Frank Sinatra Stories

Sinatra and Streisand. There was interest in having both of these legends team up for a TV special somewhere around 1967-68. It might have been between Barbra's Central Park concert and film premiere of "Funny Girl." Sinatra apparently was interested, as was Streisand's long time manager Marty Ehrlichman. It would be a show of just them singing, but Streisand seemed to chicken out. Something about Sinatra made her wary. Perhaps, he was one of those few on whom she couldn't pull her take over shit. It would probably have happened around the time of Frank and Ella's special. He was still in fine voice and the pairing of the two of them might have been classic. Does anybody know more about why this never came to be?

Lena Horne hated his spaghetti eating guts. The feeling was mutual.

Because Lena had very similar temperament. A egocentric, rude, nasty bitch.

Lena and Ava happened to be very close friends. Very close...

Too OLD, R1. Plus Funny Girl was Bab's show, she didn't want to take second billing. It would have been a nightmare with one-take-Frank not working as hard as nervous Streisand the Perfectionist.

R3, Frank thought Lena was one of Ava's former lovers, hence the dislike.

Maybe she could have given Frank suggestions on a better rug to wear. An afro maybe.

Bump. This thread should have been titled Frank Sinatra Anecdotes Part 2!

Frank was probably bipolar or at least suffered periodically from episodes. Very moody..very depressed or very high and often angry. He would sulk for weeks then go on a crazy party jag in which he could be very generous and funny. Most of his young and ' Rat pack ' years were fueled by drugs booze and sex. He is often called a nasty punk with a bad attitude. He mellowed in his later years .

R8 Maybe. I don't think so, though. I think he was just spoiled and entitled.

Did not like his singing

Frank, why'd you fuck up "New York, New York" with your "A-number one" bullshit?

R8 is the Sinatra was Bipolar troll. It isn't working.

Sinatra was a punk, add alcoholism and a massive chip on his shoulder. There are no excuses for his boorish behavior. Being an asshole is being an asshole. He got depressed? Boo hoo.

Frank did not take drugs, moron r8.

Sinatra hated drugs and people who did them, although he was on Elavil at the end of his life for mood control thanks to Barbara.

He is adequate at best

He's was like me, only not good looking or as good.

Frank by the mid 1960s was taking daily injections of testosterone administered by a nurse, according to Kitty Kelley's book "His Way." This was in his 50ish change of life period when he married Mia and felt compelled to keep up with a younger generation that would leave him behind.

Sinatra was not bipolar. He was Italian.

R!8 Same Thing.

R14, Elavil destroys your sex drive, not that Frankie had much in later life.

The stories about Sinatra at the end of his life are kind of sad, what with his greedy dominating 4th wife feuding with his kids, who didn't see all that much of him at the end because otherwise they'd tear Barbara's wig off.

I finished the book by Sinatra's valet - highly recommended, a hoot - and want to at least read Tina's memoir published a couple of years after his death. I think Nancy Jr's book would be a bit sappy, while Tina probably digs a bit deeper and certainly would go full in on her stepmother and all the problems there.

If I were any of Frank's kids, there's no way that two-bit whore would have kept me from my father on his death bed. I would have broken through the gates, grabbed that ostrich-necked, fucked out old Zeppo relic and done some expert pillow therapy and then thrown her in the pool like Carol Wayne. The nerve!

[ 13 ] Moron. In the late 50s early 60s Frank was known to be a " patent " of Dr Feelgood ,Max Jackobson. Do you think those injections he received were just vitamins ? So before you start calling other individuals " Moron " I suggest you know what your talking about...Jackass

It all started catching up with him when his voice starting showing wear and tear and by 55, he looked 70. At 70, he looked 85. He had the good sense to retire in 1971. Should have stayed that way.

R21, that's a fun book, but 50% is ridiculously false. He saw Garbo and Dietrich making out in the pool? He claims the Lena-Sinatra feud started because she refused him? Puleeese.

"Frank was probably bipolar or at least suffered periodically from episodes. Very moody..very depressed or very high and often angry. He would sulk for weeks then go on a crazy party jag in which he could be very generous and funny."

Oh bull, he wasn't bipolar, he was just emotional. Like most people.

Sometimes he'd feel happy and confident, and other times he'd devote days or weeks to nursing a grudge or feeling sorry for himself. Because he was rich, surrounded by yes-men, and connected, he didn't have to snap out of those moods and earn a living or deal with his family's needs, he could take as long as he liked with his asshole moods. And snap out of them by having his goons rough someone up.

Starting at 6:42, Barbra doesn't appear to be all that enthused by Frank.

^ neither is anyone else...especially since "STAR" was a humongous BOMB-0 in 1968.

R28 but the song was okay

[ 25 ]. " oh bull, He was just emotional " You sound like a simpleton.

For r27....Frank , in his final performing years and even at the very last performance was still interesting and worth listening to, he never really lost 'it',,,, on the other hand Babs today.......well - to be charitable - it would have to be 'an acquired taste'.

R31, Sinatra was at his peak of his fame and performance in the 1960s, he was deemed a legend and could still sing great. He produced best selling LPs, was still a movie star and appeared in a series of excellent and highly rated TV specials. The problem for him - and all of the other adult popular singers - was the change in music and lack of good material. The record companies dumped on these singers (sing contemporary music or out), and subsequently drove their fans out of record stores. Sinatra "retired" for two years as a result.

R30, I didn't say "He was just emotional," that was R26. But Sinatra was an insecure swaggering bully who threw his weight around because he could. Friends have testified that he was basically an unhappy person who couldn't be alone. That's not bi-polar.

r23 r30 Please learn how to reference earlier posts. Until then, you shouldn't be calling anyone else "moron."

Sinatra probably thought that drugs "medicine" prescribed by doctors were not drugs.

[R33] You're absolutely right. Prissy Ribbon clerk would be far more appropriate.

OP, you are supposed to post a link to the original or previous thread.

Boy, that performance of "Star" at the Academy Awards was painful. A lackluster, rendition (he was out of synch with the orchestra and throwing in those "ring-a-ding-ding" extra words) plus all the stone-faced actresses just staring at him! Yikes!

R37 You are so right about those actresses. Raquel Welch looked like she was squirming in her seat until she knew the camera was on her. Patricia Neal needed an Anacin, Barbra was like "Cut the shit and get to the Best Actress category." Kim Hunter looked like she had such dined on a formaldehyde cocktail. Only Jane Wyman managed a carefully timed smile. And poor Frank was showing his age with probably one of the better of his many broadloom toupees. He was fighting vocally with a lousy song from one of the biggest budgeted box office bombs in movie musical history, and the notion of retirement was probably more than a suggestion for him and his bloated buddy Roz Russell. The best thing about the clip was Sidney Poitier who gave me a woody. Still hot by today's standards.

r35 Still not right.

The George Jacobs bio says that when the marriage to Mia was at its worst, Sinatra threw a firecracker at Mia's deaf white cat and scared the animal so badly that it took off into the woods surrounding the house and never came back. Probably got eaten by a coyote or run over.

Sinatra had his generous moments, but he could be a cruel bully when things weren't going his way, as the above attests. Also, Jacobs details Frank's pattern of cutting off people for little or no reason and never acknowledging them again. He doesn't sound bipolar to me: He sounds like a borderline.

He sounds like a fucking asshole to me

We still cannot believe how fantastic Loretta Young looked - at 56!

in the sinatra 'star' clip

Regardless of his own boorish behavior, I believe Sinatra would have PUBLICLY trashed pres Trump.

Did Sinatra record many Sondheim songs? The only 3 I can think of are "Send in The Clowns," "All I Need is The Girl" from "Gypsy, and "Good Thing Going" from "Merrily We Roll Along."

Frank really "got" Send in the Clowns...

Antiques Roadshow is asked to appraise a Frank Sinatra letter. I find it pretty amazing. He is answering a priest who has written him on behalf of the two men who kidnapped his son. Sinatra writes back a 6 page, very well written, letter. Where he tells the priest off, stands up for his son, but does it more delicately than I would have thought.

The link is too long for DL. It's posted on Facebook, Antiques Roadshow page. It's worth a read.

(They appraised the letter at $20,000.)

R32, I agree with what you said, that Frank did not seem like a happy person in his real life.

It’s funny (and I know this allegedly happens all the time) that he got everything he could have ever dreamed out of life and was still unhappy as a human being...

I would say that someone like Dean Martin seemed more secure and overall like a happy person—until his son died of course (then he seemed sad, but he didn’t seem like that before or throughout his life like Sinatra did).

I can't imagine Sinatra signing an autograph, let alone writing a six page letter. It was probably written by George Jacobs, his valet, who frankly, answered most of the fan mail and signed virtually all of the 8x10 glossies, imitating Sinatra's signature to perfection.

R49 Somebody should let the appraisers in on the secret. Sounds like they're valuing the letter at $20K for what amounts to George Jacobs's writing.

I agree, R49. In fact, the story is that Sinatra's entire 1960s Playboy interview was done by someone else, someone who could do faux Sinatra and phone it in - literally. Sinatra was a lazy son of a bitch.

It's well known there are very few authentic Sinatra autographs out there. Few people ever got close enough to him.

We are reading the book by the valet and on page 197 he reports that Sinatra fucked bareback only - he HATED rubbers and refused to use them!

R53 Are we talking women or dudes??

Frank's wife Barbara Marx got her revenge in later years when Frank was old and demented. She basically pulled an Annie Wilkes and kept him a virtual prisoner in their Palms Spring home, refusing even his children access to him. Just reward for being a prick, bully, and womanizer.

r55=fish

R56 = geezer who still idolized the monster FS

R14, actually Sinatra was taking amphetamines pretty heavily in the early 50s when his career was on the skids. He was working an insane amount taking whatever singing jobs were offered.

Wasn't it during the low points of the fifties that his vocal chords got so badly damaged that he unable to sing and was coughing up blood? That might have been during the Ava years, when his career was on the skids and he was going downhill fast. His voice was never as powerful or smooth after that, but what saved his career and ass was the role in "From Here to Eternity", which he knew would be a big hit. After that he had a career as an actor again and could let his singing voice recover.

Which really makes you wonder how much of that story from "The Godfather" is true. Did he use undue influence to save himself?

[quote] vocal chords

Oh, dear.

R59 Ava saved his ass. She went to Harry Cohn, the head of Columbia and lobbied for him to get the role.

Ava did as much as anyone to bring Sinatra back from the trenches in the early 1950s. It was she who was the major star at that time, not he. But his Vesuvial ego would never permit him to acknowledge her help or thank her in any way. He believed he got that role and the Oscar all because of his talent. Ava eventually saw through this scarred up bag of bones and bid him a fond farewell, ten inches notwithstanding. A woman like Ava could have landed the primest dick on the planet, and certainly did. She didn't need a skinny wop.

I may have told this story. I didn't see it in the previous thread. It's probably apocryphal but who cares?

Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly were sitting on the set of "Mogambo" when a native extra dropped his pants near them and changed into his costume. Grace let out a gasp. Ava looked over and said, "Eh. Frank's is bigger."

The only other thing I've heard is that a lot of songwriters didn't like Sinatra because he would change the words to their songs. I seem to remember that Cole Porter was one of them.

I wonder if Colie actually liked Nelson Riddle's take on "I've Got You Under My Skin." He probably loathed the uptempo swinging version of "Night and Day."

Sinatra and the mob...