Al Malnik Miami Beach Memories

Frank Sinatra

About Frank Sinatra

“I got to know most of the Rat Pack guys…I saw Dean Martin around, and he was not at all like what he appeared, he was not a drunk. Peter Lawford was around too. The guys often gave him a hard time because of his connections to the Kennedy’s. Jerry Lewis was on the scene, and I remember him as not a very nice person.

And then there was Sinatra. Frank had enormous personal problems, really strange things happening to him all the time – women trouble, cat fights. Mostly things he brought on himself. Frank could get mean when he drank: he often provoked people. He would call me in the middle of the night all worried that something bad was going to happen to him. He said the wrong thing to the wrong guy who was connected to the Mafia, and he was afraid they were going to knock him off. So I would calm him down and advise him about what to do.

Frank had a good friend name Gillie. Gillie’s wife, Honey, had blue hair and she would walk around Miami Beach wearing a long fur coat. She got into a little trouble for owning one of the largest abortion clinics in New Jersey, but that’s another story. They had a boat called Gillie’s Yen, and we would all have dinner on the boat. Those are some of my fondest memories of Frank.

I once had a bar mitzvah at my house for my son, and Frank was supposed to come. Woody Allen was there, and so were Dyan Cannon and a lot of great people. Gillie called and told me Frank had a problem and couldn’t make it. Apparently Mia Farrow locked herself to his door at the Fontainebleau with handcuffs. He couldn’t get out of the room and had to call someone to cut Mia free. He showed up at my house at about 2:30 a.m., and the party was over. That was Frank.”

– Al Malnik, Attorney