More revealing than the costars and starlets who shared Sinatra’s bed were the ones who got away. On Pal Joey Rita Hayworth ignored him completely. She was close to forty at the time and still a knock- out. Mr. S never cared about age anyhow, old or young.

Somehow he was terribly impressed with her because of her romantic pedigree with Aly Khan and Orson Welles. Because I used to know her in my law firm days, he tried to use me as an opening wedge to try and get something going. It didn’t work. She didn’t remember me, or even Mr. Tannenbaum, from whom she rented her house.

She often forgot her lines, and her general blankness and disinterest even in Frank Sinatra at the top of his game, singing “The Lady Is a Tramp” to her, may have been due to early symptoms of the terrible Alzheimer’s dis- ease that would destroy her.