Essay: Frank Sinatra Has a Cold

Overview
Gay Talese's "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" is a tightly observed profile published in Esquire in 1966 that captures both a man and the machinery of his fame. The piece opens with the striking sentence "Frank Sinatra has a cold," and from that unadorned fact Talese unfolds a portrait of Sinatra's vanished availability, formidable reputation, and the porous boundary between the public star and his private life. Rather than a straightforward interview, the article assembles a chorus of voices and scenes that sketch Sinatra's presence by the way others react to him.
Talese treats absence as revealing: Sinatra's voice, canceled appearances, and reluctant interviews are the negative space that defines his power. The narrative moves through rooms, hotel suites, studios, barber shops, and through relationships, friends, protectors, lovers, employees, so that Sinatra emerges less as a single, knowable personality and more as an effect generated by his entourage and by the myths that cling to him.

Reporting and Method
Denied formal access, Talese practiced patient, meticulous reporting, cultivating conversations with people in Sinatra's orbit rather than with Sinatra himself. He reconstructs scenes from the recollections of chauffeurs, secretaries, musicians, fans, and nightclub staff, weaving those accounts into vivid set pieces that feel immediate and lived. Dialogue and detail are rendered with such specificity that the reader experiences events directly, a hallmark of the New Journalism style Talese helped popularize.
Talese's prose is cinematic and exacting: small physical details, a cigarette held a certain way, the arrangement of a room, the cadence of a dismissive line, are used as evidence. Instead of pronouncing judgments, he lets these particulars accumulate until a larger, more complex image of Sinatra is revealed: charismatic, capricious, generous, and commanding.

Portrait and Scenes
The essay juxtaposes scenes of Sinatra's glamour and the everyday mechanics that sustain it. Talese describes Sinatra's entourage, the businesslike choreography of travel and performance, and the protective rituals that surround the star. Moments of tenderness and cruelty coexist; anecdotes show generosity to close friends and a quick temper toward those who cross him, while fans and rivals circulate stories that amplify his mythic status.
Sinatra's artistry and the anxieties about it are also present: his voice is both instrument and icon, subject to the frailties of age, illness, and mood. Talese frames the "cold" as more than a physical ailment; it becomes a symbol of the precariousness of a career built on persona and presence. The narrative does not resolve Sinatra into a single explanation but allows contradictions, his vulnerability and his supremacy, to stand side by side.

Legacy and Impact
"Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" is widely regarded as a landmark of literary journalism. Its techniques, portraiture through peripheral observation, scene-setting, and a novelist's attention to detail, helped redefine what a magazine profile could accomplish. The piece influenced generations of profile writers and remains a touchstone for anyone trying to capture a public figure without relying on easy access.
Beyond craft, the essay endures because it depicts the dynamics of celebrity with clarity and restraint. It shows how fame creates a net of handlers, stories, and rituals that can be as defining as the person at the center, and it demonstrates the power of patient reporting to reveal the shape of a life through the lives it touches.