Sun, Nov 21, 2010 page14

• A new perspective on old blue eyes

  James Kaplan presents a chronicle of the first half of Frank Sinatra’s life, covering everything from the singing to the vices to the underwear

  • By Rick Warner / Bloomberg
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  Frank Sinatra was a bundle of contradictions: a scrawny artist with a tough-guy image, an outspoken liberal turned stalwart Republican, a casual actor who won an Oscar, a notorious womanizer who lost the woman he loved most, and an American icon accused of dodging the draft in World War II.

  He led such an eventful, fascinating life that author James Kaplan needs almost 800 pages to cover less than half of it in Frank: The Voice, his lively, anecdote-crammed biography of the world’s greatest saloon singer.

  The book follows Sinatra from his 1915 birth in Hoboken, New Jersey, to 1954, when his sagging career was revived by a supporting-actor Oscar for From Here to Eternity. During those first 39 years, Francis Albert Sinatra embodied the lyrics of That’s Life, his 1966 hit about resilience.

  

  Frank: The Voice

  I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king/I’ve been up and down and over and out and I know one thing/Each time I find myself flat on my face,/I pick myself up and get back in the race.

  The only child of Italian immigrants — his mother, Dolly, was a midwife who moonlighted as an abortionist, his father, Marty, a fireman and former boxer — Sinatra dropped out of high school to become a singer. He had numerous setbacks — a jilted girlfriend had him arrested on trumped-up morals charges — before joining Tommy Dorsey’s popular band in 1940.

  GANGSTERS

  Sinatra, who died in 1998 at the age of 82, recorded his first hits with Dorsey before they had a falling out and he left the band in 1942.

  Rumors that the Mafia helped Sinatra get out of his contract inspired the famous horse’s head scene in The Godfather. Kaplan doesn’t find a smoking gun on Sinatra’s reputed organized-crime connections, though he makes it clear that the singer often enjoyed the company of mobsters. He also recounts an infamous 1947 trip to Havana, where a newspaper columnist reported that Sinatra was hanging out with Lucky Luciano and other gangsters.

  PAID TO Scream

  In the 1940s Sinatra became the idol of screaming teenage girls known as bobby-soxers, a precursor to the wild crowds that later mobbed Elvis Presley and the Beatles. Kaplan reveals that Sinatra’s publicist would select girls who could scream the loudest and then pay them US$5 to stay for multiple shows.

  Sinatra hit the skids in the late 1940s and by 1950, when he damaged his vocal cords during a performance at New York’s Copacabana nightclub, many thought his career was over. The career slump, combined with depression over his rocky love affair with Ava Gardner, led to several suicide attempts, according to the book. (Pinpointing dates is difficult because Kaplan goes long stretches without mentioning the year he’s writing about.)

  Then came Sinatra’s phoenix-like comeback, fueled by his gritty performance as the rebellious soldier Maggio in From Here to Eternity. About the same time Sinatra started a collaboration with arranger/conductor Nelson Riddle that produced some of his finest albums, including In the Wee Small Hours, Only the Lonely and Songs for Young Lovers.

  MUSIC AND MORE

  Kaplan, who is working on a second volume about Sinatra, writes with insight and grace about the crooner’s music. He explains how Sinatra worked to improve his voice, how he made the transition from lightweight tunes to adult fare and how his personal experience infused his songs with emotional depth.

  He chronicles Sinatra’s troubled first marriage, which produced three children, and his tumultuous relationship with Gardner, whose appetite for liquor and sex was just as strong as Sinatra’s.

  Kaplan also writes about Big Frankie, Sinatra’s nickname for his oversized penis. It was so big, Kaplan writes, that he had to wear special underwear to contain it.

  For your information

  Publication Notes

  Frank: The Voice By James Kaplan 786 pages Doubleday
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