![\"FrankSinatraHarlanEllison\"](\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/FrankSinatraHarlanEllison.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nIn addition to Tom Wolfe’s “The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson, Yes!” (which I’d read over over again in the collection The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby<\/i> back in college when I thought I was going to follow in Wolfe’s footsteps) and Norman Mailer’s “Superman Comes to the Supermarket” (which is not about the superhero, but rather the Kennedy\/Nixon debate), they’ve posted the full text of Gay Talese’s classic personality piece from the April 1966 issue, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.”<\/a><\/p>\n For those of you who’ve never read the piece and don’t understand why you should care, well, aside from the fact that it’s wonderfully written, it also includes a cameo by Harlan Ellison, who went head-to-head with the Chairman of the Board and lived to tell the tale.<\/p>\n Here’s how the encounter begins, as described about a quarter of the way into the essay:<\/p>\n Frank Sinatra, leaning against the stool, sniffling a bit from his cold, could not take his eyes off the Game Warden boots. Once, after gazing at them for a few moments, he turned away; but now he was focused on them again. The owner of the boots, who was just standing in them watching the pool game, was named Harlan Ellison, a writer who had just completed work on a screenplay, The Oscar<\/i>.<\/p>\n Finally Sinatra could not contain himself.<\/p>\n “Hey,” he yelled in his slightly harsh voice that still had a soft, sharp edge. “Those Italian boots?”<\/p>\n “No,” Ellison said.<\/p>\n “Spanish?”<\/p>\n “No.”<\/p>\n “Are they English boots?”<\/p>\n “Look, I donno, man,” Ellison shot back, frowning at Sinatra, then turning away again.<\/p>\n Now the poolroom was suddenly silent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n