New York: NY: Taschen (2015)

Limited Edition. Signed.

One of 5000 numbered copies signed by Gay Talese, housed in a brown paper board slip case with decoration.

“Sinatra with a cold is Picasso without paint, Ferrari without fuel — only worse. For the common cold robs Sinatra of that uninsurable jewel, his voice, cutting into the core of his confidence.” —Gay Talese

In the winter of 1965, writer Gay Talese set out for Los Angeles with an assignment from Esquire to write a major profile on Frank Sinatra. When he arrived, he found the singer and his vigilant entourage on the defensive: Sinatra was under the weather, not available, and not willing to be interviewed.

Undeterred, Talese stayed on in L.A., believing Sinatra might recover and reconsider, and used the meantime to observe the star from a careful distance and to interview his friends, associates, family members, and hangers-on. Sinatra never did grant the one-on-one he had hoped for, but Talese’s tenacity paid off: his profile Frank Sinatra Has a Cold went down in history as a tour de force of literary nonfiction and the advent of the “New Journalism.” Its incisive portrait of Sinatra in the recording studio, on location, out on the town, and with the eponymous cold, revealed as much about a singular star persona as it did about the Hollywood machine.

In this Collector’s Edition, Frank Sinatra Has a Cold is published in traditional letterpress, with an introduction by Gay Talese and facsimile reproductions of manuscript pages, correspondence, and original storyboard, revealing the making of this New Journalism marvel. To complete the Sinatra picture, the text and archival material is interwoven with photographs of Sinatra from the legendary lens of Phil Stern, the only photographer granted access to Sinatra over four decades, as well as from top photojournalists of the ’60s including John Bryson, John Dominis, and Terry O’Neill. Reproduced in rich duotone, the photographs compliment Talese’s character study by documenting the many complex facets of Sinatra: the voice, the showman, the doting father, the Hollywood magnet, and the man with, in his own words, an “over-acute capacity for sadness as well as elation.”

Collector’s Edition of 5,000 numbered copies, each signed by Gay Talese
Silkscreened hardcover with embossed paper case
Letterpress printed on natural uncoated paper
Facsimile reproductions of Gay Talese’s original storyboard and manuscript pages

The author

Gay Talese joined the staff of The New York Times in 1955 and remained there for a decade. During the 1960s and 1970s he contributed many articles to magazines, principally Esquire. Talese is the best-selling author of eleven books including Thy Neighbor’s Wife, Honor Thy Father, and A Writer’s Life. He lives in New York City.

The photographer

Phil Stern (1919–2014) was one of the preeminent photographers of Hollywood’s golden age, shooting for Look, Life, and Colliers, and working as a “special photographer” on the set of over 100 feature films, including Some Like It Hot, West Side Story, and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?