Frank Sinatra

Born in Hoboken (New Jersey), on December 12, 1915, Francis Albert Sinatra came from a modest family of Italian origin. “The Hoboken neighborhood was a rough and violent environment. People insulted you and if someone said you were a pig, there was no other solution than to break their head. It took me a long time to realize that this was not the path. Afterwards, I have achieved everything I have thanks to education. But there may have been a couple of exceptions… ”, he once explained. He was a young gang member who had a lot of trouble with the police. He never had much interest in studies, and he ended up dropping out of high school to work as a newsboy. He left this job when he won the ‘Major Bowes Amateur Hour’ radio contest. From that moment on,

In the early 40’s, Sinatra debuted as a solo singer. Apparently he was a pioneer in using sound amplifiers so that his voice would sound above the orchestra. Soon, he becomes a true idol of the masses, especially among adolescents, who massively surrounded the places where his presence was announced, sometimes forcing him to escape using the most surreal techniques. Now a celebrity, RKO rushes to offer him a contract, with a view to attracting his fans to movie theaters, in light musical comedies. He debuted with Las Vegas Nights , a very minor musical by Ralph Murphy . He next starred with one of the genre’s greats, Gene Kelly , in the unforgettable musical Raising Anchors .by George Sidney . Kelly himself was so pleased with the results that he recruited him again for A Day in New York , co-directed by him and Stanley Donen . Sinatra was an intuitive actor, who became popular because he didn’t need more than one take to play him. He soon succeeded outside of the musical, for example, in the drama The Miracle of the Bells .

He never did very well on a personal level. Although he married Nancy Barbato in 1939 – with whom he had three children, including the famous singer Nancy Sinatra – he ended up abandoning her for Ava Gardner , whom he made suffer a lot, with continuous fights and reconciliations. The relationship would end definitively in 1951. Sinatra –self-acknowledged reveler– found it difficult to settle down with just one woman, as if he were trying to honor the verses of his famous song ‘My Way’: “I lived a full life, I traveled all over the world. the roads. And much, much more than that. But I did it my way.”

After separating from Ava Gardner, he lived a period of decline. His records were considered somewhat outdated and no longer had the previous pull. His films began to have discreet receptions. But he decided to work hard for Fred Zinnemann to give him a role in From Here to Eternity., the famous drama about the US military in Hawaii during the days before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The producers were reluctant to have a singer play a role, but he impressed them in the audition. Sinatra did a very convincing job, with a memorable sequence in which he dies in the arms of Montgomery Cliff. The Academy rewarded him with an Oscar for best secondary, which revalued his career. He was soon up for the statuette again, as lead actor, for The Man with the Golden Arm , a look at Otto Preminger ‘s drug addiction , filmed in 1955, but that year he was snatched the Ernest Borgnine Award , who had starred in Marty. Sinatra began to receive offers from great filmmakers such as Frank Capra ( Millionaire of Illusions ), Joseph L. Mankiewicz ( Them and Them ), Stanley Kramer ( Pride and Passion ) and Vincente Minnelli , responsible for Like a Torrent , co -starring Dean Martin . He was part of Sinatra ‘s gang of cronies, which also included Peter Lawford , Sammy Davis Jr. and other lovers of the happy life. All together they starred in La cuadrilla de los eleven , a tape of robberies ofLewis Milestone .

In the 1960s, Sinatra married actress Mia Farrow , with whom he did not last long. That decade was very fruitful in the film field, with titles such as The Devil at Four , by Mervyn LeRoy , The Messenger of Fear , by John Frankenheimer , Four Uncles from Texas , by Robert Aldrich , and Last on the List , by John Huston . . His trilogy of detective films also stands out, made up of Golden Underworld , The Cement Woman and The Detective , all by Gordon Douglas .. Sinatra served as director only once, on All Were Brave , a war drama in which Japanese and American soldiers are forced to cooperate to survive on an island during World War II. He also played one of the characters.

Sinatra gave up filmmaking almost entirely in the 1970s, although he did return occasionally, and he never stopped giving live concerts. In 1976 he married the cabaret artist Barbara Marx, the ex-wife of Zeppo Marx who would accompany him until his death on May 14, 1998, at the age of 82.