Frank Sinatra, holding a glass of bourbon in one hand and a cigarette in the other, stood in a dark corner of the bar between two attractive but fading blondes who sat waiting for him to say something.
So begins “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” Gay Talese’s legendary profile of Ol’ Blue Eyes, who refused to be interviewed.
For Neiman Storyboard, Talese has gone back and annotated the piece, which changed the face of not only celebrity profiles but also creative longform journalism as a whole.