Frank Sinatra Has a Cold

"Frank Sinatra Has a Cold"" is a profile of Frank Sinatra written by Gay Talese for the April 1966 issue of "Esquire".Cite news| url = http://www.esquire.com/fiction/ESQ1003-OCT_SINATRA_rev_ | title = Without question, picking The Best Story Esquire Ever Published is a fool's errand... | work = Esquire | date = 2003-10-01 | accessdate = 2007-05-22] The article is one of the most famous pieces of magazine journalism and is often considered not only the greatest profile ever written of Frank SinatraCite news | title = The Master's Voice | work = The Economist |url= http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_QTSPQJJ |date = 2005-07-16] but one of the greatest celebrity profiles ever written.Cite news | title = King of the day-glo, stiff-spined, wise-guy shiny sheets; In the world of glossy magazines, Esquire was to the 1960s what Vanity Fair was to the 1980s - the wittiest chronicler of its time | url = http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19970208/ai_n14090049 | date = 1997-02-08 | work = The Independent | accessdate = 2007-05-22] Cite news | url = http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/01/esquire200701?currentPage=6 | title = The Esquire Decade | author = Frank DiGiacomo | work = Vanity Fair | date = January 2007 | accessdate = 2007-05-22] Cite news | title = Esquire's Celebrity Dish: Artificial Flavoring | work = The Washington Post | date = 2001-05-22 | author = Peter Carlson] The profile is one of the seminal works of New Journalism and is still widely read, discussed and studied.Cite news| url = http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1424661 | title = Writer's Story on Sinatra Sparked a New Genre of Reporting | date = 2003-09-09 | accessdate = 2007-05-22 | work = Day to Day on National Public Radio] Cite web | url = http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/bullpen/gay_talese/lecture/ | title = Lecture: Gay Talese | accessdate = 2007-05-22 | work = NYU Bullpen] In the 70th anniversary issue of "Esquire" in October 2003, the editors declared the piece the "Best Story Esquire Ever Published." [Cite news | url = http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70914F73C5B0C708EDDAD0894DE404482&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fSubjects%2fB%2fBooks%20and%20Literature | title = Notes From Underground | author = Charles McGrath | date = 2006-04-23 | accessdate = 2007-05-22 | work = The New York Times]

The assignment

Talese had spent the first ten years of his career at "The New York Times". Talese felt restricted by the limitations of newspaper writing and began searching for jobs with magazines. In 1965, he signed a one-year, six-story contract with "Esquire" magazine. His first assignment from "Esquire" editor Harold Hayes was to write a profile of Frank Sinatra. It was a difficult assignment; Sinatra had turned down interview requests from "Esquire" for years.

Sinatra was about to turn 50 and was heavily in the spotlight. Sinatra's relationship with 20-year-old Mia Farrow was constantly in the news. A CBS television documentary had upset Sinatra, who felt that his life was being pried into and was unhappy about speculation in the documentary about his connection to mafia leaders. He was also worried about his starring role in an upcoming NBC show named after his album, "A Man and His Music," and his various business ventures in real estate, his film company, his record label and an airline. At the time, Sinatra maintained a personal staff of 75.

But Sinatra refused to be interviewed for the profile. Rather than give up, Talese spent the three months, beginning in November 1965, following Sinatra, observing everything he could and interviewing any members of his entourage who were willing to speak. "Esquire" paid nearly $5,000 in expenses over the duration of the story. Talese vacillated on whether the story could be finished, but ultimately concluded, in a letter to Harold Hayes that "I may not get the piece we'd hoped for—the real Frank Sinatra but perhaps, by not getting it—and by getting rejected constantly and by seeing his flunkies protecting his flanks—we will be getting close to the truth about the man." Without Talese ever receiving Sinatra's cooperation, the story was published in April 1966.

The profile

The profile begins with Sinatra in a sullen mood at a private Hollywood club. Stressed about all the events in his life Sinatra, and many of his staff, are in a poor mood because Sinatra is afflicted by the common cold, hampering his ability to sing. The significance of the cold is expressed by Talese in one of the story's most famous passages:

"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."

The style of narrative writing, in this passage and throughout the piece, was alien to journalism at the time, and was considered the province of fiction writing. Only a few other authors, such as Tom Wolfe, were using such techniques in journalistic writing. The piece employed techniques like scenes, dialogue and third-person narrative that were common in fiction, but still rare in journalism.

While Sinatra was near the heights of his fame in the 1960s the world of music was changing. The arrival of bands like The Beatles and the accompanying cultural change was threatening to Sinatra. This is illustrated in a scene with the writer Harlan Ellison who is wearing corduroy slacks, a Shetland sweater and a tan suede jacket in a club. Sinatra confronts and insults Ellison about his clothing. After Ellison is cajoled into leaving, Sinatra tells the assistant manager "I don't want anybody in here without coats and ties."

Though never speaking with Sinatra, Talese cast light on the singer's mercurial personality and internal turmoil. The story also detailed Sinatra's relationship with his children and his former wives, Nancy Barbato and Ava Gardner. Through a series of scenes and anecdotes, focusing on the people surrounding Sinatra, the article "reveals the inner workings of the climate-controlled biosphere the singer had constructed around himself—and the inhospitable atmosphere coalescing outside its shell."

The article ends with a passage indirectly demonstrating Sinatra's unquenchable thirst to remain relevant:

"Frank Sinatra stopped his car. The light was red. Pedestrians passed quickly across his windshield but, as usual, one did not. It was a girl in her twenties. She remained at the curb staring at him. Through the corner of his left eye he could see her, and he knew, because it happens almost every day, that she was thinking, It looks like him, but is it?"
"Just before the light turned green, Sinatra turned toward her, looked directly into her eyes waiting for the reaction he knew would come. It came and he smiled. She smiled and he was gone."

Influence on new journalism

The article was an instant sensation. Journalist Michael Kinsley has said, "It's hard to imagine a magazine article today having the kind of impact that [this] article and others had in those days in terms of everyone talking about it purely on the basis of the writing and the style."

After Tom Wolfe popularized the term "New Journalism" in his 1973 anthology "The New Journalism", Talese's piece became widely studied and imitated. "Vanity Fair" called it "the greatest literary-nonfiction story of the 20th century."

The piece is often contrasted to modern magazine profiles in which the writers spend little time with their subjects or when writers fabricate elements of their story, such as Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass.

Talese has come to reject the label of "New Journalism" for this reason. Talese told NPR: "The term new journalism became very fashionable on college campuses in the 1970s and some of its practitioners tended to be a little loose with the facts. And that's where I wanted to part company. I came up with the "New York Times" as a copy boy and later on became a reporter and I so revered the traditions of the "Times" in being accurate."

The story continues to receive acclaim and is cited by Talese as one of his best works.Cite book | editor = Retha Powers and Kathy Kiernan | title = This Is My Best; Great Writers Share Their Favorite Work | origyear = 2004 | publisher = Chronicle Books | isbn = 0811848299 | location = San Francisco, California | author = Gay Talese | pages = pp 480-516] [Cite web | url = http://www.mediabistro.com/articles/cache/a1498.asp | date = 2004-04-27 | accessdate = 2007-05-22 | work = mediabistro.com | title = So What Do You Do, Gay Talese?] The story, which continues to be widely read, has been republished in multiple anthologies. [Cite news | title = Greatest! stories! ever! sort of: Esquire celebrates its best in a new book 70 years in the making | work = Ottawa Citizen | date = 2004-01-11 | ]

Cite news | title = The Private Investigator: While The New Journalism Sought Celebrity ,Gay Talese Made a Study of It
work = Philadelphia Independent | date = April 2004 | author = William S. Lin | accessdate = 2007-09-26 | url = http://www.philadelphiaindependent.net/public/articles/13.html ] Cite news | title = A Reporter's Reporter | author = Kurt Andersen | work = The New York Times | date = April 30, 2006 | accessdate = 2007-09-26
url = http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/books/review/30andersen.html?ex=1304049600&en=294a79a7015c9dca&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss ] Cite news | title = Gay Talese's New Memoir Emerges After 14 Tortured Years | author = Charles McGrath | work = The New York Times | date = April 18, 2006 | accessdate = 2007-09-26
url = http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/18/books/23mcgr.html?ex=1303012800&en=a98df69e903899ea&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss ] Cite news | title = The Long and Happy Death of the Celebrity Profile | work = Reason Magazine | date = November 2005 | accessdate = 2007-09-26 | author = Matt Welch
url = http://www.reason.com/news/show/33163.html ] Cite news | title = The Crazy Days of Harold Hayes | author = Robert Smith | work = Columbia Journalism Review | date = July/August 1995 | accessdate = 2007-09-26 |
url = http://backissues.cjrarchives.org/year/95/4/books-esquire.asp ] Cite news | title = My Life as a Hack; It was glorious. Now it's over. | author = Ben Yagoda | date = 2005-08-26 | accessdate = 2007-09-26 | work = Slate
url = http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2125089 ] Cite news | title = The Puppet Masters | author = Catherine Seipp | work = American Journalism Review | date = October 1999 | accessdate = 2007-09-26 | url = http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=783 ] cite news | title = The Lost Art of Celebrity Journalism | author = Charles Taylor | work = Salon.com | date = June 16, 1998 | accessdate = 2007-09-26
url = http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/1998/06/cov_16feature.html ] Cite news | title = You Don't Say. The Celebrity Interview Is An Exercise in Ersatz Intimacy. Let's Talk About Reinventing It. | author = Ann Hornaday | date = August 5, 2007 | work = The Washington Post | accessdate = 2007-09-26
url = http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/03/AR2007080300456.html ]

References

External links

*" [http://www.esquire.com/fiction/ESQ1003-OCT_SINATRA_rev_ Frank Sinatra Has a Cold] " in "Esquire".