Sinatra’s Biographer Is Doing It Her Way : The Author Defends Research While Others Claim That Book Is Based on Lurid Gossip

The insults and accusations are rolling in.

Elizabeth Taylor has told New York Daily News columnist Liz Smith that Kitty Kelley “is no lady. She is not even a writer but a fabricator.”

Taylor was referring to Kelley’s new book, “His Way, the Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra,” in which the author writes that Taylor had an abortion after Sinatra got her pregnant. Millions have already read about that in the People magazine excerpts of the book.

Mia Farrow, one of Sinatra’s ex-wives, was equally miffed by the book, saying via her publicist that “the references as to how Frank Sinatra treated me”--throwing furniture out the window and being otherwise impolite to her--”are absolutely untrue,” even if they, too, were in People magazine.

Frank Sinatra Jr., who is among the 857 people Kelley says she interviewed for the book, is depicted as the forgotten child. His response: “All lies. Any facts are coincidental.”

Sinatra himself has said, through a publicist, that “comment might be delayed because it is hard to complete reading a boring book. From what we understand a lot of the material is regurgitated.”

All this, and only the third day of publication!

First Commandment of the book biz: Anything that makes people who are this famous this mad this quickly is going to pique people’s interest. According to Bantam Books Vice President Stuart Applebaum, after three days on the market the book is “probably the fastest-selling hardback” in the company’s history, which includes best-selling autobiographies of Lee Iacocca and Chuck Yeager. “His Way” is already in its fourth printing, Applebaum said, with 672,000 copies.

Bantam has paid Kelley $1.6 million, which says gobs about its expectations for the $21.95 book.

As celebrities seethed, Kitty Kelley strolled through her office, displaying at least 1,000 file folders on Sinatra. Kelley, 44, is a former teacher, World’s Fair hostess, Eugene McCarthy aide, magazine free-lancer and researcher for the Washington Post (where she departed in controversial circumstances).

Cache of Information

These thousand folders are Kelley’s tickets to respectability. They are stuffed with items more precious than Liz Taylor diamonds-- information ! And all of it about Sinatra.

Many of the people Kelley interviewed are not public figures. There is, for example, the wife of a cameraman for one of Ava Gardner’s films, who was quoted as saying she accompanied the actress to England for an abortion.

Gardner, then married to Sinatra, said she had the abortion because “she hated Frankie so much,” according to the cameraman’s wife, a quote that also made People magazine.

Mention the word gossip to Kelley, and her girlish giggle transforms to a near-growl, which she performs equally well.

“There’s no gossip in the book,” said Kelley, who, when being interviewed eight years ago about her unauthorized biography of Jacqueline Onassis, said, “If it hadn’t been for gossip, we wouldn’t have three books of the Bible because Mark, Luke and John never knew Jesus. They wrote 100 years after the guy died. At least I got to people who are still kicking.”

The Sinatra book is filled with accounts of alleged extramarital affairs, abortions, suicide attempts, Mafia brawls and a car being run off the road.

There is one file in Kelley’s office, she pointed out, that footnotes every single sentence in the 509-page biography. The book itself contains 18 pages of source notes.

Kelley seems to want, more than anything, respect for this four-year effort--something that seemed to elude her after her spicy biographies of Jacqueline Onassis in 1978 and Elizabeth Taylor in 1981.

And Kelley gets respect in many quarters.

“No matter what else anybody tries to say about Kitty,” said Peter Range, her friend and a diplomatic correspondent for U.S. News and World Report, “she’s a deadly serious researcher who doesn’t do quick, gossipy books. She is first, last and always a reporter.”

Range said that he has never read any of her books “all the way through because I’m not interested in these people. But the work she does reminds me of the work we do on a cover story, voluminous detail and unstinting effort to get every last interview, especially the hardest ones.”

‘A Good Researcher’

And her former boss at the Washington Post, then editorial page editor Philip Geyelin, said that he had “no quarrel with the actual work she was doing,” which was gathering research material for editorial writers, as well as secretarial work. “She was a good researcher,” Geyelin said. But Geyelin said he was forced to dismiss Kelley over a matter of trust.

It was at the Post that Kelley had her first job in the general field of writing, arriving in 1969 after spending four years working in the Capitol Hill Office of Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-Minn.), primarily as a press aide. Kelley had a history of moving around, having attended the University of Arizona and Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., before obtaining a bachelor of arts and a teaching certificate in 1964 from the University of Washington, near her hometown, Spokane. Kelley had grown up there as the oldest of seven children, attending Catholic schools.

Kelley taught school briefly in Seattle, “and that didn’t last very long,” she said, “because I was teaching in what they call a culturally deprived area, a ghetto. It was very demanding work and I decided I wasn’t ready for that yet. It was really 24 hours emotionally, physically.

“So I took advantage of an opportunity to go to New York City and work in the World’s Fair as a VIP hostess for General Electric. I gave coffee to visiting CEOs (corporate executive officers), the president of AT&T;, movie stars and whoever got to go to the VIP lounge.” At the fair, she met the man who would become her husband in 1976, writer Michael Edgley.

Soon the idea of becoming involved in politics lured Kelley to Washington, where she worked for four years for McCarthy. She left after McCarthy’s failed presidential bid and headed for a different kind of job at the Washington Post.

Energetic Note Taker

Kelley worked at the Post for two years before Geyelin became suspicious of her energetic note-taking in meetings of the editorial staff.

“I asked for her resignation and received it,” Geyelin told The Times. “It became apparent she was taking notes during the editorial conference that had nothing to do with her research assignments and strongly suggested that she was collecting string for some other purpose, such as a book about, I guess, Katharine Graham,” the chairman of the board of the Washington Post Co.

“(Mrs. Graham) was a frequent participant in the editorial conference,” Geyelin said. “The notes definitely included statements by Mrs. Graham that were no part of Kitty Kelley’s responsibility.”

Kelley disputed this version of her tenure at the Post.

“I do not remember Phil Geyelin asking me to resign at all,” Kelley said. “I did take copious notes, indeed. That was my job.

“What I do remember is a great deal of bad blood between Geyelin and (Executive Editor) Ben Bradlee. I got into a cross fire between Phil Geyelin and Ben Bradlee.”

Kelley said the problem stemmed primarily from Bradlee’s use of her to research the Pentagon Papers story, which took her away from the editorial staff.

“I never had any cross fire with Bradlee,” Geyelin said. “The Pentagon Papers didn’t have anything to do with my decision.”

Bradlee agreed with Geyelin’s recollection, denying there had been any cross fire, and said, “As far as getting caught in a cross fire, that’s off the wall. She got canned.”

After leaving the Post in 1971 Kelley embarked on a free-lance writing career, displaying an apparent ability to get people to open up to her in interview situations, sometimes to their great regret. A Washingtonian magazine article on Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) in 1974, less than two years after his wife had been killed in an auto accident, had the grief-stricken senator showing Kelley pictures of his late wife in a bikini, saying, “she looks better than a Playboy bunny, doesn’t she?” He also made allusions to their sex life. When the article surfaced Biden was said to be furious about it. Washingtonian Editor Jack Limpert recalled that the magazine received many complaints from Biden’s staff, “but he never claimed he was actually misquoted,” Limpert said, “only that he had thought some of his comments were not part of the actual interview, something to that effect.” This sort of thing happens again and again to Kelley, who can seem like your best friend the moment you meet her.

Leap to Book Writing

Kelley made the leap to books, writing “The Glamour Spas” in 1975, and then her first biography, “Jackie Oh!” in 1978.

Kelley followed the controversial Onassis book, which revealed Jackie’s electroshock treatments, with another big seller in 1981, “Elizabeth Taylor: The Last Star.” Pulitzer Prize-winning reviewer Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post found that book “a bore . . . relying almost entirely on secondary sources and the testimony of persons barely within genuflecting distance of the Taylor throne.”

Some people were nicer about it. In a review in the Los Angeles Times, film and television writer/producer William Dozier said the Taylor tome was “meticulously researched and properly lurid.” And, of course, the book made money.

Next up for Kelley was Sinatra. But this time Kelley apparently decided that she was fed up with being labeled a gossip just because these subjects had refused to be interviewed by her.

She eagerly showed a reporter the file room and repeatedly mentioned her attention to facts.

In the room, there is a separate file on every month of Frank Sinatra’s life. “It starts in 1915,” she said.

Is she kidding?

“I’m not kidding. I didn’t do this book to kid,” Kelley said as she pointed to her source material. “These are all the name files, in alphabetical order. There are movie files, a few Mafia files, subject files, parents and kids files. Wife files here. Financial files, gambling files, music files. We can’t not mention the music files!

“Then we have general research files and we have photo files and oh, excuse me, I forgot these, we have Hoboken files. And we have legal files.”

Suit Withdrawn

One of the legal matters concerned Sinatra and Kelley herself. In 1983 in Los Angeles, Sinatra filed a $2-million suit against Kelley, but dropped it a year later. The suit alleged that Sinatra owned his own story, and that Kelley was misrepresenting herself as Sinatra’s authorized biographer, or at least someone who had his blessing, when she sought interviews.

Writers’ groups such as the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the National Writers’ Union rallied to Kelley’s side, fearing that if Sinatra were to win the suit, no journalist could ever write anything again without the permission of the subject.

As for the allegation that Kelley misrepresented herself, she vehemently denies this.

One thing Kelley clearly has done is make herself a millionaire.

Limpert has printed several of Kelley’s articles in the Washingtonian and said, “It’s absolutely shocking to a lot of Washington journalists that this blonde they knew all these years is getting a million dollars to do this book, while respectable journalists are getting $35,000,” for their books on serious, lofty subjects.

Kelley’s response: “Money has never been a motivating factor in my life, ever.”

The author lives with her husband of 10 years, Edgley, in a lavishly decorated Georgetown Victorian that has a historical landmark plaque next to the front door, marking its birth at circa 1807. Petunias spill from window boxes and an American flag hangs from the railing.

Kelley’s controversial reputation is due largely to the intimate subject matter that turns up in the books. Reviewing the Onassis book for the Washington Post, Katharine Evans said she was “outraged that writers and publishers cash in with offerings like this.”

As for the intimate nature of her books, Kelley replied, “this (Sinatra) is a man who has defined sexuality for a generation. So of course it’s absolutely legitimate subject matter.”

Kelley doesn’t know if she will ever actually meet Sinatra.

“I don’t know,” she said, “I’d like to, very much.”