The Siege of Sinatra

Great Frank Sinatra story I’d never heard before:

It was hardly the right moment for Sinatra to get up on stage at Melbourne’s Festival Hall and describe Australia’s female journalists as “buck-and-a-half hookers”.

A furious Australian press howled for blood. Sinatra refused to apologise and sparked an extraordinary chain of events that resulted in the cancellation of Sinatra’s second Melbourne concert, a black ban of his private jet by airport refuellers and a three-day siege at Sydney’s Boulevard Hotel. […]

Sinatra even suggested calling the admiral on board the American aircraft carrier in Tokyo Bay and asking him to sail into Sydney Harbour and send a helicopter to land on the roof of the Boulevard.

★ Thursday, 5 December 2013