Frank Sinatra

The Full Biography

Frank Sinatra. Singer. Actor. The Hoboken kid who made a microphone intimate, lost his voice and his marriage, and then spent the next decades as the American century’s most complete popular singer — and its most complicated public man.

This is his story.

The image most people still carry is a tilted hat, a cigarette, a voice that arrives late to the beat on purpose. Ol’ Blue Eyes. What the still cannot show is Francis Albert Sinatra of Hoboken, New Jersey, a skinny boy the girls pulled at, a man Ava Gardner nearly finished, a 1953 comeback in a soldier’s role, and a life of Kennedy, the Rat Pack, Republican dinners, and a death in 1998 that the standards survived without effort.

He was born on December 12, 1915, in Hoboken, the only child of Dolly and Marty Sinatra. Dolly was a midwife, a ward politician, a force. Marty boxed, then ran a tavern. The household was politics and a saloon and a mother who pushed. He sang in the Hoboken Four and won a Major Bowes Amateur Hour in 1935. Harry James hired him in 1939. Tommy Dorsey hired him in 1940. He learned breath from Dorsey’s trombone — how to get through a phrase without the gasp showing — and phrasing from the idea that a microphone is a face, not a hall. He left Dorsey, bitterly, in 1942. The solo screams at the Paramount, the Columbus Day riot of 1944, the girls who pulled at the skinny kid: that is the first climate. He was a problem Columbia Pictures and the columnists enjoyed.

Nancy Barbato was the first wife, married in 1939, and the mother of Nancy, Frank Jr., and Tina. The records for Columbia in those years are the voice before the night-time albums: “I’ll Never Smile Again,” “All or Nothing at All,” a crooner the war used as a stand-in for the men who were gone. Then Ava Gardner. They married in 1951. She was the weather that wrecked the first house. The voice thinned. A hemorrhage, a fear, a career that the town was ready to file as over. The work thinned with it. He was, for a stretch, a man the columns could afford to pity.

The door back in was a soldier. From Here to Eternity (1953), for Fred Zinnemann, as Private Angelo Maggio, a skinny kid from the boroughs who dies in a stockade and still gets the laugh. The Oscar for supporting actor arrived. So did a Capitol contract and Nelson Riddle. That is not a miracle. It is a part and an arranger. In the Wee Small Hours (1955) is the monument the toasts underfile: a sad record that treats adulthood as a key change, Ava still in the grain, a man singing to a room that has already gone home. Songs for Swingin’ Lovers! (1956) is the other half of the same instrument — swagger in the same throat. Only the Lonely (1958). Come Fly with Me (1958). He had become, in five years, the American idea of a popular singer who could make depression and bounce occupy the same key.

The pictures of the Capitol years are a second run. The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), for Otto Preminger, a junkie drummer, a nomination. Guys and Dolls (1955) as Nathan Detroit, opposite Brando’s Sky. High Society (1956) with Crosby and Grace Kelly. The Joker Is Wild (1957). Pal Joey (1957). Some Came Running (1958) with Minnelli and Martin. Ocean’s 11 (1960) put the Summit on screen: Frank, Dean, Sammy, Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop, a Las Vegas that was a club and a firm. The Manchurian Candidate (1962), for John Frankenheimer, is the picture that proves the singer could act when the script was a script. He was, for a stretch, the most complete popular entertainer the country had. He was also a file of loyalties the Justice Department kept in another building.

He campaigned for John Kennedy and sang at the inauguration. He then felt discarded when the White House decided a singer with those loyalties was a problem. The Republican turn that followed is not a footnote. It is a slight with a long memory. He married Mia Farrow in 1966; she was twenty-one and he was fifty. The country treated it as a joke about age. The marriage lasted two years. He married Barbara Marx in 1976, last and longest. He recorded “My Way” in 1969, a Paul Anka English on a French song, and then had to live inside a boast that is also a trap. He announced a retirement in 1971 and came back in 1973 with Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back. The concerts of the next twenty-five years were a man conducting a museum of himself and still, on the right night, making a standard sound like a new decision.

He had already, before the retirement that did not hold, built a company around the voice. He owned a piece of the Sands until the Sands and he fell out. He made Von Ryan’s Express (1965) and None but the Brave, pictures that used the famous face as a captain. He recorded with Count Basie. He fought with a journalist, a photographer, a pit boss, a friend, and then sent the check. The Rat Pack was a night and a firm and, already, a museum the town was preparing. He kept working as if the museum could wait. It could not, entirely. The voice was still the job. The job was becoming a legend that required him to show up inside it.

Reprise, the label he built, let him own a piece of the masters. September of My Years (1965), with Gordon Jenkins, is a man singing about age before the voice had become a ruin. Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim (1967) is breath and a guitar, the microphone as a face again. The Duets albums of 1993 and 1994 put him in a booth with voices that had grown up on him; the technology is a patch. The nights, when they were nights, were not. He died on May 14, 1998, at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, of a heart attack. He was eighty-two. Tina has said the last word was “I’m losing.” The records disagree.

Whatever else has been said about me personally is unimportant. When I sing, I believe. I’m honest.Frank Sinatra

The turn is 1953, and then the long remainder in which the voice became an institution and the man became a file of loyalties — some of them to people the Justice Department also filed. He denied being owned. He did not deny knowing everyone. A complete life holds the Capitol sides and the rumors without making either of them the whole throat.

Nancy, Tina, and the memory of Frank Jr. — who died in 2016 — have kept a family firm around a myth. Friends from the Capitol years describe a man who could be royal to a sideman and impossible to a waiter. The Barbara years were a house that held. The voice, at the end, was a ruin that could still find a line.

The later years

Home, after the 1973 return, was Palm Springs and Los Angeles, a compound that could hold Barbara, a painting studio, a night that still ended with a standard, and a politics that had hardened into dinners the old Kennedy friends would not have recognized. He did not become a wax museum of the Summit. He became a touring institution: stadiums, arenas, a tuxedo, a chart of the night’s keys taped where he could see it when the memory needed a rail. He could still, on the right night, delay a downbeat until the room leaned in. He could also, on other nights, lose a lyric and let the band carry him. Both nights are the chapter. The legend had already outgrown the man. The man still showed up.

He kept the generosity that the columns underfile: a check in the night to a musician, a hospital, a friend of a friend. He kept the temper the columns never underfiled. He kept Barbara. The marriage that lasted was not Ava and not Mia; it was a house in the desert that held through the last twenty-two years. He painted. He played golf. He endorsed candidates the 1940s bobby-soxers would have had to study. Reagan’s White House was a room he wanted after Kennedy’s had closed. That is a slight with a long memory, and it is also a man who liked a president who liked him back. A complete last act holds the dinners and the checks and the nights the voice was a ruin and still found “One for My Baby.”

The Duets records of the 1990s put him in a digital booth with Bono, Aretha, Barbra, a technology that could place a living guest on a line he had already sung. Purists winced. The records sold. They are not Wee Small Hours. They are a last product a famous man is allowed to make when the famous man is still, on a good night, the reason the guest showed up. He toured into 1995. The last concerts are a man conducting a museum and, now and then, forgetting he is a museum. Friends from those years describe a professional who could still silence a band with a look, and a husband who wanted to go home to Palm Springs when the look no longer worked. He died at eighty-two, which is a full chapter, not a short goodbye. Cedars-Sinai. May 14, 1998. Barbara there. The children there. Tina’s sentence about “I’m losing.” The catalog, already, not losing.

Hoboken kept the first room. Palm Springs and Los Angeles split the last addresses. The FBI file and the Capitol masters sit in different buildings and the same life. What those last decades were not is a fade into a hat someone else wore. He wore it. He charged for it. He still, when the breath from Dorsey held, made a standard sound like a decision being made in real time. That is the work that lasted. “My Way” is the trap the crowds demanded. The sad albums are the house. The Barbara years are the marriage that finally held. The Republican dinners are the slight. The checks in the night are the underfiled weather. All of it is the man. None of it is the whole throat. The throat, at the end, was a ruin that could still find a line. The records kept the line when the man could not.

The last public appearances were already a kind of Sunday broadcast: a tuxedo, a chart, a room that had come to hear the museum and sometimes got the man. He did not pretend the voice of 1994 was the voice of 1955. He used what Dorsey had taught — the breath, the face, the delay — on a smaller instrument. When it worked, it was still a conversation. When it did not, the band was a rail and the legend did the rest. Barbara took him home. The children kept the firm. Hoboken, which had never stopped claiming the skinny kid, put his name on a street and a park and a story the tourists could walk.

He had already, in Maggio and Riddle, written the public second act. The third act was long on purpose: a retirement that did not hold, a label that he owned, a wife who stayed, a politics that changed, a voice that became an institution and then a ruin, a death at eighty-two that the standards survived without effort. Every American singer who treats a standard as a conversation is in that house. Vegas still sells the hat. The sad albums still outclass the toasts. The last word, if Tina is right, was a loss the catalog refused to honor. That refusal is the remainder. Hoboken started it. The wee small hours finished the art. The desert years finished the man.

After he was gone

Every American singer who treats a standard as a conversation is in his house. Vegas still sells the hat. The sad albums still outclass the toasts. The FBI file and the Capitol masters sit in different buildings and the same life.

He came out of Hoboken, learned a trombone’s breath, screamed a war’s girls into a faint, lost Ava and a voice, came back as Maggio, made the night-time albums, ran a pack, changed parties, and died still working the line. If you only remember “My Way,” you have the trap. If you remember Dorsey, Ava, Maggio, and the wee small hours, you have him.

Portrait: Unknown author · Public domain (PD-US, publicity still, not separately copyrighted) · via Wikimedia Commons

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