“There are two forms of fame that people admire: dying early – and surviving.” This is how ROLLING STONE editor Arne Willander wrote looking back at Frank Sinatra. Sinatra was one of the survivors. Not just at the end of the 1940s, when Eddie Fisher replaced him as the great American star. In the almost five decades that followed, he had to prove himself again and again. Showing that he was not a man of yesterday, as many said of him in 1950. He succeeded. Or does anyone remember Eddie Fisher today?
Francis Albert Sinatra was born on December 12, 1915 in Hoboken, New Jersey. As the only child of Sicilian immigrants, he decided to become a singer when he was a teenager. He had seen Bing Crosby and fallen for him. He was his idol, his fixture. Frank Sinatra became a member of the singing club at his high school and began singing in local nightclubs. There were a few dollars a night, plus some well-connected ears in show business. The radio eventually brought him to the attention of band leader Harry James, with whom Sinatra sang his first recordings, including “All or Nothing at All”. In 1940, successful orchestra leader Tommy Dorsey invited Sinatra to join his band. Their liaison lasted two successful years, during which Sinatra celebrated his final breakthrough. When the two separated, the haze of the New York Mafia hung over the dissolved contract.
Frank Sinatra’s solo career
Between 1943 and 1946 the Sinatra cult boomed. Hordes of teenagers, especially female ones, idolized the young man with blue eyes and the dreamy baritone voice. He was called “The Voice”, also “Sultan of Swoon” and “Ol’ Blue Eyes”. “It was the war years and there was a lot of loneliness,” recalled Sinatra, who escaped death in Europe and the Pacific because of a damaged eardrum. “That was everything.” Frank Sinatra became the first projection screen for mass hysteria in pop history.
In addition to music, Sinatra first set foot in films in 1943 when he took roles in Reveille With Beverley and Higher and Higher. In 1945 he won one Oscar for “The House I Live In,” a ten-minute short film that promoted tolerance on the home front. With the end of the war, however, his popularity began to wane, and with it his record and film contracts. Eddie Fisher was on the mat, Sinatra’s first marriage fell apart.
The resurrection
In 1953, Frank Sinatra made a triumphant comeback, although it wasn’t fueled by his music. As a supporting actor, he won an Oscar for his interpretation of the Italian-American soldier Maggio in the classic “From Here to Eternity.” In a roundabout way, so to speak, he regained the favor of the music industry, which in the form of Capitol Records became the new home base of a singer who increasingly discovered jazz for himself.
Frank Sinatra was by no means a man of yesterday, quite the opposite. The coming years were to be among the most successful of his career. Both in the music and film business. He received another Oscar nomination for his work in The Man With the Golden Arm (1954), and also earned critical acclaim for his performance in The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and other films. As if it were child’s play, he dominated the charts at the same time.
So what was apparently supposed to bring happiness turned out to be less harmonious in private. The breakup with Ava Gardner ended what one might look up as the definition of a love-hate relationship. Arne Willander wrote about this time: “In February 1955 he recorded the songs for In The Wee Small Hours, the first modern album. Sinatra found his subject: male pain. He made it clear what the interpretation of a song, yes, what singing actually is. He discovered the dark land of the soul for the song.”
Farewell to Capitol Records
Frank Sinatra created his own record label, Reprise, in 1960 after parting ways with Capitol Records. From then on he dictated the conditions for all productions and cemented his status as a superstar. Warner bought Reprise a little later, and the business partners also founded the film production company Artanis. In the mid-’60s, there was no one bigger than “Frankie Boy.”
In addition to numerous Grammys, including the one for his life’s work, he defined the prototype of the showmaster as a founding member of the Rat Pack in Las Vegas. Alongside Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop, Sinatra became the epitome of the hard-drinking, womanizing, gambling-addicted daredevil – an image that was constantly reinforced by the popular press and Sinatra’s own albums. At least alcohol played a prominent role in Sinatra’s real life. Even the youth of the time paid tribute to Sinatra. “No one can hold a candle to him,” said Jim Morrison in awe. Towards the end of the decade, Sinatra added another hit to his repertoire. “My Way”, provided with English lyrics by Paul Anka, used a French chanson and became Frank Sinatra’s signature tune.
The retreat
After a brief retreat in the early 1970s, Sinatra wanted to do it again with the album “Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back” (1973). Aside from entertainment, he was also drawn to politics, which is not entirely clear cut in the USA anyway. After first visiting the White House in 1944 to support Franklin D. Roosevelt’s bid for a fourth term, Sinatra worked diligently to elect John F. Kennedy in 1960. He later even oversaw JFK’s inaugural gala in Washington.
However, the relationship between the two soured after the president canceled a weekend visit to Sinatra’s home because of the singer’s ties to Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana. In the 1970s, Sinatra abandoned his longstanding loyalty to the Democrats and joined the Republican Party. He supported first Richard Nixon, then his close friend Ronald Reagan, who presented Sinatra with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 1985.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-xkTDhOpCY
We heard again and again about Sinatra’s connections to the mafia, which, in the eyes of many critics, was an important building block in the world star’s career. However, this did not affect his continued popularity. In 1993, at the age of 77, he won many new fans with the release of “Duets”. It was a collection of 13 Sinatra standards that he re-recorded with artists such as Barbra Streisand, Bono, Tony Bennett and Aretha Franklin.
Frank Sinatra dies
In November 1995, Frank Sinatra performed in front of an audience for the last time in his life. Almost exactly a year later, he was admitted to hospital with mild pneumonia, where he suffered his first heart attack in January 1997. Although he was moved home a short time later, he rarely left his bed. He watched the honor of the American Congress, which awarded him his Gold Medal of Honor, on his home television. Frank Sinatra suffered another heart attack on May 14th, as a result of which he died that same evening in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. When the news became public, the lights in Las Vegas were turned off for three minutes. The Empire State Building in New York was lit blue in honor of Ol’ Blue Eyes. Frank Sinatra had faced his final curtain call.