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Frank Sinatra Has a Cold - Gay Talese
We've accumulated a small pile of writing-related items in our backlog, which we'll be featuring this week. Unlike other weeks, when we've placed a longform article at the end of a week (to allow for weekend reading), we're frontloading the week with Gay Talese's legendary Esquire article, Frank Sinatra has a cold.
Talese, fresh off the New York Times, was assigned to profile Sinatra—a notoriously difficult person to interview. Sinatra, true to form, ducked Talese for the entirety of the assignment. Talese, undeterred, shadowed him, observed details, and talked to nearly anyone connected to Sinatra who would talk. The result was a striking piece that captured Sinatra vividly as he tried to maintain his status while the nation transitioned:
Sinatra with a cold is Picasso without paint, Ferrari without fuel—only worse. For the common cold robs Sinatra of that uninsurable jewel, his voice, cutting into the core of his confidence, and it affects not only his own psyche but also seems to cause a kind of psychosomatic nasal drip within dozens of people who work for him, drink with him, love him, depend on him for their own welfare and stability. A Sinatra with a cold can, in a small way, send vibrations through the entertainment industry and beyond as surely as a President of the United States, suddenly sick, can shake the national economy.
For Frank Sinatra was now involved with many things involving many people—his own film company, his record company, his private airline, his missile-parts firm, his real-estate holdings across the nation, his personal staff of seventy-five—which are only a portion of the power he is and has come to represent. He seemed now to be also the embodiment of the fully emancipated male, perhaps the only one in America, the man who can do anything he wants, anything, can do it because he has money, the energy, and no apparent guilt. In an age when the very young seem to be taking over, protesting and picketing and demanding change, Frank Sinatra survives as a national phenomenon, one of the few prewar products to withstand the test of time. He is the champ who made the big comeback, the man who had everything, lost it, then got it back, letting nothing stand in his way, doing what few men can do: he uprooted his life, left his family, broke with everything that was familiar, learning in the process that one way to hold a woman is not to hold her. Now he has the affection of Nancy and Ava and Mia, the fine female produce of three generations, and still has the adoration of his children, the freedom of a bachelor, he does not feel old, he makes old men feel young, makes them think that if Frank Sinatra can do it, it can be done; not that they could do it, but it is still nice for other men to know, at fifty, that it can be done.
But now, standing at this bar in Beverly Hills, Sinatra had a cold, and he continued to drink quietly and he seemed miles away in his private world, not even reacting when suddenly the stereo in the other room switched to a Sinatra song, "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning."
Talese was the first to write a profile piece based in narrative, a form that has become commonplace now. As usual, the original is best. Talese's article is probing without indulging the sensual descriptions that many profiles are now. It's long—it will take a solid 30–45min to read—but it's a masterful article. Go check it out.
WritingGay TaleseFrank SinatraCreative problem-solvingProfilesAn offer he can't refuse?