A Year Without Frank

I thought for a moment that Larry Cullen might cry. He was sitting across from me at Matteo’s talking about the old days with Frank Sinatra. His voice choked and he stopped speaking and looked away.

I had never seen a maitre d’ cry before, although I have seen their eyes moisten when an actual living celebrity walked in or when a big tipper slid into a booth with his blond babe in tow wanting special services.

It was the first anniversary of Sinatra’s death and Cullen was feeling pretty emotional to begin with. This had been the singer’s favorite restaurant when he was in town, a comfortable Westwood place that attracts entertainers, sports figures and a politician or two.

“On the day he died,” Cullen said, talking about Frank, “the place was filled with television cameras, but today, nothing. It’s all in the past now.” That was when his voice choked. I was the best he could do.

Too bad because Cullen had been there since early morning dressing the place in black and orange to honor last week’s anniversary. Black was for mourning and orange was Frank’s favorite color.

A portrait of Sinatra hung near the entryway and his “Strangers in the Night” played in the background. Gardenias, his favorite flower, floated in little bowls on the tables. “Just think,” Cullen said, suddenly aware of the lonely world he now occupies, “it’s been a year without Frank.”

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Sinatra’s widow, Barbara, was there earlier in the day with close friends and an entourage of people who had cared for her husband: secretaries and maids and cooks and someone named Tony-O whose position was never made clear. They drank mimosas and tequila bloody Marys and talked about the old days.

Lunch upstairs was pasta with a braciola sauce and veal Milanese and little individual cheesecakes. Cullen showed me the exact spot where Frank used to smoke Camels on a tiled patio just outside the big room. We stood there for a moment sucking in the ambience and then went downstairs again.

The corner booth where Frank always sat was kept empty as I suspect it will be on each anniversary of his death. Candles burned on a table meticulously set and waiting. I couldn’t suppress the feeling that Frank might actually be there in spirit form, sipping Jack Daniels and nibbling on Italian peppers, the way he always had, kind of looking around and being cool.

Cullen had been Sinatra’s waiter for 24 years, taking care of him and keeping people away so the man could eat in peace. Now the maitre d’, he’s the kind of guy who hates it when things go wrong, dashing about like an Energizer Bunny, talking here, directing this, straightening that.

He speaks of the Old Days with Frank in a tone that verges on adoration, although he is tough enough and wise enough to be able to brood about a world without Sinatra and still take care of business.

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I was there because I wanted to see the beginning of an idol’s transformation from reality to legend, the way Elvis was elevated from bloated drug addict to American Icon. Will they come to Matteo’s someday to worship at the corner booth the way they kneel and pray at Graceland? Will “Fly Me to the Moon” assume the same liturgical plateau as “Heartbreak Hotel”?

In the HBO movie “The Rat Pack,” the Dean Martin character dismisses the Pack as “the cocktail of the moment,” hinting at how quickly they’ll be forgotten once their era passes. Except for Joey Bishop, the era has passed, leaving in its wake those who yearn for what they considered the Good Old Days, before computers and cell phones and confusing no-win wars.

We tend to elevate in death those who intrigue us in life, which is probably how Jesus got his start as a deity of note. These days those who intrigue us are in the business of sports or entertainment, but at least we are selective about the ones who endure. I doubt, for instance, that statues will ever be built to the Spice Girls, but Frank at least has a chance.

“They were fun times,” Cullen says of the Sinatra Era, remembering once when the singer sent his baked ziti back because the pasta wasn’t al dente. “I wasn’t going to be the one to tell him something baked was never al dente. I just took it back and brought him another one.” Cullen paused and stared at the corner booth, smiling beatifically. “He was happy.”

Al Martinez’s column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com