Let’s Be Frank

Setting aside what I have edited myself, the magazine piece I have read the greatest number of times is, without question, Gay Talese’s “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” from the April 1966 issue of Esquire. The 15,000-word profile was Talese’s first assignment for the iconic men’s monthly, part of a six-story trial run with its editor, Harold Hayes. Considering that Ol’ Blue Eyes had rebuffed Esquire repeatedly in the past, it was always going to be a demanding initiation. But then the subject was under the weather when the reporter from New York landed in Hollywood, and he simply refused to talk.

Much ink has been spilled about the resulting article: about how, despite the challenges Talese faced, the thirty-four-year-old managed to file one of the best celebrity profiles of all time and helped to define New Journalism itself. Still, every time I reread “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” I notice something I hadn’t necessarily noticed before. Beyond the perfect title, for example, the editors delivered a master class with the deck: “And some of the most important people in some of the most important places in New York, New Jersey, Southern California and Las Vegas are suddenly developing postnasal drip.” Then there are the wonderful drop caps, illustrated by Edward Sorel, who also drew the issue’s cover. In a section about a forthcoming Walter Cronkite special that was rumoured to probe Sinatra’s supposed Mafia ties — and that had put his camp on edge — Sorel depicted the Chairman of the Board with a Pinocchio nose, wrapped in a white handkerchief. Brilliant.

But no matter how much time I spend with those legendary pages, I most admire how Talese captures Sinatra’s tells — the little things that betray the fifty-year-old star’s public persona.

I have two favourite Sinatra tells. The first speaks to his relationship with his mother, Dolly, a Genoese immigrant and something of a kingmaker back on Jersey’s North Shore. Despite having the finest suits, the best shoes, a custom sports car, and a private jet, the Oscar winner who could have anything he wanted his way still wore the brand of underwear his mother had selected for him when he was young. The other tell, subtle and easily missed, says something about this dapper crooner who was constantly surrounded by beautiful women half his age. Whenever he felt down, he would let himself into his ex-wife Nancy’s house to sleep on her couch — near, but not with, the love of his life.

Now ninety-three, Gay Talese hasn’t published much since his 2023 memoir, Bartleby and Me: Reflections of an Old Scrivener. He’s not writing profiles like “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” anymore and certainly not about the editor of one particular literary review. That doesn’t stop me from imagining what my tells might be if someone like him were to discern them while spending time around me and my decidedly less glamorous circle.

One unwitting yet telling behaviour that would surely be recalled: my reaction to the men’s hockey final at the 2010 Winter Olympics. Like 22 million others in this country, I watched on television as Canada sparred with the United States. “Who are you cheering for?” my partner asked me during the first period and then the second and then the third. “I’ll be happy either way,” I kept saying. I might even have believed those words in the moment; a native Nebraskan, I had lived in Ontario for less than five years, while studying at the University of Toronto, but I already suspected I would make the rest of my life north of the border. And then the American Zach Parise tied the game with just twenty-five seconds left to play, and I leapt off the couch, as high as a bald eagle. Minutes later, I could not even pretend to celebrate Sidney Crosby’s golden goal in overtime.

Things are markedly different these days. When I heard hockey fans in Montreal boo “The Star-Spangled Banner” during the recent 4 Nations Face-Off, I quietly booed with them. When I watched Wayne Gretzky step into that Boston arena for the final match‑up against the U.S., I questioned the loyalties of a national hero who has so far not publicly defended a nation under attack. And when I saw Connor McDavid score the winning goal in an athletic event that had unexpectedly taken on profound geopolitical significance, I felt my chest swell with pride.

Unlike Frank Sinatra, I would speak to a journalist wanting to profile me. I would tell him or her about the Vancouver Olympics and the 4 Nations final and how I came to revere Sidney Crosby as much as I do Connor McDavid. I would describe the estrangement I now feel from the land of my birth — how even my left-leaning friends and family there can’t begin to appreciate this existential moment for those of us here, how they can’t even be bothered to ask about it. And I would state my case, of which I’m certain: America won’t eat us up and spit us out. We will continue to stand tall.