Chairman of the Board, Leader of the Rat Pack
Sinatra remained a top box office draw for nearly a decade, and his success as both singer and actor led the New York radio personality William B. Williams to nickname him Chairman of the Board of show business. The name stuck for the rest of his long career.
At a time when restraints on sexual and social behavior had begun to loosen a bit, the high-living Sinatra, who enjoyed gambling and womanizing, became in the popular press the embodiment of the swinger, a concept repeatedly invoked by his album titles.
In the '60s, Sinatra appeared to be America's quintessential middle-aged playboy. "Ocean's Eleven" (1960) was the first of three Sinatra films to feature the star surrounded by the hard-drinking, high-living clique -- nicknamed the Rat Pack, which included Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Jr. and Joey Bishop.
The group was an outgrowth of a social circle that had centered on Humphrey Bogart, who died in 1957. The Rat Packers appeared together in three more lighthearted capers: "Sergeants Three" (1962), "Four for Texas" (1963) and "Robin and the Seven Hoods" (1964). This was the other side of Sinatra. As carefully as he plumbed his music, after 1960 he seemed largely to be wasting his
acting talents by walking through his movies.
One of the Rat Pack's favorite playgrounds was Las Vegas, where Sinatra was a pioneer entertainer. In 1953, he bought a 2 percent interest in the Sands Hotel, and eventually became a corporate vice president.
He earned $100,000 a week in his frequent performances at the Sands and used the hotel for recording albums and making movies.
After supporting Adlai Stevenson's bid for the Presidency in 1956, Sinatra worked avidly for John F. Kennedy in 1960 and supervised the newly elected President's inaugural gala in Washington in January 1961. But his pro-Kennedy sentiments cooled after the President canceled a weekend visit to Sinatra's house because the singer had been host to the Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana and his
associates. By the 1970's, Sinatra had turned to the right. He became a supporter of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
Sinatra's recording career entered a major new phase when he formed his own record company, Reprise, in late 1960. Since the new label overlapped his Capitol contract, for about a year he recorded for both labels. In 1963, he sold his record company to Warner Brothers, retaining a one-third interest. In association with Warner Brothers, he also set up his own independent film production company, Artanis.
Beginning with "Ring-A-Ding-Ding!" in 1961 and for the next 20 years, Sinatra recorded more than 30 albums for Reprise. By this time, his voice had hardened and coarsened. Except for "Francis Albert Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim," a remarkable 1967 collaboration with the Brazilian songwriter, guitarist and singer in which he sang very softly, his ballad singing tended toward the stentorian, often with a noticeable edge of macho toughness. The coarsening of his voice, however,
helped give his singing an extra rhythmic punch.
Increasingly, his albums had a self-consciously retrospective air. "I Remember Tommy ..." (1961) looked back to his days with the Dorsey band.
"Sinatra's Sinatra" (1963) consisted entirely of newly recorded Sinatra favorites.
His 50th birthday in 1965 was celebrated with the release of two deliberately monumental albums, "September of My Years" and "A Man and His Music," an anthology of his career that he narrated and sang. "September of My Years," whose title anthem of middle-aged nostalgia was custom-written by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen and arranged by Gordon Jenkins, won Grammys for album of the year and best male vocal performance. Sinatra scored a double triumph in
1966 when "A Man and His Music" was voted album of the year, and "Strangers in the Night," his first No. 1 single in 11 years, won record of the year. The string of hits continued with a Top 5 hit, "That's Life" (1966), and "Something Stupid" (1967), a duet with his daughter Nancy.
In 1969 he had a substantial hit with "My Way," an adaptation of a French ballad, "Mon Habitude," by Claude Francois, Jacques Revaux and Giles Thibaut, with English lyrics by Paul Anka. Along with "New York, New York," which he recorded for a three-disk set, "Trilogy: Past, Present, Future" (1980), it became one of the signature songs of his later years.
The moment when Sinatra and his style of music seemed the least fashionable was in the late 1960s, when the youthful rock counterculture dominated popular music. Sinatra was no fan of rock-and-roll, having once dismissed it as music "sung, played and written for the most part by cretinous goons."
He did make tentative efforts to adapt to changing styles, trying his hand at songs by Jim Croce, Jimmy Webb, Neil Diamond, Neil Sedaka, John Denver, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder, Peter Allen, Billy Joel and the Beatles, among others. But even singing soft rock, he never sounded
entirely comfortable.
His surprise marriage in 1966 to the actress Mia Farrow, then 20 (and 30 years his junior), seemed in part to be a search for a youthful connection. They were divorced in 1968.
Retirement? For Good? Doing That His Way
As a film actor, Sinatra continued to work steadily through the 1960s. Besides his Rat Pack jaunts, his films included "Come Blow Your Horn" (1963), "Von Ryan's Express" (1965), "Tony Rome" (1967), "The Detective" (1968) and "Dirty Dingus Magee" (1970).
In June 1971, Sinatra announced his retirement during a gala concert at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, but it lasted only two years. He returned with the album "Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back," the title of which gave him his last show business nickname.
In 1976 he married for the fourth time, to Barbara Blakely Marx, who had been married to Zeppo Marx. She survives him, as do his daughters, his son and two grandchildren.
His recordings and films became less frequent. In 1980, after a six-year hiatus, he released "Trilogy: Past, Present, Future," a concept album in which a Gordon Jenkins oratorio imagined the singer as an intergalactic traveler. It was followed by the moody "She Shot Me Down" (1981) and the jazzy
"L.A. Is My Lady" (1984).
Sinatra returned to film in 1977 with a television movie, "Contract on Cherry Street," which was poorly received, as was his last major Hollywood role, as an aging detective in "The First Deadly Sin" (1980). In 1984, he briefly appeared as himself in "Cannonball Run 2." For his 75th birthday in 1990, Capitol and Reprise each released extensive, elaborately packaged Sinatra retrospectives.
Columbia had released a six-disk anthology four years earlier.
Sinatra worked vigorously for the 1980 Presidential campaign of his close friend Ronald Reagan, and produced and directed a three-hour inaugural gala that was shown in an edited form on television in 1981. In 1985 he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award.
Even after he stopped making records and movies, Sinatra continued to give concerts. In the early 1980's, he was paid $2 million for four concerts in Argentina and $2 million for nine concerts in Sun City, South Africa. Sun City appearances by Sinatra, who had always supported civil rights causes,
drew sharp criticism from anti-apartheid groups.
In 1982, he signed a $16 million three-year contract with the Golden Nugget Hotel in Atlantic City. In 1988 and 1989, Sinatra was still listed in Forbes magazine as among the 40 richest entertainers, with an annual income estimated at $14 million in 1989 and $12 million in 1988. But when he was required to submit a financial statement to the Nevada Gaming Commission for a renewal of his gambling license in 1981, he claimed a surprisingly modest net worth of just over $14 million.
Sinatra's life was rocked in 1986 by the publication of "His Way," Kitty Kelley's best-selling unauthorized biography, which focused on his volatile personality, his personal feuds, his streak of violence and his relationships over the years with organized-crime figures. It was a harsh portrait that nevertheless acknowledged Sinatra's role as a musical icon.
The Concert Giver and Singer of Solo Duets
He toured the world in 1989 with Sammy Davis Jr. and Liza Minnelli in a concert package billed as "the ultimate event." It was one of the grander events in a rigorous touring schedule that he maintained
into his late 70s. He toured with Shirley MacLaine in 1992. Increasingly, during his performances in later years, he resorted to using electronic prompters at the front of the stage to read lyrics.
In 1993, at the age of 77, Sinatra had an astounding recording-career comeback with "Frank Sinatra Duets," a collection of 13 Sinatra standards rerecorded with such pop stars as Barbra Streisand, Tony Bennett, Aretha Franklin, Luther Vandross and Bono of the Irish rock group U2. The record was widely criticized for being an engineering stunt, since none of the guest singers were actually in
the recording studio with Sinatra, who recorded his parts separately. The record nevertheless sold over two million copies in the United States. A year later, there was a weaker follow-up using a different roster of guests.
Sinatra's last concert was on Feb. 25, 1995, at the Palm Desert Marriott Ballroom in Palm Desert,Calif.
Assessing his own abilities in 1963, Sinatra sounded a note that was quintessentially characteristic:forlorn and tough. "Being an 18-karat manic-depressive, and having lived a life of violent emotional contradictions, I have an overacute capacity for sadness as well as elation," he said.'
"Whatever else has been said about me personally is unimportant. When I sing, I believe, I'm honest."
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