The Way It Was: My Life with Frank Sinatra

In pedestrian prose, Weisman, Sinatra’s manager from the late 1970s and the executor of Sinatra’s estate, piles story upon story as he tells his own tale of his life with Sinatra and Sinatra’s family and friends. Weisman is clearly enamored of his boss, and he’s candid about Sinatra making his career: “If you had Sinatra as a friend, you didn’t need much else in life.” Weisman’s loyalty to Sinatra involved doing time for bank fraud, despite his claimed innocence, rather than implicating his client, and he emerged from prison with a new vision for the management of his clients; in his concern for their long-term financial well-being, he worked hard at marketing, promoting, and selling their shows so that “everyone left me better off than when they started.” Weisman acknowledges Sinatra’s mercurial nature, revealing that it grew out of the singer’s bouts of depression. He praises Sinatra’s work ethic, his commitment to his fans, and his ability to deliver a triple platinum album, Duets, toward the end of his career. While Weisman’s story offers few new insights about Sinatra, he does provide a glimpse into the challenging life of a manager. (Oct.)