Frank Sinatra really loved women. In his early 1940s teen idol band days he told close friend Joe D’Orazio: “We’re animals, each and every one of us, that’s what we are, and we’re damn proud of it, too. I’m just looking to make it with as many women as I can.”
He met first wife Nancy at 19, married her at 24 (after an arrest threatened his career) and projected a cookie-cutter family life in public with kids Nancy, Frank Jr and Tia. But he also told D’Orazio: “I can have every dame I want. I just can’t help myself. I don’t want to hurt Nancy. I just don’t want to sleep with her no more.”
Bandleader Tommy Dorsey added: “He was no matinée idol. He was a skinny kid with big ears. Yet what he did to women was something awful.”
And everyone from D’Orazio to second wife Ava Gardner and the star’s own valet George Jacobs confirmed it wasn’t only Sinatra’s ears that were big.
In his tell-all Hollywood memoir Mr S, Jacobs coyly wrote that Frank Sinatra actually had to have special personalised underwear made to help conceal his size in public.
D’Orazio was rather more blunt, saying: “He was just a womaniser. How can I say this politely? He was well-endowed, so he didn’t leave these women wanting anything.”
The star had a famously fiery second marriage to fellow Hollywood star Ava Gardner, who once indiscreetly quipped: “He is only 110 pounds, but 10 pounds of it is c**k!”
The pair were as notorious for their explosive sex life as for their even more public and private fights with Sinatra declaring: “If we didn’t kill each other during the day, we might have killed each other in bed.”
Their marriage only lasted from 1951-1957 but the singer’s conquests were legendary before, during and after.
In his early New York years, Sinatra had installed long-term mistress Alora Gooding in a city apartment within a year of marrying Nancy but band pianist Joe Bushkin said: “Whenever he could take a shot at a woman, he would.”
Hollywood starlet Nancy Venturi once said: “He had sex on the brain. He would make love to anyone who came along,” smugly adding, “There was something unusually intensive about his lovemaking. At least it was with me.”
As well as starlets and fans, Old Blue Eyes also cut a swathe through some of Tinseltown’s most legendary beauties from Gardner, herself, to Marilyn Monroe (rumoured), Lana Turner and Marlene Dietrich, as well as engagements to Lauren Bacall and Juliet Prowse and a short marriage to Mia Farrow.
Frank Sinatra, of course, also had extraordinary charisma, one of the greatest singing voices of all time and those eyes.
Long term-friend, actress Ruta Lee said: “Those fabulous blue eyes of Frank Sinatra were so piercing, when he was with you those blue eyes stayed with you, you felt like he was entering your soul, it was something incredible.”
He undoubtedly also mellowed with age and his final wife Barbara said: “Frank attracted women. He couldn’t help it. Just to look at him—the way he moved, and how he behaved—was to know that he was a great lover and true gentleman. He adored the company of women and knew how to treat them… but no matter what temptations Frank may have had while I wasn’t around, he made me feel so safe and loved that I never became paranoid about losing him.”