Frank Albert Sinatra
(1915 - 1998)
Hoboken, New Jersey USA
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California USA
Died May 14, 1998 in Los Angeles, California, USA
Birth Name Francis Albert Sinatra
Nicknames The Voice
Chairman of the Board
Ol' Blue Eyes
Swoonatra
The Sultan of Swoon
La Voz
Frankie
Height 5' 7" (1.7 m)
Mini Bio (1)
Frank Sinatra was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, to Italian immigrants Natalina Della (Garaventa), from Northern Italy, and Saverio Antonino Martino Sinatra, a Sicilian boxer, fireman, and bar owner. Growing up on the gritty streets of Hoboken made Sinatra determined to work hard to get ahead. Starting out as a saloon singer in musty little dives (he carried his own P.A. system), he eventually got work as a band singer, first with The Hoboken Four, then with Harry James and then Tommy Dorsey. With the help of George Evans (Sinatra's genius press agent), his image was shaped into that of a street thug and punk who was saved by his first wife, Nancy Barbato Sinatra. In 1942 he started his solo career, instantly finding fame as the king of the bobbysoxers--the young women and girls who were his fans--and becoming the most popular singer of the era among teenage music fans. About that time his film career was also starting in earnest, and after appearances in a few small films, he struck box-office gold with a lead role in Anchors Aweigh (1945) with Gene Kelly, a Best Picture nominee at the 1946 Academy Awards. Sinatra was awarded a special Oscar for his part in a short film that spoke out against intolerance, The House I Live In (1945). His career on a high, Sinatra went from strength to strength on record, stage and screen, peaking in 1949, once again with Gene Kelly, in the MGM musical On the Town (1949) and Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949). A controversial public affair with screen siren Ava Gardner broke up his marriage to Nancy Barbato Sinatra and did his career little good, and his record sales dwindled. He continued to act, although in lesser films such as Meet Danny Wilson (1952), and a vocal cord hemorrhage all but ended his career. He fought back, though, finally securing a role he desperately wanted--Maggio in From Here to Eternity (1953). He won an Oscar for best supporting actor and followed this with a scintillating performance as a cold-blooded assassin hired to kill the US President in Suddenly (1954). Arguably a career-best performance--garnering him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor--was his role as a pathetic heroin addict in the powerful drama The Man with the Golden Arm (1955).
Known as "One-Take Charlie" for his approach to acting that strove for spontaneity and energy, rather than perfection, Sinatra was an instinctive actor who was best at playing parts that mirrored his own personality. He continued to give strong and memorable performances in such films as Guys and Dolls (1955), The Joker Is Wild (1957) and Some Came Running (1958). In the late 1950s and 1960s Sinatra became somewhat prolific as a producer, turning out such films as A Hole in the Head (1959), Sergeants 3 (1962) and the very successful Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964). Lighter roles alongside "Rat Pack" buddies Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. were lucrative, especially the famed Ocean's 11 (1960). On the other hand, he alternated such projects with much more serious offerings, such as The Manchurian Candidate (1962), regarded by many critics as Sinatra's finest picture. He made his directorial debut with the World War II picture None But the Brave (1965), which was the first Japanese/American co-production. That same year Von Ryan's Express (1965) was a box office sensation. In 1967 Sinatra returned to familiar territory in Sidney J. Furie's The Naked Runner (1967), once again playing as assassin in his only film to be shot in the U.K. and Germany. That same year he starred as a private investigator in Tony Rome (1967), a role he reprised in the sequel, Lady in Cement (1968). He also starred with Lee Remick in The Detective (1968), a film daring for its time with its theme of murders involving rich and powerful homosexual men, and it was a major box-office success.
After appearing in the poorly received comic western Dirty Dingus Magee (1970), Sinatra didn't act again for seven years, returning with a made-for-TV cops-and-mob-guys thriller Contract on Cherry Street (1977), which he also produced. Based on the novel by William Rosenberg, this fable of fed-up cops turning vigilante against the mob boasted a stellar cast and was a ratings success. Sinatra returned to the big screen in The First Deadly Sin (1980), once again playing a New York detective, in a moving and understated performance that was a fitting coda to his career as a leading man. He made one more appearance on the big screen with a cameo in Cannonball Run II (1984) and a final acting performance in Magnum, P.I. (1980) in 1987 as a retired detective seeking vengeance on the killers of his granddaughter in an episode entitled "Laura".
- IMDb Mini Biography By: David Montgomery (qv's & corrections by A. Nonymous)
Spouse (4)
Barbara Marx (11 July 1976 - 14 May 1998) ( his death)
Mia Farrow (19 July 1966 - 16 August 1968) ( divorced)
Ava Gardner (7 November 1951 - 5 July 1957) ( divorced)
Nancy Barbato Sinatra (4 February 1939 - 29 October 1951) ( divorced) ( 3 children)
Trade Marks: Crooning voice. Black fedora. Blue eyes. Sports coat. Always wore a three piece suit or tuxedo. Use of 1950's slang.
Frequently worked with fellow Rat Pack members Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford.
Ethnicity & Lineage
Nationality & Locations
Religion
Professions
World Famous Actor.
Cannonball Run II
(1984)
Frank Sinatra
The First Deadly Sin
(1980)
Edward Delaney
Laugh-In
(TV Series 1977-1978)
Guest Performer (2 episodes, 1977-1978)
Contract on Cherry Street
(TV Movie 1977)
Dep. Insp. Frank Hovannes
Dirty Dingus Magee
(1970)
Dingus Billy Magee
Romeo und Julia '70
(TV Mini-Series 1969)
Frank Sinatra (1969)
Lady in Cement
(1968)
Tony Rome
The Detective
(1968)
Joe Leland
Tony Rome
(1967)
Tony Rome
The Naked Runner
(1967)
Sam Laker
Assault on a Queen
(1966)
Mark Brittain
Cast a Giant Shadow
(1966)
Vince Talmadge
The Oscar
(1966)
Frank Sinatra (uncredited)
Marriage on the Rocks
(1965)
Dan Edwards
Von Ryan's Express
(1965)
Col. Joseph L. Ryan
None But the Brave
(1965)
Chief Pharmacist Mate
Robin and the 7 Hoods
(1964)
Robbo
Paris When It Sizzles
(1964)
Singer (singing voice, uncredited)
4 for Texas
(1963)
Zack Thomas
Come Blow Your Horn
(1963)
Alan Baker
The List of Adrian Messenger
(1963)
Gypsy
The Manchurian Candidate
(1962)
Major Bennett Marco
The Road to Hong Kong
(1962)
The 'Twig' on Plutomium (uncredited)
Sergeants 3
(1962)
First Sgt. Mike Merry
The Devil at 4 O'Clock
(1961)
Harry
Pepe
(1960)
Frank Sinatra
Ocean's 11
(1960)
Danny Ocean
Can-Can
(1960)
François Durnais
Never So Few
(1959)
Capt. Tom Reynolds
A Hole in the Head
(1959)
Tony Manetta
Some Came Running
(1958)
Dave Hirsh
Kings Go Forth
(1958)
1st Lt. Sam Loggins
Pal Joey
(1957)
Joey Evans
The Joker Is Wild
(1957)
Joe E. Lewis
The Pride and the Passion
(1957)
Miguel
Around the World in 80 Days
(1956)
Barbary Coast Saloon Pianist
Johnny Concho
(1956)
Johnny Concho / Johnny Collins
High Society
(1956)
Mike Connor
Meet Me in Las Vegas
(1956)
Man at Slot Machine (uncredited)
The Man with the Golden Arm
(1955)
Frankie Machine
The Tender Trap
(1955)
Charlie Y. Reader
Guys and Dolls
(1955)
Nathan Detroit
Not as a Stranger
(1955)
Alfred Boone
Young at Heart
(1954)
Barney Sloan
Suddenly
(1954)
John Baron
From Here to Eternity
(1953)
Angelo Maggio
Meet Danny Wilson
(1952)
Danny Wilson
Double Dynamite
(1951)
Johnny Dalton
On the Town
(1949)
Chip
Take Me Out to the Ball Game
(1949)
Dennis Ryan
The Kissing Bandit
(1948)
Ricardo
The Miracle of the Bells
(1948)
Father Paul
It Happened in Brooklyn
(1947)
Danny Webson Miller
Till the Clouds Roll By
(1946)
Frank Sinatra
Anchors Aweigh
(1945)
Clarence Doolittle
Personal Life
Average Age
Life Expectancy
View other bios of people named Frank Sinatra
Relationships:
Spouse:
Children:
Friends:
Photos and snapshots taken of Frank Albert Sinatra, his Sinatra family, and locations and places or events from his life.
Share Frank's obituary or write your own to preserve his legacy.
May 16, 1998
OBITUARY
Frank Sinatra Dies at 82; Matchless Stylist of Pop
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Frank Sinatra, the singer and actor whose extraordinary voice elevated popular song into an art, died on Thursday night in Los Angeles. He was 82.
The cause was a heart attack, said his publicity agent, Susan Reynolds. Ms. Reynolds said his fourth wife, Barbara, his son, Frank Jr., and daughters, Tina and Nancy, were at his side at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. She said he would be given a private funeral.
Widely held to be the greatest singer in American pop history and one of the most successful entertainers of the 20th century, Sinatra was also the first modern pop superstar. He defined that role in the early 1940's when his first solo appearances provoked the kind of mass pandemonium that later greeted Elvis Presley and the Beatles.
During a show business career that spanned more than 50 years and comprised recordings, film and television as well as countless performances in nightclubs, concert halls and sports arenas, Sinatra stood as a singular mirror of the American psyche.
His evolution from the idealistic crooner of the early 1940's to the sophisticated swinger of the 50's and 60's seemed to personify the country's loss of innocence. During World War II, Sinatra's tender romanticism served as the dreamy emotional link between millions of women and their husbands and boyfriends fighting overseas. Reinventing himself in the 50's, the starry-eyed boy next door turned into the cosmopolitan man of the world, a bruised romantic with a tough-guy streak and a song for every emotional season.
In a series of brilliant conceptual albums, he codified a musical vocabulary of adult relationships with which millions identified. The haunted voice heard on a jukebox in the wee small hours of the morning lamenting the end of a love affair was the same voice that jubilantly invited the world to ''come fly with me'' to exotic realms in a never-ending party.
Sinatra appeared in 58 films, and won an Academy Award as best supporting actor for his portrayal of the feisty misfit soldier Maggio in ''From Here to Eternity'' (1953). As an actor, he could communicate the same complex mixture of emotional honesty, vulnerability and cockiness that he projected as a singer, but he often chose his roles indifferently or unwisely.
It was as a singer that he exerted the strongest cultural influence. Following his idol Bing Crosby, who had pioneered the use of the microphone, Sinatra transformed popular singing by infusing lyrics with a personal, intimate point of view that conveyed a steady current of eroticism.
The skinny blue-eyed crooner, quickly nicknamed The Voice, made hordes of bobby-soxers swoon in the 1940's with an extraordinarily smooth and flexible baritone that he wielded with matchless skill. His mastery of long-lined phrasing inspired imitations by many other male crooners, notably Dick Haymes, Vic Damone and Tony Bennett in the 1940's and 50's and most recently the pop jazz star Harry Connick Jr.
After the voice lost its velvety youthfulness, Sinatra's interpretations grew more personal and idiosyncratic, so that each performance became a direct expression of his personality and his mood of the moment. In expressing anger, petulance and bravado -- attitudes that had largely been excluded from the acceptable vocabulary of pop feeling -- Sinatra paved the way for the unfettered vocal aggression of rock singers.
The changes in Sinatra's vocal timbre coincided with a precipitous career descent in the late 1940's and early 50's. But in 1953, Sinatra made one of the most spectacular career comebacks in show business history, re-emerging as a coarser-voiced, jazzier interpreter of popular standards who put a more aggressive personal stamp on his songs.
Almost single-handedly, he helped lead a revival of vocalized swing music that took American pop to a new level of musical sophistication. Coinciding with the rise of the long-playing record album, his 1950's recordings -- along with Ella Fitzgerald's ''song book'' albums saluting individual composers -- were instrumental in establishing a canon of American pop song literature.
With Nelson Riddle, his most talented arranger, Sinatra defined the criteria for sound, style and song selection in pop recording during the pre-Beatles era. The aggressive uptempo style of Sinatra's mature years spawned a genre of punchy, rhythmic belting associated with Las Vegas, which he was instrumental in establishing and popularizing as an entertainment capital.
By the late 1950's, Sinatra had become so much the personification of American show business success that his life and his art became emblematic of the temper of the times. Except perhaps for Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy magazine, probably nobody did more to create a male ideal in the 1950's. For years, Sinatra seemed the embodiment of the hard-drinking, hedonistic swinger who could have his pick of women and who was the leader of a party-loving entourage.
That personality and wardrobe, borrowed in part from his friend Jimmy Van Heusen, the talented songwriter and man about town who liked to insouciantly sling his raincoat over his shoulder, was, in turn, imitated by many other show business figures. It was a style Sinatra never entirely abandoned. Even in his later years, he would often stroll onto the stage with a drink in his hand.
On a deeper level, Sinatra's career and public image touched many aspects of American cultural life. For millions, his ascent from humble Italian-American roots in Hoboken, N.J., was a symbol of ethnic achievement. And more than most entertainers, he used his influence to support political candidates. His change of allegiance from pro-Roosevelt Democrat in the 1940's to pro-Reagan Republican in the 1980's paralleled a seismic shift in American politics.
By the end of his career, Sinatra's annual income was estimated in the tens of millions of dollars, from concerts, record albums, real estate ventures and holdings in several companies, including a missile-parts concern, a private airline, Reprise Records (which he founded), Artanis (Sinatra spelled backward) Productions and Sinatra Enterprises.
Refresh this page to see various historical events that occurred during Frank's lifetime.
In 1915, in the year that Frank Albert Sinatra was born, in April, the Ottoman Empire rounded up, arrested, and deported 235 to 270 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Turkey. As their actions continued through the next several years, an estimated 600,000 to 1 million Armenians were killed by Turkish soldiers.
In 1926, at the age of only 11 years old, Frank was alive when on October 31st, Harry Houdini died in Michigan. Houdini was the most famed magician of his time and perhaps of all time, especially for his acts involving escapes - from handcuffs, straitjackets, chains, ropes slung from skyscrapers, and more. He was president of the Society of American Magicians and stringently upheld professional ethics. He died of complications from a ruptured appendix. Although he had received a blow to the area a couple of days previously, the connection between the blow and his appendicitis is disputed.
In 1949, by the time he was 34 years old, comedian Milton Berle hosted the first telethon show. It raised $1,100,000 for cancer research and lasted 16 hours. The next day, newspapers, in writing about the event, first used the word "telethon."
In 1987, he was 72 years old when on October 19th, stock exchanges around the world crashed. Beginning in Hong Kong then spreading to Europe, the crash then hit the United States. It was called Black Monday. The Dow Jones fell 508 points to 1,738.74 (22.61%).
In 1998, in the year of Frank Albert Sinatra's passing, on December 19th, the House of Representatives initiated impeachment charges against U.S. President Bill Clinton. He was subsequently acquitted of these charges by the Senate on February 12th.
Other Frank Sinatras
Other Sinatras
Other Bios
These stories will warm your heart and inspire you to share your memories of the people important to you.