MARITAL STATUS
Professions Performer (songs from the film) , Actor , Producer more
Birth name Francis Albert Sinatra
Nationality American
Birth December 12, 1915 (Hoboken, New Jersey – United States)
Died May 14, 1998
BIOGRAPHY
Martin Scorsese , Sydney Pollack , Robert De Niro , Michael Bay , Steven Soderbergh , Woody Allen , Oliver Stone … We can no longer count the directors who, even today, slip an extract from Frank Sinatra’s repertoire into one of their films, proving a little more each time the indelible mark left, in the world of music, by the one nicknamed “The Voice” .
Born in New Jersey, to a father and mother of Italian origin, Frank Sinatra was not yet 20 years old when he took his first steps in the world of entertainment, on September 8, 1935, as singer of The Hoboken Four , which earned him attention on the radio waves. Four years later, he joined Harry James ‘ group, then Tommy Dorsey ‘s orchestra , under whose direction he scored his first big musical success, with “I’ll Never Smile Again” . Which is the complete opposite of his destiny, since it was with this same group that he made his debut on the big screen, in Las Vegas Nights (1941) and Enchanted Cruise (1942), where he played his own role.
He did the same the following year, in Reveille with Beverly , but solo this time, and landed his first leading role straight away, with Amour et swing where, opposite Michèle Morgan , his crooner ‘s voice wreaked havoc in theaters, to the point of earning him a significant number of fans, 35,000 of them even going so far as to block the streets near the Paramount offices in New York, in order to see the blue eyes of their idol , in 1944. Frank Sinatra’s takeoff having already been successful, the bosses of MGM did not wait any longer to have him collaborate with another great star of musical comedy: Gene Kelly . Beginning with Stopover in Hollywood (1945) and its famous dancing scene on beds, their joint filmography only included three feature films, and reached its peak with the last: One Day in New York (1949).
In the early 1950s, Frank Sinatra made Ava Gardner his new conquest, and he dedicated the song “I’m A Fool To Want You” to her , which she co-wrote with him. The romance between the two actors lasted six years, and it is rumored that it is as much to her that he owes the role he plays in As Long as There Will Be Men(1953), that possible pressure put by the mafia on producer Harry Cohn . Mentioned by Francis Ford Coppola in The Godfather (1972), through the character of Johnny Fontane, this rumor in no way tarnishes the performance of Frank Sinatra, who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1954, and shows that he can be good outside of musicals.
However, he returned very quickly to the genre, after a stint in two TV series and the film noir I Must Kill , to play opposite Doris Day in Young at Heart (1954). He then went out of his way to land the lead role in the adaptation of White Doves and Ugly Gentlemen by Joseph L. Mankiewicz , but it was Marlon Brando who got the lead. If the atmosphere was not really good between Sinatra and his partner, whom he nicknamed “Mumbles” ( “Mumbles” ), due to the fact that he was new to musical comedy and sometimes not very coherent, the feature film adds to the list of his successes, while his musical career also reaches its peak, thanks to his contract with the Capitol label .
Alternating genres more and more frequently, Frank Sinatra obtained a new Oscar nomination thanks to the drama The Man with the Golden Arm by Otto Preminger (1955) and enjoyed prestigious collaborations with Charles Walters ( High Society ) , Vincente Minnelli ( Comme un torrent ) or Frank Capra ( A hole in the head ), as well as a first (and last) production: The Island of the Brave . Then begins the “Rat Pack” period : born in the 1950s, around Humphrey Bogart , this group of friends really took off, with Frank Sinatra at its head, the following decade. Alongside Dean Martin , Sammy Davis Jr. , Peter Lawford , Joey Bishop and, for a time, Norman Fell , the band performed regularly in Las Vegas, and it was there that they filmed The Unknown of Las Vegas , cult film of which Steven Soderbergh will direct a remake in the early 2000s.
Very present in Frank Sinatra’s career, until his disappearance at the end of the 1960s, the Rat Pack did not vampirize it, as evidenced by films such as A Crime in the Head (1962), The Shadow of a Giant (1966) or The Detective (1968), or the enormous success he encountered, on a musical level, with “Strangers in the Night” and “My Way” , before saying his (provisional) goodbyes on stage, in 1971. On stage, one would even be tempted to say, because even if he returned to the recording studios in 1973, he gradually abandoned those of cinema and only appeared in a single long feature film, A Beautiful Bastard , during the decade.
Ten years after his last feature film, Cannon Ball 2 , where he reunited with Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin , Frank Sinatra, the entire music world paid tribute to him during a charity gala where he signed his last appearance, in 1995. Seriously ill, he died on May 14, 1998, in Los Angeles, and his last words were “I’m losing” . Classy farewells, like this man who travels regularly dressed in a tuxedo, known for his tough reputation and his troubled associates, but with whom the world of cinema and music is, even today, permeated.
