Playboy Interview: Frank Sinatra

In an age of superstars, Frank Sinatra is generally conceded to be the biggest of them all: one of the box-office giants of the screen, the hightest-paid night-club performer in show business, among the all-time top recording artists of popular or classical music, seven-time winner of Playboy's All-Star Jazz Poll -- including the 1963 award, announced on page 81 -- as the favorite male vocalist of both readers and fellow musicians. He is also one of the biggest of the businessmanstars (with a $25,000,000 empire girdling the entertainment world from such lucrative concerns as Reprise Records to Lake Tahoe's Cal-Neva Lodge), firstname friend of Presidents, unchallenged titleholder as the most controversial figure in show business and lately -- to the surprise of many fans and critics alike -- self-effacing philanthropist and goodwill ambassador abroad, giving currency to talk of a "New Sinatra." It was in search of the real Sinatra -- new, old or simply mature -- that Playboy recently approached the press-shy star with a request for an exclusive interview. Rightly refusing to waste his time with predictable small talk, Sinatra agreed to sit down with us only on the condition that we "talk turkey, not trivia," that we attempt to reach the man behind the image, to clicit his deepest feelings and reflections on the things which move and motivate him as a human being. Reassuring him that this very aim is the basic premise and prerequisite of the "Playboy Interview," we gladly agreed. We then spent an entire week with Sinatra as he ambled easily through the breakneck business schedule that has become his normal routine -- answering our questions between takes on the set of "Come Blow Your Horn," his latest picture for Paramount; in his Dual-Ghia en route home from the studio; during breaks at a Reprise recording session with Count Basie; in corridors heading to and from staff summit meetings on upcoming movie-record-night-club projects; even for an unexpected hour in his Beverly Hills home following the abortive Liston-Patterson fight, which Sinatra had arranged to pipe in on closed-circuit TV for a group of friends (including Dean Martin, Billy Wilder and Los Angeles' Mayor Samuel W. Yorty), invited at $100 a seat earmarked for Share, a favorite Sinatra charity. The conversation that emerged from these catch-as-catch-can taping sessions is a courageous public declaration of private convictions from a major figure in a business wherein most stars seem concerned less with carning good reviews for their performances than with avoiding offense in their personal lives. Many people will be shocked by what he has to say, but many more, we aver, will feel that the candor of his insights adds a new dimension to their understanding of the complex, articulate and thoughtful man who is the chief executive of his profession.

[Q] Playboy: Frank, in the 20 years since you left the Tommy Dorsey band to make your name as a solo singer, you've deepened and diversified your talents with a variety of concurrent careers in related fields. But so far none of these aptitudes and activities has succeeded in eclipsing your gifts as a popular vocalist. So why don't we begin by examining Sinatra, the singer?

[A] Sinatra: Ok, deal.

[Q] Playboy: Many explanations have been offered for your unique ability -- apart from the subtleties of style and vocal equipment -- to communicate the mood of a song to an audience. How would you define it?

[A] Sinatra: I think it's because I get an audience involved, personally involved in a song -- because I'm involved myself. It's not something I do deliberately: I can't help myself. If the song is a lament at the loss of love. I get an ache in my gut. I feel the loss myself and I cry out the loneliness, the hurt and the pain that I feel.

[Q] Playboy: Doesn't any good vocalist "feel" a song? Is there such a difference . . .

[A] Sinatra: I don't know what other singers feel when they articulate lyrics, but being an 18-karat manic-depressive and having lived a life of violent emotional contradictions, I have an overacute capacity for sadness as well as elation. I know what the cat who wrote the song is trying to say. I've been there -- and back. I guess the audience feels it along with me. They can't help it. Sentimentality, after all, is an emotion common to all humanity.

[Q] Playboy: Of the thousands of words which have been written about you on this subject, do you recall any which have accurately described this ability?

[A] Sinatra: Most of what has been written about me is one big blur, but I do remember being described in one simple word that I agree with. It was in a piece that tore me apart for my personal behavior, but the writer said that when the music began and I started to sing. I was "honest." That says it as I feel it. Whatever else has been said about me personally is unimportant. When I sing. I believe. I'm honest. If you want to get an audience with you, there's only one way. You have to reach out to them with total honesty and humility. This isn't a grandstand play on my part; I've discovered -- and you can see it in other entertainers -- when they don't reach out to the audience, nothing happens. You can be the most artistically perfect performer in the world, but an audience is like a broad -- if you're indifferent, endsville. That goes for any kind of human contact: a politician on television, an actor in the movies, or a guy and a gal. That's as true in life as it is in art.

[Q] Playboy: From what you've said, it seems that we'll have to learn something of what makes you tick as a man in order to understand what motivates you as an entertainer. Would it be all right with you if we attempt to do just that -- by exploring a few of the fundamental beliefs which move and shape your life?

[A] Sinatra: Look, pal, is this going to be an ocean cruise or a quick sail around the harbor? Like you, I think, I feel, I wonder. I know some things, I believe in a thousand things, and I'm curious about a million more. Be more specific.

[Q] Playboy: All right, let's start with the most basic question there is: Are you a religious man? Do you believe in God?

[A] Sinatra: Well, that'll do for openers. I think I can sum up my religious feelings in a couple of paragraphs. First: I believe in you and me. I'm like Albert Schweitzer and Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein in that I have a respect for life -- in any form. I believe in nature, in the birds, the sea, the sky, in everything I can see or that there is real evidence for. If these things are what you mean by God, then I believe in God. But I don't believe in a personal God to whom I look for comfort or for a natural on the next roll of the dice. I'm not unmindful of man's seeming need for faith: I'm for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers or a bottle of Jack Daniel's. But to me religion is a deeply personal thing in which man and God go it alone together, without the witch doctor in the middle. The witch doctor tries to convince us that we have to ask God for help, to spell out to him what we need, even to bribe him with prayer or cash on the line. Well, I believe that God knows what each of us wants and needs. It's not necessary for us to make it to church on Sunday to reach Him. You can find Him anyplace. And if that sounds heretical, my source is pretty good: Matthew, Five to Seven, The Sermon on the Mount.

[Q] Playboy: You haven't found any answers for yourself in organized religion?

[A] Sinatra: There are things about organized religion which I resent. Christ is revered as the Prince of Peace, but more blood has been shed in His name than any other figure in history. You show me one step forward in the name of religion and I'll show you a hundred retrogressions. Remember, they were men of God who destroyed the educational treasures at Alexandria, who perpetrated the Inquisition in Spain, who burned the witches at Salem. Over 25,000 organized religions flourish on this planet, but the followers of each think all the others are miserably misguided and probably evil as well. In India they worship white cows, monkeys and a dip in the Ganges. The Moslems accept slavery and prepare for Allah, who promises wine and revirginated women. And witch doctors aren't just in Africa. If you look in the L. A. papers of a Sunday morning, you'll see the local variety advertising their wares like suits with two pairs of pants.

[Q] Playboy: Hasn't religious faith just as often served as a civilizing influence?

[A] Sinatra: Remember that leering, cursing lynch mob in Little Rock reviling a meek, innocent little 12-year-old Negro girl as she tried to enroll in public school? Weren't they -- or most of them -- devout churchgoers? I detest the twofaced who pretend liberality but are practiced bigots in their own mean little spheres. I didn't tell my daughter whom to marry, but I'd have broken her back if she had had big eyes for a bigot. As I see it, man is a product of his conditioning, and the social forces which mold his morality and conduct-- including racial prejudice -- are influenced more by material things like food and economic necessities than by the fear and awe and bigotry generated by the high priests of commercialized superstition. Now don't get me wrong. I'm for decency -- period. I'm for anything and everything that bodes love and consideration for my fellow man. But when lip service to some mysterious deity permits bestiality on Wednesday and absolution on Sunday -- cash me out.

[Q] Playboy: But aren't such spiritual hypocrites in a minority? Aren't most Americans fairly consistent in their conduct within the precepts of religious doctrine?

[A] Sinatra: I've got no quarrel with men of decency at any level. But I can't believe that decency stems only from religion. And I can't help wondering how many public figures make avowals of religious faith to maintain an aura of respectability Our civilization, such as it is, was shaped by religion, and the men who aspire to public office anyplace in the free world must make obeisance to God or risk immediate opprobrium. Our press accurately reflects the religious nature of our society, but you'll notice that it also carries the articles and advertisements of astrology and hokey Elmer Gantry revivalists. We in America pride ourselves on freedom of the press, but every day I see, and so do you, this kind of dishonesty and distortion not only in this area but in reporting -- about guys like me, for instance, which is of minor importance except to me; but also in reporting world news. How can a free people make decisions without facts? If the press reports world news as they report about me, we're in trouble.

[Q] Playboy: Are you saying that . . .

[A] Sinatra: No, wait, let me finish. Have you thought of the chance I'm taking by speaking out this way? Can you imagine the deluge of crank letters, curses, threats and obscenities I'll receive after these remarks gain general circulation? Worse, the boycott of my records, my films, maybe a picket line at my opening at the Sands. Why? Because I've dared to say that love and decency are not necessarily concomitants of religious fervor.

[Q] Playboy: If you think you're stepping over the line, offending your public or perhaps risking economic suicide, shall we cut this off now, erase the tape and start over along more antiseptic lines?

[A] Sinatra: No, let's let it run. I've thought this way for years, ached to say these things. Whom have I harmed by what I've said? What moral defection have I suggested? No, I don't want to chicken out now. Come on, pal, the clock's running.

[Q] Playboy: All right, then, let's move on to another delicate subject: disarmament. How do you feel about the necessity and possibility of achieving it?

[A] Sinatra: Well, that's like apple pie and mother -- how can you be against it? After all, despite the universal and unanimous assumption that both powers -- Russia and the United States -- already have stockpiled more nuclear weaponry than is necessary to vaporize the entire planet, each power continues to build, improve and enlarge its terrifying arsenal. For the first time in history, man has developed the means with which to expunge all life in one shuddering instant. And, brother, no one gets a pass, no one hides from this one. But the question is not so much whether disarmament is desirable or even whether it can be achieved, but whether -- if we were able to achieve it -- we would be better off, or perhaps infinitely worse off.

[Q] Playboy: Are you suggesting that disarmament might be detrimental to peace?

[A] Sinatra: Yes, in a certain very delicate sense. Look, I'm a realist, or at least I fancy myself one. Just as I believe that religion doesn't always work, so do I feel that disarmament may be completely beyond man's capacity to live with. Let's forget for a moment the complex problems we might face in converting from a cold war to a peace economy. Let's examine disarmament in terms of man's political, social and philosophical conditioning. Let's say that somehow the UN is able to achieve a disarmament program acceptable to all nations. Let's imagine, a few years from now, total global disarmament. But imagine as well the gnawing doubts, suspicions and nerve-wracking tensions which must, inevitably, begin to fill the void: the fear that the other side -- or perhaps some third power -- is secretly arming or still holding a few bombs with which to surprise and overcome the other. But I firmly believe that nuclear war is absolutely impossible. I don't think anyone in the world wants a nuclear war -- not even the Russians. They and we and the nth countries -- as nuclear strategists refer to future nuclear powers -- face the incontrovertible certainty of lethal retaliation for any nuclear strike. I can't believe for a moment that the idiot exists in any nation that will push the first button -- not even accidentally.

[Q] Playboy: You foresee no possibility of world war or of effective disarmament?

[A] Sinatra: I'm not an industrialist or an economist: I know I'm way out of my depth when I attempt even to comprehend the complexity of shifting the production of a country from war to peace. But if somehow all those involved in production of implements of destruction were willing to accept reason as well as reasonable profit, I think that a shift in psychology might be possible. And if this were to happen, I believe that the deep-seated terror in the hearts of most people due to the constant threat of total destruction would disappear. The result would be a more positive, less greedy, less selfish and more loving approach to survival. I can tell you this much from personal experience and observation: Hale solves no problems. It only creates them. But listen, you've been asking me a lot of questions, so let me ask you a question I posed to Mike Romanoff the other night. You know, Mike is quite a serious thinker; when we spend an evening together, we play an intellectual chess game touching on all topics, including those we are discussing here. Anyway, I asked Mike what would happen if a summit meeting of all the leaders in every country in the world was called, including Red China, at the UN. Further suppose that each leader brings with him his top aides: Kennedy brings Rusk, Khrushchev brings Gromyko, Mao brings Chou. All these cats are together in one room, then -- boom! Somebody blows up the mother building. No more leaders. No more deputies. The question I asked Mike, and the one I ask you, is: What would happen to the world?

[Q] Playboy: You tell us.

[A] Sinatra: I told Mike I thought it might be the only chance the world has for survival. But Mike just shook his head and said, "Frank, you're very sick." Maybe so. Until someone lights the fuse, however, I think that continuation of cold war preparedness might be more effective to maintain the peace than the dewy-eyed notion of total disarmament. I also wonder if "total" disarmament includes chemical and bacteriological weapons -- which, as you know, can be just as lethal as nuclear weapons. Card players have a saying: "It's all right to play if you keep your eyes on the deck" -- which is another way of saving, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel, then, that nuclear testing should be continued?

[A] Sinatra: Absolutely not. I think it's got to stop, and I think it will stop -- because it has to stop. The name-calling in the UN and the finger-pointing at peace conferences is just a lot of diplomatic bull. Both sides have to live on this planet, and leaders in all countries know that their children and grandchildren have to live here, too. I suspect that when the limits of strontium 90 in the atmosphere get really dangerous, scientists in both camps will persuade the politicians to call a final halt to testing -- probably at precisely the same time, with no urging from the other side.

[Q] Playboy: You spoke a moment ago of the fear and suspicion that might nullify any plan for lasting and effective disarmament. Isn't continuing nuclear preparedness--with or without further testing -- likely to engender these emotions on an even more dangerous scale?

[A] Sinatra: Fear is the enemy of logic. There is no more debilitating, crushing, self-defeating, sickening thing in the world -- to an individual or to a nation. If we continue to fear the Russians, and if they continue to fear us, then we're both in big trouble. Neither side will be able to make logical, reasoned decisions. I think, however, that their fear and concern over the ideological balance of power in some areas is far from irrational. Our concern over a Sovietized Cuba 90 miles from Key West, for instance, must be equated with Russian concern over our missile bases surrounding them. It is proper that we should be deeply concerned, but we must be able to see their side of the coin -- and not let this concern turn into fear on either side.

[Q] Playboy: On a practical level, how would you combat Communist expansion into areas such as Cuba. Laos and the emerging African nations?

[A] Sinatra: It strikes me as being so ridiculously simple: Stop worrying about communism: just get rid of the conditions that nurture it. Sidestepping Marxian philosophy and dialectical vagaries, I think that communism can fester only wherever and whenever it is encouraged to breed -- not just by the Communists themselves, but by depressed social and economic conditions: and we can always count on the Communists to exploit those conditions. Poverty is probably the greatest asset the Communists have. Wherever it exists, anyplace in the world, you have a potential Communist breeding ground. It figures that if a man is frustrated in a material sense, his family hungry, he suffers, he- broods and he becomes susceptible to the blandishments of any ideology that promises to take him off the book.

[Q] Playboy: Do you share with the American Right Wing an equal concern about the susceptibility of our own country to Communist designs?

[A] Sinatra: Well, if you're talking about that poor, beaten, dehumanized, discriminated-against guy in some blighted Tobacco Road down in the South, he's certainly in the market for offers of self-improvement. But you can't make me believe that a machinist in Detroit, ending a 40-hour week, climbing into his '63 Chevy, driving to a steak barbecue behind his $25,000 home in a tree-lined subdivision, about to begin a weekend with his well-fed, well-clothed family, is going to trade what he's got for a Party card. In America -- except for tiny pockets of privation which still persist -- Khrushchev has as much chance of succeeding as he has of making 100 straight passes at the crap table.

[Q] Playboy: In combating Communist expansion into underdeveloped areas here and abroad, what can we do except to offer massive material aid and guidance of the kind we've been providing since the end of World War II?

[A] Sinatra: I don't know. I'm no economist. I don't pretend to have much background in political science. But this much I know: Attending rallies sponsored by 110-percent anti-Communist cultists or donning white sheets and riding with the Klan -- the one that's spelled with a "K" -- isn't the answer. All I know is that a nation with our standard of living, with our Social Security system, TVA, farm parity, health plans and unemployment insurance can afford to address itself to the cancers of starvation, substandard housing, educational voids and second-class citizenship that still exist in many backsliding areas of our own country. When we've cleaned up these blemishes, then we can go out with a clean conscience to see where else in the world we can help. Hunger is inexcusable in a world where grain rots in silos and butter turns rancid while being held for favorable commodity indices.

[Q] Playboy: Is American support of the UN one of the ways in which we can uplift global economic conditions?

[A] Sinatra: It seems to me that a lot of us consider the UN a private club -- ours, of course -- with gentlemen's agreements just like any other exclusive club. Only instead of excluding a person, a race or a religion, the members of the UN have the power to exclude entire nations. I don't happen to think you can kick 800,000,000 Chinese under the rug and simply pretend that they don't exist. Because they do, If the UN is to be truly representative, then it must accept all the nations of the world. If it doesn't represent the united nations of the world, then what the hell have you got? Not democracy -- and certainly not world government. Everybody seems to have forgotten that President Kennedy, before he became President, in his book, Strategy of Peace, plainly advocated recognition of Red China. So I'm not too far out on the limb, am I?

[Q] Playboy: With or without mainland China in the UN, what do you feel are the prospects for an eventual American rapprochement with Russia?

[A] Sinatra: I'm a singer, not a prophet or a diplomat. Ask the experts or read the Rockefeller brothers' reports. But speaking just as a layman, an ordinary guy who thinks and worries, I think that if we can stay out of war for the next 10 years, we'll never have another war. From all I've read and seen recently, I'm betting that within the next decade the Russians will be on the credit-card kick just as we are. They're going to want color TV, their wives are going to want electrified kitchens, their kids are going to want hot rods. Even Russian girls are getting hip; I've seen photos of them at Russian beach resorts, and it looks just like the Riviera. They're thinning down, and I see they're going the bikini route. When GUM department store in Moscow starts selling bikinis, we've got a fighting chance, because that means the girls are interested in being girls and the boys are going to stop thinking about communes and begin thinking connubially. I've always had a theory that whenever guys and gals start swinging, they begin to lose interest in conquering the world. They just want a comfortable pad and stereo and wheels, and their thoughts turn to the good things of life -- not to war. They loosen up, they live and they're more apt to let live. Dig?

[Q] Playboy: We dig.

[A] Sinatra: You know, I'd love to visit Russia, and sometime later, China, too. I figure the more I know about them and the more they know about me, the better chance we have of living in the same-world in peace. I don't intend to go there with a mission, to sell the American way of life: I'm not equipped to get into that kind of discussion about government. But I'd love to go and show them American music. I'd take Count Basic and Ella Fitzgerald with me and we'd do what we do best. We'd wail up a storm with real American jazz so that their kids could see what kind of music our kids go for, because I'm sure that kids are the same all over the world. I'm betting that they'd dig us. And that's got to create some kind of good will, and man, a little good will is something we could use right now. All it takes is good will and a smile to breach that language barrier. When the Moiseyev Dancers were in Los Angeles. Eddie and Liz Fisher gave a party for them, and although I couldn't speak a word of Russian, I got along fine. I just said. "Hello, baby" to the dancers and they shouted. "Allo, babee" back at me. We had a ball.

[Q] Playboy: Frank, you've expressed some negative views on human nature in the course of this conversation. Yet one gets the impression dial -- despite the bigotry, hypocrisy, stupidity, cruelty and fear you've talked about -- you feel there are still some grounds for hope about the destiny of Homo sapiens. Is that right?

[A] Sinatra: Absolutely, I'm never cynical, never without optimism about the future. The history of mankind proves that at some point the people have their innings, and I think we're about to come up to bat now. I think we can make it if we live and let live. And love one another-- I mean really love. If you don't know the guy on the other side of the world, love him anyway because he's just like you. He has the same dreams, the same hope's and fears. It one world, pal. We're all neighbors. But didn't somebody once go up onto a mountain long ago and say the same thing to the world?