Sources and Acknowledgments

This is a work of fiction, but obviously many of the characters and events depicted are real. In addition, some of the dialogue is from actual conversations. Resources from which I drew information, inspiration, and sometimes dialogue include, in alphabetical order:

Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard, by Russell Miller. London: Sphere, 1987.

Breaking My Silence: Confessions of a Rat Pack Party Girl and Sex-Trade Survivor, by Jane McCormick with Patti Wicklund. St. Paul, MN: Rapfire Press, 2007.

The Cinema of John Frankenheimer, by Gerald Pratley. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1969.

The Dark Heart of Hollywood: Glamour, Guns and Gambling Inside the Mafia’s Global Empire, by Douglas Thompson. London: Mainstream Publishing, 2013.

Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams, by Nick Tosches. New York: Dell, 1992.

Double Cross: The Explosive Inside Story of the Mobster Who Controlled America, by Sam and Chuck Giancana. New York: Warner, 1992.

Frank: The Voice, by James Kaplan. New York: Doubleday, 2010.

Frank Sinatra: A Life in Pictures, edited by Yann-Brice Dherbier. London: Pavilion, 2011.

Frank Sinatra: An American Legend, by Nancy Sinatra. Santa Monica, CA: General Publishing Group, 1998.

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, by Lawrence Wright. New York: Knopf, 2013.

Handsome Johnny: The Life and Death of Johnny Rosselli, by Lee Server. New York: St. Martin’s, 2018.

His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra, by Kitty Kelley. New York: Bantam, 1986.

Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion, by Janet Reitman. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.

JFK and Sam: The Connection Between the Giancana and Kennedy Assassinations, by Antoinette Giancana, John R. Hughes, D. M. Ozon, and Thomas H. Jobe. Nashville, TN: Cumberland House, 2005.

The Manchurian Candidate, by Greil Marcus. London: British Film Institute, 2002.

Mr. S: My Life with Frank Sinatra, by George Jacobs and William Stadiem. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. (Please note, the offensive songs Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. sing to each other in the book are from here.)

My Story, by Judith Exner as told to Ovid Demaris. London: Circus/Futura, 1977. (Conversations with Sinatra, Kennedy, and Giancana, as well as the Kennedy phone numbers, are taken from this book.)

The Power and the Glitter: The Hollywood-Washington Connection, by Ronald Brownstein. New York: Pantheon, 1990.

Rat Pack Confidential, by Shawn Levy. London: Fourth Estate, 2002. (The Formosa and Giancana transcript is taken from this book.)

Robert Kennedy and His Times, by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. New York: Ballantine, 1978.

Sammy: An Autobiography, by Sammy Davis Jr. and Jane and Burt Boyar. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000.

Sinatra: All or Nothing at All, documentary film by Alex Gibney, produced by Alcon Television Group, Jigsaw Productions, and the Kennedy/Marshall Company, 2015.

Sinatra: Behind the Legend, by J. Randy Taraborrelli. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2015.