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Frank Sinatra's lesson in loyalty
July 17, 2011 10:03 a.m. EDT
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Bob Greene: Frank Sinatra so legendary, he's still part of pop culture years after his death
- But there was a time when his career was lagging and he frequented Patsy's in Manhattan
- The owner, Patsy Scognamillo, opened on Thanksgiving to accommodate Sinatra
- Greene: It's the people who deliver a kindness when you're down that you stay loyal to
RELATED TOPICS
Editor's note: CNN contributor Bob Greene is a best-selling author whose books include "Late Edition: A Love Story" and "Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen."
(CNN) -- Some people are so big during their lives, even death doesn't seem to entirely take them away.
So it is with Frank Sinatra. He left this earth in May of 1998, yet there is seldom a day when you don't hear his voice drifting out of a radio, seldom a week when you don't catch a flash of his face on a television screen, or read a reference to him in a newspaper or a magazine. Sinatra: The word itself signals something. Those three quick syllables: sharp, snappy, staccato. The images the name brings to mind: the Rat Pack, ring-a-ding-ding, very good years, strangers in the night. Many adored him, some despised him; few were indifferent.
In New York, especially, his voice remains omnipresent. His "New York, New York" might as well be the city's official anthem. Many times when I've visited Manhattan I have walked past what was said to be Sinatra's favorite restaurant: an unprepossessing-enough-looking Italian place on West 56th Street called Patsy's. This, Sinatra legend has it, is the spot where he could relax, where he felt most at home.
I'd never gone inside. I had imagined it as a peak-of-the-mountain place, a restaurant where only the most savvy would congregate, men and women who were at the pinnacle of their games, who had long ago learned and mastered all the angles. After all, this was where Sinatra had his regular table, wasn't it? How could mere mortals have a shot at fitting in?
This trip, I came in for dinner. And learned a lesson.
Sinatra, in his chairman-of-the-board years, in his sell-out-every-seat-in-the-concert-hall decades, did, in fact, gravitate to this place. But it wasn't because he was the biggest name in entertainment. It was because at one point in his life, he feared that he might be finished.
"My grandfather was the first member of our family to know him," said Salvatore J. Scognamillo, the current chef and co-owner of Patsy's.
The grandfather -- Pasquale "Patsy" Scognamillo -- had co-owned a restaurant nearby called the Sorrento during the first years of the 1940s. The young Sinatra was brought in one day by his boss, bandleader Tommy Dorsey. "I've got this skinny kid from Hoboken," Dorsey reportedly told Patsy Scognamillo. "Fatten him up."
Sinatra swiftly became an international singing idol whose voice and face made women and girls scream and faint; riots broke out at his concerts. Patsy, meanwhile, left the Sorrento and opened Patsy's. Both men -- the crooner and the cook -- were doing well for themselves.
But in the early 1950s, Sinatra's career crashed. He was no longer a kid. His records stopped selling. His romance with Ava Gardner was on the rocks. His record company dropped him. The winner suddenly was being widely seen as a loser, washed up.
People who follow the Sinatra story know about the eventual comeback: how he landed a role in the movie "From Here to Eternity" and won an Academy Award, how his career zoomed again, how he became the living symbol of success and swagger.
Yet in those down years, no one could have anticipated the rebirth. Sinatra was a has-been, yesterday's news.
"He would come in to the restaurant alone for lunch," Sal Scognamillo said to me. I could tell that this was a thrice-told family tale -- or a thrice-times-thrice-told tale. That didn't make it any less compelling.
"My grandfather would sit with him," Sal said. "There would be people eating lunch who would avoid making eye contact with Sinatra -- people who used to know him when he was on top. Sinatra would nod toward them and say to my grandfather: 'My fair-weather friends.'"
One November, on the day before Thanksgiving, Sinatra asked Patsy if he would make him a solo reservation for the next day. "He said he would be coming in for Thanksgiving dinner by himself," Sal said. "He said, 'Give me anything but turkey.' He didn't want to think about the holiday, but he didn't want to be alone."
The restaurant was scheduled to be closed on Thanksgiving. But Patsy didn't tell Sinatra that; he told him that he'd make the reservation for 3 p.m. He didn't want Sinatra to know that he was opening especially for him, so he invited the families of the restaurant's staff to come in for dinner, too. He cooked for Sinatra, on that solitary holiday, and it wasn't until years later that Sinatra found out.
That's where the loyalty came from. That's why Sinatra never stopped coming to the restaurant. In later years, when Patsy's would be jammed with diners hoping to get a glimpse of him, few understood why the most famous singer in the world would single out one place as his constant favorite.
It was no big secret to the Scognamillo family. They all knew. A person recalls how he is treated not when he is on top of the world, undefeated, but when he is at his lowest, thinking he will never again see the sun.
"Up those stairs, that's where Sinatra used to have his table," I heard a man say to his date as they entered the restaurant. He's still packing them in, 13 years after his death.
Who remembers a kindness that comes when kindnesses are in short supply? Who most treasures being made to feel welcome when every door seems to be slamming shut?
In the wee small hours of the morning, only the lonely.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Bob Greene.
Courtesy of CNN
One hears some who claim to be Villains say that there is no trust, honor, loyalty or "code" to those who aspire to work in Villainy. One has contested these false and naive beliefs, and continues to point out that with Villains, there definitely IS trust, honor, loyalty and a code.
You have but to do no more than look into the world and find many examples. In every culture throughout all of civilization there have always been Villainous Organizations, whether Secret Societies, Criminal Enterprises, or Political Cabals. You hear Omerta and laugh as state prosecutors take their organizations apart - but you forget: These same organizations come from traditions going back many hundreds of years of successful business in Evil.
One holds to these ideals. Trust is not given, it is earned. Once earned it is kept. That you may trust in this, is a Villains Honor. Likewise Friendship, too easily thought little of in social networks with acquaintances immediately given something invaluable, as if it were nothing. Friendship is not discarded unless necessary, and then only reluctantly.
Villainy has a Code of trust and honor and loyalty, a code that compels us to Defend Villainy and Support its Villains. When our Villainy goes wrong, it is the Code that compels us to stand up for what is Evil and point out what is weakness, or damaging to the work and hopes of others. To do less is cowardice, and shames us all. It makes us no better than heroes who bury their shame in fertile grounds of apathy and thus plant the seeds of future failures.
Villains also do not forget, nor forgive easily. We are rightly feared for it is Tradition that wrongs done will be avenged. A Villain's wrath will be felt, whether directly, indirectly, or both. Revenge or Vendetta, a Villain will have an accounting of slights, attacks, and backstabbings made. There are many Traditions, most are fun, while others serve to foster Respect. IF there can be no respect given, there can be no respect in return.
There are villains without these qualities. Many in fact, as they play and find their ways through channels, seeking to learn and acquire what we have and take for granted. What we have earned and has been hard fought for over years. Don't aspire to be what they are - less, so much less than our Villainy. They are distrustful creatures, always conspiring to collect the information to destroy another. Waiting to turn on each other with blackmail, and revealed secrets. How can they hope to be anything? They cannot. Without hope to create something, they are consigned to create nothing, and drag any with them down into their being nothing.
Aspire to uphold the Code, and be worthy of the benefits in entrusts; Friendship. Loyalty. Trust. Honor. Tradition. Respect. And a collaboration in the very best Evil that we can create. Something Feared, Respected, and Inclusion amongst this number sought after.
We Are Villains
-Lord Malignance
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