Frank Sinatra labelled a ‘womaniser’ by Gianni Russo
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Hollywood starlet Nancy Venturi once said: “He had sex on the brain. He would make love to anyone who came along.” The opportunities were limitless. Sinatra was one of the first-ever music teen idols long before he also became a major Hollywood star. Although he married his first wife Nancy at 24 and was presented as a wholesome family man with three young children, Nancy, Frank Jr and Tina, the star was already notorious for his conquests from his early big band days. Bandleader Tommy Dorsey remembered: “He was no matinée idol. He was a skinny kid with big ears. Yet what he did to women was something awful.”
Sinatra told his friend, Joey D’Orazio. “I can have every dame I want. I just can’t help myself. I don’t want to hurt Nancy. I just don’t want to sleep with her no more.”
Instead, he slept his way through fans and then a succession of Hollywood starlets, as well as some of the biggest names on the silver screen, from Ava Gardner to Marilyn Monroe, Lana Turner and Marlene Dietrich.
The star’s extraordinary voice and charisma were undoubtedly a factor – as were those famous peepers. Actress and close friend Ruta Lee said: “Those fabulous blue eyes of Frank Sinatra were so piercing when he was with you those blue eyes stayed with you, you felt like he was entering your soul, it was something incredible.”
Gardner was far more blunt when she described her husband’s biggest asset.
Gardner famously said: “He is only 110 pounds, but 10 pounds of it is c**k!”
The idol’s valet George Jacobs revealed in his book Mr S that his boss actually had special underwear made to contain and conceal his size in public.
Sinatra’s friend Gianni Russo said, a little more tactfully: “He was just a womaniser. How can I say this politely? He was well-endowed, so he didn’t leave these women wanting anything.”
And that list of women was extensive across the decades.
He told D’Orazio in this early days: “We’re animals, each and every one of us, that’s what we are, and we’re damn proud of it, too. I’m just looking to make it with as many women as I can.”
In the first year of his marriage to Nancy, Sinatra had already installed his first mistress, actress Alora Gooding, in an apartment, but certainly didn’t limit his conquests to her. Band pianist Joe Bushkin said: “Whenever he could take a shot at a woman, he would.”
Apparently, it wasn’t just Sinatra’s physical attributes that impressed. Venturi recalled: “There was something unusually intensive about his lovemaking. At least it was with me.”
The star would eventually meet his match in Gardner. Between constant rowing and sex, their relationship was notoriously as explosive by day as by night. Sinatra said: “If we didn’t kill each other during the day, we might have killed each other in bed.”
Well before he met Gardner and flirted with the idea of leaving his wife for Lana Turner, Sinatra apparently also had an explosive affair with Dietrich, some time after 1942.
Lyricist Sammy Cahn, who was often regarded as Sinatra’s “personal songwriter”, said: “I know they had a thing going. She would have been difficult to resist. She had powers as a lover that were spoken of behind people’s hands — not least because she was supposedly the champion in the oral sex department.”
However, one huge star proved completely indifferent to any of Sinatra’s charms, physical or otherwise.
In late 1954, two years before they starred together in High Society, Sinatra attempted to seduce Grace Kelly while he was still married to Gardner. Although teh actresses were friends, that marriage was frequently on the rocks and she agreed to go out with him Unfortunately, he turned up drunk and distressed, apparently unable to stop talking about his wife.
High Society co-star Celeste Holm said: “He held no attraction for her. Grace regarded Frank as a street kid… She was on a different level. She was a princess long before she married Prince Rainier.”
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