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It got him under his skin.
Frank Sinatra hated reports linking him to the Mafia — and believed that the only reason he was portrayed in the media as mobbed-up was anti-Italian sentiment, his former road manager Tony Oppedisano told Page Six.
“He said it’s only because my name ends in a vowel,” Oppedisano said.
The former roadie explained that Ol’ Blue Eyes would tell him that he only came in contact with wiseguys because they owned the nightclubs where he performed, becoming the 20th Century’s greatest crooner.
“He would say to me, ‘Tony I don’t get it. If the nightclubs were all owned by Cardinals and Monsignors I guess I would have been spending time with Cardinals and Monsignors but that doesn’t make me a Cardinal or a Monsignor nor does working in a club that was owned by wiseguys make me a wiseguy,’” Oppedisano said.
Oppedisano has written a book about his time with the Chairman of the Board called “Sinatra and Me, In the Wee Small Hours.”
And as for photos of Sinatra posing with mobsters, his old pal says that Sinatra told him that was down to the way he was brought up.
“He also used to say to me, ‘I was raised that when a man offers his hand to shake my hand I never asked him how he came about the money in his pocket before I shook his hand. Polite is polite,’” he explained.
Despite this, Oppedisano says that mobsters fell over each other competing for Sinatra’s attention and friendship, including John Gotti.
“Wiseguys wanted to be in Frank’s inner circle and he did his best to juggle that and not let it get too heavy, but you know some people would go overboard,” he remembered. “Some of the guys became friends over the years and they would try to do things for him that he never asked them to do. He’d say, ‘If these guys really want to do me a favor I wish they’d stop doing me favors!’”
While Sinatra may have insisted he had no mob ties, the FBI thought otherwise.
Files that were released after the crooner’s death document a close friendship with Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana. Sinatra reportedly introduced Giancana to John F. Kennedy’s campaign team in 1960 in an effort to procure votes for the Democratic candidate.
There were also files on gifts received from mob brothers Joseph and Charles Fischetti, a performance at the wedding of Philly mob boss Angel Bruno’s daughter, and documentation that revealed the Mob exerted pressure to help Sinatra wiggle out of a 1951 contract.
The situation over that contract with band leader Tommy Dorsey is similar to a subplot in the movie “The Godfather” involving the mob-linked crooner character Jonny Fontaine, which Sinatra believed was based on him.
Sinatra was so sensitive to being connected to the Mafia in the film that he reportedly once berated “Godfather” author Mario Puzo in a Beverly Hills nightclub.
Meanwhile, Oppedisano’s book also has plenty of lighthearted moments, including his encounter with Sinatra’s second wife Ava Gardner.
He recalls chatting with “The Barefoot Contessa” star with Sinatra crony Jilly Rizzo, on the subject of male pals which somehow made its way to Sinatra’s third wife — Mia Farrow.
“He finally found something that he’s been looking for his whole life. A boy with a c–t,” Gardner allegedly said, shocking Oppedisano and Rizzo.
The former Sinatra road manager says Sinatra had always told him that Gardner “was a two-fisted drinker and she could curse me under the table” and described their tempestuous union as “too hot not to burn out in the end.”
Sinatra died in 1998 at the age of 82.
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