Frank: The Voice

The Sinatra books keep coming--the good, the bad, the morethan bad. The latest is Frank by James Kaplan, who haswritten a bio of Martin and Lewis, so this signals a returnto familiar turf--the era of the forties and early fifties,before TV and Rock and Roll when the drug of choice was themartini and you tended to leave the house at night notlooking like a slob.This is a big book--652 pages, massively researchedand a pleasant surprise for someone like myself who thoughtI knew all the Sinatra stories but now it turns out I waswrong. Ill get to thatThe book divides into 3 parts--the formative years, breakingin as a singer in New Jersey and then catching on with theHarry James band. Part 2 describes the rise to fame, theearly forties when he became The Voice--the teenage throb,pulling down $20,000 a week (in 40's dollars) --and also,conincident with the war, viewed with phenomenal hatred bythe military because he managed to slip the draft andconcentrate instead on the banging of starlets over at MGM.There is a photo, taken during an engagement atthe Paramount Theatre in New York, of sailors wingingtomatoes--or maybe rocks--at a huge billboard cutout of Frankinstalled above the marqueeThen its on to Part 3, the period of the slide, followingthe war when the musical tastes of the country began ashift, as they tend to do, away from one particular styleand over to some other, in this case something known as the"novelty" tune that achieved its highest expression with animmortal ditty called How much is that doggy in the window,sung by Patti Page, complete with barking.Part 3 is also the period of Ava Gardner and its this partof the book--the meeting, the affair, the marriage, thecollapse of the marriage--where the book seems to shift intoa higher gear--to get the readerly juices flowing.Ava gardner was the woman Sinatra left his wife for and ashis daughter Nancy said--watching Ava emerge from aswimming pool in a leopard bikini: "I could understandwhy"She was the sex goddess type, a type that operates best ata distance, up there on the screen--beyond reality, but avagardner transcended this type. From time to time shecrossed path with writers, including Hemingway and RobertGraves--and impressed both in a particular way that hadlittle to do with sex. It was some other thing--an energy,a spirit--an attitude. She was--as Kaplan puts it--abeautiful nihilist.Many people marry who should never have married andspecifically not to each other and at the top of the listis Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner. Why? Because marriageworks bests between grownups and neither frank nor avaqualify here. The definition of a child is: the inabilityto wait for a need to be satisfied--the concept of instantgratification. The opposite is life as an adult: delayedgratification.Delayed gratification had zero appeal for Frank Sinatra.When Frank wanted something he wanted it now and if hedidn't get it there was hell to pay. He was an onlychild, the prince type, the apple of Dolly Sinatras eye andnormally when you are raised in this way the path toadulthood presents some unwelcome surprises--even shocking.But Frank was Frank. He was Sinatra, the fame arrivedearly, an extraordinary fame, and in this way the princelyexistence continued without missing a beat.And Ava Gardner was the same. In her words: "I was thebaby of the family and I am still the baby".So there you have it: two babies, also celebrities of thefirst magnitude, also without a faithful bone in theirbody, also with furious tempers that could ignite in theblink of an eye, married to each other. Did Imention they both liked to drink? The line, had Vegas putone out, on the survival of the marriage, would have been10-1Some stories.Sinatra and Ava Gardner were holed up in Palm Springsfollowing the third or maybe fifth time he had beenkicked out of the house. For both these two the thing mostfeared was: to be bored. So on this night the unthinkablehappens and to thwart this evil moment they pile into thecar, hammered to the gills, and find themselves in the townof Indio--blissfully asleep at 4 AM--and Frank retrieves his45 and starts popping traffic signals.He pops two or three signals and the cops appear on thescene and he is collared and its off the to station wherehe rings up George Evans, his publicist, the least enviableof all the jobs in Hollywood at this time and says: Georgewe're in trouble.Geroge evans say: how can I be trouble when I have beenhome lying in my bed all night?Sinatra was down, the gigs were drying up and he wasdropped from his label--Columbia. He did a small favor forGeorge Jacobs, chauffeur for Irving Lazar--the agent, andGeorge Jacobs mentions this kindness of Frank and Lazarsays: of course he's nice. Hes a loser. Losers have thetime to be nice.Sinatra made a movie with Shelly winters--Meet Danny Wilson.The movie proceeds and as it does the two stars develop aprofound loathing for each other. Sinatra was a hard casebut he had nothing on Shelly winters. Some day they willget around to establishing a Hollywood Ballbusters Hall ofFame and the first three women to be enshrined will beBarbra Streisand, Elizabeth Taylor and Shelly Winters. Thescript calls for scene with Shelly Winters in the hospitaland Sinatra arrives to comfort her--a tender moment. Hebends over to whisper some sweet sentiment into her ear buthe strays from the script to whisper instead a viciouscrack and she grabs a bedpan and whacks him over the head.Sinatra was under contract to MGM and of all the miserablefilms to emerge from the studio at this time Miracle of theBells (featuring Frank as a priest) was thestinker of stinkers. Sinatra despised the film, felt hedeserved better and was in no mood to go on the road--toSan Francisco--to promote the film. They put him up in asuite at the Fairmont and again the unthinkable happens: heis bored. He is with the guys, Hank Sanicola and Jimmy VanHeusen--also known as The Varsity--and its that time ofnight--3AM--and Frank calls the desk and says: this is FrankSinatra. Did you know there is no piano in my room?There is a pause and the clerk mumbles something and nowthe manager is summoned, a phone call is made, more peopleare roused from their beds and a piano is delivered toFranks room. The next day he goes shopping and buys $1200worth of cashmere sweaters for he and The Varsity andeverything, sweaters plus piano, goes on the studios dime.When Sinatra was with the Tommy Dorsey band the drummer wasBuddy Rich. Frank had a temper but he wasnt a psychopath.In the beginning the two men got along and even roomedtogether for a time because Buddy Rich had to admit thatwhen Sinatra was up there on the stand something happenedthat wasnt happening before.But two high strung prima donna types are bound to tangleand tangle they did, a few punches were thrown, that failedto land, and bloodshed was avoided--for the moment.Some weeks later Buddy rich is leaving rehearsal, walkingto his car and two guys appear who, in Buddys words,"proceeded to give me an efficient, professional beating".This means a beating sufficient to get the point acrosswithout maiming you for life. Sinatra was behind it, asRich well knew and some years later queried Frank on theincident, no hard feelings you understand, and Frank said:yes.Some observationsHe was a man who had to keep moving. He thrived on actionand if he couldnt get good action he would take bad actionbecause bad action is better than no action at all. He washappiest on the road--doing the act, playing cards with theboys, ringing room service to send up a hooker. As Kaplansays: "Even at home he was on the road".Clothes were important. There were a lot of rulesaround the Sinatra house, all Dolly's and at the top of thelist was: looking sharp. Of the many thousands or hundredsof thousands of pictures of Frank Sinatra you will neversee an untucked shirt or shoes in need of a shine or ahat that isn't perfect perfectly worn--or the tie perfectlytied or the cuffs on the shirt perfectly shot. He looks atall times ready for a fashion spread in Esquire or Voguefor Men.He visited Ava Gardner on location in Africa, filmingMogambo, and ventured into the bush wearing gabardineSlacks, freshly pressed, and an orange alpacacardigan=-the Sinatra version of roughing it.Sinatra had two obsessions: his career and women--in thatorder. It was close but the career always came first.Nothing could be allowed to interfere with that--and neverdid. The press was a problem. He hated the press. But itwas a hatred that had to be swalloed from time whenever thecareer hit a snag and the press was required to demonstratea positive attitude.The book wraps in 1953, the year Sinatra won an academyaward for the role of Maggio in From Here to Eternity,signaling the end of the slide and a resurrection of thecareer--a phenomenal resurrection. He went on to a new fame,a different fame, greater than the earlier fameextraordinary though it was. This is the Sinatra Iremember--circa 1955--from the great recordings on Capitolwith Nelson Riddle writing the scores.The voice is different. Its the same voice with thatAmazing vibe--the Sinatra vibe--that wraps itself around thetone and the consummate phrasing and a trace of the earliersweetness that was so appealing.But a dimension has been added, an emotional power, agreater depth of feeling. Call it: another 10 years ofliving.And this is what we remember when we remember Sinatra--notthe whoring and drinking and the abusive and bullyingbehavior--the mobster wannabe--that does him little credit.Instead we remember the voice. He was The Voice. When youhave said that you have said it all.

The Voice begins with a birth, a not at all unusual start for a biography. But this scene grabs the reader as different right from the start. The language is vivid, like something out of Dickens, with "horse-s**t-flecked cobblestones" and air that "smells of coal smoke and imminent snow'. We soon arrive in a kitchen full of women gathered around a table on which lies a "copper-haired girl, hugely pregnant", "moaning hoarsely". This is a difficult delivery. Blunt methods are used to extract the baby, who is then thrown aside for dead, bleeding from its injuries, to save the mother. But both mother and son survive. The son, Francis Albert Sinatra, would later say of the event, "They just kind of ripped me out and tossed me aside." This birth informed his life so much that he was still bitter about it decades later, still angry over a slight he couldn't have even been conscious of at the time, but was reminded of daily through the physical scars that remained. It was the first painful event to drive him to the heights he attained.But the birth is important to this book for another reason: it gives form to author James Kaplan's unique plan.Virtually everything that can be written about Sinatra has. So why another bio? Kaplan's twist is to focus on Sinatra's first 39 years: a sort of portrait of an artist as a young man, timed to close after his rise from the ashes of the first phase of his career. The Voice is a redemption story with Frank Sinatra in the lead.Most of what people seem to remember about Sinatra is what happened long after his comeback, the Rat-pack era of the 60's and the Chairman of the Board of the 70's. But what Kaplan understands and was smart enough to put into written form is that the most interesting part of Sinatra's life was really that time from the early 40's to mid-50's: his rise as "The Voice", mobs of girls wetting their pants for him; his downfall in the late 40's and early 50's when his shady relationship with the mob, serial cheating on his wife, and a combustible second marriage to Ava Gardner--who was essentially a female version of Frank Sinatra-- soured him to the public; then the comeback: the dissolution of his marriage to Gardner, his Oscar-winning role in From Here To Eternity, and, most importantly, his renaissance at Capitol Records, where he did his most beloved and artistically vibrant work.Kaplan gets special credit for showing us so much about Sinatra's volatile relationship to Gardner, and the often touching pain Sinatra experienced because of it, as well as the man's respect and hard work on his music. These are two important touchstones in Sinatra's life, (the other being his mother) Ava and the music, and Kaplan lays everything out for us, more than I've ever read before. When Ava and Frank are on the stage, or when Frank is at work in the studio, the book is nearly impossible to put down.Kaplan's approach is also interesting in that he provides layer upon layer of witnesses to Sinatra's life, offering sometimes inconsistent and conflicting testimony, so that the reader is often left to divine the truth, something that frequently seems as elusive as the man under study. Yet this doesn't disappoint as one might expect, in fact it feels almost like a pleasant dissonance. I think this is because Kaplan still manages to nail Sinatra's essence, the contradictions: the man who could buy a friend a new house and also leave a pregnant wife at home while he cheated; the man who thought life's rules didn't apply to him, but could be also be paralyzed with self-doubt. Kaplan's Sinatra is the man most of us forget about--the human one-- so used to the caricature that came later. And this is the beauty of The Voice: by focusing on Sinatra's difficult fall and ultimate redemption, Kaplan turns the legend into a universal story; he shows us how Sinatra is just like us, while also showing us how he isn't anything like us at all. He presents a character that at times we'll like, and at other times we'll hate, but we'll always have empathy for.

I didn't read the fine print when ordering this book and was surprised when it arrived - More than 700 reading pages and didn't even cover Sinatra's success of the 1960s. This book is the first of two, and this one covers Frank's birth to his Oscar for "From Here to Eternity." It covered his rise in the 40s and his dismal fall in the 50s and ended with the start of his rise toward the 60s. The author went deep into Frank's troubled relationship with his mom and dad, his first wife Nancy, and I think he wrote of every conversation Frank had with his wife, Ava Gardner. It was exhausting. In some ways, Frank was pathetic, but then again, he was like most of us - broken at times and struggling to get a foothold. In that way, it was very genuine and honest. I don't think I would have liked Frank Sinatra, but I understand him - and perhaps other celebrities - better. I did enjoy pausing the book to learn more about Ava Gardner and her movies and even watched one or two. I also watched 'Here To Eternity.' I had fun listening to Sinatra's music on Spotify. Reading this book was not a waste of time, but it is not for the casual reader who wants a simple biography on a famous person.

Brilliant.

Sinatra had mythical status in my household, as an entertainer. Along with Elvis and Brando, Sinatra was legendary. But I only knew about in the later part of his career. I've read about his exploits with the infamous Rat Pack but wanted a more comprehensive view of enigma which is Old Blue Eyes.Kaplan's work is nothing short of a brilliant. A biography of a complex man made entertaining and understandable. At 700 pages it looks like a daunting read, but consider that this is only the first half of Sinatra's career it looks even more challenging. Believe me it is worth the time! You can't begin to detail all the history of this man with one book. Most of the time I get a little bored about 3/4 through such lengthy biographies. With The Voice it was a literally a "could not put down" experience. It took me about a week to finish only because I had work to do. I found myself reading for hours and picking it up in the evening for just one more chapter.Kaplan covers everything, from his humble beginnings to his rise and fall...and rise again. All the rumors and stories are there, and instead of idle gossip, Kaplan delivers multiple interpretations but lets the reader decide which stores are true. In absence of hard facts Kaplan does not take only one account as truth. He draws on a lot of other sources to give a composite of the story when needed. Kaplan also tells the story about Sinatra as a singer in the way that a musician can appreciate. After all, Sinatra was a singer at his core. Now I can truly appreciate his voice and the music. With Kaplan's insight, Sinatra's music means so much more to me.Yes, his association with the mob is there, and his often tumultuous relationships with women, especially Ava Gardner. A bio without those elements would not be one of Sinatra. All his failings and strengths, and his triumphs. Kaplan delivers the whole story of a complex man's complex life.Kaplan does use snappy language and often it is a little out there, but it somehow fits the man so why not? The only oddity is Kaplan's constant reminders of men's hairlines and lack of, especially Sinatra. By the end of the book you will know who had a lot of it and who lost most of it! It is sort of hilarious but then again I can believe that Sinatra worried about it just as much. Other than that the book is a rollercoaster of emotion, as was the crooners life, this book perfectly rides the ups and downs. You will love and hate the man at times, and feel his pain and joy. We all can relate to at least some of it. The man truly lived an interesting life, this book fits the man and tells his story well.This book was a journey into the first half of Sinatra's career , and I already got the next volume and will happily be enjoying it!

This is the definitive book on Sinatra, endlessly fascinating, informative and wonderfully written. I look forward to Volume 2 with great anticipation.

This is a very engaging look at someone whose personal life was a shambles, and who yet produced glorious songs. Although more than 700 pages long, I devoured it. I look forward to the second volume. Highly recommended.

Exhaustive biography. Also contains tons of information about other greats of show business such as Tommy Dorsey and Harry James.