Frank Sinatra LifeStory

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Frank Sinatra's lifestory

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Birth
When: 12 December 1915
Where: Hoboken, New Jersey, UNITED STATES
Born in December 1915 in Hoboken, New Jersey, Sinatra was the only child of Italian immigrants Natalie Della Garaventa and Antonino Martino Sinatra and was raised Catholic. He 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.


First job
When: 1930
Where: UNITED STATES
Worked for the circulation manager of the Jersey Observer newspaper. He first started out riding news trucks, and later was promoted to copy boy.


Education
When: 1931
Where: UNITED STATES
Attended Demarest High School (Hoboken, NJ) and participated in all sports. Hated mathematics!


Education
When: 1933
Where: UNITED STATES
He wanted to be a reporter. When told by the editor that copy boys "don't know enough to be reporters," Frank went to a secretarial school and enrolled in a Journalism class, studying English, typing, and shorthand. Finally, the editor relented and made Frank a cub sports reporter. Frank covered various school games he actually played himself. He was 18 years old at the time.


Start of career
When: 1935
Where: UNITED STATES
When it came to learning how to sing, Frank did it by singing. He never read a note, and never took a lesson. He did however enjoy spending summers playing a ukulele on the beaches of the Jersey Shore. One of Frank's idols was Bing Crosby. After hearing Bing sing one night in 1935, he told his date Nancy Barbato (who one day would be his wife) that he just had to be a singer. Bing's voice would be his role model for tone and phrasing styles in his own singing later on.


Neighborhood theater
When: from 1935 to 1938
Where: UNITED STATES
To get people interested in hearing him sing, he performed in neighborhood theater amateur shows, where you could win $10 or a set of dishes! He went from one movie house to the next. In attendance was Demarest alumni, who once watched him play basketball!


Award
When: 1938
Where: UNITED STATES
Won a prize on Major Bowes Amateur Hour, which landed him his first professional contract: $25 per week for being a singer, headwaiter, master of ceremonies, and a comedian at a country roadhouse called The Rustic Cabin in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. The time period was 1938. At the same time, he began taking a dozen quarter-hour sustaining programs every week over 4 local, New Jersey radio stations. Frank's cash take for these events amounted to 70 cents a week for carfare. Anyway it was around 1938 and people were beginning to hear Sinatra.


Children
When: from 1939 to 1951
Where: UNITED STATES
Sinatra had three children, Nancy, Frank Jr., and Tina, all with his first wife


Marriage
When: from February 1939 to 1951
Where: UNITED STATES
He married his childhood sweetheart, Nancy Barbato in February of 1939. The bowties you see from a lot of old photos were compliments of Nancy herself. She knitted them to hide Frank's huge Adam's Apple!!


Harry James and two-year contract
When: June 1939
Where: WORLDWIDE
Harry James heard Frank sing at The Rustic Cabin in 1939 and signed him to a two-year contract as lead vocalist in James' new band. This was June of 1939. Sinatra would be associated with Harry James for only six months.


Tommy Dorsey
When: December 1939
Where: WORLDWIDE
At a musician's benefit in Chicago (December 1939), Tommy Dorsey approached Frank and told him he was looking for a vocalist. Frank was delighted and told Dorsey: "I've been trying for years to sing the way you play trombone." That was the beginning of a three-year relationship between Sinatra and Dorsey. It was at this time that Frank acquired the rabid following of young fans, which enabled him later to branch out as a solo artist. It was also at this time that Frank's career soared.


4-F
When: 09 December 1941
Where: WORLDWIDE
Frank always wanted to serve his country. However, on December 9, 1941, three days shy of his 26th birthday, he was classified as "4-F" at the Newark Induction Center because of a "punctured eardrum." Frank earned this from a playmate on a deserted street in Hoboken (the boy swung a bicycle chain at Frank during a fight) . Amazingly, it kept him out of the Armed Forces in 1941 when it was time for him to report.


Contract breaking
When: 1942
Where: WORLDWIDE
A talent agency marketing his voice advertised it as:"The Voice That Thrilled Millions." This sweeping phrase was condensed by a weary journalist to simply, "The Voice." The name, as you know, stuck to him ever since. In the Fall of 1942, eager to go out on his own and to get out of his contract with Dorsey, he pledged one third of his future gross earnings to Dorsey, and another 10% of his future gross to Dorsey's manager, Leonard Vannerson.


Favorite passion
When: 1943
Where: UNITED STATES
Sinatra's favorite passion is prizefighting. Was a "close friend" of Tami Mauriello, a heavyweight contender in 1943.


Incident with cops
When: 1944
Where: Hoboken, New Jersey, UNITED STATES
Always hated cops. With some of his first wages from the Jesey Observer, Frank bought new clothes. While parading them around in Hoboken, the cops saw them and wanted to know were he got them from. "Ya copper, what's it to you?" he said to them. When they got through with him he was torn, tattered, and a bloddy mess; ribs cracked, his nose smashed, and his face and body horribly swollen. From that day on, all authority has sent him a little berserk!


Award
When: 1945
Where: UNITED STATES
"The House I Live In," made at the peak of Sinatra's popularity earned him a special Academy Award in 1945.


Carreer change
When: 1945
Where: UNITED STATES
In 1945, Sinatra co-starred with Gene Kelly in Anchors Aweigh. 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". 1946 saw the release of his first album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra, and the debut of his own weekly radio show.


Achievement
When: November 1946
Where: WORLDWIDE
Around November of 1946, Columbia Records estmated that Frank was recording an average of 24 songs per year, enabling them to issue one new Sinatra record a month. At that time, his records were selling at an annual rate of 10 million per year!!


Carreer change
When: 1948
Where: UNITED STATES
Manny Sacks and William Paley of the Columbia Recording Corporation took a chance on recording Frank as a soloist. Both Columbia and MCA (Frank's new talent agency) freed Sinatra from Dorsey and Vannerson by paying them $60,000. The year was 1948.


Decline of career
When: from 1948 to 1949
Where: UNITED STATES
By the end of 1948, Sinatra felt that his career was stalling, something that was confirmed when he slipped to No. 4 on Down Beat's annual poll of most popular singers (behind Billy Eckstine, Frankie Laine, and Bing Crosby). The year 1949 saw an upswing, as Frank co-starred with Gene Kelly in Take Me Out to the Ball Game. It was well received critically and became a major commercial success. That same year, Sinatra teamed up with Kelly for a third time in On the Town.


Returning to the concert stage
When: from 1950 to 1951
Where: UNITED STATES
After two years' absence, Sinatra returned to the concert stage on January 12, 1950, in Hartford, Connecticut. His voice suffered and he experienced hemorrhaging of his vocal cords on stage at the Copacabana on April 26, 1950. Sinatra's career and appeal to new teen audiences declined as he moved into his mid-30s. This was a period of serious self-doubt about the trajectory of his career. In February of 1951, he was walking through Times Square, past the Paramount theatre, keystone venue of his earlier phenomenal success. The Paramount marquee glowed in announcement of Eddie Fisher in concert. Swarms of teen-age girls had gathered in frenzy, swooning over the current singing idol. For Sinatra this public display of enthusiasm for Fisher validated a fear he had harbored in his own mind for a long time. The Sinatra star had fallen; the shouts of "Frankieee" were echoes of the past. Agitated and disconsolate he rushed home, closed his kitchen door, turned on the gas and laid his head on the top of the stove. A friend returned to the apartment not long after to find Sinatra lying on the floor sobbing out the melodrama of his life, proclaiming his failure was so complete he could not even commit suicide.


Marriage
When: from 1951 to 1957
Where: UNITED STATES
Sinatra married actress Ava Gardner in 1951.


Carreer change
When: from September 1951 to 1952
Where: UNITED STATES
In September 1951, Sinatra made his Las Vegas debut at the Desert Inn. A month later, a second series of the Frank Sinatra Show aired on CBS. Ultimately, Sinatra did not find the success on television for which he had hoped. The persona he presented to the TV audience was not that of a performer easily welcomed into homes. He projected an arrogance not compatible with the type of cozy congeniality that played well on the small screen. Columbia and MCA dropped him in 1952.


Rebirth of career
When: from 1953 to 1957
Where: UNITED STATES
The rebirth of Sinatra's career began with the eve-of-Pearl Harbor drama From Here to Eternity (1953), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. This role and performance marked a turnaround in Sinatra's career: after several years of critical and commercial decline, becoming an Oscar-winning actor helped him regain his position as the top recording artist in the world. Also in 1953, Sinatra starred in the NBC radio program Rocky Fortune. His character, Rocko Fortunato (aka Rocky Fortune) was a temp worker for the Gridley Employment Agency who stumbled into crime-solving by way of the odd jobs to which he was dispatched. The series aired on NBC radio Tuesday nights from October 1953 to March 1954, following the network's crime drama hit Dragnet. During the final months of the show, just before the 1954 Oscars, it became a running gag that Sinatra would manage to work the phrase "from here to eternity" into each episode, a reference to his Oscar-nominated performance. In 1953, Sinatra signed with Capitol Records, where he worked with many of the finest musical arrangers of the era, most notably Nelson Riddle, Gordon Jenkins, and Billy May. With a series of albums featuring darker emotional material, Sinatra reinvented himself, including In the Wee Small Hours (1955)â€”Sinatra's first 12" LP and his second collaboration with Nelson Riddleâ€”Where Are You? (1957) and Frank Sinatra Sings For Only The Lonely (1958). He also incorporated a hipper, "swinging" persona into some of his music, as heard on Swing Easy! (1954), Songs For Swingin' Lovers (1956), and Come Fly With Me (1957). By the end of the year, Billboard had named "Young at Heart" Song of the Year; Swing Easy!, with Nelson Riddle at the helm (his second album for Capitol), was named Album of the Year; and Sinatra was named "Top Male Vocalist" by Billboard, Down Beat and Metronome. A third collaboration with Nelson Riddle, Songs For Swingin' Lovers, was both a critical and financial success, featuring a recording of "I've Got You Under My Skin". Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely, a stark collection of introspective saloon songs and blues-tinged ballads, was a mammoth commercial success, spending 120 weeks on Billboard's album chart and peaking at #1. Cuts from this LP, such as "Angel Eyes" and "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)", would remain staples of Sinatra's concerts throughout his life.


Ring-A-Ding-Ding
When: from 1960 to 1961
Where: UNITED STATES
Sinatra started the 1960s as he ended the 1950s. His first album of the decade, Nice 'n' Easy, topped Billboard's chart and won critical plaudits. Sinatra grew discontented at Capitol and decided to form his own label, Reprise Records. His first album on the label, Ring-A-Ding-Ding (1961), was a major success, peaking at #4 on Billboard and #8 in the UK. His fourth and final Timex TV special was broadcast in March 1960, and earned massive viewing figures. Titled It's Nice to Go Travelling, the show is more commonly known as Welcome Home Elvis. Elvis Presley's appearance after his army discharge was somewhat ironic; Sinatra had been scathing about him in the mid fifties, saying: "His kind of music is deplorable, a rancid smelling aphrodisiac. It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people." Presley had responded: "... [Sinatra] is a great success and a fine actor, but I think he shouldn't have said it... [rock and roll] is a trend, just the same as he faced when he started years ago." Later, in efforts to maintain his commercial viability, Sinatra recorded Presley's hit "Love Me Tender" as well as works by Paul Simon ("Mrs. Robinson"), The Beatles ("Something", "Yesterday"), and Joni Mitchell ("Both Sides Now").


Reprise records
When: from 1961 to 1967
Where: UNITED STATES
On September 11 and 12, 1961, Sinatra recorded his final songs for Capitol. In 1962, he starred with Janet Leigh and Laurence Harvey in the political thriller, The Manchurian Candidate, playing Bennett Marco. That same year, Sinatra and Count Basie collaborated for the album Sinatra-Basie. This popular and successful release prompted them to rejoin two years later for the follow-up It Might as Well Be Swing, which was arranged by Quincy Jones. One of Sinatra's more ambitious albums from the mid-1960s, The Concert Sinatra, was recorded with a 73-piece symphony orchestra on 35mm tape. 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. In June, 1965, Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Dean Martin played live in Saint Louis to benefit Dismas House. The concert was broadcast live via satellite to numerous movie theaters across America. Released in August, 1965, was the Grammy Awardâ€“winning album of the year, September of My Years, with a career anthology, A Man and His Music, following in November, itself winning Album of the Year at the Grammys in 1966. The TV special, Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music, garnered both an Emmy award and a Peabody Award. In the spring, That's Life appeared, with both the single and album becoming Top Ten hits in the US on Billboard's pop charts. Strangers in the Night went on to top the Billboard and UK pop singles charts, winning the award for Record of the Year at the Grammys. The album of the same name also topped the Billboard chart and reached number 4 in the UK.


Marriage
When: from 1966 to 1968
Where: UNITED STATES
Sinatra married Mia Farrow in 1966. He just finished an album he called "September of My Years." At this time, Frank was 51, Mia was 21. A sixties rebel and opposed to the Vietnam War, Sinatra's friends claimed he "digged her brains." They were separated 16 months later in November of 1967 acknowledging that they spent little time together.


Retirement
When: from 1973 to 1974
Where: WORLDWIDE
In 1973, Sinatra came out of retirement with a television special and album, both entitled Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back. The album, arranged by Gordon Jenkins and Don Costa, was a great success, reaching number 13 on Billboard and number 12 in the UK. The TV special was highlighted by a dramatic reading of "Send in the Clowns" and a song and dance sequence with former co-star Gene Kelly. In January, 1974, Sinatra returned to Las Vegas, performing at Caesars Palace despite vowing in 1970 never to play there again after the manager of the resort, Sanford Waterman, pulled a gun on him during a heated argument. With Waterman recently shot, the door was open for Sinatra to return.


Comeback
When: from 1974 to 1975
Where: UNITED STATES
In October 1974, Sinatra appeared at New York City's Madison Square Garden in a televised concert that was later released as an album under the title The Main Event â€“ Live. Backing him was bandleader Woody Herman and the Young Thundering Herd, who accompanied Sinatra on a European tour later that month. The TV special garnered mostly positive reviews while the album â€” actually culled from various shows during his comeback tour â€” was only a moderate success, peaking at #37 on Billboard and #30 in the UK. In August, 1975, Sinatra held several back-to-back concerts together with the newly-risen singer, John Denver. Soon they became friends with each other. John Denver later appeared as a guest in the Sinatra and friends TV Special, singing "September Song" together with Sinatra. Sinatra covered the John Denver hits "My Sweet Lady" and "Leaving on a Jet Plane". And, according to Denver, his song "A Baby Just Like You" was written at Sinatra's request.


Marriage
When: 1976
Where: WORLDWIDE
Sinatra married Ava Gardner Barbara Marx , to whom he was still married at his death.


Award
When: 1979
Where: WORLDWIDE
In 1979, in front of the Egyptian pyramids, Sinatra performed for Anwar Sadat. Back in Las Vegas, while celebrating 40 years in show business and his 64th birthday, he was awarded the Grammy Trustees Award during a party at Caesars Palace.


Trilogy: Past Present Future
When: 1980
Where: WORLDWIDE
In 1980, Sinatra's first album in six years was released, Trilogy: Past Present Future, a highly ambitious triple album that found Sinatra recording songs from the past (pre-rock era) and present (rock era and contemporary) that he had overlooked during his career, while 'The Future' was a free-form suite of new songs linked Ã la musical theater by a theme, in this case, Sinatra pondering over the future. The album garnered six Grammy nominations â€” winning for best liner notes â€” and peaked at number 17 on Billboard's album chart, while spawning yet another song that would become a signature tune, "Theme from New York, New York", as well as Sinatra's much lauded (second) recording of George Harrison's "Something" (the first was not officially released on an album until 1972's Frank Sinatra's Greatest Hits, Vol. 2).


L.A. Is My Lady
When: from 1983 to 1984
Where: WORLDWIDE
He was selected as one of the five recipients of the 1983 Kennedy Center Honors, alongside Katharine Dunham, James Stewart, Elia Kazan, and Virgil Thomson. Quoting Henry James in honoring his old friend, President Ronald Reagan said that "art was the shadow of humanity" and that Sinatra had "spent his life casting a magnificent and powerful shadow". In 1984, Sinatra worked with Quincy Jones for the first time in nearly two decades on the album, L.A. Is My Lady, which was well received critically. The album was a substitute for another Jones project, an album of duets with Lena Horne, which had to be abandoned. (Horne developed vocal problems and Sinatra, committed to other engagements, could not wait to record.)


Award
When: 1990
Where: UNITED STATES
In 1990, Sinatra celebrated his 75th birthday with a national tour, and was awarded the second "Ella Award" by the Los Angelesâ€“based Society of Singers. At the award ceremony, he performed for the final time with Ella Fitzgerald. In December, as part of Sinatra's birthday celebrations, Patrick Pasculli, the Mayor of Hoboken, made a proclamation in his honor, declaring that "no other vocalist in history has sung, swung, crooned, and serenaded into the hearts of the young and old ... as this consummate artist from Hoboken." The same month Sinatra gave the first show of his Diamond Jubilee Tour at the Brendan Byrne Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey.


Duets
When: 1993
Where: WORLDWIDE
In 1993 Sinatra made a surprise return to Capitol and the recording studio for Duets, which was released in November.


Grammy Awards
When: 1994
Where: WORLDWIDE
Sinatra was awarded the Legend Award at the 1994 Grammy Awards, where he was introduced by Bono, who said of him, "Frank's the chairman of the bad attitude... Rock 'n roll plays at being tough, but this guy is the bossâ€”the chairman of boss... I'm not going to mess with him, are you?" Sinatra called it "the best welcome...I ever had". But his acceptance speech ran too long and was abruptly cut off, leaving him looking confused and talking into a dead microphone.


Final public concerts
When: from 1994 to 1995
Where: WORLDWIDE
Sinatra's final public concerts were held in Japan's Fukuoka Dome in December, 1994. The following year, on February 25, 1995, at a private party for 1200 select guests on the closing night of the Frank Sinatra Desert Classic golf tournament, Sinatra sang before a live audience for the very last time. Esquire reported of the show that Sinatra was "clear, tough, on the money" and "in absolute control". His closing song was "The Best is Yet to Come".


Death
When: 14 May 1998
Where: WORLDWIDE
Sinatra began to show signs of senility in his last years and after a heart attack in February 1997, he made no further public appearances. After suffering a further heart attack, he died at 10:50 pm 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 as attempts were made to stabilize him, were "I'm losing". The official cause of death was listed as complications from senility, 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. President Bill Clinton, as 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". In a concert live in Ephesus, John tells the audience of an experience which he explains as "one of the most special moments for me as a songwriter", when he went to the Royal Albert Hall in London and seeing Frank Sinatra who sang John's 1976 hit, "Sorry Seems To Be the Hardest Word".

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