'My Life With Frank Sinatra'

From the early '50s to late '60s, the best guy a person could know may have been Frank Sinatra, according to George Jacobs.

After almost 35 years of silence, Jacobs writes of the parties, the people, and the places he saw as personal valet and confidant to Sinatra in "Mr. S: My Life with Frank Sinatra," which he wrote with William Stadiem.

In it, Jacobs provides a look at a womanizing Sinatra who pursued some of the most famous women of Hollywood - Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner and actress Grace Kelly who was to become Princess Grace of Monaco.

Jacobs tells The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith his relationship with Sinatra was more like that of a father and son.

"He treated me more like family," Jacobs says. "I was not treated like a servant. He expected me to do everything. I was there for him. If the phone rang, he wouldn't answer the phone; I did. We got along very well. But if he got angry, he had the right to get angry. He would laugh at me and say something funny. Aggravate me, 'What do you think you're doing? Hey, Spook, what do you think you're doing," Jacobs says noting being called "Spook" "was like a joke. More like a compliment. It didn't bother me."

Jacobs worked with Sinatra from '58 to '68 but his relationship with the "Chairman of the Board" ended when Jacobs was rumored to have had an affair with Sinatra's third wife, Mia Farrow.

Jacobs says, "I danced with Mia Farrow in a nightclub. He sent me from Palm Springs to L.A. to pick up Ava and take her to a concert at a restaurant. I stopped off to pick her up out of this little club and Mia was in there dancing. She was practically stumbling. She grabbed me and started dancing. Some little columnist, I think it was, was in the paper the next morning. He freaked."

And Jacobs was gone. He says, "When I got back to Palm Springs, he was screaming. I never thought he would do something like that."

When asked what was the relationship like between Sinatra and Farrow, Jacobs says, "She was 19. I don't know; it wasn't a very close relationship. She was happy and in love. I don't know. It was very strange."

The love of Sinatra's life was Ava Gardner, the woman Sinatra left first wife Nancy Barbato for. Jacobs says, "He loved her until he died. He thought about it. Took care of her till she died." But the marriage did not work out because he wanted a wife to stay at home and have kids. And Ava had a life of her own and wanted to keep living it."

Jacobs says, "Ava was a big star when he met her. He got a lot of breaks because Ava was out there working all the time. He wanted her to be closer. She couldn't handle that."

Jacobs also writes about Sinatra's relationship with Marilyn Monroe after her divorce from Joe Dimaggio. Jacobs says he doesn't know whether they two had an affair. The boss "dated quite a few of beautiful ladies. They were all treated very well. When he had company around, the children would never come and visit, when he had dates or anything. That was a no-no. The children, he saw them at their house and Nancy would cook two or three times a month for him. He'd go over and have a little party with their graduations and birthdays and stuff like that. And if he had guests in the house, no, the kids couldn't come down. But if they used the house, he would go somewhere else," Jacobs says.

When asked if Sinatra had an affair with Princess Grace, Jacobs says, "He did a movie with her and he dated her, but I don't know." Though Sinatra went to Monaco a couple of times, Jacobs says it was to support her charity work as Princess Grace of Monaco and noted, "Prince Ranier (Grace's husband) was a good friend of his."

Jacobs describes Sinatra as "very serious, very well-read. When he had problems, he wouldn't say much of anything. He would sit and think a lot." Jacobs says he does not think his boss was jealous of anybody.