Small of Me (Part Two)

Another source of insecurity to Sinatra was fellow 'Rat Packer' Sammy Davis Junior. “Sammy had an incredible schlong!” enthuses Spagnotti. “One of his party tricks was to stand by the pool and pretend it was a towel rail - the broads just loved it when they grabbed a towel off it and Sammy made it twitch! Frank was mighty jealous. Of course, it didn’t help when he found out that Sammy had been pouring the pork to his former squeeze Ava Gardner, and that she’d been telling everyone that it was the best she’d ever had! It all came to a head one night in Vegas when Frank was going to take a leak and Sammy shouted over to him ‘Say Frank, don’t forget your magnifying glass!’ Frank was incandescent with rage!”

He took a cruel revenge, setting up a fake audition for Davis in a non-existent jungle movie. Desperately needing the part to pay off gambling debts, Davis was forced to don war-paint, grass-skirt and spear and dance around with a bone through his nose, whilst Sinatra and his mob cronies watched from behind a two-way mirror. For years afterward Sinatra would humiliate Davis by showing the film of the audition at parties. Other members of the 'Rat Pack', however, were less threatening to Sinatra’s manhood. “Dean Martin had become obsessed with becoming a eunuch in order to curb his carnal urges”, Spagnotti remembers. “Every time he got drunk he tried to castrate himself. He wrapped elastic bands around his balls so tight one time, that they went black. Another time we found him in the kitchen with his testicles on the chopping board, getting ready to slice ‘em off with a meat cleaver. During this period you always had to keep Dino away from bacon slicers and mincers, also.” Peter Lawford also presented little threat: “Like most Englishmen he was a faggot. I heard he procured young boys for J Edgar Hoover and Bobby Kennedy”.