Page 63 - All About History - Issue 18-14

My Way

Frank Sinatra’s

Dark Side

Rumours of Sinatra’s Mafia connections dogged
his entire career and the legendary crooner

certainly had connections to made men…

Written by Owen Williams

n 1950 the US Senate convened a high-profile admitted to more than passing acquaintances with
committee to investigate the growing problem a significant list of made men: Lucky Luciano,
of organised crime in America. Popularly Bugsy Siegel, Willie Moretti and Al Capone’s
known as the Kefauver Committee, after its cousins, The Fischetti Brothers.
I chairman Senator Estes Kefauver, its findings Sinatra would not escape similar hearings in
included admissions of the FBI’s failure to combat the future. While he always denied any Mafia
countrywide mob activity, leading to more than 70 involvement, his name kept cropping up. He
local ‘crime commissions’ to combat the Mafia at was called before a Joint Senate-House Select
local level, and a nationwide Racketeer Influenced Committee on Crime – along with his fellow Rat
and Corrupt Organisations Act. Unusually for the Pack performer Sammy Davis Jr – investigating
time, the proceedings were televised, with more gambling and corruption related to sport, in 1972.
than 30 million viewers eagerly tuning in to watch There was further public testimony, and further
the testimonies of infamous gangsters: Mickey denials, in the hearings of the Nevada Gaming
Cohen, Frank Costello, Jake ‘Greasy Thumb’ Guzik Control Board in 1981, where Sinatra was seeking
and others. Narrowly escaping a public grilling on to obtain a lucrative gambling license for his Las
this occasion was a struggling club singer called Vegas interests. They were never proven, but the
Frank Sinatra. whispers of Sinatra’s intimate links to the mob
Council Joseph L Nellis questioned the singer in were never silenced either. Was he really part of
advance to determine his suitability for the stand, the Mafia? Or was he, as many have concluded,
and the Kefauver Committee ultimately decided just a ‘groupie’, in love with the life but content to
that no real purpose would be served by a Sinatra watch from the sidelines?
subpoena: his career was ailing at the time and Possible Mafia ties stretch back to Sinatra’s
the Committee generously opted not to finish him grandfather’s youth in Sicily, the Italian island
off by tarring him with the Mafia brush. However, that was the birthplace of the Cosa Nostra.
during his questioning Sinatra nevertheless Frank’s grandfather, Francesco Sinatra, was born

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