His Way: An Unauthorized Biography Of Frank Sinatra (Mass Market Paperback)

~ (Author) "On the night of December 22, 1938, two constables from Hackensack, New Jersey, headed for the Rustic Cabin in Englewood Cliffs to arrest Frank Sinatra..." (more)
Key Phrases: abortion business, rat pack, gaming license, New York, Frank Sinatra, Las Vegas (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This is the expose that Sinatra went to court to prevent. It's all herethe tumultuous marriages, the countless affairs, the Mafia ties, the arrogance, the drunken brawls, the sudden violence, the adulation of powerful figures, whether Mafia or presidential. This is obviously a one-sided portrait, and there are no real surprises, but Kelley has documented her facts with such thorough detail that the total effect is numbing. Barely mentioned are Sinatra's devotion to his parents and his children, and his unquestioned musical talent. This is unpleasant but compulsive reading, which most public libraries will need in order to fill demand. Marcia L. Perry, Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Mass.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"The most eye-opening celebrity biography of our  time." -William Safire, The New York  Times

"A  compelling page-turner...Kitty Kelley's book has made all  future Sinatra biographies virtually redundant."  --Los Angeles Herald-Examiner -- Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 656 pages
• Publisher: Bantam; 1st THUS edition (August 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553265156
• ISBN-13: 978-0553265156
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #199,174 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Suspension of disbelief?, July 31, 2000

By	"[e-mail]" (Hays, KS USA) - See all my reviews

I have to admit to being attracted by any biography with the word "unauthorized" in the title. There is always the possibility that buried somewhere within is a single sentence that sheds more light on a personality than a thousand volumes of authorized accounts. What was Sinatra really like? What did he, above anything, not want you to know about him?

Unfortunately Kelley attacks Sinatra with about as much grace as would result from you trying to take out the pit of a cherry using a pneumatic drill. Jumping from one disparaging story to another with barely an adjoining passage, she pours acid on every facet of Sinatra's life, challenging almost every aspect of his personality and career. Much of what she writes about could be part true, but it would be stretching the bounds of imagination to believe that it has not been significantly doctored or worded to make him sound truly like a Sinat-rat almost every moment he was awake.

I found myself growing tired of the incessant, disjointed jumps from one ludicrous act to another with barely a breath. By the end, I felt that rather than knowing a little more about Sinatra than I did before, I just had a series of acts of indiscretion taped together unevenly, without ever feeling like the author was trying to understand who her subject was or what drove him to continue as an upper echelon performer for so long. It's an entertaining read, don't get me wrong, but is about as structured and insightful as a house of cards.

She doesn't quit throwing darts but unfortunately not many of them hit the target.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars "The Next Time You Run Into Dorothy Kilgallen, Make Sure You're In Your Car." , March 25, 2006

By	J. H. Minde "Can you keep up?" (Boca Raton, Florida and Brooklyn, New York) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Kitty Kelley is famous for her tell-all unauthorized biographies of celebrities. This is the one that put her on the map. The target of a "prior restraint" suit by Sinatra that tried to block its publication (fortunately for the First Amendment he failed), the resulting uproar made this book an instant best-seller.

Almost any reader will be titillated by the "Unauthorized" in the title, and HIS WAY does have some merit in the Guilty Pleasures department; but Kelley is so unrelentingly negative about Frank Sinatra that this two-and-a-half star effort becomes too easy to put down.

A reader coming here for a glimpse of Ol' Blue Eyes meets a skinny, histrionic bully who was fascinated by gangsters, lived by threats alone, was alternately the most generous and the most vituperative of men, and who never dropped his torch for Ava Gardner, for whom he had turned his life upside-down.

Kelley, however, chirps past most of his actual career in favor of juicy bedroom gossip, and never acknowledges that the twenty-five year old Sinatra was not the fifty year old Sinatra. Instead, The Chairman of The Board seems to have sprung fully grown and unflatteringly from Hoboken, New Jersey, much as Athena did from the head of Zeus.

Kelley moves from sordid story to sordid story with glee and with barely a breath, clearly not understanding (or wishing to understand) the inner motivations of her incredibly complex subject. HIS WAY is catty, enjoyable tabloid trash. But it's not "biography."

Sinatra had a lifelong feud with the Media (even though he lived and died in its eye). Kelley, a yellow journalist, clearly takes sides with her fellow journalists.

20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Book reveals much about our society, not only through music., June 6, 1999

By A Customer

One would not expect a Kitty Kelley book about Frank Sinatra to have any great profundity, but *His Way* stands as a major cultural and social document of our times. Sinatra is one of the most-worshipped gods of our age. His life story shows all over again how much misery goes into "lifestyles of the rich and famous," and how much corruption comes out. Sinatra's origins were unromantic. His mother was a neighborhood abortionist. This was an albatross around young Frank's neck. Symbolic of our age, he grew up to personify the "good life" -- the suave, wealthy, hyper-romantic, carefree, yet blues-ridden one -- in his art, while his life embodied many kinds of evil. His mafia connections are well known and, like other unpleasant details of his legend, the book removes all doubt as to their authenticity. The most remarkable thing about *His Way* is in fact the superb job Kelley does of writing and documenting it. She researches and writes like a seasoned college professor. Like most muckrakers Kelley's truthfulness has been called into question, but the book seems entirely trustworthy, especially at a time so many entertainment deities are revealing themselves as tragically flawed or worse. Sinatra, the king of musical romance, bullied, used, and abused women, including his gentle wife Mia Farrow. The worlds of entertainment, crime and politics came together when Frank and company helped get JFK elected President. Frank was supposedly king of the heap himself, but displayed a pitifully boyish awe toward his fellow rake Kennedy, even after he himself helped to "create" Kennedy as president. *His Way* is a chronicle of an egomaniac who knew no restraints. He cause endless harm to others, then wrote them a check to cover their suffering. The moral of the story (every good book still has one) is that we ought to be more careful in whom we elevate as our heroes and "role models." Even those not fond of Sinatra or his swank big-band genre of music will find the book hard to put down. People of discernment will learn much from it as to why life is the way it is in 1999.