Mr S: The Last Word On Frank Sinatra

Mr S: The Last Word On Frank Sinatra

By George Jacobs and William Stadiem

Sidgwick & Jackson $220

George Jacobs was Frank Sinatra's valet for 15 years in the 1950s and 1960s, a period that saw the crooner entangled with the mafia, his middle-age slump in music and movies, and the loss of his great love, the actress Ava Gardner.

Almost 50 years later Jacobs shared the word processor with William Stadiem, an author who has carved a niche in profiling famous Americans such as Marilyn Monroe, one of Sinatra's favourite friends and lovers. Stadiem makes no attempt to embellish the uncomplicated voice of Jacob's recollections.

Jacobs confirms that Sinatra oozed confidence and abhorred sentimentality. He was a no-nonsense fella who told it like it was and made fun of everything and everyone. But he had a temper and was prone to outlandishly immature acts of vandalism - as a suite in Hong Kong's Peninsula Hotel could attest. Sinatra trashed furniture and a Ming vase or two while unleashing a tirade of racist comments in the early 1960s. The lighting crew at his concert in Hong Kong City Hall had failed to make him disappear completely when spotlighting faded.

Jacobs, who is black, mentions that around his so-called Rat Pack friends - including Italian-American Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, a black Jew - no harm was meant by Sinatra's racist outbursts. Such terms were often used as endearments. Sinatra named his private jet El Dago - though it had to be erased when he was touring Italy.