Post #576548 by tiki mick on Thu, Feb 17, 2011 9:05 AM

On 2011-02-16 19:28, JOHN-O wrote:

On 2011-02-13 23:30, King Bushwich the 33rd wrote:
But was the Buddy Love character suppose to be a parody of Dean Martin? Or Frank Sinatra?

Buddy Love was Sinatra. Even though Frankie was a music icon, legend, champion of civil rights, etc. in real life he was a bully and an asshole.

Go figure.

[ Edited by: JOHN-O 2011-02-16 19:30 ]

But John, I do consider everything you mentioned to be "real life"

I do take issue with this statement, though, that he was a bully and asshole. (I am biased, because Frank is my all-time favorite musician)…but, most of the negative publicity attributed to Frank was a result of hatchet jobs done on him by the press, and especially people like Kitty Kelly.

Frank was a good man. He was very public with his affection and friendship with African Americans, and that was something that was frowned upon during the 50’s and early 60s, but here is Frank, palling around with Sammy Davis, serving as his best man at the wedding (which was an inter-racial marriage) and performing with Count Basie. He also tried very hard to make a movie with a black listed director during the “red scare”, drawing a lot of heat and criticism for doing so.

As far as mob connections go, Frank was an Italian American entertainer, and bound to attract the attention of mobsters, as did many other entertainers back in the day. Jimmy Durante, the Marx brothers, etc…all had extensive “connections”. Back then, it was just a fact of life that if you wanted to perform at certain nightclubs, you were going to cross paths with the “guys” eventually.

I think Frank has been maligned far too often. I also think he was very much misunderstood.