One minute she was missing her children and the next she was lusting for the wiry crooner with the icy blue eyes. Sinatra, whose ballads had once driven schoolgirls to shriek and even faint, was no longer a skinny kid but rather a middle-aged man with an expanding waist and a matching chip on his shoulder. But his charisma was unmistakable—and Margaret stared as he sauntered across the movie set, stepping over cables and around equipment, bringing with him an atmosphere of excitement and, yes, sex. She felt guilty for being there. The kids are fine with their grandmother, she thought, grateful that her mother, Catherine, had flown from Ohio to New York to take care of Lucy and Dwight. Catherine had been staying with Margaret’s sister, who was in the midst of a family crisis that made Margaret’s problems seem trifling by comparison—Margaret’s teenage niece, who’d always been somewhat troubled, had run away from home.

She mulled over all that, then resumed drooling over Sinatra. In this particular scene, Major Bennett Marco—played by Sinatra—was sweating. Standing at attention, ramrod straight, unblinking, but with a sheen on his forehead and upper lip that betrayed his nerves. Next to him, in front of the gathered crowd, Senator John Yerkes Iselin, played by James Gregory, glanced sideways at Marco, trying to assess his stability. Marco looked ready to hit him.

“You have something to say, soldier?”

“Cut!” John Frankenheimer, lanky and intense, sprang from his canvas director’s chair and shot an exasperated look at his crew. The actors broke character and exhaled.

“What was wrong with that?” Major Marco had lost his military poise and become once again Frank Sinatra, irritated and impatient.

“The boom was in the frame,” Frankenheimer said.

“Sorry!” yelled Joe Edmondson, the soundman.

“Let’s take ten,” Frankenheimer said. Sinatra glared at him, then looked around the set for a cigarette.

The set—a Senate hearing room—sat in the corner of an immense soundstage that housed various other sets for the film. In one section, the set designer had constructed a train car. In another, the first floor of a house. In the middle of it all stood the Spring Lake Hotel lobby, where a poster promised FUN WITH HYDRANGEAS. Dozens of lights hung from thick chains. Construction workers, crew members, makeup artists, caterers, executives, and others heard Frankenheimer’s announcement and began buzzing.

“Whatever happened to those wireless mikes you were working on?” Frankenheimer asked Edmondson. “These booms will be the death of me.”

“Still working on them. Last prototype was too staticky.”