Draft for Frank Sinatra, for Today's Featured Article on December 12, 2015, Sinatra's centenary.

Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra (/s[invalid input: 'ɨ']ˈnɑːtrə/; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer, actor, director, and producer. Beginning his musical career in the swing era as a boy singer with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra found success as a solo artist from the early to mid-1940s after being signed by 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 early 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 (1955), Songs for Swingin' Lovers! (1956), Come Fly with Me (1958), Only the Lonely (1958) and Nice 'n' Easy (1960). Sinatra left Capitol to found his own record label, Reprise Records, in 1961, finding success with albums such as Ring-a-Ding-Ding! (1961), and the live album Sinatra at the Sands (1966), recorded at the Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, where Sinatra regularly performed between 1953 and 1967. He toured internationally, and 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". In 1967, he recorded one of his most famous collaborations with Tom Jobim, the album Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim, which was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. It was followed by 1968's collaboration with Duke Ellington. 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 from 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. After winning Best Supporting Actor in 1953, he also garnered a nomination for Best Actor for The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), and critical acclaim for his performance in The Manchurian Candidate (1962). He also starred in such musical films such as On the Town (1949), Guys and Dolls (1955), High Society (1956), and Pal Joey (1957).

Sinatra is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 150 million records worldwide.^[1] He 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. One of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century, Sinatra's popularity was later matched only by Elvis Presley, the Beatles,^[2] and Michael Jackson. American music critic Robert Christgau called him "the greatest singer of the 20th century".^[3]

Career

Singing career

1935–40: Start of career, work with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey

Sinatra got his first break in 1935 when his mother persuaded a local singing group, the Three Flashes, to let him join. With Sinatra, the group became known as the Hoboken Four,^[4] and they sufficiently impressed Edward Bowes. After appearing on his show, Major Bowes Amateur Hour,^[5] they attracted 40,000 votes and won first prize: a six-month contract to perform on stage and radio across the United States.^[6] Sinatra left the Hoboken Four and returned home in late 1935. His mother secured him a job as a singing waiter and MC at the Rustic Cabin in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey,^[5] for which he was paid $15 a week.^[7]

Bandleader Harry James had an engagement at the Paramount Theatre in New York in June 1939. One evening after his show, James was listing to a program on WNEW radio called "Dance Band Parade" which consisted of a series of remote broadcasts. James heard a voice on the program which was of much interest to him; the announcer did not identify the male singer and the vocalist did not sing another song during the program. James was able to find out that the vocalist was with Harold Arlen's Band and that they were from the Rustic Cabin in Englewood, New Jersey. When James went to the Rustic Cabin asking about the singer, he was told that the club had no singer, but they did have an emcee who did some singing. After James had heard more of Sinatra's singing, he asked him to meet with him at the Paramount and a deal was made. The only sticking point was that James wanted Sinatra to change his name. Sinatra would not agree to this; he told James that his cousin, Ray Sinatra, was a bandleader in Boston, kept his own name and was doing well with it. James knew of Ray Sinatra, so he did not press any further to get this young man to change his name.^[8][9][a]

1950s

In September 1951, Sinatra made his Las Vegas debut at the Desert Inn, and he became a prominent figure on the Las Vegas scene throughout the 1950s and 1960s. He made his first performance at the Sands Hotel and Casino on 4 October 1953,^[11] after an invitation by the manager Jack Entratter. Sinatra typically performed there three times a year, and later acquired a share in the hotel.^[12] Sinatra was ordered to sell his interest in the Sands in 1963, due to his association with Sam Giancana.^[13]

1960s

Sinatra's first live album, Sinatra at the Sands, was recorded during January and February 1966 at the Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Sinatra was backed by the Count Basie Orchestra, with Quincy Jones conducting.^[14] Sinatra pulled out from the Sands the following year, when he was driven out by its new owner Howard Hughes, who still resented Sinatra for marrying Ava Gardner.^[15] Hughes plotted to rid of Sinatra from the Sands for good,^[16][b] and asked Robert Maheu to draw up a plan shortly after the new hotel opened in 1967. The hotel imposed restrictions on what Sinatra could gamble in the casino, to just $3000 a night.^[17][c] Fuming, Sinatra began what The Los Angeles Times describes as a "weekend-long tirade" against the "hotel's management, employees and security forces".^[20] It culminated when Sinatra reportedly drove a golf cart through the window of the coffee shop where casino manager Carl Cohen was seated and began "screaming obscenities and anti-Semitic remarks" at Cohen.^[21] Sinatra reportedly punched Cohen, a heavily built man, who responded with a smack in the mouth, bloodying Sinatra's nose and knocking two of his teeth out.^[22][d] As a result, Sinatra never performed at the Sands again while Hughes owned it, and began performing at Caesar's Palace.^[21] A number of the staff were not disappointed to see Sinatra leave the Sands. Numerous employees had been humiliated or intimidated by the Rat Pack over the years, including a busboy that Sinatra tripped up while he was carrying a tray with dishes.^[24] After Sinatra left, the mobsters pulled out of Sands and gradually left Vegas in the 1970s.^[25]

Film career

1940s

Sinatra made his film debut in 1941, performing in an uncredited sequence in Las Vegas Nights, singing "I'll Never Smile Again" with Tommy Dorsey's The Pied Pipers.^[26] He received his first credit for singing "The Last Call for Love", "Poor You" and "Moonlight Bay" in Edward Buzzell's Ship Ahoy the following year, which starred Red Skelton and Eleanor Powell.^[27] In 1943 he had a cameo role along with the likes of Duke Ellington and Count Basie in Charles Barton's Reveille with Beverly, making a brief appearance singing "Night and Day".^[28] The following year he was given his first leading role opposite Michèle Morgan and Jack Haley in 1944 in Tim Whelan's musical film Higher and Higher for RKO Pictures, playing himself.^[29][30] He again worked with Whelan in another musical of that year, Step Lively, co-starring George Murphy and Adolphe Menjou. Biographer Tim Knight wrote that that this was the film that Hollywood "fully unleashed 'The Voice' on the movies", giving Sinatra a role as a "sweetly naive playwright who is swept into scheming Broadway director's Gordon Miller's chaotic universe".^[31]

In 1945, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cast Sinatra opposite Gene Kelly and Kathryn Grayson in the Technicolor musical Anchors Aweigh, in which he played a sailor on leave in Hollywood for four days. A major success, it garnered several Academy Award wins and nominations, and the song "I Fall in Love Too Easily", sung by Sinatra in the film, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Knight notes that while the film "drew Sinatra's young, excitable fans", it also "attracted an older audience who never would have stood in line all night just to hear him sing", making him into a "truly cross generational star".^[32] That same year, he was loaned out to RKO to star in a short film titled The House I Live In. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy, this film on tolerance and racial equality earned a special Academy Award shared among Sinatra and those who brought the film to the screen, along with a special Golden Globe for "Promoting Good Will".^[33][34]

In 1946, Sinatra returned to MGM to make Till the Clouds Roll By, a Technicolor musical biopic of Jerome Kern, directed Richard Whorf, with an ensemble cast which included Robert Walker, Judy Garland, Lena Horne, June Allyson and Van Heflin.^[35] Santopietro considered the film to be the "dodo bird of MGM musicals—it moves but never flies", but noted that Sinatra had a cameo in the climax of the film, singing "Ol' Man River".^[36] The following year, he featured in another musical directed by Whorf of MGM, It Happened in Brooklyn, co-starring Peter Lawford, Kathryn Grayson and Jimmy Durante. The film contains six songs written by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne, including "The Song's Gotta Come From the Heart", in which Sinatra performed a duet with Durante.^[37] Variety noted: "Much of the lure will result from Frank Sinatra's presence in the cast. Guy's acquired the Bing Crosby knack of nonchalance, throwing away his gag lines with fine aplomb. He kids himself in a couple of hilarious sequences and does a takeoff on Jimmy Durante, with Durante aiding him, that's sockeroo."^[38]

In 1948 Sinatra appeared with Grayson in The Kissing Bandit, playing a shy, Boston-bred son of a robber, who falls for the daughter of the Spanish Governor of California. The film was a financial disaster, with the studio losing over $2.5 million, making it one of the least successful musicals in MGM history.^{[citation needed]} The film was also poorly received critically, and is often cited as the worst film of Sinatra's career.^[39] Also in 1948, Sinatra played a priest, one of his most unlikely roles according to Knight, opposite Fred MacMurray and Alida Valli in Irving Pichel's The Miracle of the Bells. It fared poorly upon release, with Time Magazine declaring in their review that "The Archangel Michael, familiarly picture, ought to sue".^[40] In 1949, Sinatra co-starred with Gene Kelly in the Technicolor musical Take Me Out to the Ball Game, a film set in 1908, in which Sinatra and Kelly play baseball players who are part-time vaudevillians.^[41] It was well received critically and became a commercial success. That same year, Sinatra teamed up with Kelly for a third time in On the Town, playing a sailor on leave in New York City. Today the film is rated very highly by critics, and in 2006 it ranked No. 19 on the American Film Institute's list of best musicals.^[42]

1950s

In 1951, Sinatra featured opposite Jane Russell and Groucho Marx in the Irving Cummings comedy, Double Dynamite for RKO. The picture involves an innocent bank teller (Sinatra) suspected of embezzling who turns to a sardonic waiter (Groucho Marx) for advice.^[43] Although Sinatra has by far the most screen time, he took third billing behind Jane Russell and Groucho Marx.^[e] Both Sinatra and Jane Russell play against type as a shy, timid pair, while Marx portrays a sarcastic waiter who breezily mentors the frightened young couple. Jane Russell and Groucho Marx each sing a duet with Frank Sinatra written by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn. Marx and Sinatra sing "It's Only Money", and Russell and Sinatra deliver the romantic "Kisses and Tears.^[44] The following year he appeared in Joseph Pevney's Meet Danny Wilson with Shelley Winters, in a role which Knight thought at times was overacted.^[45] For Santopietro, the film marked the end of the first period of Sinatra's film career, at a time when his career had slumped.^[46]

The rebirth of Sinatra's career began in 1953 with Fred Zinnemann's drama From Here to Eternity, and based on the novel of the same name by James Jones. The picture deals with the tribulations of three soldiers, played by Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, and Sinatra, stationed on Hawaii in the months leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor.^[47] Knowing that the film had a good chance of being successful, Sinatra agreed to play the role for a minor fee to "prove his worth".^[48] It made a turnaround in Sinatra's career: after several years of critical and commercial decline, his Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor win helped him regain his position as the top recording artist in the world.^[49]

In 1954, Sinatra starred opposite Doris Day in the musical film Young at Heart. They released an album together, of the same name which peaked at #11 on Billboard, while the single reached #2 and was considered as Sinatra's comeback single after several years away from the top of the pop singles chart.^{[50][51][52][f]} So popular was the song "Young at Heart" that the film was also titled Young at Heart, having had no title until the song's success.^[54] The Young at Heart album released by Day and Sinatra did not include the title song, which Sinatra recorded prior to his film work.^[55][g] Later in 1954, Sinatra starred opposite Sterling Hayden in the film noir Suddenly, playing a psychopathic killer posing as an FBI agent who takes over a familial residence during a stakeout. Sinatra's performance was lauded by critics, with Bosley Crowther of The New York Times declaring that "Mr. Sinatra deserves a special chunk of praise for playing the leading gunman with an easy, cold, vicious sort of gleam" and that the film demonstrated a turn in direction in a career in playing such a "repulsive role", in comparison to his earlier career.^[56]

1960s

Final roles

In 1970, Sinatra starred opposite George Kennedy in the western Dirty Dingus Magee. According to biographer Tom Santopietro, Sinatra only agreed to the film, an "abysmal" affair which was clearly the "wrong vehicle" for him as he put, because he needed something to cheer him up following the death of his father in January 1969.^[57] The film was panned by the critics. In a scathing review, Roger Ebert referred to the film as "as shabby a piece of goods as has masqueraded as a Western", and stated: "I lean toward blaming Frank Sinatra, who in recent years has become notorious for not really caring about his movies. If a shot doesn't work, he doesn't like to try it again; he might be late getting back to Vegas".^[58]

Sinatra's last major role was opposite Faye Dunaway in Brian G. Hutton's The First Deadly Sin (1980), in which he plays a troubled New York City homicide cop, Captain Edward X. Delaney. In a small role, Dunaway is the detective's ailing wife, hospitalized during the entire story with a rare kidney affliction. The musical score was by composer and arranger Gordon Jenkins,^[59] who had first worked with Sinatra on the 1957 album "Where Are You?".^[60] The First Deadly Sin failed to make much of an impression at the box office, but was well-received by a number of critics. Santopietro noted that Sinatra gave an "extraordinarily rich", heavily layered characterization, one which "made for one terrific farewell" to his film career,^[61] and Ebert was pleasantly surprised by Sinatra's "quiet, poignant, and very effective performance" as the detective, who "looks and acts very touchingly like a tired old cop on the threshold of retirement".^[62]

References

Notes

Citations

Sources cited

• Anka, Paul; Dalton, David (2013). My Way: An Autobiography. Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-2500-3520-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Bakish, David (1995). Jimmy Durante: His Show Business Career, with an Annotated Filmography and Discography. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-89950-968-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Bakken, Gordon Morris (October 4, 2010). The World of the American West. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-136-93160-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Bret, David (2014). Doris Day: A Reluctant Star. Aurum Press Limited. ISBN 978-1-7813-1351-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Clarke, Norm (January 8, 2004). Vegas Confidential: Norm Clarke! Sin City's Ace Insider 1,000 Naked Truths. Stephens Press, LLC. ISBN 978-1-932173-26-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Consiglio, Tony; Douskey, Franz (October 20, 2011). Sinatra and Me: The Very Good Years. Tantor eBooks. ISBN 978-1-61803-025-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Dietz, Dan (2 February 2015). The Complete Book of 1940s Broadway Musicals. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4422-4528-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Friedwald, Will (1995). Sinatra! the Song is You: A Singer's Art. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0-684-19368-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Granata, Charles L. (1 October 2003). Sessions with Sinatra: Frank Sinatra and the Art of Recording. Chicago Review Press. ISBN 978-1-61374-281-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Green, Stanley (1999). Hollywood Musicals Year by Year. Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 978-0-634-00765-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Hernandez, David (2010). Broken Face in the Mirror. Red Lead Press. ISBN 978-1-4349-4723-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Jones, Delilah (1995). Viva Las Vegas: Nightclub Greats. Friedman/Fairfax Publishers. ISBN 978-1-56799-233-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Kelley, Kitty (1986). His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra. Bantam Books Trade Paperbacks. ISBN 978-0-553-38618-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Knight, Timothy (12 October 2010). Sinatra: Hollywood His Way. Running Press Book Publishers. ISBN 978-0-7624-4174-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Lynch, Richard Chigley (26 June 1989). Movie musicals on record: a directory of recordings of motion picture musicals, 1927-1987. Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-26540-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• McGuiggan, Amy Whorf (2009). Take Me Out to the Ball Game: The Story of the Sensational Baseball Song. U of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-1891-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• O'Brien, Daniel (2014). The Frank Sinatra Film Guide. Pavilion Books. ISBN 978-1-8499-4250-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Rojek, Chris (2004). Frank Sinatra. Polity. ISBN 978-0-7456-3090-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Santopietro, Tom (10 November 2009). Sinatra in Hollywood. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-1-4299-6474-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Sheridan, John Harris (September 6, 2011). Howard Hughes: The Las Vegas Years: The Women, the Mormons, the Mafia. AuthorHouse. ISBN 978-1-4634-0693-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Sinatra, Nancy (1986). Frank Sinatra, My Father. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-62508-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Sinatra, Tina; Coplon, Jeff (2000). My Father's Daughter: A Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-87076-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Gallery

• 
  Can-Can 1959
• 
  Von Ryan's Express
• 
  The Detective
• 
  Lady in Cement
• 
  Hoboken Four on Major Bowes' Amateur Hour 1935
• 
  4 for Texas
• 
  Robin and the 7 Hoods
• 
  Tony Rome
• 
  The Detective
• 
  Tony Rome
• 
  As Maggio in From Here to Eternity
• 
  In Suddenly