Frank Sinatra, film still from “Tony Rome,” 1967. Photo: Silver Screen Collection (Getty).
Nearly half a decade ago, author Gay Talese traveled to Los Angeles on an assignment for Esquire magazine to profile Frank Sinatra. The only problem was, the iconic singer had not agreed to be interviewed.
The piece that ran the following year (April 1966), titled “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” became renowned as one of the greatest magazine articles of all time and a sterling example of the sort of writing that would be known as New Journalism. Though Talese never spoke with Sinatra himself, through trailing the man over three months and speaking with as many people around him as he could — his friends, business associates, family and all the rest circling his fame — an all time classic profile was born, using the lack of access to an advantage.
“I may not get the piece we’d hoped for—the real Frank Sinatra,” Talese wrote in a letter to his editor Harold Hayes, “but perhaps, by not getting it—and by getting rejected constantly and by seeing his flunkies protecting his flanks—we will be getting close to the truth about the man.”
Now 70 years since Sinatra recorded his first studio album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra, and nearly 50 years since that legendary profile ran, one asks himself: Would a piece like this be possible today? So much has changed in over this time, bringing an incredible shift in the manner of access (or lack thereof) that the public has with almost any celebrity figure.
Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow at Masked Ball in Santa Monica, 1965. Photo: Keystone-France (Getty).
While modern journalists often lament overbearing publicists that might prevent some of the more honest and personal interview experiences of the past (for a cinematic version, think Almost Famous), Talese was faced with essentially the same issue only greater. It’s not that he only got 30 minutes with his subject, it’s that the guy wouldn’t even speak with him.
But that other people would speak with Talese is key to his story. Surely, not everyone was entirely forthcoming, but they were also less tainted then by the world of celebrity “journalism” than our culture is today. In the modern climate of gossip blogs battling with supermarket magazines for the most instantly salacious headline, it’s easy to imagine that sources like those Talese acquired would almost certainly be too suspicious to speak with any journalist or would expect some financial benefit for doing so.
Without going on a luddite’s rant about modern technology and the culture of self-promotion and vanity that social media has created, it’s worth pointing out the vast difference in reporting today as compared to years prior. Entertainment news is very often celebrity news now and it spreads quickly based on what’s often fairly innocuous content. In a week, it seems, dozens of news pieces are culled solely from a famous somebody’s post to Twitter or Instagram. These are public pronouncements, obsessively aggregated by news outlets. Throw reality shows into the mix and there’s a decent claim that the access we have today is full on, in contrast to the challenge Talese faced trailing a reclusive Sinatra. But there are also similarities in that all this new media is controlled by the entertainer and his or her team — it’s their choice what they tell us, but whose questions are they answering?
When examining the cultural climate, though, we ought to also look inward as an audience. It’s not just that journalists’ access to celebrities has changed in varying ways, but it’s also what we have come to expect from them — which, in a way, is everything. Do we have the patience for an article that doesn’t interview its subject? Or would we click through to the more salacious, digestible news post next to it?
