Chapter 6 - Ethical Culture Fieldston School

“Mr. Sinatra Gets Rejected”
Luciano and fellow crime chieftains Carlo Gambino, Vito Genovese, Joe
Bonanno, and others. “The curious desire to cavort among the scum is possibly
permissible among citizens who are not peddling sermons to the nation’s youth
and may even be allowed to a mealy‐mouthed celebrity if he is smart enough to
confine his social tolerance to a hotel room,” columnist Robert Ruark of the
Scripps‐Howard chain wrote after seeing Sinatra in Havana. “But Mr. Sinatra, the
self‐confessed savior of the country’s small fry, by virtue of his lectures on clean
living and love‐thy‐neighbor, his movie shorts on tolerance, and his frequent
dabblings into the do‐good department of politics, seem to be setting a most
peculiar example.” 30
As the tone of such comments suggests, Sinatra was not especially
popular in some quarters of the media, particularly by conservative writers and
publishers under the control of the powerful Hearst syndicate. Few were more
powerful – and more contemptuous of Sinatra – than Lee Mortimer, who taunted
him mercilessly. (In fact, Sinatra had only taken the stage that painful night at the
Copa in April of 1950 after five previous cancellations because Mortimer had bet
club owner Jack Entratter $500 that he wouldn’t show again.) Mortimer, who
described Sinatra’s fans as “imbecilic, moronic, screaming‐meemie autograph
kids,” was also the primary source of unconfirmed reports in the dossier the FBI
compiled on him. Sinatra, aware of this, threatened Mortimer with violence, and
considered planting stories that he was gay (Mortimer’s FBI contact, Clyde
Tolson was rumored to be FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover’s lover). On April 8, 1947,
Sinatra saw Mortimer at Ciro’s, an exclusive Hollywood nightclub, and accosted
him as he left. Calling Mortimer “a fucking homosexual,” he punched him, and
continued to slug away as two of Sinatra’s bodyguards held the writer down.
29 Quoted in Kelly, p. 168.
American History for Cynical Beginners
26