posted
Comment: I found this odd and disturbing tidbit on Frank Sinatra fan(!) website (www.franksville.com):
It is well known that Sinatra assaulted and almost killed Frederick R. Weisman (the president of Hunts Foods) by smashing him over the head with a telephone in the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel on June 8, 1966. The reason? A petty argument between strangers about the boisterousness and rude language being used by Sinatra and his party. Because of subsequent anonymous threats to Weisman and his family (even as the victim lay in grave condition in the hospital, his survival in doubt), no charges were ever brought against Sinatra. But if Sinatra had been tried and convicted of this assault (whether or not the victim died), I think he should have spent the rest of his life in prison -- because I don't think there's ever any excuse for violent crime. (Self-defense, on the other hand, is not a crime.) And, although many of our aesthetic lives would be that much poorer without the work that came later (for example, Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim, or She Shot Me Down) -- well, Sinatra arrogance and temper were always his own worst enemies. If people (like his own son, or some of his wives) feared or loathed him, he never had anyone to blame but himself. Sinatra's true life story is not about a man who did things "His Way" (a song he quite understandably professed to hate, anyway) it's about a man who couldn't control himself and constantly tried to weasel out of taking responsibility for his own (self-)destructive actions.
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Milky White Midway Bill
The Red and the Green Stamps
posted
Hummm, slightly different version from APBonline:
quote:June 8, 1966: Sinatra attacks Frederick Weisman, the president of Hunt's Foods, in a Los Angeles restaurant after Weisman asks Sinatra to quiet down. The attack fractures Weisman's skull, but his family refuses to press charges after receiving a series of threatening anonymous phone calls.
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