FRANK SINATRA
By Sara Lautman

Frank Sinatra’s reputation is perhaps one of the most pervasive of the latter half of the twentieth century. Frequently nicknamed (“The Voice”, “Ol’ Blue Eyes”, “Chairman of the Board”), the singer’s presence on the landscape of American pop culture surpasses the iconographic. Sinatra is a cultural institution. With over 70 films to his name, countless hit songs, and a considerable library of signature numbers (“My Way”, “The Lady is a Tramp”, “It Was a Very Good Year”, “Strangers in the Night”, “New York, New York”) his legacy is as relevant and ubiquitous as ever.

Sinatra’s career as a film actor is inextricable from his career as a singer and song-stylist. He broke into cinema in 1944, appearing in light vehicles for his swiftly rising star, eventually sharing the screen with Gene Kelly in a number of smash hits (Anchors Aweigh, Take Me Out to the Ballgame, New York, New York). He endured a decline in the early fifties, only to return with From Here to Eternity in 1953. His performance in Eternity and the Academy Award he won for it fixed him in the public imagination as a real artist, an enduring romantic and not just a fad for the bobby-soxers.

Throughout the fifties, Sinatra continued to record records prolifically, enjoying great popular and critical acclaim for In the Wee Small Hours (1953), Swing Easy (1954), Song for Swingin’ Lovers (1956), and Come Fly With Me (1957).

He also starred in some of the most sensational and well-received films of the time, including The Man With the Golden Arm (1955), The Joker is Wild (1957), and a new version of Cole Porter’s High Society. He also starred in a television one-off of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town with Eva Marie Saint and Paul Newman.

Sinatra’s love life was known as popular tabloid fodder and the list of women with whom he was linked romantically includes Ava Gardner (his second wife, after childhood sweetheart Nancy Barbato), Lauren Bacall and Mia Farrow. In 1998, he succumbed to heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He was 82 years old.

More Time Machine Stories