Protection - Charlie, Reggie & Ron

Charlie, Reggie and Ron

as captureded by Bailey, circa 1966

"Zwillinge....?" 

"Twins.....?"

- Dr. Josef Mengele,

Daily Selektion Aktion 

Auschwitz-Birkinau 

1943 - 1945

"The Germans under the Nazi government began to do serious scientific research into trauma-based mind control...

 

Under the auspices of the Kaiser Wilhelm Medical Institute in Berlin, Josef Mengele conducted mind-control research on thousands of twins and thousands of other hapless victims."

Fritz Springmeier & Cisco Wheeler,

The Illuminati Formula Used to Create an Undetectable Total Mind Controlled Slave.

"Thank you for your postcard. I very nearly went to Jersey myself, as I have never been there, and hear from so many people that it is quite delightful.

If you are free tomorrow evening between six and seven, do come round for a drink and a chat.

Ever sincerely, Boothby."

Private note sent by Lord Boothby to Ronnie Kray,

June 6, 1963

Subject/Control

"Mengele's great passion was his research on twins. They were weighed, measured, and compared in every way. Some he would kill for pathological examinations, dissecting a few and keeping parts preserved. Others he might operate on without anesthesia, removing limbs or sexual organs. If one twin died during these experiments, the other was no longer of use, so he or she was simply gassed.

Yet even as he targeted them for mutilation or death, he'd play with them and show great affection. He even gave them a ride in his car on their way to the gas chamber. Afterward, he might walk around with their heads or pin their eyes to a bulletin board."

Dr. Katherine Ramsland

"The Criminal Mind"

"

Bloodlines and Twinning

A majority of the victims/survivors come from multi-generational Satanic families (bloodlines) and are ostensibly programmed “to fill their destiny as the chosen ones or chosen generations” (a term coined by Mengele at Auschwitz). 

Some are adopted out to families of similar origin. 

Others used in this neurological nightmare are deemed as the “expendable ones” (non-bloodliners), usually coming from orphanages, foster care homes, or incestuous families with a long history of pedophilia. 

There also appears to be a pattern of family members affiliated with government or military intelligence agencies.

Many of the abused come from families who use Catholicism, Mormonism, or charismatic Christianity as a “front” for their abominable activities (though members of other religious groups are also involved.)

Victims/survivors generally respond more readily to a rigid religious (dogmatic, legalistic) hierarchical structure because it parallels their base programming. 

Authority usually goes unchallenged, as their will has been usurped through subjective and command-oriented conditioning.

Physical identification characteristics on victims/survivors often include multiple electrical prod scars and/or resultant moles on their skin. 

A few may have had various parts of their bodies mutilated by knives, branding irons, or needles, Butterfly or occult tattoos are also common. Generally, bloodliners are less likely to have the subsequent markings, as their skin is to “remain pure and unblemished.”

The ultimate purpose of the sophisticated manipulation of these individuals may sound unrealistic, depending upon our interpretive understanding of the physical and spiritual realms. 

The deepest and darkest alters within bloodliners are purported to be dormant until the “Anti-Christ’ is revealed. 

These “New World Order” alters supposedly contain call-back orders and instructions to train and/or initiate a large influx of people (possibly clones or “soulless ones”), thereby stimulating social control programs into the new millennium.  

LENNON/McCARTNEY

As Captured by Bailey, 1965 

Non-biological “twinning” is yet another bizarre feature observed within MONARCH programming. For instance, two young non related children would be ceremoniously initiated in a magical “soul-bonding” ritual so they might be “inseparably paired for eternity” (possibly another Mengele connection?). 

They essentially share two halves of the programmed information, making them interdependent upon one another. Paranormal phenomenon such as astral projection, telepathy, ESP, etc.  appear to be more pronounced between those who have undergone this process.

"

Mass Produced

Machined Production Line

End Product

Consumer Item.

German Twins, 

Mid-1930s

From Left to Right : 

?

Dr. Josef Mengele, Kaiser Wilhelm Insttute,

Auscwitz Camp Comandant Rudolf Höess,

Auschwitz, June 1944

"An event never before experienced in the history of medicine worldwide is realized here: Twins die at the same time, and there is the possibility of subjecting their corpses to an autopsy. 

Where in normal life is there the case, bordering on a miracle, that twins die at the same place at the same time? [...] 

A comparative autopsy is thus absolutely impossible under normal conditions. 

But in Auschwitz camp there are several hundred pairs of twins, and their deaths, in turn, present several hundred opportunities!"

Miklós Nyiszli,

Romanian Jew, 

Volunteer Medical Technician and Assistant Surgeon to Dr. Josef Mengele,

Auschwitz-Birkinau,

1943 - 1945

[Extremely problematic Testimony - beyond the ongoing and Rockefeller-commissioned and funded research in the established (and, for whatever it's worth, indeed, peer-reviewed) area of so-called racial hygiene and -- not even going to bother with the "quote marks", here) at-that-moment mainstream Eugenics, under the House of Rockefeller's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute front organisation driving the direction, focus and pace Megele's ongoing research..... 

Leaving all of that baggage and various caveats and qualifiers entire to one side, just to first get an outline sketch in the broad view of what was being discussed here in this expanded post-war affidavit describing what was actually going on inside Auschwitz-II, with the medical experiments [BIG, important, vital question to have detailed, accurate answers for, where it is simply unacceptable to concede with a mere hand wave yet another crucial Gap in History (TM)..] ...

 Absolutely none of this is verifiable or confirmable or able to be precisely matched any corroborated with any other primary source or eyewitness to what exactly was happening inside Mengle's clinic, in exact conceptual and historical centre of the The Holocaust, the locus around which all events and people and lives must turn, and 

"I was tired, I was depressed, my back was hurting.... And so he [the family doctor] said to the children's father, 'Why don't you go to Montreal and visit this Dr. Ewan Cameron, this famous man, who has all of these accolades, and have an assessment...?'

So we went.

My medical file even says that I took my guitar with me...! 

And that was The End, of my life....

Within 3 weeks, Dr. Cameron decided to call me 'an accute schizophrenic', and ship me up to The Sleep Room...."

And how long did they put you to sleep for..?

"I was in a coma for eighty-six days.... Eighty-six days - total comatose state.

I had to be toilet trained. I was a vegetable.

I had no memory, I had no identity, I had never existed in the world before - like a baby!

Just like a baby, that.... Has to be toilet-trained..."

Linda MacDonald,

Experimental Test Subject for Intensive Electro-Convulsive Cerbral Depatterning and Re-Education by means of  insulin therapy, induced deep coma, coupled with programmatic schedule of Psychic-Driving, sensory deprivation and probably longed social isolation whilst receiving treatment under the care of Dr. Ewan Cameron,

Courtesy of the Human Ecology Fund,

Allen Memorial Hospital, Montreal

Canada

NAKED  SELF PORTRAIT OF LUCIAN FREUD

How Lucian Freud once owed £500,000 in gambling debts to gangland 

Private: Lucian Freud spoke candidly about his gambling problem

Artist Lucian Freud ran up half a million pounds in gambling debts with gangland crimelords the Kray brothers.

Britain’s most renowned living artist said the brothers ‘forced’ money on him to feed his addiction, but he was only able to repay them in small amounts.

The 87-year-old confessed he once cancelled an exhibition out of fear they would demand more money if they saw he was earning.

The situation got so bad that at one point he received a warning from the police.

In a revealing interview, the notoriously private artist discussed the nights he spent in police cells for fighting, his relationship with Kate Moss and how he escorted Greta Garbo to nightclubs.

‘She was the most famous person in the world at that stage. I was very young, she was in her late thirties,’ he said of the actress.

‘The people in the clubs could not believe it.’

He said of Kate Moss, whom he met through his fashion designer daughter Bella: ‘She was interesting company and full of surprising behaviour,’ said Freud, who in 2002  painted a portrait of the heavily-pregnant and naked model in 2002.

In an interview with the Evening Standard, he said he was sometimes annoyed when Miss Moss was late for sittings ‘only in that way that girls are’.

He believes the painting was unsuccessful because photographers waited outside his house, disturbing his obsession with privacy.

Freud had a well-documented relationship with the Kray twins Reggie and Ronnie – with Reggie counting Freud amongst his favourite painters.

Club owner: Reggie Kray, centre, with Eddie Pucci, Frank Sinatra’s bodyguard and Shirley Bassey in the early Sixties

Their paths crossed in the swinging Sixties demi-monde of  West End nightclub life.

As club owners the Krays mixed with politicians and great entertainers of the day including Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland Shirley Bassey and Barbara Windsor.

The artist once said of his gambling: ‘I always went all out. The idea of it being a sport seemed to me insane. The thing I liked was risking everything. Losing everything to do with money.’

A self-portrait of Freud nursing a black eye after a punch-up with a taxi driver sold for more than £2.8million last month

He also explained his reasons for stopping gambling: ‘As I got more money, they wouldn’t take the bets and it just became pointless.

‘If I’d been in very high-powered card games with grand, rich people, perhaps, but that wasn’t what I did.’

The artist also disclosed he has four new muses: he is painting his assistant David Dawson; artist and printmaker Perienne Christian, 26; and two restaurateurs – Jeremy King, co-owner of The Wolseley where Freud frequently eats, and Sally Clarke, owner of Clarke’s in Kensington.

Artist and gambler: Freud in 1958

Freud is the grandson of Sigmund Freud and was born in Berlin where, at the age of nine, he photographed Hitler.

The family moved to England in 1933 to escape the rise of Nazism, and became British citizens six years later.

Freud reveals their naturalisation was made possible by the intervention of the Duke of Kent.

Freud’s painting Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, a life-size portrait of Jobcentre worker Sue Tilley, sold for £17.2million in 2008.

It set the world record for the highest price paid in an auction for a work of art by a living artist.

He remains ambitious though, adding: I work every day and night. I don’t do anything else. There is no point otherwise.’

This month, a self-portrait of Freud nursing a black eye after a punch-up with a taxi driver sold for more than £2.8million at auction.

The artist has previously discussed his habit of getting into scrapes, saying: ‘I used to have a lot of fights.

‘It wasn’t because I liked fighting, it was really just that people said things to me to which I felt the only reply was to hit them.'

" The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations has had a profound effect on the moral, spiritual, cultural, political and economic policies of the United States of America and Great Britain. It has been in the front line of the attack on the U.S. Constitution and State constitutions. No group did more to propagandize the U.S. to participate in WWI at a time when the majority of the American people were opposed to it. 

Much of the same tactics were used by the Social Science scientists at Tavistock to get the United States into WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Serbia and both wars against Iraq. Tavistock began as a propaganda creating and disseminating organization at Wellington House in London in the run-up to WWI, what Toynbee called “that black hole of disinformation, a lie factory.” 

In 1921, operations that were to shape the destinies of Germany, Russia, Britain and the United States were transferred to the Tavistock Institute. The people of these nations were unaware that they were being “brainwashed.” Tavistock's “mind control,” “inner directional conditioning” and mass “brainwashing” methods, still very much in use today, are explained in this easy to understand book written with great authority. The fall of dynasties, the Bolshevik Revolution, WWI and WWII saw the destruction of old alliances and boundaries, the convulsions in religion, morals, family life, economic and political conduct and the decadence in music and art that can all be traced back to mass indoctrination (mass brainwashing) practiced by the Tavistock Institute Social Science scientists. 

Prominent among Tavistock's faculty was Edward Bernays, the double nephew of Sigmund Freud. It is said that Herr Goebbels, Propaganda Minister in the German Third Reich used methodology devised by Bernays as well as that of Willy Munzenberg. 

This is a book about the past, present and future. Without Tavistock, there would have been no Bolshevik Revolution and no WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Serbia and Iraq wars.  But for Tavistock, the United States would not be rushing down the road to dissolution and collapse. 

The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations was unknown to the people of the United States before Dr. Coleman exposed its existence in his monograph, The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations: Britain's Control of the United States. 

Up to that time, Tavistock had successfully retained its secretive role in shaping the affairs of the United States, its government and its people since its early beginning in London, in 1913 at Wellington House. "

" Sometimes you're better off dead

There's a gun in your hand and it's pointing at your head

You think you're mad, too unstable

kicking in chairs and knocking down tables

in a restaurant in a West End town

Call the police! There's a madman around

Running down underground

to a dive bar in a West End town

In a West End town, a dead end world

the East End boys and West End girls

In a West End town, a dead end world

the East End boys and West End girls

West End girls

Too many shadows, whispering voices

faces on posters, too many choices

If? When? Why? What?

How much have you got?

Have you got it? Do you get it?

If so, how often?

Which do you choose

a hard or soft option?

(How much do you need?)

In a West End town, a dead end world

the East End boys and West End girls

In a West End town, a dead end world

the East End boys and West End girls

West End girls

West End girls

(How much do you need?)

In a West End town, a dead end world

the East End boys and West End girls

A West End town, a dead end world

East End boys, West End girls

West End girls

You got a heart of glass or a heart of stone?

Just you wait 'til I get you home

We've got no future, we've got no past

Here today, built to last

In every city, in every nation

from Lake Geneva to the Finland station

(How far have you been?)

And a West End town, a dead end world

the East End boys and West End girls

A West End town, a dead end world

East End Boys, West End girls

West End girls

The Pet Shop Boys and Sir Ian

It's a sin

When I look back upon my life

it's always with a sense of shame

I've always been the one to blame

For everything I long to do

no matter when or where or who

has one thing in common too

It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a sin

It's a sin

Everything I've ever done

Everything I ever do

Every place I've ever been

Everywhere I'm going to

It's a sin

At school they taught me how to be

so pure in thought and word and deed

They didn't quite succeed

For everything I long to do

no matter when or where or who

has one thing in common too

It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a sin

It's a sin

Everything I've ever done

Everything I ever do

Every place I've ever been

Everywhere I'm going to

It's a sin

Father forgive me

I tried not to do it

Turned over a new leaf

then tore right through it

Whatever you taught me

I didn't believe it

Father you fought me

'cause I didn't care

and I still don't understand

So I look back upon my life

forever with a sense of shame

I've always been the one to blame

For everything I long to do

no matter when or where or who

has one thing in common too

It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a sin

It's a sin

Everything I've ever done

Everything I ever do

Every place I've ever been

Everywhere I'm going to I

It's a sin

Confiteor Deo omnipotenti vobis 

fratres quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo, opere 

et omissione. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Sexual Predator (?)

Charles Bronson claims killer Ronnie Kray 'lived like a lord' inside Broadmoor with a stash of food and cigarettes

• Notorious 61-year-old Bronson reportedly made claim in pen pal letter
• He was furious at being confined to secure hospital from 1978 to 1984
• Now he reportedly claims his unit was 'like a f****** corner shop'
• Reggie Kray once described Bronson as his 'most frightening visit'

By Dan Bloom for MailOnline

Published: 09:25, 17 November 2014 | Updated: 11:04, 17 November 2014

Notorious inmate Charles Bronson has reportedly claimed Ronnie Kray 'lived like a lord' inside Broadmoor - with a huge stash of cigarettes and even tins of salmon.

The 61-year-old armed robber told a pen pal the secure psychiatric hospital, where he spent six years from 1978 to 1984 under his real name Michael Peterson, was like a 'f****** corner shop'.

Violent hostage-taker Bronson has been in and out of jail for most of his life since the stint at Broadmoor - which nonetheless he hated and protested with an 18-day hunger strike.

Friends: Charles Bronson (left in his younger days) said Ronnie Kray (right) lived like a lord in Broadmoor

Claims: Bronson is said to have described Broadmoor (above) as 'like a f****** corner shop'

In a letter obtained by The Sun he is said to describe a life of luxury by East End gangster Kray, who he befriended at HMP Parkhurst before being reunited with him at Broadmoor.

According to the newspaper, he told an unnamed 'pen pal': 'It was like a f****** corner shop. Ronnie was living the life of a lord. I'd never seen nothing like it.

'I'd just had a load of years in prison with nothing. All of a sudden I'm sitting there and eating tins of salmon.'

He added Kray, then in his late 40s, had a comfortable stash of food and cigarettes. 

Bronson, who changed his name again to Charles Salvador earlier this year, is infamous for being one of Britain's most violent prisoners.

Raised in Aberystwyth, west Wales, he began committing robberies aged 13 and has been held in solitary confinement for long stints totalling well over two decades since 1974.

Notorious: Bronson, now Charles Salvador, has taken several prison staff hostage in violent incidents

Unrepentant: Bronson's violent past has not stopped him earning a string of pen pals and a marriage in jail

He was given a life sentence after holding a prison art teacher hostage in 1999 and has committed a string of violent offences since.

His latest conviction was in September for taking hostage the governor of Woodhill Prison in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, and holding him in a headlock.

Reggie Kray once described an encounter with him in jail as 'the most frightening visit I had'.

But the violent inmate has his supporters, including an appeal fund which claims it is time for him to be released. 

He has struck up friendships with pen pals before, including in 2009 when he wrote a romantic string of letters to one-time actress and glamour model Gemini Reynolds. 

Under the spotlight: Broadmoor will soon be the subject of a book co-authored by Bronson

The Cyprus-based 50-year-old said at the time: 'He's not a monster in my eyes. I hope he gets downgraded and rehabilitated toward his freedom. There is no reason why he should not.' 

Bronson even married a pen pal inside prison in 2001, but he divorced Saira Rehman after four years and renounced her Muslim faith, to which he had briefly converted.

He is now believed to have co-authored a book about Broadmoor, due for release next year.

An organiser of his release fund dismissed the remarks about Ronnie Kray - if true - as a likely 'throwaway comment in a confidential letter' and little more.

The previously-unseen notes appear to show that Boothby, a former MP and aide to Winston Churchill, wrongly received a £40,000 libel payout from a newspaper that had linked him with the Krays.

Allegations surrounding "the peer and the gangster" emerged in 1964 at a time when Westminster was still reeling from the Profumo Affair.

When the Sunday Mirror reported in July 1964 that Scotland Yard was investigating a homosexual relationship between an unnamed peer and a major figure in the criminal underworld, suspicion fell on Boothby and on Kray, who, together with his twin brother Reggie, was building a reputation for running protection rackets and dishing out violence to those who stood in his way. 

However, Boothby chose to go public with a letter to The Times in which he denied being homosexual and stated that he had only ever met Kray three times, always to discuss business matters and always in the company of other people. 

Facing the threat of a libel defeat, the Sunday Mirror issued an apology to the peer and paid out £40,000, equivalent to £500,000 today. The newspaper's editor, Reg Payne, lost his job over the affair.

Yet a newly-uncovered letter sent by Boothby to Kray shows that the two men were friends, and were making social arrangements, more than a year before the peer won his payout.

On notepaper carrying his address in Eaton Square, Belgravia, Boothby wrote to Kray on June 6, 1963: "Thank you for your postcard. I very nearly went to Jersey myself, as I have never been there, and hear from so many people that it is quite delightful.

"If you are free tomorrow evening between six and seven, do come round for a drink and a chat."

The brief note is signed: "Ever sincerely, Boothby."

The letters, which are being put up for sale by an anonymous vendor, shed new light on one of the murkiest episodes in the career of the Kray twins.

Since described as the "pervert peer" in reference to his sexual proclivities, Boothby was shouted down in the Lords in February 1965 for demanding that the Krays should be released on bail after their arrest and charge for running the protection racket.

Another letter from Boothby to Kray, dated April 1965 on House of Lords notepaper, says: "I have had a great many letters congratulating me on the stand I took in the House of Lords on your behalf; and that some of their Lordships are now a bit ashamed of the treatment they gave me."

It adds: "I think that they will now leave you alone. And you never can say that I haven't done my best."

Each letter is expected to reach an estimated £1,000 to £1,500 when sold alongside other Kray memorabilia at Mullock's auctioneers in Ludlow, Shropshire, on August 13.

Richard Westwood-Brookes, the auctioneer, said: "These original letters have never been seen in public before and provide sensational new evidence on the relationship between Lord Boothby and Ron Kray.

"They have implications for the high-profile case Boothby won against the Mirror in the 1960s.

"It is clear that Boothby is inviting Kray round, and this proves the peer lied in his letter to The Times defending himself. It also proves the men were friends long before Boothby acknowledged." 

Another piece of Kray memorabilia sold by Mullock's earlier this year, two original police mugshots of the twins aged about 18, was estimated at £100 but reached £7,500.

Lord Boothby died in 1986. Ronnie Kray, who suffered from schizophrenia, was jailed for life for two murders in 1969 along with Reggie; he died in Broadmoor Hospital in 1995.

The Variety Club

Frank Sinatra and his wife, Ava Gardner 

with Tony Curtis and his wife Janet Leigh 

at a party hosted by the Duke of Edinburgh, 

1951

Eddie Pucci (Frank Sinatras Bodyguard), 

Ronnie Kray, 

George Raft, 

Reggie Kray, 

Rocky Marciano
and Charlie Kray (Older Brother of the Kray Twins)

 

circa. 1968

"When [his father, Ronnie Cromwell's] fraud went wrong he would come home at night, turn off all the lights, seize a big walking stick and walk around the garden. When my sister, Charlotte [the actress], was researching her role in the film about the Krays she visited their mother. Mrs Kray showed her the family album and there was a photograph of our father with his arms around the Kray twins. 

You get my drift?"

******

"What I meant, is that when you get into the masonry of espionage it is such a little journey to the other side. 

But no, I did not consider defecting."

Former MI5 Officer, Former MI6 Officer Richard Cromwell,

Aka John Le Carré

Interview with The Daily Telegraph,

In-House Organ of MI6,

2010

Lord Boothby with top gangster Ronnie Kray, centre, 

who reportedly supplied boys to the elite.

Sir Cliff Richard was friends with the Kray Twins.

How the Krays ran a protection business for Sinatra and Co from behind bars

By Vanessa Allen for the Daily Mail 

Updated: 01:50, 2 January 2010

The Kray twins ran a lucrative bodyguard and 'protection' business for Hollywood stars from behind bars which prison officials were powerless to stop, secret documents reveal today.

The gangland crime lords controlled the business from their cells while Reggie was in jail and paranoid schizophrenic Ronnie was in Broadmoor high-security hospital.

The brothers boasted on their business card that their clients included 'Hollywood stars and Arab Noblemen', such as singer Frank Sinatra, adding: 'We have never lost a client.'

'We have never lost a client' : While behind bars, Reggie (l) and Ronnie Kray ran a protection business for the rich and famous

The Krays, who had been jailed for life for murder [Note : This is not true - they were sentenced to 25 years, which, somehow (conveniently) got converted into an indefinite stay in hospital, served, 'At Her Majesty's Pleasure' (I'm not making this up), in the Secure Unit at Broadmoor, once they had been diagnosed as being 'Criminally Insane', and written off as suffering from 'schizophrenia' - an early example of the deliberate obsfocation by intentional confusion and misdirection that was the intended result of muddling up 'schizophrenia' (which is a symptom, not a diagnosis with 'Multiple Personalities' - again, also a symptom, and end-goal of Trauma-Based Mind Control methodologies] , said their services included bodyguards, security and 'house protection' – a chilling echo of the protection racket they ran in the East End.

Sinatra was said to have recruited an 18-strong team of bodyguards from the firm, Krayleigh Enterprises, before his June 1985 visit to the Wimbledon tennis tournament.

Before they were arrested in 1968, the Krays mixed with many stars of the era, including Sinatra, Judy Garland, Diana Dors, and Barbara Windsor.

Some even visited them in prison. Officials at Broadmoor raised the alarm to the Home Office in July 1985, after finding one of Ronnie Kray's business cards.

Frank Sinatra was said to have hired 18 bodyguards from the twins' company Krayleigh Enterprises in 1985

But amazingly they claimed they were powerless to ban the fledgling company, which the twins ran with their brother, Charlie, and another man who was not in prison.

The memo to the Home Office questioned whether the Krays should be allowed to run the business, but warned there were no provisions to stop Ronnie as he was held under the Mental Health Act. [I.E., He is not a prisoner, he is a patient - therefore not subject to prison rules, or prison discipline....]

The memo, written by an unnamed Broadmoor official, said: 'As far as I know there is nothing in the Mental Health Act to prevent people setting up companies but I know less about the regulations relating to prisons and the law relating to companies.

'Clearly, however, I do not want the Krays to be seen to be using Broadmoor and it may well be that if he is well enough to be the director of a company he is too well to be in Broadmoor.'

The memo, on headed Broadmoor paper, was contained in a prison dossier on the Kray twins released under Freedom of Information legislation.

The dossier did not include the Home Office's response to the memo, although an unnamed civil servant has scribbled 'Advice please!' on the top of the letter.

The file contained a photocopy of a Krayleigh Enterprises business card, which listed all three brothers as directors and added: 'Personal aides to the Hollywood stars and Arab Noblemen.'

The Kray twins were both held at Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight after they were convicted of the murder of Jack 'The Hat' McVitie and sentenced to life in 1969.

Ronnie was also convicted of the murder of George Cornell, whom he shot dead for calling him a 'fat poof'. A decade later he was transferred to Broadmoor.

He was never released from the high security unit, and died in 1995

'Powerless': Officials at Broadmoor (above) raised the alarm to the Home Office in July 1985, after finding one of Ronnie Kray's business cards - but were not allowed to ban the fledgling company

Reggie was released on compassionate grounds in 2000 after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, but died a month later.

The file described Ronnie as an 'active and predatory homosexual' in jail, and said officers had once found him in bed with another inmate.

His bed-mate was threatened with solitary confinement, but on other occasions prison officers appear to have turned a blind eye to Kray's relationships to keep him calm before his transfer to Broadmoor.

They said the paranoid schizophrenic's prison relationships were a 'stabilising' influence on him.

Kray was plunged into fits of despair when his prison 'passions' were thwarted and often became violent, according to his jailers' notes.

A 1977 report on Kray's progress at Parkhurst said: 'Ronald Kray remains an active and predatory homosexual, and cares little who knows it.

'He presents as a near moron in good physical condition but mentally dull. There are occasional glimpses in his behaviour of a latent violence.'

Lord Boothby and Sir Cliff Richard

Circa 1962

"Sir Cliff has never once replied to any criticism that he allegedly entered the profession as a male prostitute, although rumours persist that many performers have refused to share a stage with him in the past.

"The Metropolitan police have security cameras trained on the Chelsea army barracks and have also allegedly complained unofficially of Cliff Richard’s car number constantly being flagged up on numerous occasions as Sir Cliff was rumoured to be trying to chat up the soldiers."

" At a big London railway station in the spring of 1970, a plastic carrier bag was found in the regular search for bombs before the station closed for the night. The contents were an odd assortment of letters and photos, which seemed to have been taken at kinky party attended by some well-known figures in entertainment. One in particular showed a pop singer who masquerades under a Christian persona; dressed in women’s underwear he was pictured with young boys.

The bag was duly taken to the station office and as a senior rail worker wrote out a report for the lost property office, two MI5 men and a Special Branch officer arrived and demanded the photos. They claimed that the pop singer was being blackmailed over them: the object being to coerce him into promoting socialism and homosexuality in Britain for the Soviet KGB.

The pop singer in question had even threatened to commit suicide if the photos were released.

However MI5 passed one particular letter from the bag to the tax authorities, because it seemed to indicate that the three brothers who had a virtual monopoly over Britain’s entertainment industry were short-changing the taxman.

The brothers – Bernard Delfont, Lew Grade, and Leslie Grade (Winogradsky) – had a stranglehold over stage and screen appearances in Britain and gave preference to Jewish stars and promoters. Such were the amounts involved that fellow Jews the Kray twins were asked to launder much of the money in clubs and fixed boxing matches, gambling and other dubious enterprises.

Meanwhile the Krays themselves had high-level protection from inside the police, which bought them immunity for a while with bribery and funny handshakes.

Another ‘entertainer’ connected to the underworld was comedian Bud Flanagan of the Crazy Gang. He was not actually an Irishman at all, but a Polish Jew named Reuben Weintrop, codenamed ‘Whisky’ who had told the authorities all about London’s East End criminal networks before World War II. This information had been filed in the ‘take no action’ category but suddenly reappeared and made jaws drop with its accuracy.

Interlude - I Quote The Enemy :

" Grade was born in Tokmak, Taurida Governorate, Russian Empire to Isaak and Olga Winogradsky. In 1912, the Jewish family emigrated to escape Cossack violence and anti-Semitism, from Odessa via Berlin to Brick Lane in Bethnal Green in the East End of London.

Isaak worked as a trouser-presser while his three sons (Grade and his younger brothers, Bernard (later Bernard Delfont) and Leslie) attended the Rochelle Street Elementary School near Shoreditch, where Yiddish was spoken by 90% of the pupils. 

For two years the Winogradskys lived in rented rooms at the north end of Brick Lane, before moving to the nearby Boundary Estate.

At the age of 15, Grade became an agent for a clothing company, and shortly afterwards started his own business.

In 1926, he was declared Charleston Champion of the World at a dancing competition at the Royal Albert Hall. 

Fred Astaire was one of the judges.

Grade subsequently became a professional dancer going by the name Louis Grad; this form came from a Paris reporter's typing error that Grade liked and decided to keep.

The octogenarian Lord Grade once danced the Charleston at a party Arthur Ochs Sulzberger gave in New York.

[And yet, he was able to recieve a full medical discharge from the British Army in 1943, in spite of already being assigned to serve in the Concert Party, with all of the obvious non-combat, non-frontline extremely light duties such a posting would obviously entail....]

Around 1934, he became a talent agent and went into partnership with Joe Collins (father of novelist Jackie and actress Joan Collins). Among Grade's clients were harmonica player Larry Adler and the jazz group Quintet of the Hot Club of France.

Following the start of the Second World War in 1939, Grade became involved in arranging entertainment for soldiers in Harrogate, and later joined ["joined"....? Or, was drafted into...] the British Army. 

He was discharged after two years when an old problem with swelling of the knees, which had earlier ended his dancing career, re-occurred. 

[GOLDBRICKING BASTARD...]

In 1945, the arrangement with Collins having been terminated, Grade formed a partnership with his brother Leslie (Lew and Leslie Grade Ltd., or the Grade Organisation) and travelled in the United States, where the brothers developed their entertainment interests. 

His connections included, among others, Bob Hope and Judy Garland, who performed in Britain for the first time. "

PAYDIRT.

Leslie Townes "Bob" Hope, KBE, KC*SG, KSS 

Honourary Brigadier-General, United States Marine Corps.

"Their motto is 'Semper Fideleis' - which means, 'Oh, it's alright doc, just sew it back on....' " 

The distinction is currently bestowed solely by the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps to "individuals in the civilian community who have made extraordinary contributions to the Marine Corps." 

It "carries no entitlement to pay or benefits."

Nominations may be submitted to the commandant by "commanding generals, commanding officers, and officers-in-charge" and "must be endorsed by a general officer within their chain of command." 

Criteria include:

(a) A terminally ill child that has some unique or qualifying link to the military or the Marine Corps.

(b) An individual who has given extraordinary service or support to the Marine Corps, and for whom any lesser form of recognition would be insufficient.

(c) Deceased individuals whose actions or contributions on behalf of the Marine Corps would have merited consideration before their death.

Honorees

Two somewhat differing lists can be viewed on the official Marine Corps website, one at the Marine Corps Honorary Marine page (1992-2011), and the other in this document (1992-2007).

Among the notables on both lists are:

Joe Rosenthal (1996), the reporter who took the iconic photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima

Felix de Weldon (2001), the sculptor of the Marine Corps War Memorial, based on Rosenthal's photograph

combat veterans and United States Senators Max Cleland and Daniel Inouye (both 2001)

Jim Nabors (2001), star of the television comedy show Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.

actor Chuck Norris (2006)

actor Gary Sinise (2013)

Among the 2012 honorees were Cody Green, a terminally ill boy who loved the U.S. Marine Corps, and Ryan Crocker, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan.

Jacob Tyler Sprinkle was posthumously made an Honorary Marine on July 11, 2014 and the family was presented his honor on October 15, 2014. The ceremony was held at Lee High School in Jonesville, Virginia. 

The presenting officer of the United States Marine Corps was Lt. General John A. Toolan, Jr., Commander, Marine Corps Forces, Pacific. Jacob lost a 13 year fight with congenital heart defects.

As of October 2014, there have been fewer than 100 Honorary Marine titles presented in the 239 years of the Marine Corps.

Other ad hoc honorees

Lon Chaney, Sr. was made an honorary member of the Corps for his portrayal of a Marine sergeant in the 1926 film Tell It to the Marines.

Cartoon character Bugs Bunny was given the rank of honorary Marine Master Sergeant for his performance in Super-Rabbit.

Actor and comedian Bob Hope, famous for his work with the USO, was named an honorary Brigadier General of the Corps.

Bob Hope of British Intelligence performs a brief set in Da Nang, 

Republic of Vietnam

c.1967

(May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003), was an English-born American comedian, vaudevillian, actor, singer, dancer, athlete, and author. 

With a career spanning nearly 80 years, Hope appeared in over 70 films and shorts, including a series of "Road" movies co-starring Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour. In addition to hosting the Academy Awards fourteen times (more than any other host), he appeared in many stage productions and television roles and was the author of fourteen books. 

The song "Thanks For the Memory" is widely regarded as Hope's signature tune.

Celebrated for his long career performing United Service Organizations (USO) shows to entertain active service American military personnel—he made 57 tours for the USO between 1941 and 1991—Hope was declared an honorary veteran of the United States Armed Forces in 1997 by act of the U.S. Congress.

Sir Cliff Richard, 

"The Duchess" (Saville's Mother), 

and 

Sir James "Jimmy" Savile, OBE

Knight-Commander of the Papal Order of St. Gregory the Great

In 1937, the three year old Kray Twins were in hospital, separated from their mother.

In 1952, the Kray Twins were doing National service in the army. They spent much of their time locked up.

The man who seemed to exercise some kind of control over the Kray Twins was 'an aristocratic adjutant, a languid ex-public schoolboy". 

('Villains' edited by Esme Hawes, 1994)

Brainwashing can give the victim more than one personality.

The Kray Twins were described by their local school teacher and by their local vicar as being polite, helpful, punctilious and respectful to their elders. 

('Villains' edited by Esme Hawes, 1994)

The Kray Twins could have sudden changes of mood and become murderous.

Ronnie Kray claimed that while he was locked up, there were people who wanted to torture him. 

('Villains' edited by Esme Hawes, 1994)

"...[Sinatra's] most searing remarks were directed at Rona Barrett, who had recently published her autobiography. 

She also observed that anyone seeing Frank with his daughter, Nancy, “would quietly walk away with a funny, gnawing feeling: If they weren’t father and daughter, they could certainly pass for lovers. …” 

Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow on their wedding day on July 19, 1966.

Left to right, Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner (1922–1990), Mrs C.J. Latta, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and American opera singer Dorothy Kirsten enjoying an after dinner joke at a Variety Club of Great Britain benefit for the National Playing Fields Association, at the Empress Club, London, 29th December 1951. 

Mrs Latta is the wife of a co-founder of the Variety Club of Great Britain.

" The first step in remaking the Sinatra image was the European concert tour arranged by Mickey Rudin in 1962 to benefit underprivileged children and to introduce his client as a philanthropist with a social conscience.

“I was married to Mickey at the time, and together the two of us had to go out and get Frank concerts,” said Elizabeth Greenschpoon. “We went all over the world—to Rome and Tokyo and London, and I watched Mickey create an atmosphere of demand for Frank, that he was desirable. Never mind the henchmen and goons. Mickey made them book Frank. Because of my husband’s strong ties to Israel, he also managed to get a youth house named for Frank because supposedly this was a tour to benefit children and youth. I say ‘supposedly’ because the real purpose was to benefit Frank. He needed a good press at the time, and Mickey saw to it that he got one.”

In Tokyo, they gave Frank the key to the city and named an orphanage for him.

In Hong Kong, hundreds of children lined the streets waving garlands of flowers in his honor.

In Nazareth, they presented him with a silver-embossed Bible in a ground-breaking ceremony for the Frank Sinatra International Friendship Youth House. But this antagonized the Arab League, which promptly banned his movies and records.

In London, Princess Margaret shook his hand and Lord Snowden bowed in admiration.

In Paris, General de Gaulle made him an officer of the “Order of Public Health.”

Throughout the ten-week tour, the press coverage was outstanding because Moses had hired a still photographer, a three-man television team, and two publicity people to accompany Frank. Photographs of him holding blind children in Greece and talking with crippled children in Italy appeared around the world, inspiring newspapers to commend “the new Frank Sinatra.” In Japan, they hailed him as “a nice, gentle guest,” in Israel as “a tough dandy.”

His return to the United States was heralded as “Do-Gooder Frank Flies Back Home.” He was honored by the Variety Club of Southern California for “services in behalf of children everywhere” and was presented with a silver plate by the Columbian Foundation. He told reporters that as an overprivileged adult he wanted to help underprivileged children.


“I think we raised something like a million dollars for children’s institutions. I wish it was five million,” he said, noting that his most moving experience had occurred while visiting with a six-year-old blind child. “It was windy, and I brushed the hair out of her eyes and told her that the wind had been blowing up her hair. She stopped me cold when she said, ‘What color is the wind?’ ”

Chuck Moses designed new press kits with a biography of Frank that began: “Frank Sinatra’s life has moved into a new phase. …” Moses also arranged as many interviews as he could, believing that Frank would gain more by talking to reporters than by beating on them.

“Frank cared very much about the press and what they wrote about him,” said Moses. “He insisted that I take a nice big suite in every hotel we checked into so that I could have reporters up. I had to be very careful when I announced his engagement to Juliet Prowse because Frank was concerned about Nancy, Sr. He knew that she [still] expected him to come back to her, and he really didn’t want to hurt her. Six weeks later, I had to announce that the engagement was broken because of ‘a conflict of career interest.’ Juliet just refused to give up her dancing and be the kind of stay-at-home wife that Frank wanted, but I couldn’t go into that kind of detail with reporters. Because of the personal nature of those two announcements, they were probably the toughest I had to make.”

Frank’s image campaign suffered a slight setback a few months later when he fought with a photographer in a San Francisco nightclub because he had not asked for permission to take Sinatra’s picture. The photographer’s camera was smashed and the film ruined.

“It is true that Frank was unhappy with the way the picture was taken,” said Moses. “He likes photographers to ask his permission to take pictures and to address him as “Mr. Sinatra.’”

Extract from His Way : The Unauthorised Biography of Frank Sinatra

by Kitty Kelley

(1986)

Frank gave his usual performance of exceptional vulgarity and exquisite taste, a swine one minute as he lashed out at female columnists, and particularly graceful the next as he sang his soft, sad ballads, playing the audience like a sweet harp. Applauding the old insouciance, Charles Champlin in the Los Angeles Times praised his astonishing gifts of phrasing, control, and feeling, which he said proved beyond doubt the still youthful tenderness of his voice. “The night was not an unmitigated triumph, though,” Champlin wrote. “Midway along, Sinatra paused to sip a glass of wine … and revive his animosities towards the ladies of the press.… Whatever the distant provocations, the savagery of the attacks invited sympathy for his victims and put gall in a winy evening.”

To trumpet his comeback, Frank launched an extensive ten-city concert tour, his first in six years, to benefit Variety Clubs International. Every performance sold out weeks in advance as he made his triumphant march across the country, leaving spellbound audiences in his wake. The only criticism arose when he stopped singing and started talking. Skewering the press, he criticized Edwin Newman of NBC-TV, sneered at Eric Sevareid of CBS-TV, and ridiculed Barbara Walters, calling her “the ugliest broad on television.”

His most searing remarks were directed at Rona Barrett, who had recently published her autobiography. In it she wrote that she felt Frank, Jr., had staged his own kidnapping to get his father’s attention. She also observed that anyone seeing Frank with his daughter, Nancy, “would quietly walk away with a funny, gnawing feeling: If they weren’t father and daughter, they could certainly pass for lovers. …”


Frank’s rage could not be contained: “Congress should give Rona Barrett’s husband a medal just for waking up beside her and having to look at her.… She’s so ugly that her mother had to tie a pork chop around her neck just to get the dog to play with her.… What can you say about her that hasn’t already been said about—(pause)—leprosy. … I promise not to say anything about Rona Barrett tonight. I really mean that. A lot of my friends were upset about the fact that I was even bothering about her, so I’m not going to mention her name. I’m also not going to mention Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr, Adolf Hitler, Bruno Hauptmann, or Ilse Koch—she’s the other two-dollar broad—the one who made the lampshades.”

The success of his U.S. tour led to a five-country tour through Europe, his first since 1962. But Frank canceled his appearance in West Germany because of what he called “scurrilous attacks” by its press, and then flew to London, where he lambasted the Germans from the British stage.

“What gives with these Germans anyway? I’ve done nothing to them,” he said. “I could have answered and told reporters to ‘look to the sins of your fathers.’ I could have mentioned Dachau, the concentration camp. … I don’t understand the German press. They call me a super-gangster. What’s that? Al Capone? He wasn’t one. It’s ridiculous, who the hell needs it anyway?”

The British audiences gave him standing ovations, while the British press wrote rave reviews, but Prince Charles, the future king of England who had met Frank twice, said he was distressed by the “creeps” and “Mafia types” Sinatra surrounded himself with.

“He’s a pretty strange person,” said the prince. “He could be terribly nice one minute and … well, not so nice the next.”

In France, they referred to Frank’s bodyguards as “gorilles.”

The tour ended with an international incident in Australia when Frank insulted the country’s press corps. Darting past reporters in Melbourne, he spat at the reporters waiting to interview him before his rehearsal at Festival Hall. One newsman had managed to reach him by phone earlier in the morning to ask what he had eaten for breakfast and Frank slammed the phone down without responding.

“The idiot,” Frank said. “What the hell does he care what I had for breakfast? I was about to tell him what I did after breakfast.”

He refused to be interviewed after his rehearsal, and when he returned to his hotel and found more television cameramen waiting for him, he exploded, a signal for his bodyguards to fly into action.

According to one of the cameramen, one of Frank’s bodyguards wrapped an electric cord around his throat and warned, “Things are going to get physical.”

Reporter Hilary Sexton emerged from the fray with cuts on her face.

“Sinatra’s goon squads blocked the way and then attacked the newsmen,” said Jim Oram of the Sydney Daily Mirror.

That evening, Frank appeared at Melbourne’s Festival Hall before a sold-out house of eight thousand people, who clapped, cheered, and stamped their feet with approval.

Extract from His Way : The Unauthorised Biography of Frank Sinatra

by Kitty Kelley

(1986)

" Through marriage, the Sinatras had elevated themselves socially, so there were few traces left of the showgirl in a feathered headdress who danced her way across the Las Vegas stage, or the saloon singer with the grade school education. In their place stood a stunning wife bedecked with a queen’s ransom in jewels and a husband hailed around the world as a humanitarian. Hand in hand, they chased the rainbow of respectability that had eluded Frank for so many years. While they were not embraced by the pedigreed elite, they were crowned by the rich and nouveau riche who go to nightclubs, winter in Palm Springs, and appear in Suzy’s column.

As Mrs. Sinatra, Barbara began to do her part with charity work for the Desert Museum, the Desert Hospital, and the Sexually Abused Children Program in the Coachella Valley. She joined boards, volunteered her time, and contributed money, provided it was a considerable sum.

“We only deal in giving away millions,” she said to a woman who requested a mere one thousand dollars.

Together, the Sinatras traveled to the south of France to attend galas for Princess Grace of Monaco and Baron Guy de Rothschild; they promoted and accompanied a caravan to the Holy Land for one hundred seventy people who paid twenty-five hundred dollars apiece; they sponsored charity balls for the World Mercy Fund, which ushered them into the lofty circles of Laurance Rockefeller and Barron Hilton. The world hailed them as Lord and Lady Bountiful.

In California, they waved to thousands as the grand marshals of the Rose Bowl Parade. In Philadelphia, Frank received the city’s Freedom Medal while Barbara sparkled by his side. In New Jersey, he was hailed as a humanitarian for raising $600,000 for the Atlantic City Medical Center, and a wing was dedicated in his honor.

In New York, he helped raise one million dollars for Governor Hugh Carey’s campaign expenses, and the governor immediately defended him to the press against charges of ties to organized crime.

“I have yet to see anyone lay any criticism against Frank Sinatra excepting he’s very good to his friends,” he said. “I admire and respect him, and I think it’s a filthy assertion unworthy of comment.”

In Denver, where Frank raised money for the Children’s Diabetes Foundation, he was given the International Man of the Year award.

Italy presented him with its highest civilian honor—the Grande Ufficiale Deli Ordine Al Merito Della Republica Italiana—calling him “a great and meritorious official of the Italian Republic.”

In Egypt, he performed before the pyramids in a benefit for President and Mrs. Anwar Sadat and received international press coverage for his generosity.

Caesars Palace staged a sixty-fourth birthday party for Frank, which also commemorated his fortieth anniversary in show business. The affair was videotaped by Sinatra’s Bristol Productions and sold to NBC-TV for a two-hour show entitled Sinatra—The First 40 Years. In saluting Frank, Dionne Warwick presented him with a special Grammy from the recording industry; Jule Styne presented him with the Pied Piper Award from ASCAP; Caesars Palace announced that the fountain in front of the casino would be called the Frank Sinatra Fountain and the coins tossed in would go to the John Wayne Memorial Cancer Clinic at UCLA; the Egyptian ambassador read a message of congratulations from President Anwar Sadat; the Israeli Consul General read a similar one from Menachem Begin; and Dean Martin presented Frank with an honorary diploma from Hoboken High School to compensate for the one he never earned.

In Hollywood, the show was hailed as “the greatest event of the decade in the world of entertainment,” but the East Coast wasn’t so complimentary. The Washington Star published an editorial entitled “The King and His Court,” which disparaged the spectacle and the “seemingly endless procession of sycophants who celebrated it for him, in a display of public groveling that would have embarrassed anyone except the gentleman in question, Mr. Frank Sinatra.…


“What was puzzling, as the festivities ground on and on, was the fear that seemed to quiver just beneath the gaiety. That wasn’t love emanating from the TV set; it was obsequiousness. Some of the most celebrated men and women in entertainment marched across the stage—in Las Vegas, of course—in a parade of abjection. Has Mr. Sinatra really accumulated so much wealth and influence that he can reduce Orson Welles, once a great actor and film-maker, to a sycophantic blob?

“Even more puzzling than the groveling was all the blather about Mr. Sinatra’s humanitarian enterprises. There were even emissaries from Israel and Egypt, in Camp David lock-step, on hand to present Mr. Sinatra with awards for his benevolence. Well, Mr. Sinatra’s charities are rather like Mr. Rockefeller’s dimes—good for the old blue-eyed image. They are not to be taken seriously by any except those who receive them.”

Praising Frank as “the best singer of American popular music who ever walked down the pike,” despite a voice “that may have lost much of its timbre,” the Washington Star editorial expressed wonder and awe at his performance. “That such beautiful music should emerge from such vulgarity is one of the great mysteries of the age; but we must count our blessings, no matter how peculiar.”

Then William Safire wrote a column in The New York Times about Frank’s “lifelong gangland friendships.” Having already called Safire “a goddamn liar,” Frank now went on a rampage against all the press. He sent letters to President Jimmy Carter, to his Cabinet, to every member of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, every governor, to publishers, business leaders throughout the country, and deans of every journalism school in America, begging them to join him in a crusade to restrain the nation’s “runaway press.” He asked them to remind “the press that there is more to the Constitution of this great nation than the First Amendment it so frequently hides behind.” 

Then he banned press coverage of him as the grand marshal in New York’s Columbus Day parade. 

Extract from His Way : The Unauthorised Biography of Frank Sinatra

by Kitty Kelley

(1986)

“He’s one of the most investigated people in America,” argued Rudin.

“It would be ludicrous to avoid calling him in,” said Nevada Gaming Control Board Chairman Richard Bunker, who agreed to a time limit of nine months on the Sinatra investigation. He later declared that Frank’s “worldwide prominence” made it “important” to act “as quickly as possible.” He never explained why.

During those nine months, Frank burnished his image with good works and prestigious awards. His benefit for the Desert Hospital in Palm Springs raised $1.3 million. The district’s grateful congressman, Jerry Lewis, addressed the House of Representatives and said Frank “as America’s number one entertainer and philanthropist… has brought a song and a smile to the heart of a world that so needs a smile.”

A week later, Sinatra’s benefit for the University of Santa Clara raised $250,000, which the Catholic school announced would establish a Frank Sinatra chair in music and theater arts.

He hosted a benefit fund-raiser for Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal and received the Humanitarian Award of the Year from Variety Clubs International. He was named national chairman for the Multiple Sclerosis Society’s Hope Chest campaign. He volunteered to be the television spokesman for Chrysler for one dollar a year. He did a benefit at Carnegie Hall for the Police Athletic League and another in the Los Angeles Universal Amphitheater for St. Francis Medical Center. He performed for Danny Thomas’s St. Jude Children’s Research Center. He sang on the Jerry Lewis telethon for muscular dystrophy as well as for the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

By the end of the year his benefit performances had indebted to him politicians, educators, policemen, Catholics and Jews and Protestants, corporate America, the medical profession, and—on November 4, 1980—the fortieth president of the United States. Within days of his election Ronald Reagan showed his gratitude to the singer by naming him chairman of the inaugural gala.

“It’s a big thrill,” said Frank. “Somebody you love has made the big move. You don’t say ‘Hello, Ron’ anymore. You say ‘Hello, Mr. President.’ … I promise I will try to make it the greatest gala in history—a night America and the world will remember.”

The appointment drew worldwide coverage, setting off rumors that Reagan might appoint Sinatra U.S. ambassador to Italy—which drew scathing comment from Italian newspapers. Typical was that in La Stampa, the respected Turin daily: “Sinatra is welcome at any time for a singing engagement or to make a movie. But not in any other capacity. … If the American government thinks of Italy as the land of mandolins and La Cosa Nostra, then Sinatra would be the appropriate choice.”

While Frank concentrated on the gala, Barbara Sinatra worked secretly with Jilly Rizzo to plan a party for her husband’s sixty-fifth birthday on December 12, 1980.

“Please keep this under your Stetson, but I’m tossing a surprise birthday party for my blue-eyed cowboy,” said the invitations she sent to more than one hundred people.

High on her list was William French Smith, named by Reagan to be attorney general. Months before, the Los Angeles lawyer had privately contacted the Nevada Gaming Control Board to assure them of Ronald Reagan’s high opinion of Frank, adding that he knew Frank only socially, not in a business relationship, so he did not feel he could be a character reference. “However,” said Smith, “Governor Reagan finds him to be an honorable person who is extremely charitable and loyal.”

The Smiths were delighted to receive their invitation from Mrs. Sinatra, and flew to Palm Springs for the party at which another guest was Sidney Korshak, the Los Angeles labor lawyer linked to organized crime.

So the man scheduled to become the nation’s highest law enforcement officer shared a social evening with the Mafia’s lawyer at a party honoring a man with underworld connections. Puzzled, a reporter from The Washington Post called Smith’s office, where a spokesman said that the attorney general-designate “had never met Korshak and wouldn’t recognize him if he saw him on the street. … If he talked to him [at the party], it was purely accidental.”

William Safire of The New York Times was so revolted by Smith’s “rehabilitation of the reputation of a man obviously proud to be close to notorious hoodlums” that he risked Sinatra’s wrath again in a column he wrote a few days later saying the attorney general-designate had made “the first deliberate affront to propriety of the Reagan administration.” Safire mentioned records in the Department of Justice that contain “file after file on Sinatra’s liaison with mobsters, along with a vivid account of the first time the singer tried to curry favor with a president-elect.”

Years before, Safire had charged that Sinatra’s introduction of Judith Campbell to Jack Kennedy and Sam Giancana made “possible the first penetration of the White House by organized crime.” Now he wrote that Sinatra would be able to use William French Smith’s presence at his party to show that he is respected by the law. “Let birthday-party goer Smith review the FBI’s Sinatra file. Then let him tell the Senate to what extent he thinks it proper for a friend of mobsters to profit from being a chum of the chief executive and of the man who runs the Department of Justice.”

Smith called the column “scurrilous” and “a cheap shot,” saying through a spokesman that he was “totally unaware of any allegations about Frank Sinatra’s background.”

The Milwaukee Journal Found that reaction troubling. “Surely, a lawyer chosen to be attorney general should understand why his presence at the party was disturbing,” said the newspaper’s editorial.

During his confirmation hearings, the attorney general-designate surprised Senator William Proxmire (D-Wis.) by saying he was unaware of the FBI files mentioned in Safire’s column that detailed Frank Sinatra’s gangland associations. This made Smith sound either dumb or duplicitous.

“While I am aware of recent press reports setting forth such allegations,” Smith told Proxmire, “I have never had access to any FBI files concerning any citizen. I have no basis for assuming that allegations reported in the press [about Sinatra] are true or false.”

In a series of written questions, the senator asked: “When the Nevada Gaming Control Board checks Sinatra’s reference by writing to President Reagan, how would you as attorney general suggest the president respond?”

Smith wrote, “As I am not familiar with all of the facts referenced by the question, I cannot say whether the matter is one on which it would be appropriate for the attorney general to render advice.”

Senator Proxmire was annoyed. “Instead of telling us that he was not familiar with the facts, Mr. Smith’s clear answer should have been that he had already been asked and made the response he made. [Smith’s phone call for Reagan on behalf of Sinatra to the Nevada Gaming Board.] He was less than candid in his answer.”

Casting the sole dissenting vote, Senator Proxmire voted against confirming the Los Angeles lawyer as attorney general.

Despite the controversy swirling around Frank, President Reagan remained loyal. This wasn’t the first time that Sinatra’s ties to organized crime had been brought to his attention. During the campaign, he had received a note from an outraged citizen about those gangland associations and had responded with a personal letter, saying: “I have known Frank Sinatra and Barbara Marx for a number of years; I’m aware of the incidents, highly publicized, quarrels with photographers, nightclub scrapes, etcetera and admit it is a life style I neither emulate nor approve. However, there is a less publicized side to Mr. Sinatra, which in simple justice must be recognized. It is a side he has worked very hard to keep hidden and unpublicized. I know of no one who has done more in the field of charity than Frank Sinatra. A few years ago a small town in the Midwest had suffered a terrible calamity; he went there on his own and staged a benefit to raise funds. All expenses were paid out of his pocket. He’d be very upset if he knew I’d told you these things. …”

The letter later sold at auction for $12,500, the highest price ever paid for a letter from a living person. The secret buyer? Frank Sinatra.

Days before the inauguration, the president-elect again was asked about Sinatra’s involvement with gangsters. “We’ve heard those things about Frank for years,” he said. “We just hope none of them are true.”

Jubilant Republicans descended on Washington to stage the biggest and most expensive inaugural in history while the incumbent President from Plains, Georgia, tried frantically to negotiate for the release of the fifty-two Americans who had been held hostage in Iran by the followers of the Ayatollah Khomeni for 444 days after the seizure of the American embassy.

Columnist William F. Buckley, Jr., wrote that if the hostages were not released before Ronald Reagan took office on January 20, 1981, the new president should simply declare war on Iran. Frank Sinatra agreed, and immediately wired the editor of the National Review: 

DEAR BILL-BRAVO BRAVO BRAVO. IT IS THE MOST SENSIBLE SOLUTION I HAVE HEARD OR READ SINCE THE INCEPTION OF THE PROBLEM.

Wearing a Philadelphia Eagles warm-up jacket, a gift from owner Leonard Tose, Frank worked in an opulent gold-carpeted office in inaugural headquarters. Here he made his calls, persuading Johnny Carson to be master of ceremonies, and recruiting Bob Hope, Ethel Merman, Jimmy Stewart, Donnie and Marie Osmond, Charlton Heston, Robert Merrill, Mel Tillis, Debbie Boone, Charlie Pride, Ben Vereen, and the U.S. Naval Academy Glee Club. He called the line-up of performers “the greatest talents America could offer to any audience.”

Intent on raising $5.5 million for the Reagan Inaugural Committee, Frank directed and produced a three-hour show for 20,000 people in the Capital Centre, which was edited for television. Before the show started, he took the spotlight in a $2,500 tuxedo to escort the Vice-President and his wife to their seats, and again to greet the Reagans, whom he had placed in thronelike chairs a few feet away from the stage.

He sang a lyrical revision of “Nancy with the Laughing Face,” retitled “Nancy with the Reagan Face.” Turning to the President’s wife, he said, “This is something special for our new first lady … I hope you like it, Nancy.” Craning to read the lyrics from a card in his hand, he made love to the music: “I’m so proud that you’re First Lady, Nancy, and so pleased that I’m sort of a chum/The next eight years will be fancy/as fancy as they come.”

Nancy cried.

So did the critics. With the exception of Clive Barnes in the New York Post, who pronounced the Sinatra gala gay and grand, most were repelled by what they saw.

“It looked like a cross between Dial-A-Joke and Hee Haw” said Rex Reed in the New York Daily News. “I feel America is the greatest country in the world and the greatest talents in our country should have been up there proving it. Instead, we got a parade of jerks, clowns, and no-talent mediocrities that made you look forward to the brassiere and toilet-cleaner commercials. Except for the Metropolitan Opera’s Grace Bumbry, the show had nothing to offer anyone with intelligence or a respect for quality.”

“For a celebration and cross-section of American bad taste, it was not all-inclusive, but not for lack of trying,” said Tom Shales in The Washington Post, dismissing the gala as “a tacky combination of a Hollywood awards show, a Kiwanis club talent contest, and a telethon stocked with fewer greats than near-greats and even more pure mediocrities.”

Mike Royko of the Chicago Sun-Times was stunned by the performance of Ben Vereen, whose painted-on blackface and big white lips jolted 1981 sensibilities.

“For sophistication, it would be hard to top having a shuffling, grimacing, bulging-eyed black man in bum’s clothing come out and do a minstrel routine in which he appeared to be brain-damaged,” Royko wrote. “You just don’t see that kind of sophisticated entertainment anymore—not since Stepin Fetchit died, and no other black actor came along who could so hilariously portray the dim-witted, gape-mouthed, obsequious black stereotype. It’s possible that this performance offended some black viewers, but it probably made many of the rich Republicans in the audience yearn for the days when you could get good domestic help.”

At the cocktail party before the show, Barbara Sinatra, wearing a black sequined flamenco dress, talked with her husband’s lawyer, Mickey Rudin, and Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, producer of the James Bond movies, saying that she thought politicians and actors were alike. “They’re both in a business under a lot of pressure,” she said. “Politicians need actors to help raise money. And it’s nice to be friends with somebody in office if there’s a problem in your hometown, in case you need a stoplight.”

The next day, wrapped in a new mink coat, Barbara, clutching her lawn ticket, took her designated place in front of the U.S. Capitol to watch the swearing-in ceremonies. Frank, enraged at being excluded from the chosen one hundred people given special passes by the Reagans, barged up the steps to take his place on the platform with members of the first family and select friends.

“Frank had not been invited to stand on the steps with the President and First Lady, but he bulldozed his way in anyway and took someone else’s place,” said a White House photographer. “He didn’t have an authorized ticket, but he ballsed his way through, ramming past the Secret Service and the Capitol police. No one had the nerve to stop him. No one!”  

 

Extract from His Way : The Unauthorised Biography of Frank Sinatra

by Kitty Kelley

(1986)