Product Description

Fully documented and highly detailed, this is the biography that Sinatra tried but failed to stop. A runaway #1 bestseller. HC: Bantam. (Nonfiction)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #68259 in Books
• Published on: 1987-09-01
• Released on: 1987-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 656 pages

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.

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

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

Customer Reviews

Suspension of disbelief?
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.

"The Next Time You Run Into Dorothy Kilgallen, Make Sure You're In Your Car."
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.

Tabloid book offers a lot of dirt, not much substance
No doubt a lot of what Kelley says is true, but I found myself not caring about much of it. When I want perfect morality and ethics, I usually don't look to the entertainment industry, and by the end of the book I think I learned more about Kelley than about Sinatra.

Not recommended. Check out Donald Clarke's less biased All or Nothing at All, or, for more music, Will Friedwald's book. I borrowed Kelley's book from the library out of respect to Mr. Sinatra -- I didn't want to spend five bucks on this kind of garbage.