Chapter 6 - Ethical Culture Fieldston School

“Mr. Sinatra Gets Rejected”
Sinatra’s response to JFK is milder, though still cool. Upon his arrival in
California at the end of March, Kennedy asks Lawford how Sinatra has taken the
news. “Not very well,” Lawford replies. “I’ll make it up to him,” Kennedy
responds. He calls Sinatra and invites him to Crosby’s for lunch. Sinatra declines.
Too busy, he explains. He’s on his way to Los Angeles to visit some friends (one
of whom, Marilyn Monroe, will soon be an intimate of Kennedy brothers).
The bloom is off the rose. In May, Sinatra sends the president a birthday
gift, which Kennedy acknowledges in a thank‐you note. In August, Sinatra
telegraphs his readiness to send a print of The Manchurian Candidate if desired.
But Kennedy keeps his distance. Sinatra does not attend his funeral. He does call
the White House to offer his condolences (the call is taken by Lawford’s wife
Patricia, JFK’s sister). 6 But for all intents and purposes, Sinatra’s stay in Camelot
is over by the spring of 1962. In 1968, he supports Hubert Humphrey, not Robert
Kennedy, for the presidency.
“The thing was this: Frank was hurt,” Sammy Davis Jr. told Sinatra
biographer Randy Taraborelli decades later. “He thought it was chickenshit, the
whole goddamn thing. And for the president to stay at Bing’s, well, that looked
to Frank like a slap in the face. A Republican! In other words, it looked to Frank
like Kennedy was saying ‘I’d rather stay anywhere than with you.’ I think Frank
felt like the whole thing was designed to humiliate him, and you know what,
pal? I fucking agree. I do. The way Frank helped the Kennedys, man, that whole
thing they did was cold.” 7
Other perhaps more neutral observers were less outraged by what
happened. “Why the fuck would the president stay with Sinatra?” Giancana said
6 Wilson, 171-172; Taraborelli, p. 268.
7 Taraborelli, 268.
American History for Cynical Beginners
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