what was frank's scene like with lesbian and gay friends? did he have many of them? did he or they ever talk about each other?
this is a great question that i sort of feel like i don’t have enough concrete information to answer, but i’ll present what i have and you can take it from there.
frank sinatra had a steadfast, lifelong policy of live and let live. it sounds shallow, but he actually lived it. it was that deceptively simple idea that influenced a lot of his politics and his social liberalism. he felt that, if you weren’t deliberately hurting another person, you should be able to do whatever you want. in a way, i think he took this mindset almost too far when you look at some of the more unsavory people he befriended–and not just mobsters.
in terms of lgbqp friends, he absolutely had them and some of them were very close friends. he absolutely adored montgomery clift. greta garbo stayed in his home (with his wife!). he slept with and was good friends with marlene dietrich. he was friends with cole porter, noel coward, joan crawford, jeff chandler. he was very close with cary grant. billie holiday was his hero, and he also greatly admired ethel waters. additionally, he worked (and got along) with people such as laurence harvey, marlon brando, and many others i would assume.
additionally, sammy davis jr is believed to have been bisexual, and there has been similar speculation about ava gardner.
which brings me to my next point–just because some of these people were lgbpq, doesn’t mean they were out to frank, or out at all. i honestly have no idea whether sammy would have talked to frank about a male conquest–and i don’t think there’s any way to know that for sure. they certainly seemed to talk about pretty much everything else. some of the people i listed were out, and frank had to have known about their same gender relationships. however, that also doesn’t mean he ever discussed it with them, and that’s another thing i have no way of knowing. it’s generally my belief that frank was very accepting of homosexuality/bisexuality, but i don’t want to let him off the hook and declare that without more sufficient proof.
he did sing the lyrics “boys with boys/and girls with girls do it” at a show once (it was a parody of let’s do it written by sammy cahn). he also made the film the detective, which many look at today and think of as overtly homophobic and thus assign that trait to frank. they’re right about the film being homophobic, and not standing up today in any way. however, look more closely. frank’s character bristles against the other cops’ slurs and homophobic remarks throughout the entire film, and at one point makes a “live and let live” type remark that sounds like it’s straight out of frank’s mouth. he’s pretty much the only cop in the whole film that treats any of the gay characters with kindness and decency, and that point is not subtle. i’m positive frank took the role in part to say something about that–he had a history of making political statements in his films, actually.
on the negative side, we know that he called johnny mathis “the african queen” on stage, and made the same joke about sammy. people who haven’t listened to their shows carefully might not realize it, but a great deal of rat pack humor is centered around homosexuality/gay men. a lot of it is actually quite flirty and not dismissive in its tone, and then other parts are. so there’s that.
lastly, in regards to monty, i will say that someone told me years ago that frank snubbed monty when he came onto frank and that ended their friendship. for one thing, i don’t think their friendship ever really ended as he visited the set of the misfits and spoke nothing but the kindest possible words about monty for his entire life. monty was also the sole individual that frank thanked when he won his oscar. so anyway, i actually went looking for this story in preparation for answering your question. here’s what patricia bosworth’s biography of monty says:
to me that could read as homophobia related, but it could also read as sinatra protecting monty from shaming/criticism. so, you be the judge i suppose.
so what i would say is, being a straight man in his era, frank was more accepting of lgbpq individuals than most, and formed close relationships with those people throughout his life. that doesn’t mean he never made any homophobic remarks, but i don’t think he specifically had anything against gayness and i do believe that his philosophy of life would have prevented him from being deliberately cruel to anyone because of their sexual orientation.
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