Features
Sinatra and the Mob
June 2005 | Anthony Summers, Robbyn Swan
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The aging Luciano had a large collection of Sinatra records. Ensconced in his apartment on the Via Tasso, in Naples, he listened to them often. "They were very fond of each other," said Rizzo. "And, for Sinatra, Luciano had a lot of respect."
The dallying with the Mafia in Cuba was part of a lasting pattern. By 1948, Frank's involvement with criminals was woven into the fabric of his life and career. "I'd known these people all my life," Frank's daughter Nancy wrote years later. "I've sat with them talking about their families.... Then I'd hear their names in the news and I'd say to myself, 'Oh my God. This one's under investigation for tax evasion.' Or, 'That one's just been questioned in a murder.'"
Martin Jurow, who produced the classic movies
Breakfast at Tiffany's and
Terms of Endearment, was the William Morris Agency's man in New York when
From Here to Eternity was being cast in 1952. Half a century later he told how a William Morris colleague, George Wood, had brought Frank into his office. Wood explained that Frank was there to discuss his foundering career— the destructive relationship with Ava Gardner had brought him to the brink of ruin—and wondered if Jurow had any suggestions. Wood, Jurow knew, was close to the " 'quiet investors' [who] were willing to pay entertainers large fees for performing in their Las Vegas clubs"—in other words, the mobsters. Wood had been "connected" since Prohibition days, and was close to Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky.
Jurow looked carefully at Frank as he came into the room. Some of the old cockiness remained, but he seemed dispirited, almost desperate. When Jurow said finding him a prestigious film role would get him out of the doldrums, Frank said gloomily that there was small chance of that. Jurow, however, knew something Frank did not— that Fred Zinnemann was still looking for the right actor to play Private Angelo Maggio in
From Here to Eternity. Frank looked the part, a loser trying to put on a brave face, and Jurow put his name forward. Zinnemann expressed interest. Harry Cohn, however, reacted with characteristic coarseness. Yelling into the phone, he said he would not have "that bum" Sinatra in his studio.
Hours after being turned down, Jurow went to see Wood at his apartment on Central Park South. There, as he put it 50 years later, "something fantastic occurred." He found Wood, not for the first time, ensconced with "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo, the mafioso and key member of the old Luciano syndicate. Alo had a low profile but a great deal of power. He knew Frank and his family so well, an associate said, that Frank regarded him as "his closest friend in that realm." He was an intimate of Frank's East Coast manager, Henri Giné, though that was something Giné went to great pains to keep quiet. Alo had a stake in the William Morris Agency, had known Wood since the 1930s, and visited him almost every day.
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