title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra's decline in popularity was evident at his concert appearances. At a brief run at the Paramount in New York he drew small audiences. At the Desert Inn in Las Vegas he performed to half-filled houses of wildcatters and ranchers. At a concert at Chez Paree in Chicago, only 150 people in a 1,200-seat capacity venue turned up to see him. By April 1952 he was performing at the Kauai County Fair in Hawaii. Sinatra's relationship with Columbia Records was also disintegrating, with A&R executive Mitch Miller claiming he "couldn't give away" the singer's records. Though several notable recordings were made during this time period, such as "If I Could Write a Book" in January 1952, which Granata sees as a "turning point", forecasting his later work with its sensitivity, Columbia and MCA dropped him later that year. His last studio recording for Columbia, "Why Try To Change Me Now", was recorded in New York on September 17, 1952, with orchestra arranged and conducted by Percy Faith. Journalist Burt Boyar observed, "Sinatra had had it. It was sad. From the top to the bottom in one horrible lesson."


title: Frank Sinatra

text: The release of the film "From Here to Eternity" in August 1953 marked the beginning of a remarkable career revival. Tom Santopietro notes that Sinatra began to bury himself in his work, with an "unparalleled frenetic schedule of recordings, movies and concerts", in what authors Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan describe as "a new and brilliant phase". On March 13, 1953, Sinatra met with Capitol Records vice president Alan Livingston and signed a seven-year recording contract. His first session for Capitol took place at KHJ studios at Studio C, 5515 Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, with Axel Stordahl conducting. The session produced four recordings, including "I'm Walking Behind You", Sinatra's first Capitol single. After spending two weeks on location in Hawaii filming "From Here to Eternity", Sinatra returned to KHJ on April 30 for his first recording session with Nelson Riddle, an established arranger and conductor at Capitol who was Nat King Cole's musical director. After recording the first song, "I've Got the World on a String", Sinatra offered Riddle a rare expression of praise, "Beautiful!", and after listening to the playbacks, he could not hide his enthusiasm, exclaiming, "I'm back, baby, I'm back!"


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In subsequent sessions in May and November 1953, Sinatra and Riddle developed and refined their musical collaboration, with Sinatra providing specific guidance on the arrangements. Sinatra's first album for Capitol, "Songs for Young Lovers", was released on January 4, 1954, and included "A Foggy Day", "I Get a Kick Out of You", "My Funny Valentine", "Violets for Your Furs" and "They Can't Take That Away from Me", songs which became staples of his later concerts. That same month, Sinatra released the single "Young at Heart", which reached No. 2 and was awarded Song of the Year. In March, he recorded and released the single "Three Coins in the Fountain", a "powerful ballad" that reached No. 4. Sinatra's second album with Riddle, "Swing Easy!", which reflected his "love for the jazz idiom" according to Granata, was released on August 2 of that year and included "Just One of Those Things", "Taking a Chance on Love", "Get Happy", and "All of Me". "Swing Easy!" was named Album of the Year by "Billboard", and he was also named "Favorite Male Vocalist" by "Billboard", "DownBeat", and "Metronome" that year. Sinatra came to consider Riddle "the greatest arranger in the world", and Riddle, who considered Sinatra "a perfectionist", offered equal praise of the singer, observing, "It's not only that his intuitions as to tempo, phrasing, and even configuration are amazingly right, but his taste is so impeccable... there is still no one who can approach him."


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In 1955 Sinatra released "In the Wee Small Hours", his first 12" LP, featuring songs such as "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning", "Mood Indigo", "Glad to Be Unhappy" and "When Your Lover Has Gone". According to Granata it was the first concept album of his to make a "single persuasive statement", with an extended program and "melancholy mood". Sinatra embarked on his first tour of Australia the same year. Another collaboration with Riddle resulted in the development of "Songs for Swingin' Lovers!", sometimes seen as one of his best albums, which was released in March 1956. It features a recording of "I've Got You Under My Skin" by Cole Porter, something which Sinatra paid meticulous care to, taking a reported 22 takes to perfect.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: His February 1956 recording sessions inaugurated the studios at the Capitol Records Building, complete with a 56-piece symphonic orchestra. According to Granata his recordings of "Night and Day", "Oh! Look at Me Now" and "From This Moment On" revealed "powerful sexual overtones, stunningly achieved through the mounting tension and release of Sinatra's best-teasing vocal lines", while his recording of "River, Stay 'Way from My Door" in April demonstrated his "brilliance as a syncopational improviser". Riddle said that Sinatra took "particular delight" in singing "The Lady is a Tramp", commenting that he "always sang that song with a certain amount of salaciousness", making "cue tricks" with the lyrics. His penchant for conducting was displayed again in 1956's "Frank Sinatra Conducts Tone Poems of Color", an instrumental album that has been interpreted to be a catharsis to his failed relationship with Gardner. Also that year, Sinatra sang at the Democratic National Convention, and performed with The Dorsey Brothers for a week soon afterwards at the Paramount Theatre.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In 1957, Sinatra released "Close to You", "A Swingin' Affair!" and "Where Are You?"—his first album in stereo, with Gordon Jenkins. Granata considers "Close to You" to have been thematically his closest concept album to perfection during the "golden" era, and Nelson Riddle's finest work, which was "extremely progressive" by the standards of the day. It is structured like a three-act play, each commencing with the songs "With Every Breath I Take", "Blame It on My Youth" and "It Could Happen to You". For Granata, Sinatra's "A Swingin' Affair!" and swing music predecessor "Songs for Swingin' Lovers!" solidified "Sinatra's image as a 'swinger', from both a musical and visual standpoint". Buddy Collette considered the swing albums to have been heavily influenced by Sammy Davis Jr., and stated that when he worked with Sinatra in the mid-1960s he approached a song much differently than he had done in the early 1950s. On June 9, 1957, he performed in a 62-minute concert conducted by Riddle at the Seattle Civic Auditorium, his first appearance in Seattle since 1945. The recording was first released as a bootleg, but in 1999 Artanis Entertainment Group officially released it as the "Sinatra '57 in Concert" live album, after Sinatra's death. In 1958 Sinatra released the concept album "Come Fly with Me" with Billy May, designed as a musical world tour. It reached the top spot on the Billboard album chart in its second week, remaining at the top for five weeks, and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year at the inaugural Grammy Awards. The title song, "Come Fly With Me", written especially for him, would become one of his best known standards. On May 29 he recorded seven songs in a single session, more than double the usual yield of a recording session, and an eighth, "Lush Life", was abandoned as Sinatra found it too technically demanding. In September, Sinatra released "Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely", a stark collection of introspective saloon songs and blues-tinged ballads which proved a huge commercial success, spending 120 weeks on Billboards album chart and peaking at No.1. Cuts from this LP, such as "Angel Eyes" and "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)", would remain staples of the "saloon song" segments of Sinatra's concerts.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In 1959, Sinatra released "Come Dance with Me!", a highly successful, critically acclaimed album which stayed on Billboard's Pop album chart for 140 weeks, peaking at No. 2. It won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, as well as Best Vocal Performance, Male and Best Arrangement for Billy May. He also released "No One Cares" in the same year, a collection of "brooding, lonely" torch songs, which critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine thought was "nearly as good as its predecessor "Where Are You?", but lacked the "lush" arrangements of it and the "grandiose melancholy" of "Only the Lonely".


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In the words of Kelley, by 1959, Sinatra was "not simply the leader of the Rat Pack" but had "assumed the position of "il padrone" in Hollywood". He was asked by 20th Century Fox to be the master of ceremonies at a luncheon attended by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev on September 19, 1959. "Nice 'n' Easy", a collection of ballads, topped the "Billboard" chart in October 1960 and remained in the charts for 86 weeks, winning critical plaudits. Granata noted the "lifelike ambient sound" quality of "Nice and Easy", the perfection in the stereo balance, and the "bold, bright and snappy" sound of the band. He highlighted the "close, warm and sharp" feel of Sinatra's voice, particularly on the songs "September in the Rain", "I Concentrate on You", and "My Blue Heaven".


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra grew discontented at Capitol, and fell into a feud with Alan Livingston, which lasted over six months. His first attempt at owning his own label was with his pursuit of buying declining jazz label, Verve Records, which ended once an initial agreement with Verve founder, Norman Granz, "failed to materialize." He decided to form his own label, Reprise Records and, in an effort to assert his new direction, temporarily parted with Riddle, May and Jenkins, working with other arrangers such as Neil Hefti, Don Costa, and Quincy Jones. Sinatra built the appeal of Reprise Records as one in which artists were promised creative control over their music, as well as a guarantee that they would eventually gain "complete ownership of their work, including publishing rights." Under Sinatra the company developed into a music industry "powerhouse", and he later sold it for an estimated $80million. His first album on the label, "Ring-a-Ding-Ding!" (1961), was a major success, peaking at No.4 on "Billboard". The album was released in February 1961, the same month that Reprise Records released Ben Webster's "The Warm Moods", Sammy Davis Jr.'s "The Wham of Sam", Mavis River's "Mavis" and Joe E. Lewis's "It is Now Post Time". During the initial years of Reprise, Sinatra was still under contract to record for Capitol, completing his contractual commitment with the release of "Point of No Return," recorded over a two-day period on September 11 and 12, 1961.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In 1962, Sinatra released "Sinatra and Strings", a set of standard ballads arranged by Don Costa, which became one of the most critically acclaimed works of Sinatra's entire Reprise period. Frank Jr., who was present during the recording, noted the "huge orchestra", which Nancy Sinatra stated "opened a whole new era" in pop music, with orchestras getting bigger, embracing a "lush string sound". Sinatra and Count Basie collaborated for the album "" the same year, a popular and successful release which prompted them to rejoin two years later for the follow-up "It Might as Well Be Swing", arranged by Quincy Jones. The two became frequent performers together, and appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1965. Also in 1962, as the owner of his own record label, Sinatra was able to step on the podium as conductor again, releasing his third instrumental album "Frank Sinatra Conducts Music from Pictures and Plays".


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In 1963, Sinatra reunited with Nelson Riddle for "The Concert Sinatra", an ambitious album featuring a 73-piece symphony orchestra arranged and conducted by Riddle. The concert was recorded on a motion picture scoring soundstage with the use of multiple synchronized recording machines that employed an optical signal onto 35mm film designed for movie soundtracks. Granata considers the album to have been "impeachable" [sic], "one of the very best of the Sinatra-Riddle ballad albums", in which Sinatra displayed his vocal range, particularly in "Ol' Man River", in which he darkened the hue.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In 1964 the song "My Kind of Town" was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Sinatra released "Softly, as I Leave You", and collaborated with Bing Crosby and Fred Waring on "America, I Hear You Singing", a collection of patriotic songs recorded as a tribute to the assassinated President John F. Kennedy. Sinatra increasingly became involved in charitable pursuits in this period. In 1961 and 1962 he went to Mexico, with the sole purpose of putting on performances for Mexican charities, and in July 1964 he was present for the dedication of the Frank Sinatra International Youth Center for Arab and Jewish children in Nazareth.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra's phenomenal success in 1965, coinciding with his 50th birthday, prompted "Billboard" to proclaim that he may have reached the "peak of his eminence". In June 1965, Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Dean Martin played live in St. Louis to benefit Dismas House, a prisoner rehabilitation and training center with nationwide programs that in particular helped serve African Americans. The Rat Pack concert, called The Frank Sinatra Spectacular, was broadcast live via satellite to numerous movie theaters across America. The album "September of My Years" was released September 1965, and went on to win the Grammy Award for best album of the year. Granata considers the album to have been one of the finest of his Reprise years, "a reflective throwback to the concept records of the 1950s, and more than any of those collections, distills everything that Frank Sinatra had ever learned or experienced as a vocalist". One of the album's singles, "It Was a Very Good Year", won the Grammy Award for Best Vocal Performance, Male. A career anthology, "A Man and His Music", followed in November, winning Album of the Year at the Grammys the following year.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In 1966 Sinatra released "That's Life", with both the single of "That's Life" and album becoming Top Ten hits in the US on "Billboard"s pop charts. "Strangers in the Night" went on to top the "Billboard" and UK pop singles charts, winning the award for Record of the Year at the Grammys. Sinatra's first live album, "Sinatra at the Sands", was recorded during January and February 1966 at the Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Sinatra was backed by the Count Basie Orchestra, with Quincy Jones conducting. Sinatra pulled out from the Sands the following year, when he was driven out by its new owner Howard Hughes, after a fight.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra started 1967 with a series of recording sessions with Antônio Carlos Jobim. He recorded one of his collaborations with Jobim, the Grammy-nominated album "Francis Albert Sinatra & Antônio Carlos Jobim", which was one of the best-selling albums of the year, behind the Beatles's "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". According to Santopietro the album "consists of an extraordinarily effective blend of bossa nova and slightly swinging jazz vocals, and succeeds in creating an unbroken mood of romance and regret". Writer Stan Cornyn wrote that Sinatra sang so softly on the album that it was comparable to the time that he suffered from a vocal hemorrhage in 1950.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra also released the album "The World We Knew", which features a chart-topping duet of "Somethin' Stupid" with daughter Nancy. In December, Sinatra collaborated with Duke Ellington on the album "Francis A. & Edward K.". According to Granata, the recording of "Indian Summer" on the album was a favorite of Riddle's, noting the "contemplative mood [which] is heightened by a Johnny Hodges alto sax solo that will bring a tear to your eye". With Sinatra in mind, singer-songwriter Paul Anka wrote the song "My Way", using the melody of the French "Comme d'habitude" ("As Usual"), composed by Claude François and Jacques Revaux. Sinatra recorded it in one take, just after Christmas 1968. "My Way", Sinatra's best-known song on the Reprise label, was not an instant success, charting at No. 27 in the US and No. 5 in the UK, but it remained in the UK charts for 122 weeks, including 75 non-consecutive weeks in the Top 40, between April 1969 and September 1971, which was still a record in 2015. Sinatra told songwriter Ervin Drake in the 1970s that he "detested" singing the song, because he believed audiences would think it was a "self-aggrandizing tribute", professing that he "hated boastfulness in others". According to NPR, My Way has become one the most requested songs at funerals.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In an effort to maintain his commercial viability in the late 1960s, Sinatra would record works by Paul Simon ("Mrs. Robinson"), the Beatles ("Yesterday"), and Joni Mitchell ("Both Sides, Now") in 1969.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In 1970, Sinatra released "Watertown", a critically acclaimed concept album, with music by Bob Gaudio (of the Four Seasons) and lyrics by Jake Holmes. However, it sold a mere 30,000 copies that year and reached a peak chart position of 101. He left Caesars Palace in September that year after an incident in which executive Sanford Waterman pulled a gun on him. He performed several charity concerts with Count Basie at the Royal Festival Hall in London. On November 2, 1970, Sinatra recorded the last songs for Reprise Records before his self-imposed retirement, announced the following June at a concert in Hollywood to raise money for the Motion Picture and TV Relief Fund. He gave a "rousing" performance of "That's Life", and finished the concert with a Matt Dennis and Earl Brent song, "Angel Eyes" which he had recorded on the Only The Lonely album in 1958. He sang the last line."'Scuse me while I disappear." The spotlight went dark and he left the stage. He told "LIFE" journalist Thomas Thompson that "I've got things to do, like the first thing is not to do at all for eight months... maybe a year", while Barbara Sinatra later said that Sinatra had grown "tired of entertaining people, especially when all they really wanted were the same old tunes he had long ago become bored by". While he was in retirement, President Richard Nixon asked him to perform at a Young Voters Rally in anticipation of the upcoming campaign. Sinatra obliged and chose to sing "My Kind of Town" for the rally held in Chicago on October 20, 1972.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In 1973, Sinatra came out of his short-lived retirement with a television special and album. The album, entitled "Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back", arranged by Gordon Jenkins and Don Costa, was a success, reaching number 13 on "Billboard" and number 12 in the UK. The television special, "Magnavox Presents Frank Sinatra", reunited Sinatra with Gene Kelly. He initially developed problems with his vocal cords during the comeback due to a prolonged period without singing. That Christmas he performed at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas, and returned to Caesars Palace the following month in January 1974, despite previously vowing to perform there again [sic]. He began what Barbara Sinatra describes as a "massive comeback tour of the United States, Europe, the Far East and Australia". In July, while on a second tour of Australia, he caused an uproar by describing journalists there– who were aggressively pursuing his every move and pushing for a press conference– as "bums, parasites, fags, and buck-and-a-half hookers". After he was pressured to apologize, Sinatra instead insisted that the journalists apologize for "fifteen years of abuse I have taken from the world press". Union actions cancelled concerts and grounded Sinatra's plane, essentially trapping him in Australia. In the end, Sinatra's lawyer, Mickey Rudin, arranged for Sinatra to issue a written conciliatory note and a final concert that was televised to the nation. In October 1974 he appeared at New York City's Madison Square Garden in a televised concert that was later released as an album under the title "The Main Event – Live". Backing him was bandleader Woody Herman and the Young Thundering Herd, who accompanied Sinatra on a European tour later that month.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In 1975, Sinatra performed in concerts in New York with Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald, and at the London Palladium with Basie and Sarah Vaughan, and in Tehran , giving 140 performances in 105 days. In August he held several consecutive concerts at Lake Tahoe together with the newly-risen singer John Denver, who became a frequent collaborator. Sinatra had recorded Denver's "Leaving on a Jet Plane" and "My Sweet Lady" for "Sinatra & Company" (1971), and according to Denver, his song "A Baby Just Like You" was written at Sinatra's request for his new grandchild, Angela. During the Labor Day weekend held in 1976, Sinatra was responsible for reuniting old friends and comedy partners Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis for the first time in nearly twenty years, when they performed at the "Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon". That year, the Friars Club selected him as the "Top Box Office Name of the Century", and he was given the Scopus Award by the American Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Nevada.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra continued to perform at Caesars Palace in the late 1970s, and was performing there in January 1977 when his mother Dolly died in a plane crash on the way to see him. He cancelled two weeks of shows and spent time recovering from the shock in Barbados. In March, he performed in front of Princess Margaret at the Royal Albert Hall in London, raising money for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. On March 14, he recorded with Nelson Riddle for the last time, recording the songs "Linda", "Sweet Loraine", and "Barbara". The two men had a major falling out, and later patched up their differences in January 1985 at a dinner organized for Ronald Reagan, when Sinatra asked Riddle to make another album with him. Riddle was ill at the time, and died that October, before they had a chance to record.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In 1978, Sinatra filed a $1million lawsuit against a land developer for using his name in the "Frank Sinatra Drive Center" in West Los Angeles. During a party at Caesars in 1979, he was awarded the Grammy Trustees Award, while celebrating 40 years in show business and his 64th birthday. That year, former President Gerald Ford awarded Sinatra the International Man of the Year Award, and he performed in front of the Egyptian pyramids for Anwar Sadat, which raised more than $500,000 for Sadat's wife's charities.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In 1980, Sinatra's first album in six years was released, "", a highly ambitious triple album that features an array of songs from both the pre-rock era and rock era. It was the first studio album of Sinatra's to feature his touring pianist at the time, Vinnie Falcone, and was based on an idea by Sonny Burke. The album garnered six Grammy nominations– winning for best liner notes– and peaked at number 17 on Billboard's album chart, and spawned yet another song that would become a signature tune, "Theme from New York, New York". That year, as part of the Concert of the Americas, he performed in the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which broke records for the "largest live paid audience ever recorded for a solo performer". The following year, Sinatra built on the success of "Trilogy" with "She Shot Me Down", an album that was praised for embodying the dark tone of his Capitol years. Also in 1981, Sinatra was embroiled in controversy when he worked a ten-day engagement for $2million in Sun City, in the internationally unrecognized Bophuthatswana, breaking a cultural boycott against apartheid-era South Africa. President Lucas Mangope awarded Sinatra with the highest honor, the Order of the Leopard, and made him an honorary tribal chief.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Santopietro stated that by the early 1980s, Sinatra's voice had "coarsened, losing much of its power and flexibility, but audiences didn't care". In 1982, he signed a $16million three-year deal with the Golden Nugget of Las Vegas. Kelley notes that by this period Sinatra's voice had grown "darker, tougher and loamier", but he "continued to captivate audiences with his immutable magic". She added that his baritone voice "sometimes cracked, but the gliding intonations still aroused the same raptures of delight as they had at the Paramount Theater". That year he made a reported further $1.3million from the Showtime television rights to his "Concert of the Americas" in the Dominican Republic, $1.6million for a concert series at Carnegie Hall, and $250,000 in just one evening at the Chicago Fest. He donated a lot of his earnings to charity. He put on a performance at the White House for the Italian prime minister, and performed at the Radio City Music Hall with Luciano Pavarotti and George Shearing.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra was honored at 1983 Kennedy Center Honors, alongside Katherine Dunham, James Stewart, Elia Kazan, and Virgil Thomson. Quoting Henry James, President Reagan said in honoring his old friend that "art was the shadow of humanity" and that Sinatra had "spent his life casting a magnificent and powerful shadow". On September 21, 1983, Sinatra filed a $2million court case against Kitty Kelley, suing her for punitive damages, before her unofficial biography, "His Way", was even published. The book became a best-seller for "all the wrong reasons" and "the most eye-opening celebrity biography of our time", according to William Safire of "The New York Times". Sinatra was always adamant that such a book would be written on his terms, and he himself would "set the record straight" in details of his life. According to Kelley, the family detested her and the book, which took its toll on Sinatra's health. Kelley says that Tina Sinatra blamed her for her father's colon surgery in 1986. He was forced to drop the case on September 19, 1984, with several leading newspapers expressing concerns about his views on censorship.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In 1984, Sinatra worked with Quincy Jones for the first time in nearly two decades on the album, "L.A. Is My Lady", which was well received critically. The album was a substitute for another Jones project, an album of duets with Lena Horne, which had to be abandoned. In 1986, Sinatra collapsed on stage while performing in Atlantic City and was hospitalized for diverticulitis, which left him looking frail. Two years later, Sinatra reunited with Martin and Davis and went on the Rat Pack Reunion Tour, during which they played many large arenas. When Martin dropped out of the tour early on, a rift developed between them and the two never spoke again.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: On June 6, 1988, Sinatra made his last recordings with Reprise for an album which was not released. He recorded "My Foolish Heart", "Cry Me a River", and other songs. Sinatra never completed the project, but take number 18 of "My Foolish Heart" may be heard in "The Complete Reprise Studio Recordings" (1995).


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In 1990, Sinatra was awarded the second "Ella Award" by the Los Angeles-based Society of Singers, and performed for a final time with Ella Fitzgerald at the award ceremony. Sinatra maintained an active touring schedule in the early 1990s, performing 65 concerts in 1990, 73 in 1991 and 84 in 1992 in seventeen different countries.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In 1993, Sinatra returned to Capitol Records and the recording studio for "Duets", which became his best-selling album. The album and its sequel, "Duets II", released the following year, would see Sinatra remake his classic recordings with popular contemporary performers, who added their vocals to a pre-recorded tape.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: During his tours in the early 1990s, his memory failed him at times during concerts, and he fainted onstage in Richmond, Virginia, in March 1994. His final public concerts were held in Fukuoka Dome in Japan on December 19–20, 1994. The following year, Sinatra sang for the last time on February 25, 1995, before a live audience of 1200 select guests at the Palm Desert Marriott Ballroom, on the closing night of the Frank Sinatra Desert Classic golf tournament. "Esquire" reported of the show that Sinatra was "clear, tough, on the money" and "in absolute control". Sinatra was awarded the Legend Award at the 1994 Grammy Awards, where he was introduced by Bono, who said of him, "Frank's the chairman of the bad attitude... Rock 'n roll plays at being tough, but this guy is the boss– the chairman of boss... I'm not going to mess with him, are you?"


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In 1995, to mark Sinatra's 80th birthday, the Empire State Building glowed blue. A star-studded birthday tribute, "Sinatra: 80 Years My Way", was held at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, featuring performers such as Ray Charles, Little Richard, Natalie Cole and Salt-N-Pepa singing his songs. At the end of the program Sinatra performed on stage for the last time to sing the final notes of the "Theme from New York, New York" with an ensemble. In recognition of his many years of association with Las Vegas, Sinatra was elected to the Gaming Hall of Fame in 1997.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: While Sinatra never learned how to read music well, he had a fine, natural understanding of it, and he worked very hard from a young age to improve his abilities in all aspects of music. He could follow a lead sheet (simplified sheet music showing a song's basic structure) during a performance by "carefully following the patterns and groupings of notes arranged on the page" and made his own notations to the music, using his ear to detect semitonal differences. Granata states that some of the most accomplished classically trained musicians soon noticed his musical understanding, and remarked that Sinatra had a "sixth sense", which "demonstrated unusual proficiency when it came to detecting incorrect notes and sounds within the orchestra". Sinatra was an aficionado of classical music, and would often request classical strains in his music, inspired by composers such as Puccini and Impressionist masters. His personal favorite was Ralph Vaughan Williams. He would insist on always recording live with the band because it gave him a "certain feeling" to perform live surrounded by musicians.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: By the mid 1940s, such was his understanding of music that after hearing an air check of some compositions by Alec Wilder which were for strings and woodwinds, he became the conductor at Columbia Records for six of Wilder's compositions: "Air for Oboe", "Air for English Horn", "Air for Flute", "Air for Bassoon", "Slow Dance" and "Theme and Variations". The works, which combine elements of jazz and classical music, were considered by Wilder to have been among the finest renditions and recordings of his compositions, past or present. At one recording session with arranger Claus Ogerman and an orchestra, Sinatra heard "a couple of little strangers" in the string section, prompting Ogerman to make corrections to what were thought to be copyist's errors. Critic Gene Lees, a lyricist and the author of the words to the Jobim melody "This Happy Madness", expressed amazement when he heard Sinatra's recording of it on "Sinatra & Company" (1971), considering him to have delivered the lyrics to perfection.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Voice coach John Quinlan was impressed by Sinatra's vocal range, remarking, "He has far more voice than people think he has. He can vocalize to a B-flat on top in full voice, and he doesn't need a mic either". As a singer, early on he was primarily influenced by Bing Crosby, but later believed that Tony Bennett was "the best singer in the business". Bennett also praised Sinatra himself, claiming that as a performer, he had "perfected the art of intimacy." According to Nelson Riddle, Sinatra had a "fairly rangy voice", remarking that "His voice has a very strident, insistent sound in the top register, a smooth lyrical sound in the middle register, and a very tender sound in the low. His voice is built on infinite taste, with an overall inflection of sex. He points everything he does from a sexual standpoint". Despite his heavy New Jersey accent, according to Richard Schuller, when Sinatra sang his accent was barely detectable, with his diction becoming "precise" and articulation "meticulous". His timing was impeccable, allowing him, according to Charles L. Granata, to "toy with the rhythm of a melody, bringing tremendous excitement to his reading of a lyric". Tommy Dorsey observed that Sinatra would "take a musical phrase and play it all the way through seemingly without breathing for eight, ten, maybe sixteen bars". Dorsey was a considerable influence on Sinatra's techniques for his vocal phrasing with his own exceptional breath control on the trombone, and Sinatra regularly swam and held his breath underwater, thinking of song lyrics to increase his breathing power.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Arrangers such as Nelson Riddle and Anthony Fanzo found Sinatra to be a perfectionist who constantly drove himself and others around him, stating that his collaborators approached him with a sense of uneasiness because of his unpredictable and often volatile temperament. Granata comments that Sinatra was almost fanatically obsessed with perfection to the point that people began wondering if he was genuinely concerned about the music or showing off his power over others. On days when he felt that his voice was not right, he would know after only a few notes and would postpone the recording session until the following day, yet still pay his musicians. After a period of performing, Sinatra tired of singing a certain set of songs and was always looking for talented new songwriters and composers to work with. Once he found ones that he liked, he actively sought to work with them as often as he could, and made friends with many of them. He once told Sammy Cahn, who wrote songs for "Anchors Aweigh", "if you're not there Monday, I'm not there Monday". Over the years he recorded 87 of Cahn's songs, of which 24 were composed by Jule Styne, and 43 by Jimmy Van Heusen. The Cahn-Styne partnership lasted from 1942 until 1954, when Van Heusen succeeded him as Sinatra's main composer.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Unlike many of his contemporaries, Sinatra insisted upon direct input regarding arrangements and tempos for his recordings. He would spend weeks thinking about the songs he wanted to record, and would keep an arranger in mind for each song. If it was a mellow love song, he would ask for Gordon Jenkins. If it was a "rhythm" number, he would think of Billy May, or perhaps Neil Hefti or some other favored arranger. Jenkins considered Sinatra's musical sense to be unerring. His changes to Riddle's charts would frustrate Riddle, yet he would usually concede that Sinatra's ideas were superior. Barbara Sinatra notes that Sinatra would almost always credit the songwriter at the end of each number, and would often make comments to the audience, such as "Isn't that a pretty ballad" or "Don't you think that's the most marvelous love song", delivered with "childlike delight". She states that after each show, Sinatra would be "in a buoyant, electrically charged mood, a post-show high that would take him hours to come down from as he quietly relived every note of the performance he'd just given".


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra's split with Gardner in the fall of 1953 had a profound impact on the types of songs he sang and on his voice. He began to console himself in songs with a "brooding melancholy", such as "I'm a Fool to Want You", "Don't Worry 'Bout Me", "My One and Only Love" and "There Will Never Be Another You", which Riddle believed was the direct influence of Ava Gardner. Lahr comments that the new Sinatra was "not the gentle boy balladeer of the forties. Fragility had gone from his voice, to be replaced by a virile adult's sense of happiness and hurt". Author Granata considered Sinatra a "master of the art of recording", noting that his work in the studio "set him apart from other gifted vocalists". During his career he made over 1000 recordings. Recording sessions would typically last three hours, though Sinatra would always prepare for them by spending at least an hour by the piano beforehand to vocalize, followed by a short rehearsal with the orchestra to ensure the balance of sound. During his Columbia years Sinatra used an RCA 44 microphone, which Granata describes as "the 'old-fashioned' microphone which is closely associated with Sinatra's crooner image of the 1940s", though when performing on talk shows later he used a bullet-shaped RCA 77. At Capitol he used a Neumann U47, an "ultra-sensitive" microphone which better captured the timbre and tone of his voice.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In the 1950s, Sinatra's career was facilitated by developments in technology. Up to sixteen songs could now be held by the twelve-inch L.P., and this allowed Sinatra to use song in a novelistic way, turning each track in a kind of chapter, which built and counterpointed moods to illuminate a larger theme". Santopietro writes that through the 1950s and well into the 1960s, "Every Sinatra LP was a masterpiece of one sort of another, whether uptempo, torch song, or swingin' affairs. Track after track, the brilliant concept albums redefined the nature of pop vocal art".


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra attempted to pursue an acting career in Hollywood in the early 1940s. While films appealed to him, being exceptionally self-confident, he was rarely enthusiastic about his own acting, once remarking that "pictures stink". Sinatra made his film debut performing in an uncredited sequence in "Las Vegas Nights" (1941), singing "I'll Never Smile Again" with Tommy Dorsey's Pied Pipers. He had a cameo role along with Duke Ellington and Count Basie in Charles Barton's "Reveille with Beverly" (1943), making a brief appearance singing "Night and Day". Next, he was given leading roles in "Higher and Higher" and "Step Lively" (both 1944) for RKO.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cast Sinatra opposite Gene Kelly and Kathryn Grayson in the Technicolor musical "Anchors Aweigh" (1945), in which he played a sailor on leave in Hollywood for four days. A major success, it garnered several Academy Award wins and nominations, and the song "I Fall in Love Too Easily", sung by Sinatra in the film, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. He briefly appeared at the end of Richard Whorf's commercially successful "Till the Clouds Roll By" (1946), a Technicolor musical biopic of Jerome Kern, in which he sang "Ol' Man River".


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra co-starred again with Gene Kelly in the Technicolor musical "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" (1949), in which Sinatra and Kelly play baseball players who are part-time vaudevillians. He teamed up with Kelly for a third time in "On the Town" (also 1949), playing a sailor on leave in New York City. The film remains rated very highly by critics, and in 2006 it ranked No. 19 on the American Film Institute's list of best musicals. Both "Double Dynamite" (1951), an RKO Irving Cummings comedy produced by Howard Hughes, and Joseph Pevney's "Meet Danny Wilson" (1952) failed to make an impression. The "New York World Telegram and Sun" ran the headline "Gone on Frankie in '42; Gone in '52".


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Fred Zinnemann's "From Here to Eternity" (1953) deals with the tribulations of three soldiers, played by Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, and Sinatra, stationed on Hawaii in the months leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Sinatra had long been desperate to find a film role which would bring him back into the spotlight, and Columbia Pictures boss Harry Cohn had been inundated by appeals from people across Hollywood to give Sinatra a chance to star as "Maggio" in the film. During production, Montgomery Clift became a close friend, and Sinatra later professed that he "learned more about acting from him than anybody I ever knew before". After several years of critical and commercial decline, his Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor win helped him regain his position as the top recording artist in the world. His performance also won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture. The "Los Angeles Examiner" wrote that Sinatra is "simply superb, comical, pitiful, childishly brave, pathetically defiant", commenting that his death scene is "one of the best ever photographed".


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra starred opposite Doris Day in the musical film "Young at Heart" (1954), and earned critical praise for his performance as a psychopathic killer posing as an FBI agent opposite Sterling Hayden in the film noir "Suddenly" (also 1954).


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor and BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his role as a heroin addict in "The Man with the Golden Arm" (1955). After roles in "Guys and Dolls", and "The Tender Trap" (both 1955), Sinatra was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his role as a medical student in Stanley Kramer's directorial début, "Not as a Stranger" (also 1955). During production, Sinatra got drunk with Robert Mitchum and Broderick Crawford and trashed Kramer's dressing room. Kramer vowed at the time to never hire Sinatra again, and later regretted casting him as a Spanish guerrilla leader in "The Pride and the Passion" (1957).


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra featured alongside Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly in "High Society" (1956) for MGM, earning a reported $250,000 for the picture. The public rushed to the cinemas to see Sinatra and Crosby together on-screen, and it ended up earning over $13million at the box office, becoming one of the highest-grossing pictures of its year. He starred opposite Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak in George Sidney's "Pal Joey" (1957), Sinatra, for which he won for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. Santopietro considers the scene in which Sinatra sings "The Lady Is a Tramp" to Hayworth to have been the finest moment of his film career. He next portrayed comedian Joe E. Lewis in "The Joker Is Wild" (also 1957); the song "All the Way" won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. By 1958, Sinatra was one of the ten biggest box office draws in the United States, appearing with Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine in Vincente Minnelli's "Some Came Running" and "Kings Go Forth" (both 1958) with Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood. "High Hopes", sung by Sinatra in the Frank Capra comedy, "A Hole in the Head" (1959), won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, and became a chart hit, lasting on the Hot 100 for 17 weeks.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Due to an obligation he owed to 20th Century Fox for walking off the set of Henry King's "Carousel" (1956), Sinatra starred opposite Shirley MacLaine, Maurice Chevalier and Louis Jourdan in "Can-Can" (1960). He earned $200,000 and 25% of the profits for the performance. Around the same time, he starred in the Las Vegas-set "Ocean's 11" (also 1960), the first film to feature the Rat Pack together and the start of a "new era of screen cool" for Santopietro. Sinatra personally financed the film, and paid Martin and Davis fees of $150,000 and $125,000 respectively, sums considered exorbitant for the period. He had a leading role opposite Laurence Harvey in "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962), which he considered to be the role he was most excited about and the high point of his film career. Vincent Canby, writing for the magazine "Variety", found the portrayal of Sinatra's character to be "a wide-awake pro creating a straight, quietly humorous character of some sensitivity." He appeared with the Rat Pack in the western "Sergeants 3" (also 1962), following it with "4 for Texas" (1963). For his performance in "Come Blow Your Horn" (also 1963) adapted from the Neil Simon play, he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor– Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra directed "None but the Brave" (1965), and "Von Ryan's Express" (1965) was a major success, However, in the mid 1960s, Brad Dexter wanted to "breathe new life" into Sinatra's film career by helping him display the same professional pride in his films as he did his recordings. On one occasion, he gave Sinatra Anthony Burgess's novel "A Clockwork Orange" (1962) to read, with the idea of making a film, but Sinatra thought it had no potential and did not understand a word.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In the late 1960s, Sinatra became known for playing detectives, including Tony Rome in "Tony Rome" (1967) and its sequel "Lady in Cement" (1968). He also played a similar role in "The Detective" (1968).


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra starred opposite George Kennedy in the western "Dirty Dingus Magee" (1970), an "abysmal" affair according to Santopietro, which was panned by the critics. The following year, Sinatra received a Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award and had intended to play Detective Harry Callahan in "Dirty Harry" (1971), but had to turn the role down due to developing Dupuytren's contracture in his hand. Sinatra's last major film role was opposite Faye Dunaway in Brian G. Hutton's "The First Deadly Sin" (1980). Santopietro said that as a troubled New York City homicide cop, Sinatra gave an "extraordinarily rich", heavily layered characterization, one which "made for one terrific farewell" to his film career.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: After beginning on the "Major Bowes Amateur Hour" radio show with the Hoboken Four in 1935, and later WNEW and WAAT in Jersey City, Sinatra became the star of radio shows of his own on NBC and CBS from the early 1940s to the mid-1950s. In 1942, Sinatra hired arranger Axel Stordahl away from Tommy Dorsey before he began his first radio program that year, keeping Stordahl with him for all of his radio work. By the end of 1942, he was named the "Most Popular Male Vocalist on Radio" in a "DownBeat" poll. Early on he frequently worked with The Andrews Sisters on radio, and they would appear as guests on each other's shows, as well as on many USO shows broadcast to troops via the Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS). He appeared as a special guest in the sisters' ABC "Eight-to-the-Bar Ranch" series, while the trio in turn guested on his "Songs by Sinatra" series on CBS. Sinatra had two stints as a regular member of cast of "Your Hit Parade"; his first was from 1943 to 1945, and second was from 1946 to May 28, 1949, during which he was paired with the then-new girl singer, Doris Day. Starting in September 1949, the BBD&O advertising agency produced a radio series starring Sinatra for Lucky Strike called "Light Up Time"– some 176 15-minute shows which featured Frank and Dorothy Kirsten singing– which lasted through to May 1950.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In October 1951, the second season of "The Frank Sinatra Show" began on CBS Television. Ultimately, Sinatra did not find the success on television for which he had hoped. Santopietro writes that Sinatra "simply never appeared fully at ease on his own television series, his edgy, impatient personality conveying a pent up energy on the verge of exploding". In 1953, Sinatra starred in the NBC radio program "Rocky Fortune", portraying Rocco Fortunato (a.k.a. Rocky Fortune), a "footloose and fancy free" temporary worker for the Gridley Employment Agency who stumbles into crime-solving. The series aired on NBC radio Tuesday nights from October 1953 to March 1954.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In 1957, Sinatra formed a three-year $3million contract with ABC to launch "The Frank Sinatra Show", featuring himself and guests in 36 half-hour shows. ABC agreed to allow Sinatra's Hobart Productions to keep 60% of the residuals, and bought stock in Sinatra's film production unit, Kent Productions, guaranteeing him $7million. Though an initial critical success upon its debut on October 18, 1957, it soon attracted negative reviews from "Variety" and "The New Republic", and "The Chicago Sun-Times" thought that Sinatra and frequent guest Dean Martin "performed like a pair of adult delinquents", "sharing the same cigarette and leering at girls". In return, Sinatra later made numerous appearances on "The Dean Martin Show" and Martin's TV specials.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra's fourth and final Timex TV special, "", was broadcast in March 1960, earning massive viewing figures. During the show, he performed a duet with Presley, who sang Sinatra's 1957 hit "Witchcraft" with the host performing the 1956 Presley classic "Love Me Tender". Sinatra had previously been highly critical of Elvis Presley and rock and roll in the 1950s, describing it as a "deplorable, a rancid smelling aphrodisiac" which "fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people." A CBS News special about the singer's 50th birthday, "", was broadcast on November 16, 1965, and garnered both an Emmy award and a Peabody Award.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: According his musical collaboration with Jobim and Ella Fitzgerald in 1967, Sinatra appeared in the TV special, "A Man and His Music + Ella + Jobim", which was broadcast on CBS on November 13. When Sinatra came out of retirement in 1973, he released both an album and appeared in a TV special named "Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back". The TV special was highlighted by a dramatic reading of "Send in the Clowns" and a song-and-dance sequence with former co-star Gene Kelly. In the late 1970s, John Denver appeared as a guest in the "Sinatra and Friends" ABC-TV Special, singing "September Song" as a duet.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra starred as a detective in "Contract on Cherry Street" (1977), cited as his "one starring role in a dramatic television film". Ten years later, he made a guest appearance opposite Tom Selleck in "Magnum, P.I.", playing a retired policeman who teams up with Selleck to find his granddaughter's murderer. Shot in January 1987, the episode aired on CBS on February 25.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra had three children, Nancy (born 1940), Frank Jr. (1944–2016) and Tina (born 1948), with his first wife, Nancy Sinatra (née Barbato, 1917–2018), to whom he was married from 1939 to 1951.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra had met Barbato in Long Branch, New Jersey in the summer of 1934, while working as a lifeguard. He agreed to marry her after an incident at "The Rustic Cabin" which led to his arrest. Sinatra had numerous extramarital affairs, and gossip magazines published details of affairs with women including Marilyn Maxwell, Lana Turner, and Joi Lansing.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra was married to Hollywood actress Ava Gardner from 1951 to 1957. It was a turbulent marriage with many well-publicized fights and altercations. The couple formally announced their separation on October 29, 1953, through MGM. Gardner filed for divorce in June 1954, at a time when she was dating matador Luis Miguel Dominguín, but the divorce was not settled until 1957. Sinatra continued to feel very strongly for her, and they remained friends for life. He was still dealing with her finances in 1976.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra reportedly broke off engagements to Lauren Bacall in 1958 and Juliet Prowse in 1962. He was also romantically linked to Pat Sheehan, Vikki Dougan, and Kipp Hamilton. He married Mia Farrow on July 19, 1966, a short marriage that ended with divorce in Mexico in August 1968. They remained close friends for life, and in a 2013 interview Farrow said that Sinatra might be the father of her son Ronan Farrow (born 1987). In a 2015 "CBS Sunday Morning" interview, Nancy Sinatra dismissed the claim as "nonsense".


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra was married to Barbara Marx from 1976 until his death. The couple married on July 11, 1976, at Sunnylands, in Rancho Mirage, California, the estate of media magnate Walter Annenberg.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra was close friends with Jilly Rizzo, songwriter Jimmy Van Heusen, golfer Ken Venturi, comedian Pat Henry and baseball manager Leo Durocher. In his spare time, he enjoyed listening to classical music and attended concerts when he could. He swam daily in the Pacific Ocean, finding it to be therapeutic and giving him much-needed solitude. He often played golf with Venturi at the course in Palm Springs, where he lived, and liked painting, reading, and building model railways.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Though Sinatra was critical of the Church on numerous occasions and had a pantheistic, Einstein-like view of God in his earlier life, he was inducted into the Catholic Sovereign Military Order of Malta in 1976, and he turned to Catholicism for healing after his mother died in a plane crash in 1977. He died as a practicing Catholic and had a Catholic burial.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra was known for his immaculate sense of style. He spent lavishly on expensive custom-tailored tuxedos and stylish pin-striped suits, which made him feel wealthy and important, and that he was giving his very best to the audience. He was also obsessed with cleanliness—while with the Tommy Dorsey band he developed the nickname "Lady Macbeth", because of frequent showering and switching his outfits. His deep blue eyes earned him the popular nickname "Ol' Blue Eyes".


title: Frank Sinatra

text: For Santopietro, Sinatra was the personification of America in the 1950s: "cocky, eye on the main chance, optimistic, and full of the sense of possibility". Barbara Sinatra wrote, "A big part of Frank's thrill was the sense of danger that he exuded, an underlying, ever-present tension only those closest to him knew could be defused with humor". Cary Grant, a friend of Sinatra, stated that Sinatra was the "most honest person he'd ever met", who spoke "a simple truth, without artifice which scared people", and was often moved to tears by his performances. Jo-Caroll Dennison commented that he possessed "great inner strength", and that his energy and drive were "enormous". A workaholic, he reportedly only slept four hours a night on average. Throughout his life, Sinatra had mood swings and bouts of mild to severe depression, stating to an interviewer in the 1950s that "I have an over-acute capacity for sadness as well as elation". Barbara Sinatra stated that he would "snap at anyone for the slightest misdemeanor", while Van Heusen said that when Sinatra got drunk it was "best to disappear".


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra's mood swings often developed into violence, directed at people he felt had crossed him, particularly journalists who gave him scathing reviews, publicists, and photographers. According to Rojek he was "capable of deeply offensive behavior that smacked of a persecution complex". He received negative press for fights with Lee Mortimer in 1947, photographer Eddie Schisser in Houston in 1950, Judy Garland's publicist Jim Byron on the Sunset Strip in 1954, and for a confrontation with "Washington Post" journalist Maxine Cheshire in 1973, in which he implied that she was a cheap prostitute.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: His feud with then-"Chicago Sun Times" columnist Mike Royko began when Royko wrote a column questioning why Chicago police offered free protection to Sinatra when the singer had his own security. Sinatra fired off an angry letter in response calling Royko a "pimp", and threatening to "punch you in the mouth" for speculating that he wore a toupée. Royko auctioned the letter, the proceeds going to the Salvation Army. The winner of the auction was Vie Carlson, mother of Bun E. Carlos of the rock group Cheap Trick. After appearing on "Antiques Roadshow", Carlson consigned the letter to Freeman's Auctioneers & Appraisers, which auctioned it in 2010.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra was also known for his generosity, particularly after his comeback. Kelley notes that when Lee J. Cobb nearly died from a heart attack in June 1955, Sinatra flooded him with "books, flowers, delicacies", paid his hospital bills, and visited him daily, telling him that his "finest acting" was yet to come. In another instance, after an argument with manager Bobby Burns, rather than apologize, Sinatra bought him a brand new Cadillac.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra became the stereotype of the "tough working-class Italian American," something which he embraced. He said that if it had not been for his interest in music, he would have likely ended up in a life of crime. Willie Moretti was Sinatra's godfather and the notorious underboss of the Genovese crime family, and he helped Sinatra in exchange for kickbacks and was reported to have intervened in releasing Sinatra from his contract with Tommy Dorsey. Sinatra was present at the Mafia Havana Conference in 1946, and the press learned of his being there with Lucky Luciano. One newspaper published the headline "Shame, Sinatra". He was reported to be a good friend of mobster Sam Giancana, and the two men were seen playing golf together. Kelley quotes Jo-Carrol Silvers that Sinatra "adored" Bugsy Siegel, and boasted to friends about him and how many people Siegel had killed. Kelley says that Sinatra and mobster Joseph Fischetti had been good friends from 1938 onward, and acted like "Sicilian brothers". She also states that Sinatra and Hank Sanicola were financial partners with Mickey Cohen in the gossip magazine "Hollywood Night Life".


title: Frank Sinatra

text: The FBI kept records amounting to 2,403 pages on Sinatra, who was a natural target with his alleged Mafia ties, his ardent New Deal politics, and his friendship with John F. Kennedy. The FBI kept him under surveillance for almost five decades beginning in the 1940s. The documents include accounts of Sinatra as the target of death threats and extortion schemes. The FBI documented that Sinatra was losing esteem with the Mafia as he grew closer to President Kennedy, whose younger brother Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy was leading a crackdown on organized crime. Sinatra said he was not involved: "Any report that I fraternized with goons or racketeers is a vicious lie".


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In 1960, Sinatra bought a share in the Cal Neva Lodge & Casino, a casino hotel that straddles the California-Nevada state line on the north shores of Lake Tahoe. Sinatra built the Celebrity Room theater which attracted his show business friends Red Skelton, Marilyn Monroe, Victor Borge, Joe E. Lewis, Lucille Ball, Lena Horne, Juliet Prowse, the McGuire Sisters, and others. By 1962, he reportedly held a 50-percent share in the hotel. Sinatra's gambling license was temporarily stripped by the Nevada Gaming Control Board in 1963 after Giancana was spotted on the premises. Due to ongoing pressure from the FBI and Nevada Gaming Commission on mobster control of casinos, Sinatra agreed to give up his share in Cal Neva and the Sands. That year, his son Frank Jr. was kidnapped but was eventually released unharmed. Sinatra's gambling license was restored in February 1981, following support from Ronald Reagan.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra held varied political views throughout his life. His mother, Dolly Sinatra (1896–1977), was a Democratic Party ward leader, and after meeting President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944, he subsequently heavily campaigned for the Democrats in the 1944 presidential election. According to Jo Carroll Silvers, in his younger years Sinatra had "ardent liberal" sympathies, and was "so concerned about poor people that he was always quoting Henry Wallace". He was outspoken against racism, particularly toward black people and Italians, from a young age. In the early 1950s, he was among those who campaigned to combine the racially segregated musicians unions in Los Angeles. In November 1945 Sinatra was invited by the mayor of Gary, Indiana, to try to settle a strike by white students of Froebel High School against the "Pro-Negro" policies of the new principal. His comments, while praised by liberal publications, led to accusations by some that he was a Communist, which he said were not true. In the 1948 presidential election, Sinatra actively campaigned for President Harry S. Truman. In 1952 and 1956, he also campaigned for Adlai Stevenson.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Of all the U.S. presidents he associated with during his career, he was closest to John F. Kennedy. Sinatra often invited Kennedy to Hollywood and Las Vegas, and the two would womanize and enjoy parties together. In January 1961, Sinatra and Peter Lawford organized the Inaugural Gala in Washington, D.C., held on the evening before President Kennedy was sworn into office. After taking office, Kennedy distanced himself from Sinatra, due in part to the singer's ties with the Mafia. His brother Robert, who was serving as Attorney General and was known for urging FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to conduct more crackdowns on the Mafia, was distrustful of Sinatra.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In 1962, Sinatra was snubbed by the President during his visit to his Palm Springs home when Kennedy stayed with the Republican Bing Crosby instead, citing FBI concerns about Sinatra's alleged connections to organized crime. Crosby's affiliations with the mafia were less publicly known; however, Sinatra spared no expense upgrading the facilities at his home in anticipation of the President's visit, fitting it with a heliport, which he later smashed with a sledgehammer upon being rejected. Despite the snub, when he learned of Kennedy's assassination he reportedly sobbed in his bedroom for three days.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra worked with Hubert H. Humphrey in 1968, and remained a supporter of the Democratic Party until the early 1970s. Although still a registered Democrat, Sinatra endorsed Republican Ronald Reagan for a second term as Governor of California in 1970. He officially changed allegiance in July 1972 when he supported Richard Nixon for re-election in the 1972 presidential election.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In the 1980 presidential election, Sinatra supported Ronald Reagan and donated $4million to Reagan's campaign. Sinatra arranged Reagan's Presidential gala, as he had done for Kennedy 20 years previously. In 1985, Reagan presented Sinatra with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, remarking, "His love of country, his generosity for those less fortunate... make him one of our most remarkable and distinguished Americans."


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Santopietro notes that Sinatra was a "lifelong sympathizer with Jewish causes". He was awarded the Hollzer Memorial Award by the Los Angeles Jewish Community in 1949. He gave a series of concerts in Israel in 1962, and donated his entire $50,000 fee for appearing in a cameo role in "Cast a Giant Shadow" (1966) to the Youth Center in Jerusalem. On November 1, 1972, he raised $6.5million in bond pledges for Israel, and was given the Medallion of Valor for his efforts. The Frank Sinatra Student Center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was dedicated in his name in 1978. He owned a Jewish skullcap, known as a kippah or yarmulkah, which was sold as part of his wife's estate many years after his death.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: From his youth, Sinatra displayed sympathy for African Americans and worked both publicly and privately all his life to help the struggle for equal rights. He blamed racial prejudice on the parents of children. Sinatra played a major role in the desegregation of Nevada hotels and casinos in the 1950s and 1960s. At the Sands in 1955, Sinatra went against policy by inviting Nat King Cole into the dining room, and in 1961, after an incident where an African-American couple entered the lobby of the hotel and were blocked by the security guard, Sinatra and Davis forced the hotel management to begin hiring black waiters and busboys. On January 27, 1961, Sinatra played a benefit show at Carnegie Hall for Martin Luther King Jr. and led his fellow Rat Pack members and Reprise label mates in boycotting hotels and casinos that refused entry to black patrons and performers. According to his son, Frank Jr., King sat weeping in the audience at one of his father's concerts in 1963 as Sinatra sang "Ol' Man River", a song from the musical "Show Boat" that is sung by an African-American stevedore. When he changed his political affiliations in 1970, Sinatra became less outspoken on racial issues. Though he did much towards civil rights causes, it did not stop the occasional racial jibe from him and the other Rat Pack members toward Davis at concerts.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on May 14, 1998, aged 82, with his wife at his side after suffering two heart attacks. Sinatra was in ill health during the last few years of his life, and was frequently hospitalized for heart and breathing problems, high blood pressure, pneumonia and bladder cancer. He also suffered from dementia-like symptoms due to his usage of antidepressants. He had made no public appearances following a heart attack in February 1997. Sinatra's wife encouraged him to "fight" while attempts were made to stabilize him, and reported that his final words were, "I'm losing." Sinatra's daughter, Tina, later wrote that she and her siblings (Frank Jr. and Nancy) had not been notified of their father's final hospitalization, and it was her belief that "the omission was deliberate. Barbara would be the grieving widow "alone" at her husband's side." The night after Sinatra's death, the lights on the Empire State Building in New York City were turned blue, the lights at the Las Vegas Strip were dimmed in his honor, and the casinos stopped spinning for one minute.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra's funeral was held at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills, California, on May 20, 1998, with 400 mourners in attendance and thousands of fans outside. Gregory Peck, Tony Bennett, and Sinatra's son, Frank Jr., addressed the mourners, who included many notable people from film and entertainment. Sinatra was buried in a blue business suit and his grave was adorned with mementos from family members—cherry-flavored Life Savers, Tootsie Rolls, a bottle of Jack Daniel's, a pack of Camel cigarettes, a Zippo lighter, stuffed toys, a dog biscuit, and a roll of dimes that he always carried—next to his parents in section B-8 of Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: His close friends Jilly Rizzo and Jimmy Van Heusen are buried nearby. The words "The Best Is Yet to Come", plus "Beloved Husband & Father" were imprinted on Sinatra's original grave marker. Sinatra's gravestone was changed under mysterious circumstances according to the magazine Palm Springs Life. The grave currently reads "Sleep Warm Poppa". Significant increases in recording sales worldwide were reported by "Billboard" in the month of his death.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra was called the Chairman of the Board. Frank Sinatra was responsible for awakening a fan phenomenon made up of hysterical teenage girls called "Bobby Soxers". Throughout his professional career, Sinatra recorded more than 1,300 songs and participated in more than fifty films. Sinatra once said, "Bing Crosby is the best singer in the world". The bobby soxers were portrayed as very enthusiastic to the point of hysteria. Newspapers at the time highlighted the bobby soxers' great fanaticism and passion for Sinatra; they experienced hunger, fatigue, and dizziness while waiting in line to see him.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: The United States Postal Service issued a 42-cent postage stamp honoring Sinatra in May 2008, commemorating the tenth anniversary of his death. May 13 is considered "Frank Sinatra Day."


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In Frank Sinatra Park, a 6-foot (1.80-meter) tall bronze statue honoring Sinatra was erected in the year 2021 on December 12. There are also several streets and highways in the US named after Sinatra.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Robert Christgau referred to Sinatra as "the greatest singer of the 20th century". His popularity is matched only by Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, and Michael Jackson. For Santopietro, Sinatra was the "greatest male pop singer in the history of America", who amassed "unprecedented power onscreen and off", and "seemed to exemplify the common man, an ethnic twentieth-century American male who reached the 'top of the heap', yet never forgot his roots". Santopietro argues that Sinatra created his own world, which he was able to dominate—his career was centred around power, perfecting the ability to capture an audience. Encyclopædia Britannica referred to Sinatra as "often hailed as the greatest American singer of 20th-century popular music...Through his life and his art, he transcended the status of mere icon to become one of the most recognizable symbols of American culture."


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Gus Levene commented that Sinatra's strength was that when it came to lyrics, telling a story musically, Sinatra displayed a "genius" ability and feeling, which with the "rare combination of voice and showmanship" made him the "original singer" which others who followed most tried to emulate. George Roberts, a trombonist in Sinatra's band, remarked that Sinatra had a "charisma, or whatever it is about him, that no one else had". Biographer Arnold Shaw considered that "If Las Vegas had not existed, Sinatra could have invented it". He quoted reporter James Bacon in saying that Sinatra was the "swinging image on which the town is built", adding that no other entertainer quite "embodied the glamour" associated with Las Vegas as him. Sinatra continues to be seen as one of the icons of the 20th century,


title: Frank Sinatra

text: and has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in film and music. There are stars on east and west sides of the 1600 block of Vine Street respectively, and one on the south side of the 6500 block of Hollywood Boulevard for his work in television.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In Sinatra's native Hoboken, he was awarded the Key to the City of by Mayor Fred M. De Sapio on October 30, 1947. In 2003 the city's main post office was rededicated in his honor. A bronze plaque, place two years before Sinatra's death in 1998, marks the site of the house where he was born. There is also a marker in front of Hoboken Historical Museum, which has artifacts from his life and conducts Sinatra walking tours through the city. Frank Sinatra Drive runs parallel to the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway. On the waterfront is Frank Sinatra Park, where a bronze plaque was placed in 1989 upon its opening. In the Frank Sinatra Park, a tall bronze statue of Sinatra was dedicated in 2021 on December 12, the date of Sinatra's birthday in 1915.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: A residence hall at Montclair State University in New Jersey was named in his honor. Other buildings named for Sinatra include the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Astoria, Queens, the Frank Sinatra International Student Center at Israel's Hebrew University in Jerusalem dedicated in 1978, and the Frank Sinatra Hall at the USC School of Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles, California, dedicated in 2002. Wynn Resorts' Encore Las Vegas resort features a restaurant dedicated to Sinatra which opened in 2008.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: There are several streets and roads named in honor of Frank Sinatra in several states of the U.S., such as the road named Frank Sinatra Drive connecting Cathedral City and Palm Desert in California, a road in Las Vegas near the Las Vegas Strip is also a road named Frank Sinatra Drive in his honor.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Various items of memorabilia from Sinatra's life and career, such as Frank Sinatra's awards, gold records, and various personal items are displayed at USC's Frank Sinatra Hall in Los Angeles and also at Wynn Resort's Sinatra restaurant in Las Vegas.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: The United States Postal Service issued a 42-cent postage stamp in honor of Sinatra in May 2008, commemorating the tenth anniversary of his death.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: The United States Congress passed a resolution introduced by Representative Mary Bono Mack on May 20, 2008, designating May 13 as Frank Sinatra Day to honor his contributions to American culture.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra received three Honorary Degrees during his lifetime. In May 1976, he was invited to speak at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) graduation commencement held at Sam Boyd Stadium. It was at this commencement that he was bestowed an Honorary Doctorate litterarum humanarum by the university. During his speech, Sinatra stated that his education had come from "the school of hard knocks" and was suitably touched by the award. He went on to describe that "this is the first educational degree I have ever held in my hand. I will never forget what you have done for me today". A few years later in 1984 and 1985, Sinatra also received an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Loyola Marymount University as well as an Honorary Doctorate of Engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra has also been portrayed on numerous occasions in film and television. A television miniseries based on Sinatra's life, titled "Sinatra", was aired by CBS in 1992. The series was directed by James Steven Sadwith, who won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Directing for a Miniseries or a Special, and starred Philip Casnoff as Sinatra. "Sinatra" was written by Abby Mann and Philip Mastrosimone, and produced by Sinatra's daughter, Tina.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra has subsequently been portrayed on screen by Ray Liotta ("The Rat Pack", 1998), James Russo ("Stealing Sinatra", 2003), Dennis Hopper ("The Night We Called It a Day", 2003), and Robert Knepper ("My Way", 2012), and spoofed by Joe Piscopo and Phil Hartman on "Saturday Night Live". A biographical film directed by Martin Scorsese has long been planned. A 1998 episode of the BBC documentary series "Arena", "The Voice of the Century", focused on Sinatra. Alex Gibney directed a four-part biographical series on Sinatra, "All or Nothing at All", for HBO in 2015. A musical tribute was aired on CBS television in December 2015 to mark Sinatra's centenary. Sinatra was also portrayed by Rico Simonini in the 2018 feature film "Frank & Ava", which is based on a play by Willard Manus.


title: Frank Sinatra

text: Sinatra was convinced that Johnny Fontane, a mob-associated singer in Mario Puzo's novel "The Godfather" (1969), was based on his life. Puzo wrote in 1972 that when the author and singer met in Chasen's, Sinatra "started to shout abuse", calling Puzo a "pimp" and threatening physical violence. This was recreated in the miniseries "The Offer" with Sinatra portrayed by Frank John Hughes. Francis Ford Coppola, director of the film adaptation, said in the audio commentary that "Obviously Johnny Fontane was inspired by a kind of Frank Sinatra character".


title: Frank Sinatra

text: In December 2020, it was announced that Creed singer Scott Stapp will portray Frank Sinatra in "Reagan," a biopic of U.S. President Ronald Reagan.


title: Chadwick Boseman

text: Chadwick Aaron Boseman (; November 29, 1976August 28, 2020) was an American actor. During his two-decade career, Boseman received two Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a Critics' Choice Movie Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award, among other accolades. He was also nominated for an Academy Award.


title: Chadwick Boseman

text: After studying directing at Howard University, Boseman began his career in theatre, winning a Drama League Directing Fellowship and an acting AUDELCO, along with receiving a Jeff Award nomination for his 2005 play "Deep Azure". Transitioning to the screen, his first major role was as a series regular on the NBC drama "Persons Unknown" (2010) and he landed his breakthrough performance as baseball player Jackie Robinson in the 2013 biographical film "42". He continued to portray historical figures, starring as singer James Brown in "Get on Up" (2014) and as attorney Thurgood Marshall in "Marshall" (2017).


title: Chadwick Boseman

text: Boseman achieved international fame for playing the Marvel Comics superhero Black Panther in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) from 2016 to 2019. He appeared in four MCU films, including an eponymous 2018 film that earned him an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. As the first black actor to headline an MCU film, he was also named in the 2018 "Time" 100. Boseman's final performance as the character in the Disney+ anthology series "What If...?" (2021) earned him a posthumous Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance.


title: Chadwick Boseman

text: In 2016, Boseman was diagnosed with colon cancer. He kept his condition private, continuing to act until his death in 2020 from the illness. His final film, "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom", was released posthumously the same year to critical acclaim, earning him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama. Boseman also received four nominations at the 27th Screen Actors Guild Awards for his work in "Da 5 Bloods" and "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom", the most for a performer at a single ceremony, winning Male Actor in a Leading Role for the latter.


title: Chadwick Boseman

text: Chadwick Aaron Boseman was born and raised in Anderson, South Carolina, the son of Carolyn ("née" Mattress) and Leroy Boseman, both African-American. His mother was a nurse, and his father worked at a textile factory and managed an upholstery business. In his youth, Boseman practiced martial arts, and continued this training as an adult. As a child, he wanted to become an architect. According to Boseman, DNA testing indicated that some of his ancestors were Jola people from Guinea-Bissau, Krio people and Limba people from Sierra Leone, and Yoruba people from Nigeria.


title: Chadwick Boseman

text: Boseman graduated from T. L. Hanna High School in 1995, where he played on the basketball team. In his junior year, he wrote his first play, "Crossroads", and staged it at the school after a classmate was shot and killed. He competed in Speech and Debate in the National Speech and Debate Association at T. L. Hanna. He placed eighth in Original Oratory at the 1995 National Tournament. He was recruited to play basketball at college but chose the arts instead, attending college at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and graduating in 2000 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in directing. While at Howard, he worked in an African American–oriented bookstore near the university, which friend Vanessa German said was important and inspirational to him; he drew on his experience there for his play "Hieroglyphic Graffiti".


title: Chadwick Boseman

text: His teachers at Howard included Al Freeman Jr. and Phylicia Rashad, who became a mentor. Rashad helped raise funds, notably from her friend and prominent actor Denzel Washington, so that Boseman and other classmates could attend the Oxford Summer Program of the British American Drama Academy at Balliol College, Oxford, in England, to which they had been accepted. Boseman wanted to write and direct, and initially began studying acting to learn how to relate to actors. He attended the program in 1998, and he developed an appreciation for the playwriting of William Shakespeare; additionally, he studied the works of various dramatists, including Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter. He also traveled to Africa for the first time while at college, working in Ghana with his professor Mike Malone "to preserve and celebrate rituals with performances on a proscenium stage"; he said it was "one of the most significant learning experiences of [his] life". After he returned to the U.S., he took additional course work in film studies, graduating from New York City's Digital Film Academy.


title: Chadwick Boseman

text: Boseman lived in Brooklyn, New York City, at the start of his career. In 2000, he was named a Drama League Directing Fellow. He directed productions including George C. Wolfe's "The Colored Museum" (Wolfe would later direct Boseman in his final role) and a staging of Amiri Baraka's "Dutchman". He worked as the drama instructor in the Schomburg Junior Scholars Program, housed at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem between 2002 and 2009.


title: Chadwick Boseman

text: He rose to prominence as a playwright and stage actor in 2002, performing in multiple productions and winning an AUDELCO award in 2002 for his part in Ron Milner's "Urban Transitions". As a member of the National Shakespeare Company of New York, he played Romeo in "Romeo and Juliet" and Malcolm in "Macbeth". He directed and wrote plays as part of the Hip-hop theater movement; his works included "Rhyme Deferred" (co-written with Howard classmate Kamilah Forbes), in which he also performed, and "Hieroglyphic Graffiti". "Rhyme Deferred" was commissioned for a national tour, as well as featuring in "The Fire This Time" anthology of works, while "Hieroglyphic Graffiti" was produced at a variety of locations, including the National Black Theatre Festival in 2001. Combining modern African-American culture and Egyptian deities, it is set in Washington, D.C. and was picked up by the New York Hip-Hop Theatre Festival and Tennessee State University's summer stock theatre program in 2002. It was also the Kuntu Repertory Theatre's 2002–03 season launch production. At the 2002 Hip-Hop Theatre Festival, Boseman also gave a one-man show called "Red Clay and Carved Concrete".


title: Chadwick Boseman

text: In 2003, Boseman was cast in his first television role, an episode of "Third Watch", and began playing Reggie Montgomery in the daytime soap opera "All My Children". He was fired from "All My Children" after voicing concerns to producers about racist stereotypes in the script; the role was subsequently re-cast, with Boseman's future "Black Panther" co-star Michael B. Jordan taking the part. Boseman had wanted to work around the stereotypes of the character, feeling that being in a soap opera would give him more room for improvisation as the writers often do not initially plan a full story; his (then-future) agent said that when Boseman was given the second script and learned that his character's parents were a drug addict and an absent father, Boseman confronted the creators. He reflected on the experience in his 2018 commencement address to Howard University, saying that it "seemed to be wrapped up in assumptions about us as black folks [and he] would have to make something out of nothing." His other early television work included episodes of the series "Law & Order", "Cold Case", "", and "ER".


title: Chadwick Boseman

text: Boseman's best-known play, "Deep Azure", was commissioned in 2004 by the Congo Square Theatre Company in Chicago. It was nominated for a 2006 Jeff Award for Best New Work. Boseman said at the time that "Deep Azure" was "a fusion and progression of [his] previous plays", which he did not feel fit wholly in the Hip Hop theater genre. The play – about police brutality, a daring subject in 2004, and largely delivered in rhyme – was workshopped at the Apollo Theater in New York. Drama critic Chris Jones in the "Chicago Tribune" highly praised the work. In 2008, Boseman turned "Deep Azure" into a screenplay. Michael Greene, who would become his agent, picked it up and contacted Boseman when Tessa Thompson and Omari Hardwick expressed an interest in playing the lead roles, prompting Boseman's move to Los Angeles. He also directed, wrote, and produced the short film "Blood Over a Broken Pawn" in 2007, which was honored at the 2008 Hollywood Black Film Festival.


title: Chadwick Boseman

text: In 2008, Boseman moved to Los Angeles to pursue his film and acting career. He was cast in a recurring role on the television series "Lincoln Heights" as Nathaniel Ray Taylor, an army veteran with PTSD who was later revealed to be the son of the main character before re-enlisting. He also appeared in his first feature film in 2008, "", as running back Floyd Little. He landed his first regular role in the 2010 television series "Persons Unknown" as the Marine Graham McNair. The show received mediocre reviews that felt the characters were all archetypes with little development. In July 2013, Boseman's second short film as director, "Heaven", premiered at the HollyShorts Film Festival.


title: Chadwick Boseman

text: Boseman's breakthrough role came in 2013 with the film "42", in which he portrayed the lead role of baseball legend Jackie Robinson. Boseman had been directing an off-Broadway play in the East Village when he auditioned for the role, and was considering giving up acting to pursue directing full-time. About twenty-five other actors had been seriously considered for the role, but director Brian Helgeland liked Boseman's bravery in choosing to read the most difficult scene, in which Robinson goes down a stadium tunnel and breaks a bat in anger, and cast him after he had auditioned twice. Part of the audition process involved playing baseball; Boseman had been involved with Little League as a child but was primarily a basketball player growing up, saying that in this part the casting directors likely noticed his athleticism rather than specifically baseball skills. Robinson's widow, Rachel Robinson, commented that Boseman's performance was like seeing her husband again. To replicate Robinson's mannerisms, Boseman trained for five months with professional baseball coaches who "would tape [his] practices every few weeks, and they would basically split-screen [his technique] with [Robinson's]" to allow him to compare. After having portrayed football player Little in "The Express", Boseman was encouraged by stunt coordinator Allan Graf to approach running bases in the same way, as Robinson had also been a college football player. Upon taking the role, Boseman first spoke with Rachel Robinson, which he said was of great help in discovering the character. The same year, Boseman also starred in the independent film "The Kill Hole", which was released in theaters a few weeks before "42".


title: Chadwick Boseman

text: Critics, even those who viewed the film negatively, felt that Boseman being a relatively unknown actor was a benefit when playing an icon and an athlete; Mick LaSalle of "San Francisco Chronicle" wrote that "as [...] played by Chadwick Boseman, Robinson is a hero we can recognize", and Mary Pols for "Time" said that "Boseman is not a hugely close physical match to Robinson, except for perhaps in the power he conveys, but he's a great choice to play the ball player". "The Guardian" Mike McCahill noted that "Boseman hits his key scenes out of the park", but felt the film would not interest people who are not baseball fans, with Dana Stevens of "Slate" suggesting that the film made black history "squeaky-clean" and did both Robinson and Boseman's performance as him a disservice.


title: Chadwick Boseman

text: In 2014, Boseman starred in another sporting film, "Draft Day", as fictional football player Vontae Mack. He had workshopped the Tupac Shakur jukebox musical "Holler If Ya Hear Me" in 2013, but did not continue to Broadway with it in order to take the role of James Brown in 2014's "Get on Up". As Brown, Boseman did some singing and all of his own dancing, working with choreographer Aakomon Jones for five to eight hours a day over two months in preparation. Producer Mick Jagger also directed him on interacting with audiences when performing live music. He had not wanted to take a role in another biopic so soon after playing an icon in Robinson, saying he "wasn't looking to do it again for another 15, 20 years", but was sought out as director Tate Taylor's only choice. Co-star Dan Aykroyd, who had known Brown, praised Boseman's performance, saying that it was neither replication nor impression and that he "did not have to squint sitting across from [Boseman] to imagine that [he] was talking to [Brown]". Boseman also stayed in character between filming on set; Taylor said this was not a method acting approach, and more a necessity due to Boseman holding his vocal cords unnaturally to imitate Brown's southern drawl.


title: Chadwick Boseman

text: His performance was praised as the highlight of an also good movie, with the Rotten Tomatoes critical consensus reading: "With an unforgettable Chadwick Boseman in the starring role, "Get On Up" offers the Godfather of Soul a fittingly dynamic homage." Among the critics was "Time" Richard Corliss (hyperbolically) saying that Boseman "deserves a Pulitzer, a Nobel and instant election to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame." Eulogizing Boseman, Donald Clarke of "The Irish Times" said that ""Get on Up" tested every weapon in the actor's arsenal [and his] performance confirmed that, like a star from Hollywood's golden age, Chadwick Boseman could do it all and do it all with style."


title: Chadwick Boseman

text: Boseman had sold a thriller screenplay to Universal Pictures in 2014, which he continued to collaborate on with creative partner Logan Coles and planned to star in, and told "The Guardian" that he still wanted to be a director but would explore his acting career first, adding that "maybe it'll be easier if you're a successful actor". In 2016, he starred as Thoth, a deity from Egyptian mythology, in "Gods of Egypt". Boseman was one of the few actors of color featured in the film, which had drawn criticism for using a predominantly white cast to portray Egyptian characters. Agreeing with the criticism, Boseman said this had motivated him to accept the role, to ensure one of the film's African characters would be played by someone of African descent. Boseman's own casting was criticized for falling under the "Magical Negro" stereotype. "The Independent" reported that Boseman shook his head while telling "GQ" in an interview that "people don't make $140 million movies starring black and brown people". It was his first largely CGI film, and he expressed that he preferred acting alongside people than with blue screens and prop stand-ins. The film was heavily criticized; Jordan Hoffman for "The Guardian" said that it lacks story or interesting characters, but "Boseman makes for nice comic relief as the witty Thoth", with Will Leitch of "The New Republic" saying that his then-upcoming Marvel Studios role may have to work "to make you forget he was ever in this movie". Perri Nemiroff for "Collider" said that Boseman shines as "the only cast member who really seems to understand the movie he's in".


title: Chadwick Boseman

text: In 2016, Boseman began portraying the Marvel Comics character T'Challa / Black Panther in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. "" was his first film in a five-picture deal with Marvel Entertainment. He did not audition for the role, instead having a "discussion about what [Marvel] wanted to do and how [he] saw it and what [he] wanted to do." While working on "Civil War", Boseman learned some Xhosa from John Kani, who played his father, and insisted on using the language for the character. Boseman also developed a Wakandan accent himself, and used it during the entire production "whether he was on camera or not". When asked by journalist Ryan Gilbey if he felt pressure not to "screw up" the beloved comics character, Boseman responded by saying: "It's more positive than that. It's more like: 'Seize it. Enjoy it.'" He told the Associated Press, though, that he more identified with the Black Panther's nemesis, Killmonger, knowing that his roots to his African past had been severed. Producer Kevin Feige explained that the Black Panther was included in "Civil War" "because [they] needed a third party. [It] needed fresh eyes [of a character] who wasn't embedded with the Avengers and who has a very different point of view than either Tony or Steve." Boseman's performance in "Civil War" was highly praised, though critics acknowledged the character's inclusion was largely to set up his upcoming headlining movie.


title: Chadwick Boseman

text: Boseman returned as the Black Panther in "Black Panther" (2018), directed by Ryan Coogler, which focused on the character and his home country of Wakanda in Africa. The film opened to great anticipation, becoming one of the highest-grossing films. The role earned Boseman a spot on the 2018 "Time" 100 as one of the world's most influential people, with Sean Combs writing his entry. It is seen as a landmark in being the first mega-budget movie to have a predominantly black cast and director, as well as the first superhero film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. The film was also critically well-received and Boseman was praised; Matthew Norman for the "Evening Standard" said that he "brings a measure of sub-Shakespearean gravitas to T'Challa's struggle to bear the weight of his crown"; Richard Lawson and "Sight & Sound" Kelli Weston also noted the strength of gravitas Boseman gave to the performance. Weston added that he, "despite having the more thankless role [out of T'Challa and Killmonger], carries the film with a quiet dignity one might rightfully expect of a man raised to be king." Todd McCarthy and "The Village Voice" Kristen Yoonsoo Kim saw that while Boseman played his serious character well, the cast was full of charismatic scene stealers. Peter Travers gave much praise to Boseman as the lead, and said that he "digs so deep into T'Challa that you can feel his nerve endings"; LaSalle wrote that "Boseman commands every moment of this film, radiating probity and purpose, and it's only later on that you realize that, with another actor, this wouldn't have been a sure thing."


title: Chadwick Boseman

text: He reprised the role in both "" and "", which were released in 2018 and 2019, respectively. Both films were the highest grossing of the year they were released, with "Endgame" going on to become the highest-grossing film of all time. "Infinity War" was filmed at the same time as "Black Panther", and Boseman and other actors playing Wakandan characters improvised chanting scenes in the former that originated in the latter. Boseman's last physical appearance as Black Panther was in "Endgame", at Tony Stark's funeral; he voiced alternate versions of T'Challa in the 2021 Disney+ animated series "What If...?".


title: Chadwick Boseman

text: Boseman portrayed Thurgood Marshall in the biographical film "Marshall" in 2017. Set years before he became the first African American Supreme Court Justice, the movie focuses on one of Marshall's early cases, the trial of Joseph Spell. It was premiered at Howard University, which both Boseman and Marshall had attended. Boseman was still worried about being put into a "biopic box", and felt that he didn't look enough like the real Marshall, but took the role because he enjoyed the script "separate from the historical relevance"; he had expected big courtroom speeches but found that in the case Marshall was silenced by the judge and had to mentor white co-counsel Sam Friedman (Josh Gad) to take on his first criminal case. He told "The New York Times" that he liked this element of the story because "it doesn't allow you as an audience member, no matter what color you are, to hide from the issues". Boseman researched Marshall extensively before portraying him, as well as studying videos of him speaking and losing muscle to reflect the younger Marshall's wiry frame. The film opened to an average critical reception, though Boseman's performance was praised. However, "Vulture" criticized his casting, noting that, unlike Boseman, "the real-life Marshall was a light-skinned man, and his place on the color spectrum undoubtedly influenced how he became such a legend." Boseman had been concerned about their differences before taking the role, but was convinced by the director and producer that as the film was telling an insular story it did not matter as much.


title: Chadwick Boseman

text: In 2019, he starred in "21 Bridges", an American action thriller film directed by Brian Kirk, as an NYPD detective who shuts down the eponymous twenty-one bridges of Manhattan to find two suspected cop killers. He was approached to work on the film by two of its producers, "Avengers" directors the Russo brothers, at the "Infinity War" premiere. While "21 Bridges" was filming, the Russos and Boseman were working on "Endgame". Boseman was also a producer on "21 Bridges", something he said was made clear to him in his early conversations with the production team; the three producers are given a nod in one of the film's opening lines, when a character is described as an "avenger". All of the film's characters were originally conceived as male and white, with Boseman encouraging amendments to this and other parts of the story. In his capacity as a producer, Boseman sought out Sienna Miller to be his co-star; Miller, who was intending to take a break from acting while her daughter was young, asked for a salary that the studio would not meet, and so Boseman donated the rest from his own pay. He also personally called Stephan James to ask him to play one of the criminals Boseman's detective is hunting; the two actors had been planning to work more together after the film. Boseman said that he and Coles "fought for casting and for actors that brought particular sensibilities and feelings".


title: Chadwick Boseman

text: As an actor, Boseman developed his character by going on calls with the NYPD and LAPD, which he said influenced the writing after he fed back his experiences, and learning how to fire blanks and handle a gun with a police weapons specialist. While the film received mixed reviews, the cast was praised; Clarisse Loughrey of "The Independent" wrote that the film was indelicate in its storytelling, but that Boseman "finds a surprising amount to work with in such a basic, stock character", while the "Los Angeles Times" said that "Chadwick Boseman and thin characters cannot keep "21 Bridges" from collapsing". Glenn Kenny of "RogerEbert.com" was more positive towards the film, writing that "it's no small feat to tie up an intelligent action thriller with such assuredness" and that "Boseman [...] does a lot of running and driving and gun-pointing and car-hood slamming here, but his character also does a lot of thinking — and a lot of maneuvering."