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His Way: An Unauthorized Biography Of Frank Sinatra | 
 enlarge | Author: Kitty Kelley
Publisher: Bantam
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
Buy Used: $0.01
You Save: $7.98 (100%)
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Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 211977
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 656
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 6.8 x 4.2 x 1.6
ISBN: 0553265156
Dewey Decimal Number: 784.500924
UPC: 978055326515
EAN: 9780553265156
ASIN: 0553265156
Publication Date: September 1, 1987
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy!
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Product Description
This is the book Frank Sinatra failed to stop,the unauthorized biography of one of the mostelusive public figures of our time. Celebratedjournalist Kitty Kelley spent three years researchinggovernment documents (Mafia-related material, wiretapsand secret testimony) and interviewing more than800 people in Sinatra's life (family, colleagues,law-enforcement officers, personal friends). Fullydocumented, highly detailed and filled withrevealing anecdotes, here is the penetrating story ofthe explosively controversial and undeniablymulti-talented legend who ruled the entertainmentindustry for more than fiftyyears.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 21 more reviews...
Way Too Many Negative Details for a Good Story June 7, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Admittedly Frank Sinatra had an extraordinarily rich and interesting life, but one much too full of details for a single book. So in this rendition of his life, the reader is left to ask the question: how many, hook-ups, breakup, screw-ups, jam-ups, and mob-ups can a story have before it goes well past being well-told, into a whole other zone of being just plain incoherent gossip?
One would think that of all people who should know where this mark in the sand lies, it would be Kitty Kelly? Yet, in this biography, Kelly, who is normally so good at culling the low hanging fruit from the rumor mill and gossip trees and turning them into a tasty and sometimes even a succulent wine, this time, gets it so wrong. She seems to have fouled up the fermentation process altogether and gone well past coherence into a whole new zone of vinegar, all the way past Go into complete incoherence.
There are just way too many repetitious unnecessary details, vignettes, spats, breakup and irrelevances to make this a well-rounded, coherent and interesting story. Some of the details, which after a while just start falling all over each other, simply should have been relegated to footnotes, mentioned in passing, or left out altogether. In the interest of "tightness" and coherence, Kelly, more than anyone, should know that more is not always better. Sometimes unorganized details in a manuscript can overpower the story. As is the case here, they cannot even be tamed by forcing them into a "Procrustean Bed" of the author's own making. Kelly knows, all to well that details must be sorted, selected and ever so carefully placed so that through organization alone, they are allowed to tell their own story. Here, it seemed that Kelly, just as she accuses her subject of doing in the manuscript, allowed her own enthusiasm to get well ahead of her keen sense of organization and storytelling. What a pity: so much material, so little time.
Despite this, one can reassemble this jigsaw puzzle of "way too many pieces" into a mosaic beneath the clutter to get at a reasonable psychological portrait of Frank Sinatra, and still be able to see that he was pretty much handicapped at birth: Accidentally misnamed; an only child; collar-flowered ears, a busted eardrum, skinny and slight of stature. Add to this that he had only a smattering of talent, in a heavily male dominated culture and you get at an early age, a personality blanketed with deeply rooted insecurities.
But these were nothing compared to the "trip his mother put on him" to heighten these congenital insecurities. She was overbearing and over-protective, dressed him like a girl and spoiled him. And then, as this his most powerful role model and ally through life, provided him a very poor example of adult humanity. Dolly Sinatra was the dynamo of the family: the matron and breadwinner, who cursed in technicolor, always dabbled over the edge of legalities, including being jailed multiple times for running an illegal abortion clinic, and for her prohibition era Speakeasy activities. The fact that Frank's father was present, but missing in action: a virtual "nobody" who deferred to his mother, pretty much sealed his psychological fate: Little Frankie had no chance of evolving into a normal well-balanced adult.
What Frank Sinatra had going for him was a very contradictory self-destructive kind of self-confidence spawn mostly out of fantasy and denial. It was one that bordered on unwarranted arrogance, fits of uncontrolled anger, depressive spins, hovering on the rim of immorality and illegality, and leaving him with an empty emotional reservoir. Throughout his life he was little more than an insecure bully with an average voice. Yet he used bullying to his advantage, and as a weapon to "club his way" through life.
And as life would have it, after many inevitable "ups-and-downs," failures and come backs, shattered and scattered love affairs--especially with Ava Gardner -- he became a raving financial and professional success, but an utter moral, personal and human failure. End of story.
Five stars for the research, two for the organization; three for the book.
 So biased its comical March 21, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I'm only writing this review because there are those who think this book contains the "truth" about Sinatra. Think about this, someone who doesn't like you much decides to write a book about you, they find all the people throughout your life that hate you, you have had fights with, don't speak to anymore, or you just don't really like. They ignore anyone who has good things to say or your long time friends and family. They interview them and write the book containing all their quotes, stating its factual, after all people did say these things - right!! Now think about how that would make you look, would it represent the truth about you- i don't think so. This is pure unadulterated garbage, from a twisted viewpoint and not worth the paper its printed on. Did Sinatra have some dark moments, i guess so - but this is not the place to find out about them.
 A walk on the sinister side... May 1, 2007
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is a lengthy look at the shadows in Sinatra's personality, and is not the one to read if you are interested in how he developed his approach to singing so well. Frank appears to have been a victim of what we now call bipolar disorder, back in the days when no effective medications existed for it except alcohol and nicotine. He sank into scary depressions, and soared into wild bouts of manic activity, exhibited both grandiosity and generosity in excess, supported violence against his enemies and often uncritical acceptance of his friends. He grew up with a passive dad and a forceful but not likable mom, was a spoiled child who sometimes was a victim of discrimination due to his Italian heritage, and developed such an intense drive to be successful that he frequently drove away the people who might have been best for him. Upon finishing this gossipy yet apparently truthful biography, I didn't want Frank as a friend, but I didn't give away any of my dozen CD's, either. Sometimes one has to divorce the artist from the person in order to remain a fan.
Do Not Read This Book May 30, 2006
13 out of 16 found this review helpful
This was evidently meant to be a commentary on the life and hates of Frank Sinatra. It was probably meant to be quite a character study - connect the dots between all the revolting facts coldly listed here and you find a revolting human being. If the dots don't quite come together, as they didn't for me, you find a rather different connotation. The solemn quote at the beginning delineates the difference between reputation and character. Ms.Kelley, being the all-knowing Author, gets right into her examination into Mr. Sinatra's character behind the reputation with a cold first chapter related in frankly impossible detail. From then on Sinatra is shown to be callous, pathetic, weak, vicious, brutal, abusive, crude, egomaniacal, vindictive, and quite possibly crazy in an overwhelming documentary that seems very fond of the two words "Sinatra screamed" and any reference to any weakness known to man that Sinatra allegedly possessed. In a cold, stark, very nearly cruel style interviews with disgruntled former employees, wives of friends, gangsters, yes-men, Hoboken tattle-tales, discarded girlfriends, two-bit comics, technicians, and the slimy Peter Lawford are all displayed in 633 pages of rot. The skeletal overview of Mr. Sinatra's life is almost frighteningly calculated - any unscrupulous writer can pick and choose to their heart's content while still remaining truthful, and Ms. Kelley could write a book about her inimitable art of relating only the least flattering information and blaming her digustingly biased view on outraged virtue.
Every character in this organized assasination, as a matter of fact, appears to be a good little human being, abused and cruelly rejected by Frank Sinatra, doing their sad duty to let the world know Sinatra done 'em wrong. Appears. Ms. Kelley apparentely agrees with them. Their sympathetically related tales are the backbone of the biography.
I have no idea how Kitty Kelley and several other Sinatra biographers are so blind that they have never been able to locate one positive Sinatra review in their life. In this book, if no bad review exists for a movie, record, concert, TV show, ect., it is either ignored or used to promote another example of bad behavior backstage. I know all the good reviews exist. I've read them, and it always surprised me because according to Kelley and other pick-and-choosers the perfomance was lousy. But this is not about a career, it's said; it's about a life. Then why mention any reviews at all?
If all the names mentioned in here actually said Sinatra was an awful person, I just might believe it. But they didn't. The uncomplimentary comments used are in any other source buried in an avalanche of rave reviews and praise. Ms.Kelley, of coure, the St. Bernard of literature, sniffed them out. Ava Gardner's autobiography paints a very different portrait of what she felt about Mr.Sinatra than the few harsh statements here. Lauren Bacall's "By Myself" is so often negatively interpreted it's ridiculous, and Ms. Kelley joins the long line of misinterpreters. Rare comments by Frank Sinatra Jr., Sammy Davis and others are gleefully repeated, despite the fact that their opinions about Mr.Sinatra are almost always positive to the extreme. No famous friends of his were interviewed, simply because people who genuinely loved him went as high as the summit of upper-class Hollywood, nobility, and the White House, and that was the type of thing Kelley wanted least. I read an interview in which Ms. Kelley supposedly said she didn't find Sinatra appealing because he had no sense of humor. Ha. There has never been anyone with as little humor about them as Ms.Kitty Kelley, executioner of reputation, fabricater of character. The sense of smug gloating, the nasty smirking of the authoress over Mr.Sinatra's discomfort at having so many people read this trash and BELIEVE it, is the only humor evident, and that makes me sick. Even if every statement were true, I'd still have a certain sympathy for Frank Sinatra, because, as it eventually becomes clear, you learn less than nothing about what Sinatra was really like, but you learn a great deal about the writer. The Sinatra story displayed is all probably untrue reputation, but Ms.Kelley's scheme for hurting him backfired - her character is evident. The preface says,''Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us." True.
On Sinatra: This Is Not The Book To Read April 12, 2006
24 out of 28 found this review helpful
I read this bound piece of trash twenty years ago. I thought it was nothing but a steaming, stinking pile of lies and over-the-top exaggerations. Time has shown that the author, Kitty Kelley, is a hateful smear mistress lacking the least bit of integrity and decency.
All you will get from this book besides the outright lies are hearsay and rumors.
According to Kelley, Sinatra was nothing but a spoiled brat and bullying coward who relied on thugs to get what he wanted.
She tells us he brought home prostitutes and tried to force his first wife, Nancy, into threesomes with them. We read about a mafia hit on a smalltown sheriff whose wife was being screwed by Ol' Blue Eyes. Then there is the tale of a hot pot of fresh coffee which Sinatra launched at his longtime valet's face. Do you get the idea of what this book is all about?
HIS WAY is typical Kitty Kelley, epitomizing her level and ability as a writer and a human being.
Sinatra had many faults but they were vastly outnumbered by his virtues.
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