Frank Sinatra!

[Tiki Tom]

Frank Sinatra’s 100th birthday would have been on December 12th.

Whether you love “the chairman of the board” or are a bit more sceptical, he was an icon of the golden era and beyond. His songs are classics and he could act too. For some, he practically wrote the book on style. His quote “Cock your hats, angles are attitudes” is well known to loungers. The Rat Pack lives on in legend, as do Frank Sinatra’s many hits, love affairs, fights, and make-ups.

Got a Sinatra story? We’re all ears. Do you have a favourite Sinatra quote? Or a song that you find yourself whistling whenever the golden era is upon you? (For me it is “Fly me to the moon”.) How will you celebrate Frank's birthday? Me? I might put on my CD of "The Rat Pack Live at the Sands" and pour myself a tumbler of Jack Daniels. The media will be all over Frank’s 100th, but we won’t let that spoil things.

Happy 100th, Mr Sinatra. You helped define an era.

“Regrets, I've had a few;
But then again, too few to mention.”
--Frank Sinatra

 

[MisterCairo]

One of the first thoughtful gifts I bought for one of my parent's was a ticket for my dad to see Frankie at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto, 1984 as I recall.

Frank's set was interrupted by rain. He said goodnight and left. He'd been on stage perhaps 40 minutes. The rain stopped after five. He never came back out!

 

[Fading Fast]

While "From Here to Eternity" was Sinatra's big career-comeback movie, "Some Come Running" is the movie that said to me he can act. He balances the emotions of angst, anger, vulnerability and disaffection with an effortlessness that is impressive and powerful and carries the movie. James Dean and Marlon Brando get all the attention for their "method acting" and under-the-surface emotional strife - Sinatra matched them in "Some Come Running."

As to quotes, Ava Gardner's one about him and his sexual prowess is so stunning the it is my favorite Sinatra quote, but it is also so raw, that those who care will have to Google it.

 

[filfoster]

Love his music; the man was a difficult 'like'. It used to irk me that he was such a decent actor as well as a great singer. I didn't buy any albums. CD's until after he died. But doesn't every man wish he could sing like that?

 

[Tiki Tom]

Wow, that is some quote by Ava Gardner. I guess the guy was legendary in more ways than one.

Another story is that, when Peter Lawford first brought the screenplay for Ocean’s Eleven to him, Frank’s response was “forget the movie, let’s pull the job!”

 

[emigran]

SINATRA... his name alone is totally evocative...HUGE talent... I particularly liked his crooner years, probably into the Rat Pack era and vocally until '65. After that he began to become a parody of himself IMHO. I mean he seemed to take his cool style over the top...His singing performances, that is.
My favorite movie was "The Tender Trap" 1955 don't really know why. Perhaps it was because he was in such great voice in that time period... and sang the bejeezus out of the song too...
His bit with BIng in High Society was amazing (same period '56)
AND his dancing in Anchors Aweigh '45) with those dancing paragons was super as well.
the list goes on and on... he coudn't even spoil it all by saying something stupid like I love you...

 

[GHT]

Strangers in the Night. It was 1966, I was an amateur dancer with a partner who was planning to get married, her boyfriend didn't dance, and he didn't like her dancing with me, (or anyone else.) My dance teacher, told me that she knew just the partner for me, a young lady whom I knew on the dance circuit, she was gorgeous, just bowled me over. Within two years we would be married, but that night, at the dance school, we danced for the first time together to Frank Sinatra's: "Strangers in the Night."
She reminds me of a witticism that I came out with, it was probably, who said:
“To be is to do”—Socrates.
“To do is to be”—Jean-Paul Sartre.
“Do be do be do”—Frank Sinatra.
Do be do be do, coming from Strangers in the Night.
We still enjoy dancing to that number.............do be do be do.

 

[emigran]

Quick story... I was a professional drummer for many years and one day the leader of a trio I was in says to me we have a gig coming up and we need a singer and you're it... (probably 1967) So I went out and bought a book of Frank Sinatra lyrics. Copied all I could onto a "sten pad" and put it on top of the drum in front of me... first one I got to sing was "Come Fly With Me"... Still like hearing him do that one...

 

[stratcat]

I'm a big fan of the music and his amazing vocal talent. He had such a long career for a popular music singer. He just kept reinventing himself.
It's always difficult to separate the man from the music/acting but very few people can cope with the massive adoration of the public, having risen from usually a pretty humble backgrounds and remain grounded. Look at how many stars become addicts of one or many things. So while he, like most of us, had his faults at least we don't have them played out in the media.
I believe Bing Crosby once said that Frank Sinatra was a once in a lifetime voice...why did it have to be my lifetime.

 

[Stearmen]

The story I always heard was, while in Vegas, Sinatra and the Rat Pack decided to go to a club. When the Manager saw Sammy Davis Jr. and his white wife, he said something to the effect, "your welcome here Mr. Sinatra, but they can't come in" Apparently Sinatra said to every one in the place, "come on, lets go to a joint with some hip cats." With that, every one in the club got up to leave. Needless to say, the management relented! I kind of believe the story, it sounds just like him, being the hip cat public persona, while also poking his finger in the eye of the manager type that used to look down on him!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Interesting fact: When Frank Sinatra made his second network radio appearance, he didn't sing a note. Although he famously made his debut on "Major Bowes' Original Amateur Hour" in 1935 as part of a singing quartet called "The Hoboken Four," that group fizzled out. In May of 1937, Sinatra tried again, with a novelty instrumental band called "The Four Sharps," and landed a spot -- thru the intercession of his cousin Ray Sinatra, who was working at NBC as a staff conductor at the time -- on Fred Allen's "Town Hall Tonight." The Four Sharps played a swingy little rendition of "Exactly Like You," and although Frankie didn't sing, he did bandy a few words with Mr. Allen at the start of the segment.

Sinatra here was aping very closely the style of the Raymond Scott Quintet, which was just then the most popular novelty swing group on the air -- note the riff from Scott's "Powerhouse" which opens and closes the number. But radio already had one Raymond Scott , so there really wasn't room for another, and Frankie went back to ham-and-egging it at the Rustic Cabin in New Jersey. Stardom was still a few years away.

 

[Frunobulax]

...so what instrument did Frank play?

 

[LizzieMaine]

He didn't. He conducted and was the "front man."

 

[Frunobulax]

I kinda figured. I've never seen him pick up an instrument. I'll assume he could play something, though, even if it's just a comb and tissue paper.

 

[stratcat]

I kinda figured. I've never seen him pick up an instrument. I'll assume he could play something, though, even if it's just a comb and tissue paper.

By all accounts even though he never played an instrument his musical ability was impeccable. There are stories of some of his arrangers changing their arrangements because of suggestions made by Frank and they admitted later that Frank had been right and the arrangement was better because of the changes.

 

[Frunobulax]

By all accounts even though he never played an instrument his musical ability was impeccable. There are stories of some of his arrangers changing their arrangements because of suggestions made by Frank and they admitted later that Frank had been right and the arrangement was better because of the changes.

I guess that's why he was Chairman.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

I don't have any anecdotes about ol' blue eyes but my favorite song of his would have to be ' Strangers in the night " ..........it's rare that a love song is so optimistic & has a happy ending & also I used to sing it to my daughter when she was very young & she still remembers.

 

[Benzadmiral]

Sinatra had a wider acting range than you might think if you've only seen one of his movies. He went from musical comedy to drama to Western to crime to spy story and back to crime. We all know that he played the lead, Joe Leland, in the movie adaptation in 1966 of Roderick Thorp's The Detective. What isn't so well known is that Thorp wrote a sequel about Leland that came out in 1979. Leland's running his own PI agency, and finds himself alone in a California skyscraper, trying to outmaneuver terrorists who have taken a group of people hostage.

Yes. Die Hard (the novel was called Nothing Lasts Forever. I've read it, and it's quite good). The story goes that Sinatra had the right of first refusal on any property with the Joe Leland character, but he knew he was too old to play the role in the film. But just think how good Sinatra would have been at, say, age 35-40, playing the character that made Bruce Willis a star. . . .

 

[emigran]

BTW anyone ever catch Frank as a Detective in a MAGNUM PI episode... wasn't his greatest role (ha ha)... but neither was Magnum PI...

 

[stratcat]

I've just noticed Robin and the Seven Hoods is about to start on TV here, that's the next hour or so spoken for!