Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra,  /sɨˈnɑːtrə/, (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and film actor of Italian origin.

 

Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra found unprecedented success as a solo artist from the early to mid-1940s after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the "bobby soxers", he released his first album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra in 1946. His professional career had stalled by the 1950s, but it was reborn in 1953 after he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in From Here to Eternity.

 

He signed with Capitol Records in 1953 and released several critically lauded albums (such as In the Wee Small Hours, Songs for Swingin' Lovers, Come Fly with Me, Only the Lonely and Nice 'n' Easy). Sinatra left Capitol to found his own record label, Reprise Records in 1961 (finding success with albums such as Ring-a-Ding-Ding!, Sinatra at the Sands and Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim), toured internationally, was a founding member of the Rat Pack and fraternized with celebrities and statesmen, including John F. Kennedy. Sinatra turned 50 in 1965, recorded the retrospective September of My Years, starred in the Emmy-winning television special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music, and scored hits with "Strangers in the Night" and "My Way".

 

With sales of his music dwindling and after appearing in several poorly received films, Sinatra retired for the first time in 1971. Two years later, however, he came out of retirement and in 1973 recorded several albums, scoring a Top 40 hit with "(Theme From) New York, New York" in 1980. Using his Las Vegas shows as a home base, he toured both within the United States and internationally, until a short time before his death in 1998.

 

Sinatra also forged a highly successful career as a film actor, winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in From Here to Eternity, a nomination for Best Actor for The Man with the Golden Arm, and critical acclaim for his performance in The Manchurian Candidate. He also starred in such musicals as High Society, Pal Joey, Guys and Dolls and On the Town. Sinatra was honored at the Kennedy Center Honors in 1983 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan in 1985 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1997. Sinatra was also the recipient of eleven Grammy Awards, including the Grammy Trustees Award, Grammy Legend Award and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

 

Early life

Born December 12, 1915, in Hoboken, NJ, Sinatra was the only child of Italian immigrants Natalie Della (Garaventa) and Antonino Martino Sinatra, and was raised Roman Catholic.In his book Try and Stop Me (p. 218), American publisher and writer Bennett Cerf says that Sinatra's father was a lightweight boxer who fought under the name Marty O'Brien and was a member of the Hoboken fire brigade. Sinatra left high school without graduating, having attended only 47 days before being expelled because of his rowdy conduct. Sinatra's father, often referred to as Marty, served with the Hoboken Fire Department as a Captain. His mother, known as Dolly, was influential in the neighborhood and in local Democratic Party circles, but also ran an illegal abortion business from her home; she was arrested several times and convicted twice for this offense.During the Great Depression, Dolly nevertheless provided money to her son for outings with friends and expensive clothes. In 1938, Sinatra was arrested for carrying on with a married woman, a criminal offense at the time. For his livelihood, he worked as a delivery boy at the Jersey Observer newspaper,and later as a riveter at the Tietjan and Lang shipyard,[but music was Sinatra's main interest, and he listened carefully to big band jazz.He began singing for tips at the age of eight, standing on top of the bar at a local nightclub in Hoboken. Sinatra began singing professionally as a teenager in the 1930s,although he learned music by ear and never learned how to read music.

 

Personal life

Sinatra had three children, Nancy, Frank Jr., and Tina, all with his first wife, Nancy Sinatra (née Barbato) (m. 1939–1951). He was married three more times, to actresses Ava Gardner (m. 1951–1957), Mia Farrow (m. 1966–1968), and finally to Barbara Marx (m. 1976-1998; his death).

 

Throughout his life, Sinatra had mood swings and bouts of depression. Solitude and unglamorous surroundings were to be avoided at all cost. He struggled with the conflicting need "to get away from it all, but not too far away."He acknowledged this, telling an interviewer in the 1950s: "Being an 18-karat manic depressive, and having lived a life of violent emotional contradictions, I have an over-acute capacity for sadness as well as elation."In her memoirs My Father's Daughter, his daughter Tina wrote about the "eighteen-karat" remark: "As flippant as Dad could be about his mental state, I believe that a Zoloft a day might have kept his demons away. But that kind of medicine was decades off."

 

Although beloved as a hero by his hometown of Hoboken, Frank Sinatra rarely visited it. According to one account, Sinatra returned once in 1948 to celebrate the election of Hoboken's first Italian mayor and was not well received by the crowd. He stated he would never come back, and in fact did not return until 1984, to appear with Ronald Reagan.

 

Alleged organized crime links

Sinatra garnered considerable attention due to his alleged personal and professional links with organized crime,including figures such as Carlo Gambino, Sam Giancana,Lucky Luciano, and Joseph Fischetti.The Federal Bureau of Investigation kept records amounting to 2,403 pages on Sinatra. With his alleged Mafia ties, his ardent New Deal politics and his friendship with John F. Kennedy, he was a natural target for J. Edgar Hoover's FBI.The FBI kept Sinatra under surveillance for almost five decades beginning in the 1940s. The documents include accounts of Sinatra as the target of death threats and extortion schemes. They also portray rampant paranoia and strange obsessions at the FBI and reveal nearly every celebrated Sinatra foible and peccadillo.

 

For a year Hoover investigated Sinatra's alleged Communist affiliations, but found no evidence. The files include his rendezvous with prostitutes, and his extramarital affair with Ava Gardner, which preceded their marriage. Celebrities mentioned in the files are Dean Martin, Marilyn Monroe, Peter Lawford, and Giancana's girlfriend, singer Phyllis McGuire.

 

The FBI's secret dossier on Sinatra was released in 1998 in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.

 

The released FBI files reveal some tantalizing insights into Sinatra’s lifetime consistency in pursuing and embracing seemingly conflicting affiliations. But Sinatra’s alliances had a practical aspect. They were adaptive mechanisms for behavior motivated by self-interest and inner anxieties. In September 1950 Sinatra felt particularly vulnerable. He was in a panic over his moribund career and haunted by the continual speculations and innuendos in circulation regarding his draft status in World War II. Sinatra “was scared, his career had sprung a leak.” In a letter dated September 17, 1950, to Clyde Tolson, Deputy FBI Director, Sinatra offered to be of service to the FBI as an informer. An excerpted passage from a memo in FBI files states that Sinatra “feels he can be of help as a result of going anywhere the Bureau desires and contacting any people from whom he might be able to obtain information. Sinatra feels as a result of his publicity he can operate without suspicion…he is willing to go the whole way.” The FBI declined his assistance.

 

Death

Sinatra began to show signs of dementia in his last years. After a heart attack in February 1997, he made no further public appearances. After suffering another heart attack,he died at 10:50 p.m. on May 14, 1998, at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, with his wife, Barbara, by his side. He was 82 years old.Sinatra's final words, spoken after Barbara encouraged him to "fight" as attempts were made to stabilize him, were, "I'm losing."The official cause of death was listed as complications from dementia, heart and kidney disease, and bladder cancer.His death was confirmed by the Sinatra family on their website with a statement accompanied by a recording of the singer's version of "Softly As I Leave You." The next night the lights on the Las Vegas Strip were dimmed for 10 minutes in his honor and the lights on the Empire State Building in New York were turned blue. President Bill Clinton, an amateur saxophonist and musician, led the world's tributes to Sinatra, saying that after meeting and getting to know the singer as president, he had "come to appreciate on a personal level what millions of people had appreciated from afar".Elton John stated that Sinatra, "was simply the best – no one else even comes close".

 

On May 20, 1998, at the Roman Catholic Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills, Sinatra's funeral was held, with 400 mourners in attendance and hundreds of fans outside.Gregory Peck, Tony Bennett, and Frank, Jr., addressed the mourners, among whom were Jill St. John, Tom Selleck, Joey Bishop, Faye Dunaway, Tony Curtis, Liza Minnelli, Kirk Douglas, Robert Wagner, Bob Dylan, Don Rickles, Nancy Reagan, Angie Dickinson, Sophia Loren, Bob Newhart, Mia Farrow, and Jack Nicholson.A private ceremony was held later that day at St. Theresa's Catholic Church in Palm Springs. Sinatra was buried following the ceremony next to his parents in section B-8 of Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, a quiet cemetery on Ramon Road where Cathedral City meets Rancho Mirage and near his compound, located on Rancho Mirage's tree-lined Frank Sinatra Drive.His close friends, Jilly Rizzo and Jimmy Van Heusen, are buried nearby in the same cemetery. The words "The Best Is Yet to Come" are imprinted on Sinatra's grave marker.

 

Legacy

"Sinatra was... the first modern pop superstar... Following his idol Bing Crosby, who had pioneered the use of the microphone, Sinatra transformed popular singing by infusing lyrics with a personal, intimate point of view that conveyed a steady current of eroticism... Almost singlehandedly, he helped lead a revival of vocalized swing music that took American pop to a new level of musical sophistication... his 1950s recordings... were instrumental in establishing a canon of American pop song literature."

--Stephen Holden

 

Philadelphia radio DJ Sid Mark has hosted a Frank Sinatra show (Friday with Frank, Saturday with Sinatra, Sunday with Sinatra) for over 50 years.

 

The U.S. Postal Service issued a 42-cent postage stamp in honor of Sinatra on May 13, 2008.The design of the stamp was unveiled Wednesday, December 12, 2007 – on what would have been his 92nd birthday – in Beverly Hills, California, with Sinatra family members on hand.The design shows a 1950s-vintage image of Sinatra, wearing a hat. The design also includes his signature, with his last name alone.The Hoboken Post Office was renamed in his honor in 2002.The Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Astoria, Queens and the Frank Sinatra Park in Hoboken were named in his honor.

 

The U.S. Congress passed a resolution on May 20, 2008, designating May 13 as Frank Sinatra Day to honor his contribution to American culture. The resolution was introduced by Representative Mary Bono Mack.

 

To commemorate the anniversary of Sinatra's death, Patsy's Restaurant in New York City, which Sinatra frequented, exhibited in May 2009 fifteen previously unseen photographs of Sinatra taken by Bobby Bank.The photos are of his recording "Everybody Ought to Be in Love" at a nearby recording studio.

 

Stephen Holden wrote for the 1983 Rolling Stone Record Guide:

 

Frank Sinatra's voice is pop music history. [...] Like Presley and Dylan – the only other white male American singers since 1940 whose popularity, influence, and mythic force have been comparable – Sinatra will last indefinitely. He virtually invented modern pop song phrasing.

 

Wynn Resorts dedicated a signature restaurant to Sinatra inside Encore Las Vegas on December 22, 2008.Memorabilia in the restaurant includes his Oscar for "From Here to Eternity", his Emmy for "Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music", his Grammy for "Strangers in the Night", photographs and a gold album he received for "Classic Sinatra".

 

There is a residence hall at Montclair State University named for him in recognition of his status as an iconic New Jersey native.

 

The Frank Sinatra International Student Center at Israel's Hebrew University, Mt. Scopus campus, was dedicated in 1978 in recognition of Sinatra's charitable and advocacy activities on behalf of the State of Israel.

 

In 1999 Huell Howser Productions, in association with KCET/Los Angeles, featured Frank Sinatra's Palm Springs home in California's Gold; the 49 minute program is available on VHS.

 

Film and television portrayals

• In The Godfather, fictional singer Johnny Fontane, whose career was helped by organized crime boss Vito Corleone, was recognized by many, even Sinatra, as being based on his life.

• In 1992, CBS aired a TV mini-series about the entertainer's life titled, Sinatra, directed by James Steven Sadwith and starred Philip Casnoff as Sinatra. Opening with his childhood in Hoboken, New Jersey, the film follows Sinatra's rise to the top in the 1940s, through the dark days of the early 1950s and his triumphant re-emergence in the mid-1950s, to his status as pop culture icon in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. In between, the film hits all of the main events, including his three marriages, his connections with the Mafia and his notorious friendship with the Rat Pack. Tina Sinatra was executive producer. Casnoff received a Golden Globe nomination for his performance.

• In 1998, Ray Liotta portrayed Sinatra in the HBO movie The Rat Pack, alongside Joe Mantegna as Dean Martin and Don Cheadle as Sammy Davis, Jr. It depicted their contribution to John F. Kennedy's election as U.S. president in 1960.

• Joe Piscopo and the late Phil Hartman spoofed Sinatra on Saturday Night Live.

• In 2003, Sinatra was portrayed by James Russo in "Stealing Sinatra", which revolved around the kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr. in 1963

• Also in 2003, he was portrayed by Dennis Hopper in The Night We Called It a Day, based upon events that occurred during a tour of Australia where Frank had called a member of the news media a "two-bit hooker" and all the unions in the country came crashing down on him.

• Sinatra was also portrayed by Sebastian Anzaldo in the film Tears of a King, who also impersonated Sinatra in a TV episode of The Next Best Thing.

• In the Emmy Award Winning 2011 miniseries, The Kennedys, Sinatra was depicted by Canadian actor Chris Diamantopoulos.

• Martin Scorsese is developing a biopic of Sinatra's life to be scripted by Phil Alden Robinson and produced by Scott Rudin.When the film was first announced, three actors were said to be in contention for the part: Leonardo DiCaprio was Scorsese's preference, Johnny Depp was the studio's, and the Sinatra estate preferred George Clooney.Scorsese later mentioned that he wanted Al Pacino for Sinatra and Robert De Niro as Dean Martin.The film covers his whole life, so three or more actors will be playing him at different ages.Billy Ray has been linked to write the screenplay for the film.