Possessing "the most imitated, most listened to, most recognized voice of the second half of the twentieth century," according to NYC disc jockey William B Williams, who tagged him forever as 'The Chairman of the Board', Frank Sinatra parlayed his one-of-a-kind phrasing and immaculate sense of timing into a colossal singing career spanning six decades. His appearance as one of the Hoboken Four on radio's "Major Bowes' Amateur Hour" prompted 40,000 listeners to call in--the then-largest vote in the show's history. Sinatra toured with Harry James' struggling band for six months before Tommy Dorsey lured him away to front his orchestra. Inspired by Dorsey's trombone playing ("He would take a musical phrase and play it all the way through seemingly without breathing for eight, ten, maybe sixteen bars."), Sinatra began swimming under water, thinking song lyrics to himself as he held his breath, and over time developed and perfected his distinct method of long phraseology. Although Billboard had voted him as Best Male Vocalist of 1941, Sinatra saw his popularity really soar when he left Dorsey and embarked on a solo career the following year, his salary jumping from $7500 a week to $25,000. Idolized by millions of bobby-soxers, he inadvertently sparked what became known as the Columbus Day Riot (1944), when audience members refusing to leave his first show caused the frustrated crowd outside to go berserk. 200 police, 421 police reserves, 20 radio cars and two emergency trucks were necessary to control the rampaging, mostly teenaged girls.
Slightly built, but with undeniably magnetic charm, Sinatra made his first acting appearance in 1943 at RKO and soon moved to MGM, where he generally played the boyish innocent unaware of his allure to women. His best features amidst this light, breezy fare were two musicals that teamed him with Gene Kelly as sailor pals, "Anchors Aweigh" (1945) and "On the Town" (1949). Near the end of the decade, his career, his marriage (to first wife Nancy Sinatra Sr.) and his voice showed visible signs of cracking under the pressure of his momentum. Feature flops like "Double Dynamite" (1951) and "Danny Wilson" (1952), coupled with hemorrhaged vocal chords, delivered the knockout blow in 1952 (By then, he had married and was on the verge of separating from wife number two, actress Ava Gardner.)
Undaunted, Sinatra regrouped, picked himself up off the canvass and not only signed a one-year contract with Capitol Records with six one-year options and a five-percent royalty but also agreed to play the tough but unfortunate Maggio in "From Here To Eternity" (1953) for a mere $8000. The results were career-rejuvenating. Maggio would win him an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor. Oscar in hand, Sinatra became a full-fledged movie icon; his most notable roles coming as a heroin addict in Otto Preminger's controversial "The Man With the Golden Arm" (1955), for which he earned a Best Actor nomination, and as the stalwart, perceptive Bennett Marco in the political psychodrama, "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962). From the moment "From Here to Eternity" was released, Sinatra's records began to sell again. By 1954, his partnership with arranger Nelson Riddle had produced his first hit single in seven years, "Young at Heart", which went to Number 2 on the charts. Together with Riddle, he created the classic Sinatra sound during the Capitol years, taking advantage of the technological advancements of high fidelity and the long-playing record to express emotions at an extended length in the first concept albums (i.e., "Songs for Swingin' Lovers" 1956).
Sinatra's social life also grabbed plenty of headlines, and sometimes business and pleasure went hand in hand as in the movies he made with fellow "Rat Pack" members Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford (for the record, many of the group were mambers of Humphrey Bogart's Holmby Hills Rat Pack and the name stuck, but they never billed themselves that way professionally and Sinatra always preferred "The Summit," as in the apex of that era's A-list entertainers). Lawford, married to John F Kennedy's sister Patricia, introduced him to Kennedy, who enjoyed carousing with Sinatra's star-studded cronies. Sinatra repaid the honor of the association by dubbing his clique the "Jack Pack" for a while. He stumped hard for Kennedy during the 1960 presidential campaign, visited Hyannis Port, traveled on the President's private plane, cruised with the President on the Honey Fitz and escorted Jacqueline Kennedy to the inaugural which he had organized. He even installed a White House hotline telephone in "the Kennedy room" at his compound in Rancho Mirage in anticipation of a presidential visit, but on orders from the Attorney General (Robert F Kennedy), the President opted to stay instead with Bing Crosby in order to distance himself from Sinatra and his purported underworld connections. Sinatra maintained his Rat Pack friendships with Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr (one early public spat not withstanding), touring with the two in the late 80s (until Liza Minnelli replaced a sick Martin), and was instrumental in healing the riff between Martin and former partner Jerry Lewis.
Following his 50s comeback, Sinatra laid the groundwork for a business empire, acquiring nine percent of the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, which he turned almost single-handedly into an entertainment mecca. As vice-president of the corporation, he earned $100,000 for each week he performed, until falling out with the hotel in 1967, and he also owned for a time fifty percent of the Cal-Neva Lodge in Lake Tahoe and invested in a small charter airline, a music-publishing house, radio stations, restaurants and real estate. His movie stardom continued unabated throughout the 60s as he alternated between light fare (i.e., "Oceans Eleven" 1960; "Come Blow Your Horn" 1963; "Robin and the Seven Hoods" 1964) and drama (i.e.. "Von Ryan's Express" 1965; "Tony Rome" 1967 and its sequel "Lady in Cement" 1968). Sinatra dabbled at producing and even directing ("None but the Brave" 1965). After starring in "Dirty Dingus Magee" in 1970, Sinatra was off-screen for nearly a decade. He resumed his film career starring opposite Faye Dunaway in "The First Deadly Sin", one of his better serious vehicles, but subsequent film appearances were limited to cameos ("Cannonball Run II" 1983) or documentaries ("Listen Up" 1990), and he made his final acting appearance playing himself (because who else could?) in the 1995 telepic "Young at Heart," visiting a strong-willed Hoboken matriarch (Olympia Dukakis) who is inspired by his music to take on the mobsters muscling in on her family's bar. That film was produced by his youngest daughter Tina, who also oversaw the production the excellent and suprisingly uncompromised CBS biographical miniseries "Sinatra" (CBS, 1992) starring Phillip Casnoff as the crooner, Gina Gershon as first wife Nancy, Marcia Gaye Hardin as Ava Gardner and Nina Siemaszko as Mia Farrow.
Sinatra embraced the leading songwriters of his day, interpreting Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, Johnny Mercer, E Y Harburg and Lorenz Hart and making their words his own. Lyricist Sammy Cahn, however, stood out amidst these lions as writing songs that tapped into Sinatra's common touch. With lines like "Call me irresponsible/Throw in undependable too", Cahn captured and helped to create the legend of a romantic tough guy's unpredictability, the embodiment of the second phase of Sinatra's career. What followed, though, was the inevitable decline. After the Capitol success, Sinatra formed his own label, Reprise Records, but its output together with Capitol's new albums (made from unreleased recordings) glutted the market. He did have a few brief moments of singles glory in the 60s: "Strangers in the Night", "It Was a Very Good Year", "My Way" and "Something Stupid" (with daughter Nancy, his last Number 1 hit), but popular music had gone the way of rock. Sinatra's crossover attempts covering Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder and the Beatles were abysmal. He retired briefly in 1971 but was back working by 1973, and if he wasn't generating hit singles, he was selling out live performances. People flocked to see the legend, not caring that his pipes were a shadow of their former glory. Reaching out to a new audience with his two multi-platinum "Duets" albums, he sang with contemporary pop stars like Barbra Streisand, Jimmy Buffett and Bono, earning a Grammy Award at the age of 80, an appropriate coda for a remarkable career (inexplicably cut off during his televised acceptance speech for a commercial, his celebrity fans were prompted to a chorus of "Let Frank Sinatra finish!" in the days following).
Sinatra remained a towering figure of intense interest and mystique up to and beyond his passing in 1998--indeed on the day of his death, one could not change television channels without yet another vision of Sinatra, so intrinsic was he to the culture of the 20th Century. The charming 1996 film "Swingers" helped popularize a revival of interest in Sinatra and the Rat Pack for new fans born only in the twilight of the stars' performing careers, and soon Sinatra and his pallies held sway over another era where the culture of cool dominated, the subject of a seemingly never-ending series of biographical books and TV documentaries, unearthed performance videos, undiscovered music and even film projects based on their legendary exploits: HBO's telepic "The Rat Pack" (1998) made a respectable bid to capture the style and swagger of the group's heyday and shrewdly cast Ray Liotta as the tempestuous Chairman, but the project never quite gelled; director Ron Underwood's telepic "Stealing Sinatra" (Showtime, 2003) was an off-kilter look at the 1965 kidnapping of the entertainer's son Frank Sinatra, Jr. from the P.O.V. of the bumbling criminals (David Arquette and William H Macy) with character actor James Russo in suppurt as Ol' Blue Eyes. As yet no truly definitive and artfully satisfying account of Sinatra's life has been put to film, perhaps because the scope of it is too huge to be encompassed in one film. And perhaps only Sinatra could do Sinatra justice: years after his passing, the late singer was set to virtually star in a dance and music production in London, thanks to footage from the 1950s that will be restored, colorized and projected onto screens in a theater, slated to open in February 2006.
Frank Sinatra's legacy is his survival in all aspects of his life. He survived a dominating mother's excessive expectations and ultimately accepted that nothing he could ever do would be enough for her. He persevered in a business renowned for transitory success, making sure that a second comeback would never be necessary after he had weathered the initial threat to his career. A history of stormy relationships with women finally led to a (relatively) stable marriage of more than twenty years to third wife Barbara. Who in the USA has not heard of Sinatra? His name is a household word, and hearing it conjures up mythical images connected to it. The more than 200 CDs in print insure that long after the body has departed, the voice will remain to tell the story of the scrawny kid from Hoboken, NJ, who made it to the very top and rubbed shoulders with the royalty of the world. The key to Sinatra's rise was the honest emotion he rendered in songs which represented the highest achievement of American popular music. While no man is immortal, Sinatra's recorded voice and celluloid image might beg to differ.