For George Jacobs, 86, whose business card proclaimed him "The Last of the Rat Pack," there were some very good years. From 1953 to 1968, he was Frank Sinatra's valet, traveling companion and pal, a gentleman's gentleman who poured the Jack Daniels at cocktail time and stayed all night to play poker.
In Palm Springs and Bel-Air, he cooked the pasta, pressed the suits, found the girls. Sinatra cried on his shoulder about his lost love, Ava Gardner. Marilyn Monroe cried on his shoulder about Sinatra.
The product of a rough-and-tumble background, Jacobs got up close with global figures. He had a spirited talk about women with John F. Kennedy while giving the future president a massage. Sinatra's mobster friend Sam Giancana joked about trying to hire him away.
"It was an amazing trip, and even more amazing that a poor black kid from Louisiana like me got to take it," he wrote in "Mr. S: My Life With Frank Sinatra," a 2003 memoir he co-wrote with William Stadiem.
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