Frank Sinatra Swung on a Hotel Manager Who Brought Him Sandwiches
Frank Sinatra’s temper and intimidating reputation meant that many people approached the singer with caution. Though he had many close friends, they also witnessed his less-than polite behavior. His longtime friend Shirley MacLaine often saw Sinatra behaving badly. She explained that being around the singer often felt like living through a violent cartoon and cited an occasion when he fought with a hotel manager.
Frank Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine were lifelong friends
MacLaine first met Sinatra on the set of Some Came Running. After viewing her in another performance, Sinatra invited MacLaine to join the cast. They grew close after this, and MacLaine learned both the kind side of Sinatra and the more dangerous one.
“As for Frank, he was nice to me but muscled others,” she wrote in her book My Lucky Stars: A Hollywood Memoir, per Vanity Fair. “When he said to me one day, ‘Just let me know if anybody bothers you and I’ll take care of it,’ an electrical shudder went through me. It was a shudder of conflict. On the one hand, I basked in his protection; on the other — what would he do to someone who ‘bothered’ me?”
She said that he could behave violently
MacLaine said that Sinatra always treated her well. Still, she witnessed his temper flare on more than one occasion.
“Why were we so comfortable together, given their backgrounds, which were diametrically opposed to mine?” she wrote. “Sometimes I was flabbergasted not only at what I witnessed but also at my reaction to it. When Dean and Frank took me places and our hotel rooms weren’t satisfactory, Frank would punch a hole in the wall to make them satisfactory. I can’t say I was appalled. It was like being in a violent cartoon.”
She recalled a time that she was watching television with Sinatra and Dean Martin at around two in the morning. Sinatra called the hotel manager, demanding food. Though he brought up sandwiches and beer, the manager chastised Sinatra for calling at such an hour.
“Frank offhandedly told the manager to shut up and get the hell out. The manager dropped the tray and called Frank a skinny wop. Frank took a swing at the guy, and it connected. The guy swung back. Dean looked up. ‘If you’re gonna fight,’ he said impatiently, ‘do it on the other side of the room.’”
Eventually, the manager “rubbed his jaw, mumbled something about how crazy they were, and left.”
Shirley MacLaine has a warmer lasting memory of Frank Sinatra
Though MacLaine was privy to many chaotic nights of parties and violence, her image of the “true” Sinatra is a much softer one. After performing in a stadium show together decades after the incident with the hotel manager, Sinatra and MacLaine traveled home on his plane.
“Frank didn’t want to sleep,” she explained. “It was late at night. He went to the back of the plane and quietly retrieved the snack food from the galley. He got down on his hands and knees and surreptitiously stuffed everyone’s shoes with popcorn, peanuts, jelly beans, gumdrops, crackers, and nuts.”
MacLaine said that this moment moved her.
“The image of Sinatra on his hands and knees stuffing gumdrops into people’s shoes seems to be the true Sinatra to me,” she wrote. “This was the man-child that moved me.”
