with permission from ‘Sinatra: Behind the Legend’ by J. Randy Taraborrelli. Published by Pan Macmillan. RRP $29.99. Available September.
Originally published as ‘Let big Frankie in’: Extract from new book reveals startling insights into Sinatra’s love life