Sinatra Unmasked: The Chairman, the Mob, and the Hidden Record: How Organized Crime Built Frank Sinatra's Career, Owned His Casinos, and Put Him on His Knees in a New York Basement

Everyone knows Frank Sinatra. The voice. The swagger. The Chairman of the Board who looked the world in the eye and sang that he did it his way.The record tells a different story.Sinatra was born into a bootlegging household where Lucky Luciano's associates were regular customers. His recording career launched when a mob underboss put a gun in his bandleader's mouth. His Oscar-winning comeback was secured when a gangster called Columbia's studio chief and explained what would happen if he didn't cast Frank in the role. His Las Vegas empire was built with Chicago Outfit money, run in partnership with a Black Book mobster, and dismantled when Nevada's gaming board finally said no. The FBI tracked him for forty years and amassed 2,400 pages. He read the file himself in 1979. He kept performing.And according to credible reporting from a former federal agent, there was a moment — in an abandoned basement in East Harlem — when the most famous entertainer in America got down on his knees and begged organized crime not to kill him.Sinatra Unmasked goes where the tributes won't. Drawing on FBI files, declassified records, investigative biographies, and Gay Talese's landmark Esquire reporting, Jensen Clarke presents the hidden record of the most mythologized entertainer of the twentieth century across ten unflinching chapters — from the Hoboken bar where Dolly Sinatra served bootlegged alcohol to the Palm Desert stage where Frank sang his last note at seventy-nine years old, voice failing, image still intact.The voice was real. The mob connections were real. The basement was real. Now read what was underneath the Chairman of the Board.Perfect for readers of investigative biography, American organized crime history, and the dark side of the entertainment industry. Read more