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Frank Sinatra, dead tonight at the age of 82,
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which brought to an end a remarkable life
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that was on one kind of stage
or another for six decades.
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Idol of mine and millions,
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and a great Italian-American,
a great American.
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00:00:31,783 --> 00:00:33,910
And great actor, by the way.
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I think every American would have to smile
and say he really did do it his way.
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They dimmed the lights on the Vegas strip
in his honour.
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Here, and in dozens of cities
across the country,
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radio stations have been playing
nothing but Sinatra.
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My first recollection of Frank's voice
was coming out of a jukebox.
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It was in a dark bar on a Sunday afternoon
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when my mother and I went in
searching for my father.
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And she said, I'll always remember,
"Listen to that.
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"That's Frank Sinatra, he's from New Jersey."
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And while his music became synonymous
with black-tie, good life,
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the best booze, women, sophistication,
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it was the deep blueness of Frank's voice
that affected me the most.
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He was the poet laureate of loneliness.
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His songs were haunted by it.
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For all his fame, he loved solitude.
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We don't know
what he thought about his own life
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because he never wrote it down in a book.
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But there was one mysterious moment
when he gave us all a clue.
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It was when, at the very peak of his career,
he suddenly decided to retire.
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The beginning of March that year
I was working somewhere in Florida
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and he called me and he said,
"I think I'm gonna hang it up."
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One afternoon by the pool,
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Dad was with his black flair pen,
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making his music list, his song list.
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He never showed the set list to anybody.
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But in the run-up to the show,
at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles,
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he must have been thinking about it.
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Eleven songs to tell the story of a life.
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Ladies and gentlemen, Frank Sinatra.
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And this was the beginning.
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The night itself was star-studded
and exciting
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and sad and a lot of mixed emotions.
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What startled me about that film was that
it has that rough, hand-held look to it.
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00:04:39,614 --> 00:04:43,534
And how appropriate that it should be
at this particular event,
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that we don't see the concert film of Sinatra
where everything is perfectly controlled.
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You can hear the guy backstage
kicking the chord out of the socket,
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and suddenly the mic goes bad.
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People holding those cameras
were as swept up in the moment
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as everybody in the audience or the people
on stage, the orchestra, Sinatra himself.
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They knew this was the end of the line
for this great artist.
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These were some of the
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milestone points in his career, musically.
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Going back to the very beginning,
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there have been conflicting stories
about your childhood in Hoboken,
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quoted by people
who've done interviews with you.
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00:06:07,452 --> 00:06:11,789
There's this kind of general version
of the near-slum conditions in Hoboken.
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And then there are others.
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There was an article some years ago
by a very good magazine writer
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who said that this isn't so.
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That all the toys you needed,
that you even had a Chrysler at the age of 15.
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Most of the biographies I've read,
or articles I've read,
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pardon me, about my young days
or my childhood
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were rather dreamed up, rather fictitious.
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I have read many of them,
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and I said to myself, "I don't remember this.
This is really strange."
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I was born in 1915, on December 12th,
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and I weighed 12 and three-quarter pounds.
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And when I was removed from her womb
by a midwife, there was a problem.
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I didn't wanna come out of there.
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And finally they sent up a flare for a doctor.
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And upon removing me,
I was pretty well damaged
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at my left side of my neck and ear and face.
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And my grandmother,
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who had more sense than anybody
in the room, as far as I'm concerned,
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because she knew what to do with me.
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And she stuck me under the ice-cold water
in the cold water flat,
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and, apparently, got some blood moving
around and whacked me around a little bit.
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And I have blessed that day, that moment,
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in her honour ever since.
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Hi, I've been able to contact
Mr and Mrs Martin Sinatra.
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- Hello, Mrs Sinatra.
-Yeah, hello.
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Here's Mr Gardner just one moment.
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- Hello, Mrs Sinatra.
-Hello, Mr Gardner.
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It's certainly nice to talk to you
and to have you come to the phone.
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I know the last time Frank was in town
you weren't feeling very well.
82
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And you fully recovered now?
83
00:08:01,440 --> 00:08:05,027
Well, yes. I feel pretty well now.
84
00:08:05,111 --> 00:08:10,575
And Frank called me only recently
while I was in the hospital.
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- I was an only child.
-Yeah.
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And she was tough on me.
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I mean, she was very strict with me,
my mother was always strict.
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She told me to stay away
from the railroad tracks,
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because a kid, one time, one day,
a kid lost an arm.
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About three years later, another guy,
little guy lost his leg.
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And if she found out that I was down there,
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the railroad tracks,
she'd whacked me around.
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Out of fear, only out of fear.
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I think the first thing that I was ever
conscious of,
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was the drive that she had all the time.
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Her constant seeking, it was to do better,
to constantly do better.
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Dolly Sinatra was an earth mother.
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Everybody became her son, her daughter.
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Everybody's problems became her problems.
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And that went from psychological problems
to physical problems.
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00:09:05,838 --> 00:09:10,134
Grandma had become a midwife
in her neighbourhood.
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00:09:10,301 --> 00:09:14,222
When there were families
with children they couldn't afford to feed,
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then was it right to bring another child
into that neediness?
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And she was a good Catholic.
105
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I don't think she thought
that abortion was a great thing.
106
00:09:27,735 --> 00:09:32,573
But I think, in those days,
in that Depression, it was necessity.
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She did what needed to be done.
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My father was withdrawn, he was a shy man.
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He spoke perfect English,
but he couldn't put words together.
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He would still a "dees, dems and dose".
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Remember that he had to be intimidated
by my mother's innate knowledge.
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She was innately bright, my mother was.
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They both came over,
different families came over
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and they came into Ellis Island.
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One from Catania, and the other from Genoa.
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00:10:02,561 --> 00:10:06,399
The Genoese were the original bankers,
they were lawyers.
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00:10:07,233 --> 00:10:10,778
And she used to say to me,
"I think that I'm half Italian, half Jew."
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I said, "Maybe you are, Ma."
She said, "Well, I'm smart."
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She said, "That's where they came from,
where I came from."
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And consequently she succeeded.
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She made her way in life,
she did very well, considering.
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00:10:28,004 --> 00:10:29,588
When Sinatra was young,
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being an Italian-American
was being the object of bigotry.
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You were part of a minority group,
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one that was stereotyped as being
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either comical and absurd,
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the organ grinder with the monkey,
128
00:10:42,768 --> 00:10:46,522
or dangerous and threatening,
the guy with the submachine gun.
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00:10:48,149 --> 00:10:53,654
And of course, Sinatra, growing up
where he did, when he did, understood
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00:10:53,738 --> 00:10:56,824
that that guy with the machine gun was real.
131
00:10:57,742 --> 00:11:00,661
My father at the time was rarely at home,
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00:11:00,745 --> 00:11:03,831
because he was a protector
for the bootlegging trucks.
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00:11:03,914 --> 00:11:07,877
They used to have a car that would
follow the trucks so it wouldn't get hijacked.
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00:11:07,960 --> 00:11:13,341
During Prohibition, my grandfather
had taken a job as a lookout on a truck
135
00:11:13,424 --> 00:11:15,760
that carried 90 proof contraband.
136
00:11:16,927 --> 00:11:20,681
And, apparently, the truck was hijacked
by a rival gang mob,
137
00:11:20,765 --> 00:11:24,143
and he didn't duck fast enough
and somebody hit him on the head,
138
00:11:24,226 --> 00:11:27,313
and he had a skull fracture
and he was bleeding everywhere.
139
00:11:27,396 --> 00:11:30,107
And my father, as a little boy,
woke up and saw this.
140
00:11:35,488 --> 00:11:37,198
In those days there were sayings.
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In order to be an attorney, or an accountant,
you had to be a Jew.
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00:11:40,659 --> 00:11:43,537
In order to be a singer,
you had to be an Italian.
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00:11:43,621 --> 00:11:46,082
In order to be a prize fighter,
you had to be Irish,
144
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which is why he took
the name Marty O'Brien.
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I was about eight or nine years old,
the old man opened a saloon.
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00:11:58,677 --> 00:12:01,389
It was called Marty O'Brien's bar.
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The bar that they ran,
they didn't run it as the Sinatras.
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They took an Irish name.
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Because the Italians were lower
than the Irish in Hoboken, right?
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Dolly. He said she was the kind of woman
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who kept a little club behind the bar.
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If somebody gave her some shit,
she hit them with the club,
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put it under the bar and kept talking.
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They had in the bar a piano with a roll in it.
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You put a nickel in it,
it would play the songs.
156
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And occasionally, one of the men in the bar
would pick me up
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and put me up on the piano
and I'd sing with the roll.
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And it was a horrendous voice, terrible.
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I mean, it was like a siren.
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You know, "Honest and truly I'm in love you."
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Way up there, like that.
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It's a wonder I ever got anywhere
starting that way, is what kills me.
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So one day I got a nickel, or a dime,
whatever it was.
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And I said, "This is the racket.
165
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"This is what you gotta be doing."
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In my hometown, the city was, as I said,
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the square mile was almost
divided in quarters.
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00:13:21,093 --> 00:13:25,473
One quarter was Italian,
another quarter was of the Jewish families,
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except that we were also intermingled
in the tenement houses.
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Then the other quarter was the Irish,
who politically ran the city.
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00:13:35,065 --> 00:13:37,651
They were out-voted any day of the week.
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But for some reason,
when election time came,
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they would give coal and give some clothing
to all of the other families,
174
00:13:43,991 --> 00:13:47,077
and they would vote
for the Irishmen all the time.
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00:13:47,161 --> 00:13:49,788
And the blacks, of course,
were kept in one part of the town.
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They were such a small matter
that we never knew they were there at all.
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I don't remember too many black children
in my classes.
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I think it's easy for us to forget
that he was also a boy and a young man
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00:14:06,013 --> 00:14:10,768
at a time when everybody's life was difficult,
when everybody was at risk.
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00:14:12,478 --> 00:14:17,107
The Depression was an all-encompassing
experience for anybody who grew up in it.
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00:14:17,816 --> 00:14:20,027
And above all,
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00:14:20,110 --> 00:14:23,405
it caused you to realise that life was hard.
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00:14:23,864 --> 00:14:26,200
It was not just gonna be hard
for you to make a living,
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00:14:26,283 --> 00:14:28,577
it might actually be hard for you to survive.
185
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This was not theoretical
for somebody like Sinatra, it was real.
186
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It shaped his whole idea of professionalism,
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of his feeling that he had to be
the best performer,
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00:14:44,301 --> 00:14:47,179
the best professional
that he could possibly be.
189
00:14:47,263 --> 00:14:50,432
Because if you're going to survive
in the '30s,
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you had to do it by working very hard
and being very lucky.
191
00:14:55,020 --> 00:14:57,982
In Italy, there were 55
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00:14:58,399 --> 00:15:02,027
discreet dialects of the Italian language.
193
00:15:02,319 --> 00:15:06,323
My grandmother spoke all 55.
194
00:15:06,448 --> 00:15:11,829
This put her in a position where people came
to her as the neighbourhood interpreter.
195
00:15:12,496 --> 00:15:17,001
The next logical step in the '20s,
she went into politics.
196
00:15:17,626 --> 00:15:22,840
Then, they wanted to reward my mother
and give my father a job
197
00:15:23,340 --> 00:15:24,800
on the city payroll, right?
198
00:15:25,009 --> 00:15:27,636
A cop or a fireman, right?
So she made him a fireman.
199
00:15:33,142 --> 00:15:38,230
Hoboken had about six movie theaters,
in only one mile square.
200
00:15:38,314 --> 00:15:42,568
We had the Lyric Theatre, the U.S. Theatre,
201
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the vaudeville houses with the movie.
202
00:15:45,988 --> 00:15:49,116
We had the Rialto, we had the City Theatre
203
00:15:49,199 --> 00:15:51,619
and every time I saw somebody,
I wanted to be them.
204
00:15:51,952 --> 00:15:56,540
I wanted to be a ventriloquist and then
I saw jugglers and all that kind of jazz.
205
00:15:56,624 --> 00:15:58,626
But I am still thinking about singing.
206
00:15:58,709 --> 00:16:01,295
I never lost that thing
about singing back here.
207
00:16:03,088 --> 00:16:07,718
And I went to see performers. I mean,
not anybody famous, until I saw Bing.
208
00:16:15,934 --> 00:16:19,188
Bing Crosby was the first
great pop singer in America.
209
00:16:19,271 --> 00:16:24,401
And the first white singer
to completely internalize
210
00:16:25,069 --> 00:16:29,490
the innovations of jazz which he got
directly from Louis Armstrong.
211
00:16:30,074 --> 00:16:34,870
Sinatra heard these things and he said,
"That's what I want to do."
212
00:16:34,953 --> 00:16:36,914
"I want to be like that."
213
00:16:53,597 --> 00:16:57,976
I started singing more in school
with the dances on Friday nights.
214
00:16:58,060 --> 00:17:00,354
Every other Friday night,
we had to dance in the gymnasium.
215
00:17:00,479 --> 00:17:02,648
People would say to me,
"Hey, you're pretty good."
216
00:17:03,148 --> 00:17:05,567
And that began to register in my head.
217
00:17:08,612 --> 00:17:11,031
When I went to the publishing houses,
218
00:17:11,115 --> 00:17:13,617
they would give away free orchestrations
if they knew you,
219
00:17:13,701 --> 00:17:15,619
complete stock orchestration.
220
00:17:15,703 --> 00:17:20,290
And I built a library and then I saved enough
money and I bought a public address system.
221
00:17:20,374 --> 00:17:22,251
Because before that,
I sang through a megaphone.
222
00:17:22,334 --> 00:17:24,586
- You wouldn't know what that is. It's a...
-Rudy Vallee, yes.
223
00:17:24,670 --> 00:17:26,630
- That's what you sing through.
-You actually used a megaphone?
224
00:17:27,339 --> 00:17:29,216
And guys would throw pennies,
225
00:17:29,299 --> 00:17:31,885
to try to see if they could get me
to swallow the pennies.
226
00:17:31,969 --> 00:17:34,555
- A lot of fun, those days.
-Try it with shot glasses.
227
00:17:34,638 --> 00:17:37,599
But I used to move a great deal.
They couldn't hit it.
228
00:17:37,683 --> 00:17:40,394
Then came the microphone age
and I thought,
229
00:17:40,477 --> 00:17:42,062
"Geez, if I could save some money."
230
00:17:42,146 --> 00:17:44,314
So for $60, I bought a whole outfit.
231
00:17:44,648 --> 00:17:48,402
The microphone allowed
for a new kind of singing
232
00:17:48,485 --> 00:17:51,488
because it magnified the voice
233
00:17:51,572 --> 00:17:53,574
so you didn't have to project.
234
00:17:53,657 --> 00:17:59,538
What Sinatra sang
was this longing and passion
235
00:17:59,621 --> 00:18:02,666
that was controlled in song.
236
00:18:03,167 --> 00:18:06,754
When did you first discover that Frank
found out that he could sing?
237
00:18:06,837 --> 00:18:10,549
Well, I first discovered it when he didn't
want to go to school any more
238
00:18:10,632 --> 00:18:13,969
outside of just going into
these glee clubs all the time.
239
00:18:14,261 --> 00:18:18,182
- How old was he at that time?
-At the time he was about 16.
240
00:18:18,432 --> 00:18:24,104
And naturally the principal sent for me
and said he was just taking up space.
241
00:18:24,688 --> 00:18:27,566
Was there a family crisis
when you dropped out of high school?
242
00:18:27,691 --> 00:18:30,694
It was disastrous, absolutely disastrous.
243
00:18:31,695 --> 00:18:34,990
My dad, you know, who never had
too much of a formal education
244
00:18:35,073 --> 00:18:36,408
was terribly disappointed.
245
00:18:36,492 --> 00:18:38,160
He just couldn't understand it.
246
00:18:38,660 --> 00:18:43,540
I pleaded with him, I said, "You got to give
me a chance to work in what I want to do."
247
00:18:43,624 --> 00:18:46,919
And he said something about,
"Sure, a chance."
248
00:18:47,044 --> 00:18:50,589
He said, "Ten years from now, you'll still be
looking for a chance, you'll be a bum."
249
00:19:16,573 --> 00:19:18,992
Where did you first meet Frank?
250
00:19:19,076 --> 00:19:21,787
In Long Branch, New Jersey,
which is on the coast.
251
00:19:22,955 --> 00:19:26,458
I knew his family,
his aunt and uncle and their children.
252
00:19:27,835 --> 00:19:31,588
Across the street,
Nancy's father and mother had a house
253
00:19:31,672 --> 00:19:37,094
and I saw this very pretty little girl
sitting on the front stoop.
254
00:19:37,344 --> 00:19:40,681
And he called across the street saying,
"Hi, what are you doing?"
255
00:19:40,764 --> 00:19:44,268
And I said, "I'm giving myself a manicure."
256
00:19:44,893 --> 00:19:47,813
He said, "Would you give me one?"
I said, "Sure."
257
00:19:48,105 --> 00:19:51,400
And I gave him a manicure
and that's how I met him.
258
00:19:52,734 --> 00:19:55,571
Well, I have a funny feeling
that she may have had eyes for me
259
00:19:55,654 --> 00:19:58,782
because she was sitting there all alone,
just staring across the street.
260
00:19:58,866 --> 00:20:05,664
He lived in Hoboken which is 4 miles
from Jersey City and I'd never been there.
261
00:20:06,582 --> 00:20:11,795
So he called me after we met
and he started to come over.
262
00:20:16,258 --> 00:20:19,261
And we went together for four and a half,
five years, or five and a half years,
263
00:20:19,344 --> 00:20:20,971
I can't remember exactly.
264
00:20:21,138 --> 00:20:24,516
I know that before Major Bowes
we were going together.
265
00:20:25,309 --> 00:20:28,729
We are proud indeed of the brilliant careers
that have been launched
266
00:20:28,812 --> 00:20:31,398
through the radio forum in New York City.
267
00:20:35,485 --> 00:20:39,698
To get a start, there was a man on the radio
called Major Bowes,
268
00:20:39,781 --> 00:20:41,366
who had an amateur programme.
269
00:20:41,742 --> 00:20:43,535
And you went and you auditioned.
270
00:20:43,660 --> 00:20:47,247
I went over and I auditioned,
and they said, "Okay,
271
00:20:48,498 --> 00:20:50,167
"we'll put you on the radio."
272
00:20:51,418 --> 00:20:57,132
And there were three other kids from
my hometown who made up a trio
273
00:20:57,674 --> 00:21:01,762
called the Three Aces,
very intelligent title for a group.
274
00:21:02,304 --> 00:21:05,724
Three Aces. Oh, boy,
they took a lot of time to think that up.
275
00:21:06,683 --> 00:21:09,937
Major Bowes loused that up by saying,
"You're gonna be the Hoboken Four."
276
00:21:10,020 --> 00:21:12,189
That took care
of that whole situation like that.
277
00:21:12,314 --> 00:21:14,566
We have now the Hoboken Four.
278
00:21:14,650 --> 00:21:17,527
They call themselves
the singing and dancing fools.
279
00:21:17,611 --> 00:21:20,614
- Who'll speak for the group?
-I will, I'm Frank.
280
00:21:20,697 --> 00:21:22,908
We're looking for jobs, how about it?
281
00:21:24,576 --> 00:21:28,121
Everyone that's ever heard us, likes us.
They think we're pretty good.
282
00:21:28,622 --> 00:21:31,833
All right, what do you want to sing,
or dance or whatever it is that you do?
283
00:21:31,917 --> 00:21:34,294
- We're going to sing Shine.
-All right, let's have it.
284
00:21:34,378 --> 00:21:35,796
Hoboken Four.
285
00:21:55,107 --> 00:21:58,860
We performed and we won the first prize
and we went out on the road
286
00:21:58,944 --> 00:22:01,947
all over the United...
Mostly over the United States, anyway.
287
00:22:02,030 --> 00:22:06,868
And we started out on the train,
our first stop was Chicago,
288
00:22:07,035 --> 00:22:09,913
and I remember,
I was getting 75 bucks a week.
289
00:22:10,372 --> 00:22:13,625
And I sent most of it home
290
00:22:13,709 --> 00:22:17,629
because we were living in the best hotels
in the United States for a dollar a night.
291
00:22:19,131 --> 00:22:22,801
But then, when we got up around Seattle,
292
00:22:23,802 --> 00:22:25,762
I decided that I'd had enough.
293
00:22:25,846 --> 00:22:29,599
Well, I got homesick and also I wanted
to go back to what I really started to do.
294
00:22:29,933 --> 00:22:33,186
To become a solo singer,
I didn't want to be a part of it any more.
295
00:22:33,270 --> 00:22:35,439
And I told the guys and they stayed.
296
00:22:35,564 --> 00:22:39,526
Well, you know, he used to write me letters,
he was lonely, I'll tell you that.
297
00:22:39,609 --> 00:22:43,030
- Did you keep those letters?
-I tore them all up.
298
00:22:43,113 --> 00:22:44,448
I kept one.
299
00:22:44,865 --> 00:22:47,117
I had enough money
and I bought a plane ticket.
300
00:22:47,200 --> 00:22:49,161
When I landed in Newark,
301
00:22:49,536 --> 00:22:53,373
Nancy's brother borrowed a car
and they came out and met me at the airport.
302
00:22:53,540 --> 00:22:57,544
Then, of course, that's when I began
to have trouble with my family.
303
00:22:57,627 --> 00:22:59,880
I wasn't doing well because, you know,
304
00:22:59,963 --> 00:23:02,215
if an orchestra got a job
on a Saturday night to play,
305
00:23:02,299 --> 00:23:04,551
they had four men or six men,
306
00:23:04,634 --> 00:23:07,137
they didn't have enough money
to hire a singer.
307
00:23:07,262 --> 00:23:10,474
But a lot of guys I knew, they'd say,
"Hey, listen, come on over and sing
308
00:23:10,557 --> 00:23:12,559
"if you want to sing,
but we can't give you anything."
309
00:23:12,642 --> 00:23:13,977
So I did.
310
00:23:14,770 --> 00:23:18,231
Shortly following that was when my old man,
one morning, woke me up
311
00:23:18,315 --> 00:23:19,983
when he came off the night shift
312
00:23:20,067 --> 00:23:23,737
and he, at this particular morning,
said to me,
313
00:23:23,820 --> 00:23:26,531
"Why don't you just get out of the house
and go out on your own?"
314
00:23:26,615 --> 00:23:28,909
It's really what he said, "Get out."
315
00:23:28,992 --> 00:23:33,830
And I think the egg was stuck in here
for about 20 minutes.
316
00:23:33,997 --> 00:23:36,291
I couldn't swallow it or get rid of it, anyway.
317
00:23:36,374 --> 00:23:39,169
My mother, of course, was nearly in tears,
318
00:23:39,961 --> 00:23:42,214
but we agreed that it might be a good thing.
319
00:23:42,297 --> 00:23:45,342
And then I packed up a small case that I had
and I came to New York.
320
00:23:50,013 --> 00:23:56,394
When Frank Sinatra was young, New York
was the center of American popular music.
321
00:23:57,479 --> 00:24:02,275
The radio networks at that point
were centred in New York.
322
00:24:02,859 --> 00:24:07,489
The music business itself, Tin Pan Alley,
these were centred in New York.
323
00:24:08,115 --> 00:24:12,994
As a young man, in New Jersey,
New York would have been Oz.
324
00:24:14,287 --> 00:24:18,542
The magic city that he looked at
from a distance and say,
325
00:24:18,708 --> 00:24:22,838
"This is the place that I have to go
in order to become
326
00:24:22,921 --> 00:24:24,548
"what I want to become."
327
00:24:29,261 --> 00:24:30,554
I just kind of bummed around.
328
00:24:30,637 --> 00:24:35,517
I had about $60 in a savings account,
and I just hung around, I got odd jobs.
329
00:24:42,899 --> 00:24:45,610
I used to hang up at publishing houses,
the music publishing houses
330
00:24:45,694 --> 00:24:49,322
and I got to know
Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn
331
00:24:49,406 --> 00:24:52,826
Saul Chaplin, and all those guys,
that's how far back we go.
332
00:24:53,743 --> 00:24:55,745
Jimmy Van Heusen was a piano player
333
00:24:55,829 --> 00:24:58,165
who would teach the singers
the company's new songs
334
00:24:58,248 --> 00:24:59,457
so that they could do it on the radio.
335
00:24:59,583 --> 00:25:02,002
But I wasn't a big enough of artist
336
00:25:02,085 --> 00:25:04,212
to be taught the song
by a guy like Van Heusen.
337
00:25:05,172 --> 00:25:08,258
Couple of times,
when I was really kind of short,
338
00:25:08,341 --> 00:25:12,470
I bunked with a musician of one of the bands
in the Forrest Hotel.
339
00:25:14,431 --> 00:25:16,016
About that point
340
00:25:17,100 --> 00:25:19,853
was the Christmas that came
that I went home.
341
00:25:20,312 --> 00:25:24,691
And I thought my old man was on
24-hour shift but I had the day screwed up.
342
00:25:24,774 --> 00:25:27,402
He was off 24 hours and he was at home.
343
00:25:27,569 --> 00:25:29,696
And I brought two presents over
to leave them there,
344
00:25:29,779 --> 00:25:32,657
because he didn't speak to me
for a long time, he wouldn't talk to me.
345
00:25:32,741 --> 00:25:34,951
And he met me at the door,
346
00:25:35,118 --> 00:25:36,828
and of course, it was a great homecoming.
347
00:25:36,953 --> 00:25:40,457
He started to cry and I was teary
and it was just marvellous.
348
00:25:57,933 --> 00:26:00,560
But several months
after the Christmas incident,
349
00:26:00,644 --> 00:26:04,231
a musician friend of mine told me
there was a joint called the Rustic Cabin
350
00:26:04,314 --> 00:26:07,901
and they were forming a new band
and they were looking for a boy singer.
351
00:26:07,984 --> 00:26:10,737
I went up and auditioned
in Englewood Cliffs,
352
00:26:10,820 --> 00:26:14,324
up near the George Washington Bridge.
I got the job at the Rustic Cabin.
353
00:26:15,033 --> 00:26:17,410
Shortly after that, we got word
354
00:26:17,494 --> 00:26:21,373
that the WNEW Dance Parade was going
to pick up the Rustic Cabin.
355
00:26:21,456 --> 00:26:24,084
Every night of the week, 11:00 to 11:15
356
00:26:24,167 --> 00:26:26,503
or 11:15 to 11:30, whatever it was.
357
00:26:26,586 --> 00:26:30,966
Suddenly my dad became
the proudest man in the world.
358
00:26:32,467 --> 00:26:35,762
He couldn't wait to tell everybody
or anybody that I was on
359
00:26:36,054 --> 00:26:38,390
a 15-minute dance remote programme
360
00:26:38,473 --> 00:26:40,517
from New Jersey
in some roadhouse somewhere.
361
00:26:41,559 --> 00:26:45,063
And they'd all sit around the radio
to listen at 11:00 at night for 15 minutes.
362
00:26:45,605 --> 00:26:48,316
And in those days, I couldn't sing
my way out of a paper bag
363
00:26:48,400 --> 00:26:50,360
but they thought I was a big star, you know.
364
00:26:50,694 --> 00:26:54,489
Anybody who got on the radio in
the early days of radio was a very big star.
365
00:27:07,168 --> 00:27:09,546
On my night off at the Rustic Cabin
366
00:27:09,671 --> 00:27:12,257
was when I would take Nancy out
and we would go to see somebody.
367
00:27:12,382 --> 00:27:15,719
I was always going out to see
somebody else work.
368
00:27:16,761 --> 00:27:21,016
That's when I ran into one of the men
in the music business, said to me,
369
00:27:21,099 --> 00:27:24,019
"Listen," he said,
"why don't you take some lessons?"
370
00:27:24,269 --> 00:27:26,313
And I said, "What kind of lessons?"
371
00:27:26,396 --> 00:27:28,815
He said, "Vocal lessons,
you know, guys do that."
372
00:27:28,898 --> 00:27:30,942
I said, "Well, where do you find these guys?"
373
00:27:31,026 --> 00:27:34,779
He said, "There's a guy up over
the Brass Rail Restaurant."
374
00:27:34,863 --> 00:27:36,823
He said, "His name is Quinlan,
he's an old drunk."
375
00:27:36,906 --> 00:27:39,409
He said, "He used to be at the Met
and he got kicked out of the Met."
376
00:27:40,076 --> 00:27:42,996
He said, "You ought to go and talk to him."
So I went up and he was surly.
377
00:27:43,079 --> 00:27:44,664
I think he was hungover anyways.
378
00:27:44,748 --> 00:27:47,125
He said, "Who are you,
and how long you've been singing?
379
00:27:47,208 --> 00:27:49,586
"Why do you want to be a singer?"
And all that kind of stuff.
380
00:27:49,961 --> 00:27:54,215
I said, "Well, I'd like to be a singer because
I feel that I have an idea about singing."
381
00:27:54,299 --> 00:27:56,259
"Oh," he said, "you already got an idea?"
382
00:27:56,343 --> 00:27:59,262
He said, "Then why do you need me?"
I said, "What I mean is,
383
00:27:59,637 --> 00:28:03,558
"I just need some direction."
He said, "I'll tell you what we'll do.
384
00:28:03,683 --> 00:28:07,145
"If you can handle $3 a week,
I'll give you three lessons a week."
385
00:28:07,228 --> 00:28:11,608
I started three lessons a week and I couldn't
wait to get there, every time I had a lesson.
386
00:28:12,192 --> 00:28:14,986
I couldn't wait because I knew
that I was learning something.
387
00:28:15,820 --> 00:28:18,365
He was teaching me the proper way to sing.
388
00:28:18,948 --> 00:28:22,577
I still use the same exercises
and I've developed some of my own.
389
00:28:23,036 --> 00:28:26,331
Matter of fact, I once put out a book with him.
We put out a paperback,
390
00:28:27,207 --> 00:28:29,667
vocal calisthenic book, after I made it.
391
00:28:29,793 --> 00:28:33,296
And we had drawings made
of the mouth formation.
392
00:28:33,421 --> 00:28:36,216
The "ee" sound and the "oo" sound
and the "uh".
393
00:28:36,549 --> 00:28:38,635
There's no such thing as the "ah", it's wrong.
394
00:28:38,718 --> 00:28:42,222
Never sing "ah", you sing" uh". U-H. "Uh".
395
00:28:42,347 --> 00:28:45,475
That's up the roof of the mouth
into the mask.
396
00:28:45,683 --> 00:28:50,271
If you sing "ah", it goes back into the throat
and it can break. it can snap.
397
00:28:50,605 --> 00:28:53,024
- Now, that's my first vocal lesson with you.
-I am ready.
398
00:28:53,108 --> 00:28:54,359
And you'll get a bill next week.
399
00:28:54,651 --> 00:28:58,822
I worked with him for a long time
and then I began to get the jobs.
400
00:28:58,947 --> 00:29:04,160
I got a couple little jobs, I went to WNEW,
I didn't get any money but carfare.
401
00:29:04,244 --> 00:29:08,873
And Dinah Shore and I split a half-hour.
She had 15 minutes, I had 15 minutes.
402
00:29:08,957 --> 00:29:12,794
Don't you remember the early, early, early,
early show we used to do on WNEW?
403
00:29:12,877 --> 00:29:15,463
Do I?
Every time I think about them, I get tired.
404
00:29:15,547 --> 00:29:18,133
Imagine having to sing love songs
at 6:00 in the morning?
405
00:29:18,258 --> 00:29:20,009
- Yeah.
-And not even finishing the chorus.
406
00:29:20,093 --> 00:29:22,387
- There was never enough time.
-And put all the emotion into it.
407
00:29:22,512 --> 00:29:24,431
- Yeah.
-We were lucky, though,
408
00:29:24,514 --> 00:29:26,266
-'cause they used to give us free coffee.
-Yeah.
409
00:29:26,349 --> 00:29:28,101
And who could afford breakfast
in those days?
410
00:29:28,184 --> 00:29:29,185
Yeah.
411
00:29:41,364 --> 00:29:43,241
Now I was on the air, twice.
412
00:29:43,741 --> 00:29:45,702
Once at night and one in the morning.
413
00:29:47,704 --> 00:29:49,372
And then I got fan mail.
414
00:29:49,581 --> 00:29:52,250
And I'd get little postcards, two postcards,
three postcards.
415
00:29:52,333 --> 00:29:54,752
Girls would write to me, you know,
penny postcards.
416
00:29:54,836 --> 00:29:57,046
And I'd go and look in there right away
and see how much mail,
417
00:29:57,130 --> 00:29:59,799
if it'd get any bigger
and it never got any bigger.
418
00:29:59,883 --> 00:30:01,593
People began to hear me.
419
00:30:01,759 --> 00:30:03,470
And they were saying,
"Jesus, you're getting better.
420
00:30:03,553 --> 00:30:05,722
"You're really...
We see the difference in what's happening."
421
00:30:09,851 --> 00:30:13,480
He's singing about youthful,
essentially naive romance.
422
00:30:13,563 --> 00:30:17,066
And he's doing it in a voice
that is distinctly different
423
00:30:17,150 --> 00:30:19,444
from what anybody else
was doing back then.
424
00:30:19,527 --> 00:30:22,447
It is so clearly the voice of a young man.
425
00:30:23,907 --> 00:30:29,329
The ambition of being the greatest
pop singer of his time, of his generation,
426
00:30:29,746 --> 00:30:34,751
was an ambition that couldn't have existed
in Sinatra's imagination when he was young.
427
00:31:33,851 --> 00:31:36,145
Do you remember
when he asked you to marry him?
428
00:31:36,604 --> 00:31:38,398
Well...
429
00:31:38,481 --> 00:31:42,402
See, he was supposedly involved with
other girls while we were going together,
430
00:31:42,485 --> 00:31:45,196
and I really don't know if that was true.
431
00:31:45,863 --> 00:31:49,659
But he, believe me, wanted to get married.
432
00:31:50,994 --> 00:31:54,914
When Nancy and I got married...
The Italian custom is to...
433
00:31:55,873 --> 00:31:59,669
The bride has a satin, a white satin bag
with a drawstring on it.
434
00:31:59,752 --> 00:32:01,879
And you give envelopes,
435
00:32:01,963 --> 00:32:04,048
which is the most sensible thing,
by the way, in the world.
436
00:32:04,132 --> 00:32:07,010
Instead of a whole bunch of phoney gifts
you can never use.
437
00:32:07,844 --> 00:32:12,265
And all the song guys chipped in.
I think there were almost 30 of them.
438
00:32:12,348 --> 00:32:14,851
And they put like $2 apiece or something,
439
00:32:14,976 --> 00:32:18,313
and they gave us $60 for our wedding,
$50 or $60.
440
00:32:18,396 --> 00:32:20,273
Sweet, you know, really touching.
441
00:32:21,858 --> 00:32:25,278
I got married in '39, 1939.
442
00:32:25,361 --> 00:32:28,656
I took a course in secretarial work.
443
00:32:28,740 --> 00:32:30,325
Think I was earning...
444
00:32:31,367 --> 00:32:33,453
I don't remember, very little a week.
445
00:32:33,536 --> 00:32:37,373
She was making $22 a week and I was
at the Rustic Cabin making $15 a week.
446
00:32:37,457 --> 00:32:39,459
And the minute we married,
447
00:32:40,376 --> 00:32:43,546
the career started to get better all the time.
448
00:33:04,025 --> 00:33:06,110
We finished our last show
at the Paramount and went home.
449
00:33:07,320 --> 00:33:08,905
And I turned the radio on.
450
00:33:08,988 --> 00:33:12,825
And I heard this remote coming
from the Rustic Cabin and I heard a singer.
451
00:33:12,909 --> 00:33:14,952
So I said,
"Well, gee, this kid really sounds great.
452
00:33:15,036 --> 00:33:19,666
"Maybe I'll take a run out there,
and see if I can see him and listen to him."
453
00:33:48,861 --> 00:33:52,407
Harry James is listening to me
all the time and I don't know this, you see.
454
00:33:52,490 --> 00:33:55,118
He was with Benny Goodman,
he was the first trumpet player.
455
00:33:56,119 --> 00:33:59,163
He said to me,
"We're all gonna start our own band.
456
00:33:59,247 --> 00:34:01,165
"How soon can you get out of here?"
457
00:34:01,708 --> 00:34:04,377
I said, "I have no contract here."
I said, "How about tomorrow?"
458
00:34:04,460 --> 00:34:05,503
"How about tonight?"
459
00:34:08,339 --> 00:34:11,426
So, now I leave and I go with Harry.
We go on the road.
460
00:34:15,513 --> 00:34:19,308
When you're on the road with a dance band,
you're moving all the time.
461
00:34:19,434 --> 00:34:21,686
I mean, you're actually going all the time,
you know?
462
00:34:23,187 --> 00:34:24,564
And you could try things.
463
00:34:24,647 --> 00:34:26,566
And nobody's saying,
"Well, what are you doing?"
464
00:34:26,649 --> 00:34:29,569
Harry knew what I was doing,
he knew I was reaching, trying to find things.
465
00:34:29,652 --> 00:34:32,071
Like a pitcher, you're trying a new curveball.
466
00:34:33,322 --> 00:34:36,242
He had no arrangements laid out for me yet,
so we were faking things.
467
00:34:36,325 --> 00:34:40,830
And we would do Embraceable You
and the band would kind of fill in with notes,
468
00:34:40,913 --> 00:34:43,416
and Harry would noodle with the trumpet.
469
00:34:43,499 --> 00:34:46,502
And Stardust, which I hated,
'cause everybody used to sing it
470
00:34:46,586 --> 00:34:47,920
and I had it up to here.
471
00:34:50,256 --> 00:34:52,508
And a lot of the wives
was like baseball wives.
472
00:34:52,592 --> 00:34:55,178
They all came across the country in the car.
473
00:34:57,555 --> 00:35:00,808
I met him in Chicago,
that's where Nancy was conceived.
474
00:35:03,060 --> 00:35:06,355
Our plan was not to get pregnant that fast.
475
00:35:06,606 --> 00:35:11,277
In those days, there wasn't much money,
and we were paying off a new car.
476
00:35:11,360 --> 00:35:14,322
And I'm pregnant and he's worried,
you know?
477
00:35:16,991 --> 00:35:18,451
He's always thinking ahead.
478
00:35:18,534 --> 00:35:22,413
This man thinks a great deal,
always did as a kid, even.
479
00:35:22,497 --> 00:35:24,916
He always had an ambition.
480
00:35:25,666 --> 00:35:28,461
He said he wanted to be
481
00:35:29,128 --> 00:35:31,589
very big in the industry. He wanted to be...
482
00:35:31,672 --> 00:35:35,885
When he saw Bing, you know,
he felt that that was his ambition.
483
00:35:47,230 --> 00:35:50,983
And Bing Crosby
ruled the airwaves completely.
484
00:35:51,067 --> 00:35:53,611
I mean, every radio show, in those days,
485
00:35:54,570 --> 00:35:57,156
had 15, 20 minutes of Bing Crosby.
486
00:35:58,074 --> 00:36:01,452
A single record, it's called White Christmas,
487
00:36:01,536 --> 00:36:04,789
to this day, it's the biggest record
that ever sold.
488
00:36:05,039 --> 00:36:06,999
Sold 50 million records.
489
00:36:14,632 --> 00:36:18,928
All the time I was with Harry,
I just kept thinking about the next step.
490
00:36:20,763 --> 00:36:24,684
I'd listen to Tommy Dorsey's band
and I'd listen to this singer with the band.
491
00:36:24,767 --> 00:36:28,688
Jack Leonard was with the band.
But I had heard through the grapevine,
492
00:36:28,771 --> 00:36:31,566
Tommy tried to screw him out of $3,000
and they were fighting.
493
00:36:31,983 --> 00:36:36,612
To my knowledge,
I was the first guy to tell Tommy about Frank.
494
00:36:38,197 --> 00:36:40,491
Friend, girlfriend, she said,
495
00:36:40,575 --> 00:36:44,287
"Frank Sinatra has a record out,
called All Or Nothing At All."
496
00:36:44,370 --> 00:36:47,206
And she said, "it is fantastic."
497
00:36:47,290 --> 00:36:48,875
And I mentioned that to Tommy.
498
00:36:53,462 --> 00:36:58,009
When I quit,
the first guy he contacted was Frank.
499
00:36:58,092 --> 00:36:59,886
He said, "How'd you like to work for me?"
500
00:37:00,219 --> 00:37:06,058
I said, "Jesus, Tom." I said, "I got
a two-year deal with Harry and I don't know."
501
00:37:06,142 --> 00:37:08,561
I said, "I'm dying to sing for you."
502
00:37:08,644 --> 00:37:12,815
'Cause Tommy was... He and Glenn Miller,
they were the two top orchestras.
503
00:37:12,899 --> 00:37:15,067
So I didn't sleep all night.
504
00:37:15,151 --> 00:37:17,904
My eyes were jumping, I was so excited.
505
00:37:17,987 --> 00:37:19,405
I went to the theatre very early.
506
00:37:19,488 --> 00:37:22,450
I was just sitting in the dressing room
and Harry came.
507
00:37:22,533 --> 00:37:26,037
I finally got up and I walked into his room.
And I walked in and I walked out.
508
00:37:26,120 --> 00:37:28,831
I walked in and I walked out.
"What are you, nervous?"
509
00:37:29,999 --> 00:37:32,460
I said, "Well, Jesus, I am nervous, Harry."
510
00:37:32,543 --> 00:37:36,047
I said, "I know what I'm gonna ask you
is a very tough thing."
511
00:37:37,006 --> 00:37:40,009
And he said,
"Tommy Dorsey wants to hire you."
512
00:37:40,843 --> 00:37:42,678
He was still signed with me.
513
00:37:42,762 --> 00:37:45,598
I hadn't given him a written release,
I just said, "Sure, go ahead, Frank."
514
00:37:45,681 --> 00:37:48,517
'Cause really, I mean,
I have always lived that way.
515
00:37:48,601 --> 00:37:50,686
The word is stronger than the pen with me.
516
00:37:50,770 --> 00:37:54,482
I was so happy.
And that even affected my singing now.
517
00:37:54,565 --> 00:37:58,235
It began to get it more lofty than it was.
And I was doing better things.
518
00:38:04,700 --> 00:38:08,913
I joined Tommy
with a lot of malevolence in the band.
519
00:38:08,996 --> 00:38:11,707
A lot of bad vibes.
520
00:38:11,791 --> 00:38:14,752
They resented me for the fact
that their friend Jack Leonard quit.
521
00:38:19,382 --> 00:38:21,133
When you're with a band, it's very clicky.
522
00:38:22,259 --> 00:38:24,053
And when a new person comes in, it's like,
523
00:38:24,136 --> 00:38:27,223
"You prove yourself, kiddo,
before you become one of the group."
524
00:38:28,849 --> 00:38:33,729
We were just sitting on the bandstand
when Tommy announced this new singer.
525
00:38:33,813 --> 00:38:39,026
Out on stage walked this very skinny,
unprepossessing-looking young man.
526
00:38:39,110 --> 00:38:40,736
And I thought, "WOW."
527
00:38:57,712 --> 00:38:59,922
He sang about eight bars,
528
00:39:00,506 --> 00:39:05,720
and that whole theatre became so quiet
you could've heard a pin drop.
529
00:39:05,803 --> 00:39:10,099
You just knew that you were hearing
something quite unique.
530
00:39:18,441 --> 00:39:23,446
Tommy Dorsey had this incredible,
incredible breath control.
531
00:39:27,450 --> 00:39:29,243
Without breathing...
532
00:39:41,297 --> 00:39:44,133
I watched him
and I could never see him breathe.
533
00:39:44,216 --> 00:39:47,136
Sixteen bars at a time,
I wonder how he does that.
534
00:39:48,971 --> 00:39:52,308
If you can visualise, a trombone player
holds the mouthpiece,
535
00:39:52,391 --> 00:39:54,685
he was breathing in the corner of his mouth.
536
00:39:55,478 --> 00:39:59,315
And that was my theory,
"Do not break a phrase, if you can do that.
537
00:39:59,398 --> 00:40:02,985
"And keep the audience listening
for the rest of the phrase."
538
00:40:04,028 --> 00:40:07,531
He wouldn't be able to sing
four lines of that song.
539
00:40:09,366 --> 00:40:11,410
There was a seamlessness, a smoothness.
540
00:40:11,494 --> 00:40:15,122
And not one person
is looking at anybody else.
541
00:40:15,206 --> 00:40:18,709
And they are completely
under the spell of Sinatra's story.
542
00:40:39,146 --> 00:40:42,858
We came to Los Angeles
to open the Palladium,
543
00:40:42,942 --> 00:40:44,568
a great new dance hall.
544
00:40:46,362 --> 00:40:48,781
We got bombed,
everybody did the night before and
545
00:40:48,864 --> 00:40:50,074
I remember the bellboy came in,
546
00:40:50,616 --> 00:40:54,120
said, "Hey! Everybody awake yet?
We're in a war with Japan.
547
00:40:54,203 --> 00:40:56,205
"They bombed the Pearl Harbor."
548
00:40:58,624 --> 00:41:02,837
With the unbounding determination
of our people,
549
00:41:03,587 --> 00:41:07,508
we will gain the inevitable triumph.
550
00:41:07,883 --> 00:41:09,760
So help us God.
551
00:41:12,429 --> 00:41:13,848
Now we were getting angry.
552
00:41:13,931 --> 00:41:17,101
If I had been single, I probably would have
said, "Hey, I want to volunteer."
553
00:41:17,184 --> 00:41:18,686
But I had a child.
554
00:41:50,926 --> 00:41:55,472
Dad was in Hollywood with the band
when I was born, back in Jersey City.
555
00:41:55,556 --> 00:41:58,851
Band singer Jo Stafford recalled
that he was so excited
556
00:41:58,934 --> 00:42:01,437
that all he did
was talk about his new baby girl.
557
00:42:21,498 --> 00:42:24,418
Oh, my God. it was beautiful.
558
00:42:25,252 --> 00:42:29,798
I was first in the family of seven children
to have a baby,
559
00:42:29,882 --> 00:42:33,385
and the whole family spoiled her, loved her.
560
00:42:33,969 --> 00:42:36,639
And he was wonderful with her.
561
00:42:37,431 --> 00:42:38,641
He loved it.
562
00:43:27,606 --> 00:43:29,692
It was a different era, it was a sweet era.
563
00:43:30,859 --> 00:43:32,278
It was a dance era.
564
00:43:32,361 --> 00:43:34,738
And you did a ballad with long lines,
565
00:43:34,822 --> 00:43:38,909
so that you could hold the girl
real close and dance.
566
00:44:04,143 --> 00:44:07,813
Frank had a style, almost a sexy style.
567
00:44:07,896 --> 00:44:09,690
Very warm.
568
00:44:10,691 --> 00:44:12,234
With those eyes and that smile,
569
00:44:12,318 --> 00:44:16,697
it was almost like he could pinpoint them
at one particular girl.
570
00:44:16,780 --> 00:44:18,157
They just fell in love with him.
571
00:44:36,300 --> 00:44:39,053
The kids were just enamoured of Frank.
572
00:44:39,470 --> 00:44:42,723
And you could hear,
when Tommy would be playing,
573
00:44:42,806 --> 00:44:45,684
the kids were aware that
there's a modulation for Frank's vocal,
574
00:44:46,852 --> 00:44:50,064
and nobody would be dancing,
they'd all just crowd around the bandstand.
575
00:44:50,147 --> 00:44:52,608
The kids came not to see
Tommy Dorsey any more.
576
00:44:53,776 --> 00:44:58,030
It wasn't Tommy that was getting the crowd,
it was Frank that was getting the crowd.
577
00:45:02,159 --> 00:45:03,994
And that's what Tommy couldn't stand.
578
00:45:05,079 --> 00:45:08,832
If you've got an organisation and
the boy singer is taking it away from you,
579
00:45:08,916 --> 00:45:10,292
who needs that action?
580
00:45:13,629 --> 00:45:14,671
So there was a conflict.
581
00:45:14,755 --> 00:45:18,050
He kept trying to push him down,
and Frank wouldn't let him.
582
00:45:19,468 --> 00:45:22,930
In 15 months he became
the hottest new singing star in the country,
583
00:45:24,056 --> 00:45:25,974
especially among teenagers.
584
00:45:31,647 --> 00:45:35,150
It was pandemonium all the time, chaos.
585
00:45:36,318 --> 00:45:40,072
The reaction from the crowds in those days
was absolutely phenomenal.
586
00:45:40,155 --> 00:45:42,574
I mean, they were screaming
and yelling and screaming.
587
00:45:42,658 --> 00:45:45,786
The kids would scream
every time I'd come out on the stage.
588
00:45:49,832 --> 00:45:51,166
How are you, Frank?
589
00:45:51,250 --> 00:45:53,168
I feel fine, Mr Crosby.
590
00:45:53,252 --> 00:45:55,754
Let's declare a little moratorium
on the formality, Frankie.
591
00:45:55,838 --> 00:45:56,922
Just call me Bing.
592
00:45:57,005 --> 00:46:00,801
No, I wouldn't dream of calling
a man of your years by his first name.
593
00:46:03,846 --> 00:46:08,100
Now, I figured that Crosby
was the only man on top.
594
00:46:08,183 --> 00:46:10,936
He was the only guy on top
and I thought to myself,
595
00:46:11,019 --> 00:46:14,815
"Somebody's got to challenge this bum.
Sometime or other it's gonna happen."
596
00:46:14,898 --> 00:46:17,151
So I began to think to myself,
597
00:46:17,359 --> 00:46:19,611
"Jesus, why don't I do it for myself?
598
00:46:19,695 --> 00:46:23,574
"I mean, I know this guy has signed me
and I got a deal with him."
599
00:46:23,657 --> 00:46:27,786
Tommy was a man
who was more of a proprietary attitude.
600
00:46:28,287 --> 00:46:29,288
Tommy was almost like a father.
601
00:46:29,371 --> 00:46:32,458
And if a guy left,
he was a son who was leaving, you see.
602
00:46:33,000 --> 00:46:34,793
After the first year I was with him, I said,
603
00:46:34,877 --> 00:46:36,670
"Tommy, I think in about a year
I'd like to leave the band."
604
00:46:36,753 --> 00:46:39,673
And he kind of laughed at me,
just grinned at me.
605
00:46:40,174 --> 00:46:42,801
And after four months went by,
I said it to him again.
606
00:46:42,885 --> 00:46:45,220
But he didn't smile too broadly this time.
607
00:46:45,971 --> 00:46:47,598
Said, "I don't want to talk to you,
God damn it."
608
00:46:47,681 --> 00:46:49,600
He said, "You fucking ingrate."
609
00:46:50,225 --> 00:46:53,061
I left Tommy's band, signing a piece of paper
610
00:46:53,145 --> 00:46:56,732
which said he gets the rest of my life
one-third of my salary.
611
00:46:57,441 --> 00:46:58,775
He sued me,
612
00:46:58,859 --> 00:47:02,404
and I've been accused that the mob
got me out of the band.
613
00:47:02,654 --> 00:47:05,741
Some unidentifiable creature
614
00:47:05,908 --> 00:47:09,912
went to Tommy Dorsey, said,
"You better let him out of the contract."
615
00:47:10,913 --> 00:47:12,080
Well, that never happened.
616
00:47:12,539 --> 00:47:14,500
The man that straightened that out was
617
00:47:14,583 --> 00:47:18,295
the secretary of the American Federation
of Radio Artists.
618
00:47:18,378 --> 00:47:21,256
Then he went to Mr Dorsey, he said,
619
00:47:21,340 --> 00:47:24,009
"I think we can come
to a settlement quite simply."
620
00:47:24,092 --> 00:47:25,385
Tom said, "No, no, no."
621
00:47:25,469 --> 00:47:29,389
He said, "I want one-third of his salary
for the rest of his life, as long as he lives."
622
00:47:29,890 --> 00:47:34,478
Then Jaffe said to him,
"You enjoy playing music in hotel rooms
623
00:47:34,561 --> 00:47:36,980
"and having the nation
hear you on the radio?"
624
00:47:37,606 --> 00:47:41,610
He said, "Sure, I do."
He said, "Not any more, you won't."
625
00:47:43,612 --> 00:47:46,240
He never said goodbye to me or nothing.
626
00:47:46,323 --> 00:47:48,575
And I didn't know where I was going.
627
00:47:48,659 --> 00:47:50,869
I didn't know where I was going,
but I went home.
628
00:47:50,953 --> 00:47:53,622
I bought a little house
for Nancy and myself in Hasbrouck Heights.
629
00:47:53,705 --> 00:47:55,374
And I was just happy to be home.
630
00:47:57,543 --> 00:47:59,628
Nancy was now two years old.
631
00:48:02,965 --> 00:48:06,802
I spent about three, four weeks
just sitting at home.
632
00:48:07,678 --> 00:48:10,013
And I can just picture, you know?
633
00:48:11,390 --> 00:48:13,392
They were poor times but they were good.
634
00:48:13,475 --> 00:48:18,313
Always. As poor as they always were,
they were never that bad.
635
00:48:28,824 --> 00:48:33,412
'Cause then when the real work started,
he worked like a dog.
636
00:48:34,788 --> 00:48:36,331
I was living in Hasbrouck Heights,
637
00:48:36,415 --> 00:48:39,793
and I found out there was a theatre there
where they had vaudeville,
638
00:48:39,876 --> 00:48:42,045
and I went around, spoke to the manager.
639
00:48:42,129 --> 00:48:45,882
And I said, "I'd like to play here
for a couple of nights, maybe a weekend."
640
00:48:45,966 --> 00:48:47,301
He said, "Okay."
641
00:48:47,384 --> 00:48:53,307
Each booker from the theatres in New York,
the Roxy, the Strand, the Loew's State,
642
00:48:53,390 --> 00:48:54,808
the Paramount,
643
00:48:54,891 --> 00:48:58,103
they sent their scouts over
to see what all the noise was about.
644
00:48:58,186 --> 00:49:01,982
Why were the kids screaming and yelling
and running up and down the aisles.
645
00:49:02,065 --> 00:49:05,110
The Paramount Theatre manager said,
646
00:49:05,193 --> 00:49:07,613
"I would like you to open at New Year's Eve."
647
00:49:07,696 --> 00:49:11,617
And he said, "You've got Benny Goodman's
orchestra and a Crosby picture."
648
00:49:11,700 --> 00:49:15,120
And I fell right on my butt.
I couldn't believe what he said to me.
649
00:49:15,203 --> 00:49:18,790
And in those days, they called you,
"An extra added attraction."
650
00:49:18,874 --> 00:49:21,501
I got into New York
and I look at the marquee.
651
00:49:25,464 --> 00:49:26,590
Holy Christ.
652
00:49:27,633 --> 00:49:30,802
So we get ready to go and I'm excited
and it's the opening day.
653
00:49:30,886 --> 00:49:33,805
And this is the moment
that's gonna make me or break me.
654
00:49:33,889 --> 00:49:36,433
If I'm not good in the Paramount Theatre,
655
00:49:36,516 --> 00:49:39,144
under these circumstances I'm dead.
656
00:49:39,227 --> 00:49:40,729
Jesus, I was nervous.
657
00:49:48,362 --> 00:49:50,489
Benny did a whole section of music,
658
00:49:50,572 --> 00:49:53,700
and then he would finish that section
with Sing, Sing, Sing.
659
00:49:53,784 --> 00:49:55,827
And it would get rowdy,
it would tear the joint.
660
00:49:55,911 --> 00:49:57,412
It ran about eight minutes.
661
00:49:57,996 --> 00:50:00,957
He finished Sing, Sing, Sing
and he took a bow.
662
00:50:01,041 --> 00:50:05,420
And he went over to the microphone
and he said, "Now, Frank Sinatra."
663
00:50:08,715 --> 00:50:11,218
And they screamed like a banshee.
664
00:50:11,968 --> 00:50:15,263
He turned around and looked at the audience
and he said, to nobody,
665
00:50:15,389 --> 00:50:17,516
"What the fuck is that?" he said.
666
00:50:36,451 --> 00:50:38,578
There was one girl that was
making so much noise
667
00:50:38,662 --> 00:50:40,789
and screaming so much and I wanted her out.
668
00:50:42,082 --> 00:50:44,334
'Cause I thought she would precipitate a riot.
669
00:50:44,793 --> 00:50:47,921
And I tried to pull her out
and she was like a tigress.
670
00:50:48,088 --> 00:50:51,466
So I called some of the guards.
I had four guards
671
00:50:51,883 --> 00:50:55,053
pulling her out and carrying her,
and she wouldn't go!
672
00:50:56,054 --> 00:50:58,682
I mean, there was nothing that you can do
when you have 3,000 people
673
00:50:58,765 --> 00:51:02,185
standing up and screaming at something.
What you gonna say? "Sit down"?
674
00:51:02,394 --> 00:51:05,772
I mean, this was the kind of hysteria
that came there.
675
00:51:10,652 --> 00:51:14,114
The next day, the reviews came out,
they were very kind.
676
00:51:14,239 --> 00:51:16,241
I mean, business was mobbed.
it was holiday season.
677
00:51:16,324 --> 00:51:17,701
New York was jumping.
678
00:51:17,993 --> 00:51:20,787
I was booked for two weeks.
679
00:51:26,960 --> 00:51:30,756
Parents would take the children into
the theatres at 4:00 in the morning
680
00:51:30,839 --> 00:51:32,966
and wait with them until daylight.
681
00:51:33,049 --> 00:51:34,843
And what a difference
in a child in those days.
682
00:51:34,926 --> 00:51:36,845
I mean, they used to come scrubbed up,
683
00:51:37,012 --> 00:51:40,140
their pink cheeks, with their hair combed
and the bobby socks.
684
00:51:46,021 --> 00:51:48,607
It was incredible, it was like mass hypnosis.
685
00:51:50,650 --> 00:51:52,152
That was the thrill of our life.
686
00:51:52,235 --> 00:51:54,654
We used to go for 35 cents
and sat there all day.
687
00:51:55,822 --> 00:51:59,534
We were poor, but we always had money
to go to the Paramount to see Sinatra.
688
00:52:00,202 --> 00:52:03,997
When he'd walk out and then the band
would play the intro to the songs,
689
00:52:04,372 --> 00:52:06,249
you'd get goose bumps.
690
00:52:06,666 --> 00:52:08,627
It was little wonder that throughout
the nation,
691
00:52:08,710 --> 00:52:13,006
feminine listeners formed
Frank Swoonatra fanclubs.
692
00:52:13,089 --> 00:52:15,050
And one organisation called itself
693
00:52:15,133 --> 00:52:19,221
the Sighing Society of Swooning
Sinatra Slaves.
694
00:52:19,513 --> 00:52:23,266
The Voice, as he was nicknamed,
was no flash in the pan.
695
00:52:24,100 --> 00:52:27,062
When Frank Sinatra was becoming famous,
696
00:52:27,187 --> 00:52:31,733
movies were the ultimate tool
of creating celebrity.
697
00:52:31,983 --> 00:52:37,239
But after the Depression, not everybody
could even afford a ticket to the theatre.
698
00:52:37,405 --> 00:52:42,077
But everybody in America, pretty much,
either had a radio
699
00:52:42,410 --> 00:52:45,580
or had access to one
and you could use it for free.
700
00:52:47,123 --> 00:52:49,292
Here's Your Hit Parade!
701
00:52:49,751 --> 00:52:53,922
Here's Frank with your fifth place favourite,
Swinging On A Star.
702
00:53:10,438 --> 00:53:12,524
The Hit Parade came along.
703
00:53:12,774 --> 00:53:16,611
The next thing happened, I'm still at
the Paramount, there's a new club opening
704
00:53:17,237 --> 00:53:22,576
on 57th Street called Riobamba
and they called and made an offer.
705
00:53:22,659 --> 00:53:25,954
I said to my agents,
"Gee, that sounds interesting."
706
00:53:26,413 --> 00:53:28,081
They said, "We don't think so.
707
00:53:28,206 --> 00:53:31,710
"'Cause you're a Coca-Cola seller
and this is a champagne joint."
708
00:53:32,502 --> 00:53:36,423
I said, "I'm fucking well ready for anything
right now." I said, "Book 'em."
709
00:53:36,506 --> 00:53:39,551
it all happened in like a period
of two to three months.
710
00:53:39,634 --> 00:53:44,222
The opening at the Paramount,
the Riobamba and the Hit Parade.
711
00:53:47,809 --> 00:53:51,855
The show at the Paramount, I came off
the stage at about a quarter of 9:00
712
00:53:52,272 --> 00:53:53,773
and the radio show went on at 9:00.
713
00:53:54,482 --> 00:53:57,485
And it was like you put an animal in a cage.
The ambulance would back up
714
00:53:57,569 --> 00:54:00,697
up on the sidewalk, they'd open the door
like that so I could jump in,
715
00:54:00,780 --> 00:54:02,699
as it pulled away a bit,
they would close the door,
716
00:54:02,782 --> 00:54:04,618
because there were thousands
of kids in the street.
717
00:54:04,743 --> 00:54:07,454
And in the ambulance, they would have
a malted milk and a sandwich
718
00:54:07,579 --> 00:54:12,250
and I would devour that by the time I got
the ten blocks up to the radio station.
719
00:54:15,837 --> 00:54:19,132
I was so busy working,
I was really working my ass off
720
00:54:19,215 --> 00:54:22,135
trying to help out with the war effort,
the best I could.
721
00:54:22,385 --> 00:54:25,680
Super war bond salesmen say,
"Let's all back the attack."
722
00:54:26,014 --> 00:54:30,101
It's an auction, with the biggest buyers
of war-bonds getting souvenirs.
723
00:54:30,185 --> 00:54:33,396
20,000, Bob Hope has got Seabiscuit's shoe,
worn when he won the Santa Anita Handicap.
724
00:54:33,480 --> 00:54:35,357
Do you think it will fit me?
725
00:54:36,483 --> 00:54:41,071
Now war-bond buyers get orchids
with the Voice as the pin-up boy.
726
00:54:42,614 --> 00:54:44,950
And we have a squeal with each orchid,
ladies and gentlemen.
727
00:54:45,325 --> 00:54:49,162
The super war-bond special
is the duet of the century.
728
00:55:39,963 --> 00:55:43,883
Ruth Lowe, who was a Canadian woman,
her husband got killed.
729
00:55:43,967 --> 00:55:46,636
He was a Canadian flyer, right at
the beginning of the war, he got killed.
730
00:55:47,387 --> 00:55:50,890
She wrote that song and brought it down
personally to New York.
731
00:55:58,189 --> 00:56:01,192
That song, it followed my dad his whole life.
732
00:56:02,736 --> 00:56:07,532
And I think it probably was because so many
people identified with it in the first place.
733
00:56:08,491 --> 00:56:11,578
You know, with their personal losses.
734
00:56:43,902 --> 00:56:45,445
I was declared a 4-F.
735
00:56:45,820 --> 00:56:50,075
I got a reject slip from Uncle Sam because
of a perforated ear-drum from my birth.
736
00:56:50,867 --> 00:56:52,952
Then the press started to work on me.
737
00:56:54,370 --> 00:56:56,790
"Who the hell is he not to be in the service?
738
00:56:56,998 --> 00:56:59,667
"Boys are getting killed in Europe
739
00:56:59,751 --> 00:57:02,337
"and this guy's singing songs
to their wives and their girlfriends."
740
00:57:17,852 --> 00:57:23,942
I'm stationed in Foggia, Italy, and all
we knew overseas about Frank Sinatra was
741
00:57:24,275 --> 00:57:28,696
he was not serving because
of a punctured ear-drum
742
00:57:28,780 --> 00:57:31,616
and the women were crazy about him,
743
00:57:31,699 --> 00:57:36,121
so our girlfriends, our wives were nuts
about Frank Sinatra.
744
00:57:36,204 --> 00:57:40,625
There was a great dislike, at the least,
for this figure.
745
00:57:47,632 --> 00:57:51,386
The real creeps were the guys who were
in uniform but had safe jobs in
746
00:57:51,469 --> 00:57:53,805
Fort Dix, Fort Totten in Long Island.
747
00:57:53,888 --> 00:57:57,433
They were the guys who threw the tomatoes
and the eggs at the big sign
748
00:57:57,517 --> 00:57:59,894
up the marquee at the Paramount Theatre.
749
00:57:59,978 --> 00:58:03,481
It was childish. They would not have
the guts to face me alone.
750
00:58:06,025 --> 00:58:07,443
But I got the second notice.
751
00:58:08,069 --> 00:58:11,447
And I had to reappear for the exam,
I couldn't believe it.
752
00:58:12,574 --> 00:58:15,910
In other words, I wasn't being treated
like an ordinary citizen.
753
00:58:16,202 --> 00:58:18,663
I was a special case, all of a sudden, right?
754
00:58:24,752 --> 00:58:27,922
I went to the Newark armoury
with 6,000 other guys,
755
00:58:28,256 --> 00:58:33,553
and there were cameramen and radio guys
and a thousand people on the street.
756
00:58:33,636 --> 00:58:36,139
The kids, you know, "Frankie, baby,
don't let them push you around",
757
00:58:36,222 --> 00:58:38,391
and all that kind of jazz.
758
00:58:39,934 --> 00:58:42,854
And when I got finished,
they put me in a station wagon
759
00:58:42,937 --> 00:58:46,316
with two rifled infantry men
760
00:58:46,608 --> 00:58:49,903
and a driver and took me
to Governors Island.
761
00:58:50,403 --> 00:58:52,780
First of all, when I walked into the ward,
762
00:58:53,031 --> 00:58:55,200
they knew I was coming.
Word was out that I was coming
763
00:58:55,283 --> 00:58:57,160
and these guys were kind of
lolling on their beds,
764
00:58:57,243 --> 00:58:58,995
and they walked toward me,
765
00:58:59,078 --> 00:59:03,666
and one guy shook my hand and said
"I'm glad to meet you, I've been a big fan."
766
00:59:03,791 --> 00:59:07,295
He said, "You need any magazines,
or comic books, I got a lot of stuff."
767
00:59:07,378 --> 00:59:10,798
Well, you know how many phone calls
I made? I must have made 700 phone calls
768
00:59:10,924 --> 00:59:13,635
to everybody's family,
all over the United States!
769
00:59:13,801 --> 00:59:15,970
Because they would call their family
and put me on.
770
00:59:16,054 --> 00:59:17,722
And there were about
seven phone booths there
771
00:59:17,805 --> 00:59:19,432
and the kids would make them one at a time.
772
00:59:19,515 --> 00:59:21,392
I'm running from one booth
to another making a call.
773
00:59:21,476 --> 00:59:25,647
"Hello, Mrs so and so or the wife of the guy...
Hello, Angie, he's fine.
774
00:59:25,772 --> 00:59:28,107
"He looks great." "Are you sure?"
775
00:59:28,191 --> 00:59:30,193
"Oh, my God! You're calling me?
It's really you?"
776
00:59:30,276 --> 00:59:31,277
"Yeah, sing something!"
777
00:59:32,570 --> 00:59:34,113
The next afternoon,
778
00:59:35,198 --> 00:59:37,533
I get word to go down
and see the psychiatrist.
779
00:59:38,660 --> 00:59:40,453
And he said, "Before we do anything,
780
00:59:41,037 --> 00:59:43,915
"I got an 11 year old
who is absolutely crazy about you."
781
00:59:44,249 --> 00:59:46,334
And I signed it to his little girl.
782
00:59:46,668 --> 00:59:49,712
He put it away and said,
"I've read your whole medical report."
783
00:59:49,879 --> 00:59:52,966
Even a rifle shot can deafen you
if the guy is next to you.
784
00:59:53,049 --> 00:59:55,551
That's why they reject people
with holes in their ears.
785
00:59:55,718 --> 00:59:57,136
He said, "I'm recommending
786
00:59:57,720 --> 01:00:00,890
"that you are absolutely rejected
from the service."
787
01:00:01,641 --> 01:00:03,601
He said to me, "Now, why don't you go back
to your ward,
788
01:00:03,685 --> 01:00:06,562
"get yourself dressed
and go back to New York."
789
01:00:07,730 --> 01:00:10,316
I got on the ferryboat,
put my coat collar up like this,
790
01:00:10,400 --> 01:00:12,235
the snow on my face,
791
01:00:12,318 --> 01:00:15,029
and suddenly the city began to come alive
792
01:00:15,113 --> 01:00:17,949
through the snow,
the lights at Wall Street downtown,
793
01:00:18,032 --> 01:00:19,492
all the buildings are lit.
794
01:00:19,575 --> 01:00:20,827
I started to cry.
795
01:00:41,180 --> 01:00:45,268
Frankie was born at the Margaret Hague
Hospital in Jersey City.
796
01:00:45,351 --> 01:00:50,481
Somewhere along the line, Daddy said
he named him for Franklin Roosevelt.
797
01:00:50,565 --> 01:00:53,860
So it was Franklin Wayne Emmanuel Sinatra.
798
01:00:55,236 --> 01:00:57,488
My brother says it's Francis.
799
01:00:57,572 --> 01:00:59,532
I think he was putting you on, hon.
800
01:00:59,615 --> 01:01:04,412
My name was never Franklin and I was
not named after Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
801
01:01:04,495 --> 01:01:09,917
But Dolly Sinatra said he was
the greatest president that we had ever had.
802
01:01:10,251 --> 01:01:12,003
Her son began to believe it.
803
01:01:12,086 --> 01:01:13,755
And when he became famous,
804
01:01:13,838 --> 01:01:17,592
he worked for Franklin D. Roosevelt
many, many times.
805
01:01:18,259 --> 01:01:20,136
I came out for Roosevelt. I loved him.
806
01:01:20,303 --> 01:01:22,889
And then I went on,
and I worked my ass off for him.
807
01:01:23,431 --> 01:01:26,517
Orson Welles and myself
did a lot of the campaigning
808
01:01:26,601 --> 01:01:30,271
and particularly if it was a large Italian area.
809
01:01:30,355 --> 01:01:31,522
We did one in Jersey,
810
01:01:31,606 --> 01:01:34,108
with all of the dagos in the audience,
almost all Italians.
811
01:01:35,193 --> 01:01:39,614
Then I said, "if you don't vote for this man,
you're all gonna be in a lot of trouble."
812
01:01:40,615 --> 01:01:43,284
I didn't make any kind of a fancy speech.
813
01:01:43,368 --> 01:01:45,370
And then Welles would walk out.
814
01:01:45,453 --> 01:01:48,623
And he was dynamite.
He was absolute dynamite.
815
01:01:52,960 --> 01:01:56,047
There was great criticism heaped upon me
816
01:01:56,130 --> 01:02:00,343
because I was so active
in that particular campaign for Mr Roosevelt.
817
01:02:01,594 --> 01:02:05,723
Newspaper writers
like Lee Mortimer and Westbrook Pegler,
818
01:02:05,807 --> 01:02:09,310
who were never in favour
of the Democratic position,
819
01:02:09,394 --> 01:02:11,896
they suddenly began to attack Sinatra.
820
01:02:11,979 --> 01:02:13,022
I was stamped.
821
01:02:13,106 --> 01:02:15,525
They stamped me a communist right away.
822
01:02:15,608 --> 01:02:16,776
I said, "Bullshit."
823
01:02:16,859 --> 01:02:20,279
I said, "I don't know who you are,
but you are wrong."
824
01:02:21,280 --> 01:02:23,324
- Yeah?
-Good morning. My name is Frank Sinatra.
825
01:02:25,827 --> 01:02:27,495
What?
826
01:02:29,580 --> 01:02:32,959
Dad did the first picture at RKO
called Higher and Higher.
827
01:02:33,918 --> 01:02:36,337
My family was still at home,
but I looked for a house.
828
01:02:37,088 --> 01:02:39,632
That point Nancy put our house
on the market.
829
01:02:39,715 --> 01:02:42,885
And I called her.
I said, "I found a great house."
830
01:02:42,969 --> 01:02:45,179
And I couldn't have been happier
831
01:02:45,263 --> 01:02:48,182
because I loved California.
832
01:02:48,266 --> 01:02:50,101
Lovely, lovely.
833
01:02:50,184 --> 01:02:51,936
It was right on the lake.
834
01:02:52,019 --> 01:02:54,856
We had a kayak, a canoe.
835
01:02:56,399 --> 01:02:59,026
Toluca Lake was so beautiful.
836
01:02:59,110 --> 01:03:01,737
We had a wonderful life there.
837
01:03:01,821 --> 01:03:03,322
Dad came home a lot.
838
01:03:03,531 --> 01:03:05,533
He wasn't just a voice on the radio.
839
01:03:08,703 --> 01:03:13,124
I was home. I'm thinking I've done a movie,
and I'm gonna do another movie.
840
01:03:13,207 --> 01:03:15,001
And then I didn't get many movies
down at RKO,
841
01:03:15,084 --> 01:03:17,253
because Mr Mayer saw me
at a big old building downtown, the Shrine.
842
01:03:18,421 --> 01:03:20,465
Metro used to buy the whole row.
843
01:03:52,288 --> 01:03:54,665
And I'm standing up there singing.
I've never met Mayer.
844
01:03:54,749 --> 01:03:57,668
And I see him sitting there and he's crying.
845
01:03:57,752 --> 01:04:00,755
And he whispered something
to the guy sitting next to him.
846
01:04:00,880 --> 01:04:03,090
Mayer said, "I want that boy."
847
01:04:03,174 --> 01:04:05,843
I went to Metro and I got $130,000 a picture.
848
01:04:16,604 --> 01:04:20,274
A problem arose when I started at MGM.
849
01:04:20,358 --> 01:04:22,860
We did a picture called Anchors Aweigh.
850
01:04:23,986 --> 01:04:26,113
What struck me at first about Frank
851
01:04:26,197 --> 01:04:30,952
was that here was the best known,
most popular performer in America,
852
01:04:31,035 --> 01:04:33,871
and the first two pictures he made at RKO
853
01:04:33,955 --> 01:04:37,041
were, let's face it, flops.
854
01:04:37,124 --> 01:04:41,379
So I said to him, "Frank,
there's one big thing you have to do.
855
01:04:41,462 --> 01:04:45,049
"You can't be thought of as a guy
who just stands there.
856
01:04:45,132 --> 01:04:48,177
"You don't have to be a great, great dancer
857
01:04:48,261 --> 01:04:52,139
"but you have to move,
you have to dance a little bit. Period."
858
01:04:52,223 --> 01:04:54,850
I said that means a lot of sweat and work.
859
01:04:54,934 --> 01:04:57,436
He said, "Great. When do we start?"
860
01:04:57,520 --> 01:05:00,231
He worked as if he were training
for the heavyweight championship.
861
01:05:00,314 --> 01:05:02,108
He really worked very hard.
862
01:05:15,538 --> 01:05:17,999
I did four vocals in Anchors Aweigh.
863
01:05:18,082 --> 01:05:21,210
They said, "Well, Mr Sinatra,
who do you want to write these songs?
864
01:05:21,294 --> 01:05:23,588
"The Gershwins, Kern, Porter,
865
01:05:23,671 --> 01:05:26,257
"Oscar Hammerstein, Rodgers?
Who do you want?"
866
01:05:26,340 --> 01:05:28,175
He said, "Sammy Cahn."
867
01:05:28,843 --> 01:05:31,470
And they said,
"We don't mind hiring him. Who is he?"
868
01:05:31,554 --> 01:05:34,765
And Sinatra typically said,
"Since you're not singing the songs,
869
01:05:34,849 --> 01:05:36,350
"don't let it bother you."
870
01:05:36,434 --> 01:05:38,603
And they said,
"You know we've got about 10 arrangers?"
871
01:05:38,686 --> 01:05:41,105
I said,
"No, no, sorry, I have my own arranger."
872
01:05:41,188 --> 01:05:44,859
Axel Stordahl, whom I now had engaged,
who would not leave Tommy.
873
01:05:44,942 --> 01:05:46,110
I finally convinced him.
874
01:05:46,193 --> 01:05:48,487
I got him $1,250 an arrangement.
875
01:05:48,571 --> 01:05:51,741
He said,
"I never saw so much money in my life."
876
01:07:18,828 --> 01:07:24,166
Anchors Aweigh opened to rave reviews
and big box office around the country.
877
01:07:24,250 --> 01:07:28,129
Overnight Frank Sinatra
became a major movie star,
878
01:07:28,212 --> 01:07:30,923
having already become
a recording and radio star.
879
01:07:37,263 --> 01:07:40,891
At that point his attitude was
880
01:07:40,975 --> 01:07:44,395
fate has now suddenly
put me into the position
881
01:07:44,478 --> 01:07:47,231
to do something about unfairness.
882
01:07:47,314 --> 01:07:49,400
In his lifetime,
883
01:07:49,483 --> 01:07:51,485
he had seen abject poverty.
884
01:07:52,653 --> 01:07:55,489
He had seen terrible things done to people.
885
01:07:55,781 --> 01:07:57,408
And it upset him.
886
01:07:59,535 --> 01:08:02,788
I was living in Harlem,
and my family was on welfare.
887
01:08:04,373 --> 01:08:06,542
We were just a hoofing act.
888
01:08:06,625 --> 01:08:10,421
And Frank found us,
and we went into the Capitol Theatre
889
01:08:10,504 --> 01:08:13,132
and he paid us $1,750.
890
01:08:13,215 --> 01:08:15,551
All the money in the world.
891
01:08:16,469 --> 01:08:20,014
And Frank would come out,
open up, sing a couple of songs,
892
01:08:20,097 --> 01:08:21,098
then he introduced us.
893
01:08:21,182 --> 01:08:23,017
You know, he'd say little things like
894
01:08:23,100 --> 01:08:25,728
"I want you to keep an eye
on this little kid in the middle."
895
01:08:25,811 --> 01:08:27,855
He said, "Boy, he's gonna be something
one of these days.
896
01:08:27,938 --> 01:08:30,107
"You watch him. He burns the stage out."
897
01:08:32,985 --> 01:08:36,280
Frank has been
one of the main moving forces with me
898
01:08:36,363 --> 01:08:40,493
'cause he stood up and was countered
long before it became fashionable.
899
01:08:42,578 --> 01:08:44,622
Putting his convictions on the line,
900
01:08:44,705 --> 01:08:47,625
Dad played himself in The House I Live In,
901
01:08:47,708 --> 01:08:50,711
a 10-minute short made in 1945.
902
01:08:51,378 --> 01:08:55,674
And it fitted me to a tee because
I was involved in anti-bigotry motions.
903
01:08:55,966 --> 01:08:57,635
We got 10 little kids,
904
01:08:57,718 --> 01:09:00,012
and then you hear the rumpus
in the alley outside,
905
01:09:00,095 --> 01:09:01,222
where they back up one little boy.
906
01:09:01,305 --> 01:09:03,557
They don't use any words on him,
but you know
907
01:09:03,641 --> 01:09:06,852
they're either saying "you guinea bastard", or
"you Jew bastard" or something to him.
908
01:09:06,936 --> 01:09:08,521
And I do a little short speech.
909
01:09:08,604 --> 01:09:10,356
My dad came from Italy.
910
01:09:10,439 --> 01:09:14,401
But should I hate your father because
he came from Ireland or France or Russia?
911
01:09:14,485 --> 01:09:16,403
Wouldn't I be a first class fat head?
912
01:09:16,487 --> 01:09:18,447
That film deeply moved me.
913
01:09:19,615 --> 01:09:25,037
It was one of the most engaging documents
that I had ever seen on the issue of race.
914
01:09:25,704 --> 01:09:28,415
A lot of movies had been made
before that time
915
01:09:28,499 --> 01:09:31,418
that attempted to deal
with the issues of race.
916
01:09:31,502 --> 01:09:36,131
But nobody from the height of pop culture
had done it quite the way Sinatra did.
917
01:09:36,215 --> 01:09:38,259
Think about that, fellas.
918
01:09:38,342 --> 01:09:40,761
Use your good American heads.
919
01:09:40,845 --> 01:09:42,847
Don't let anybody make suckers out of you.
920
01:09:42,930 --> 01:09:45,099
Well, gotta go to work.
921
01:09:45,266 --> 01:09:46,267
What do you work?
922
01:09:47,017 --> 01:09:49,478
- I sing.
-You're kidding.
923
01:09:51,772 --> 01:09:53,357
Come here.
924
01:09:55,317 --> 01:09:57,862
Now, you all stand here
and no hissing allowed.
925
01:10:38,986 --> 01:10:40,821
As an Italian-American growing up,
926
01:10:40,905 --> 01:10:45,034
the most virulent, anti-Italian thing
was still in the land.
927
01:10:45,117 --> 01:10:47,912
Stereotypes of a fractured English,
928
01:10:47,995 --> 01:10:51,498
Life With Luigi radio shows.
929
01:10:51,707 --> 01:10:54,001
Dear Mamma Mia!
930
01:10:56,378 --> 01:11:00,716
Sinatra, he's a very big singer
and he's ltaliano born.
931
01:11:01,508 --> 01:11:04,553
For him to come along and deal with that,
932
01:11:04,637 --> 01:11:08,098
to insist that he was going
933
01:11:08,182 --> 01:11:12,269
to change the way people thought about
Italian-Americans through his diction,
934
01:11:12,353 --> 01:11:14,688
which was impeccable on those songs,
935
01:11:15,773 --> 01:11:18,400
through the style
that he presented himself with,
936
01:11:18,525 --> 01:11:19,568
I think was crucial.
937
01:11:22,404 --> 01:11:25,240
New Oscars
for Hollywood's top moviemakers.
938
01:11:25,324 --> 01:11:28,661
At Grauman's Chinese Theatre,
over 2,000 stars are on hand
939
01:11:28,744 --> 01:11:31,789
for the 18th annual motion picture
Academy Awards.
940
01:11:31,872 --> 01:11:32,873
The Frank Sinatras.
941
01:11:32,957 --> 01:11:36,377
He is honoured with a special award
for his short The House I Live In.
942
01:11:43,342 --> 01:11:45,803
The last day of World War ll.
943
01:11:45,886 --> 01:11:49,223
Here and across the nation,
yes, from coast to coast,
944
01:11:49,306 --> 01:11:52,810
uncorks the pent-up emotions
of almost four years.
945
01:11:52,893 --> 01:11:56,230
Downtown they see sailors lift automobiles,
946
01:11:56,313 --> 01:11:58,273
soldiers kiss pretty girls
947
01:11:58,357 --> 01:12:01,235
and the carrying off of beautiful maidens.
948
01:12:49,033 --> 01:12:50,868
Hollywood was Dad's oyster,
949
01:12:50,951 --> 01:12:53,787
and he was befriending
a wide circle of the famous.
950
01:12:55,372 --> 01:12:58,042
During this heady period
of newfound stardom,
951
01:12:58,125 --> 01:13:02,129
he was seen around town
squiring sweater girl Lana Turner
952
01:13:02,212 --> 01:13:05,883
and starlet Marilyn Maxwell,
among other women.
953
01:13:37,873 --> 01:13:41,585
All the rich, glamorous girls
were after the celebrity.
954
01:13:42,294 --> 01:13:43,962
He was attractive.
955
01:13:44,505 --> 01:13:47,424
He was oriented that way in a way.
956
01:13:47,508 --> 01:13:51,595
He thought he had to possess
any woman he thought attractive.
957
01:13:51,678 --> 01:13:53,514
A lot of men are like that.
958
01:13:53,597 --> 01:13:56,517
And they get that way more so
with more success.
959
01:14:09,530 --> 01:14:11,865
With Frank,
it was the martinis in the dressing room.
960
01:14:13,158 --> 01:14:14,785
The lavishness,
961
01:14:14,868 --> 01:14:16,954
gold cigarette lighters.
962
01:14:17,121 --> 01:14:18,539
"Let's have fun.
963
01:14:18,747 --> 01:14:19,832
"Where are the laughs?
964
01:14:19,915 --> 01:14:22,709
"Where are the people in this new world
that I love?"
965
01:14:23,544 --> 01:14:26,547
Nancy was always the Italian wife.
966
01:14:27,089 --> 01:14:28,966
The house has got to be spotless.
967
01:14:29,049 --> 01:14:32,219
If you want peppers or pasta,
the sauce is made.
968
01:14:32,302 --> 01:14:34,847
And I'll have the kids and we'll raise a family.
969
01:14:34,930 --> 01:14:37,391
And that was what was important to her.
970
01:14:40,477 --> 01:14:43,063
On the last day of 1946,
971
01:14:43,147 --> 01:14:45,107
my mother discovered a diamond bracelet
972
01:14:45,190 --> 01:14:47,484
in the glove compartment
of the new Cadillac convertible
973
01:14:47,568 --> 01:14:50,404
that Dad was teaching her to drive.
974
01:14:50,487 --> 01:14:53,740
Figuring it was a gift for her,
she said nothing.
975
01:14:53,991 --> 01:14:57,411
But that night
at the family's New Year's Eve party,
976
01:14:57,744 --> 01:15:01,123
she spied Marilyn Maxwell
wearing the bracelet.
977
01:15:01,748 --> 01:15:04,668
I said to her, "I know where you got that."
978
01:15:04,751 --> 01:15:06,712
She just walked out aghast
979
01:15:06,795 --> 01:15:09,506
that I would be brave enough.
980
01:15:09,590 --> 01:15:11,175
She went and told Frank.
981
01:15:11,258 --> 01:15:13,719
And Frank said to me,
"You know, you should apologise."
982
01:15:13,802 --> 01:15:16,722
And I said, "Frank, you're mixed up.
983
01:15:16,805 --> 01:15:19,266
"She has to apologise to me."
984
01:15:21,268 --> 01:15:23,937
I feel it was like part of growing up,
985
01:15:24,188 --> 01:15:27,858
that he would eventually
have his fill of all this routine
986
01:15:27,941 --> 01:15:30,319
and appreciate what he had.
987
01:15:31,445 --> 01:15:34,198
Then we made up,
and he said, "it's gonna be different.
988
01:15:34,323 --> 01:15:36,783
"It's gonna be better. It's gonna be fine."
989
01:17:13,005 --> 01:17:15,632
"Nancy," I said,
"it's Valentine's Day coming up.
990
01:17:15,716 --> 01:17:17,926
"And I'm finished with my work
here in New York.
991
01:17:18,010 --> 01:17:21,305
"How would you like to be my valentine
in Acapulco?"
992
01:17:21,388 --> 01:17:23,682
She said, "That would be marvellous."
993
01:17:24,891 --> 01:17:27,477
Now, in the meantime I went to Miami.
994
01:17:27,561 --> 01:17:29,479
But the next morning was a shitty day,
995
01:17:29,563 --> 01:17:32,149
and I said, "I'm not gonna sit down here.
I'm gonna go where the sun is,
996
01:17:33,608 --> 01:17:34,609
"Cuba."
997
01:17:42,659 --> 01:17:45,912
And I checked into the famous hotel,
Nacional Hotel.
998
01:18:00,302 --> 01:18:03,597
We went down to the bar,
and 66 gangsters were standing there.
999
01:18:03,680 --> 01:18:06,016
Forty-eight years of good behaviour.
1000
01:18:06,099 --> 01:18:09,186
And I knew several of the fellas
from New Jersey and New York,
1001
01:18:09,269 --> 01:18:10,937
including the Fischetti brothers.
1002
01:18:11,021 --> 01:18:13,815
They were Capone's guys when he was alive.
1003
01:18:15,776 --> 01:18:17,027
They were really tough.
1004
01:18:21,656 --> 01:18:23,867
That time the boys were dealing with Cuba,
1005
01:18:23,950 --> 01:18:25,619
they handled
all the gambling up there, right?
1006
01:18:26,745 --> 01:18:28,288
And one of them said,
"Hey, Frank, come here.
1007
01:18:28,372 --> 01:18:29,831
"I want you to meet Charlie Luciano."
1008
01:18:29,915 --> 01:18:31,792
And I said, "How do you do?"
1009
01:18:32,542 --> 01:18:35,128
Charlie "Lucky" Luciano.
Shackled to his henchmen,
1010
01:18:35,462 --> 01:18:39,674
the overlord of a $12 million a year vice ring
goes to prison.
1011
01:18:41,635 --> 01:18:44,137
And when he got out, he was deported.
1012
01:18:44,221 --> 01:18:47,808
The United States Bureau of Narcotics
didn't like the fact that he ended up in Cuba
1013
01:18:47,891 --> 01:18:51,353
because they didn't want him setting up
an operation so close to their shores.
1014
01:18:51,436 --> 01:18:52,854
This is in the '40s.
1015
01:18:52,938 --> 01:18:55,232
Lucky Luciano was being watched closely.
1016
01:18:55,315 --> 01:18:59,778
And of course it went on the wire service
that I shook hands with Charlie Luciano.
1017
01:18:59,861 --> 01:19:01,530
Writers picked it up and all that crap.
1018
01:19:08,745 --> 01:19:11,039
And that was the public's first taste
1019
01:19:11,123 --> 01:19:15,168
of what became Sinatra's persona
for the rest of his life.
1020
01:19:15,252 --> 01:19:16,837
Buddies with the mob.
1021
01:19:18,004 --> 01:19:20,215
From that moment,
I couldn't beat these guys.
1022
01:19:20,340 --> 01:19:22,259
See, they went to press every day.
1023
01:19:22,342 --> 01:19:25,929
- Then of course at that point...
-Lee Mortimer picked up a picture...
1024
01:19:26,012 --> 01:19:28,473
...getting off the plane.
1025
01:19:28,557 --> 01:19:31,852
And then the FBI got the photo
from Mortimer,
1026
01:19:31,935 --> 01:19:34,688
who was a famous muckraking journalist,
1027
01:19:34,771 --> 01:19:40,110
who was trying to identify
the people in the photo that are with Sinatra.
1028
01:19:40,193 --> 01:19:42,529
They start to dream up all these things
about me.
1029
01:19:42,612 --> 01:19:47,659
Said I went to Cuba and delivered $2 million,
and I brought back drugs into the country.
1030
01:19:48,702 --> 01:19:50,620
Now, my luggage of course is
on the aeroplane,
1031
01:19:50,704 --> 01:19:55,459
but I carried a sketchpad
in a thin attaché case.
1032
01:19:56,126 --> 01:19:59,713
Now, this was the bag I was
supposedly bringing the $2 million in, right?
1033
01:20:00,881 --> 01:20:02,424
There's no evidence of it!
1034
01:20:02,507 --> 01:20:04,426
The only mentions of it
in government documents
1035
01:20:04,509 --> 01:20:07,804
are recounting that it's been in the press.
1036
01:20:07,888 --> 01:20:12,142
The investigators,
they would read something in the press
1037
01:20:12,225 --> 01:20:16,480
and then investigate it,
giving it the patina of truth.
1038
01:20:16,563 --> 01:20:18,607
It was in some ways a vicious cycle.
1039
01:20:18,690 --> 01:20:23,737
It led to yet another investigation
of his arrest in the late '30s.
1040
01:20:34,247 --> 01:20:38,001
But that was an old, old charge,
way back when I was a kid,
1041
01:20:38,084 --> 01:20:40,587
when I first got the job at the Rustic Cabin.
1042
01:20:40,670 --> 01:20:44,049
Some dame claimed that I'd seduced her
and she was pregnant.
1043
01:20:44,132 --> 01:20:46,968
She wasn't pregnant at all.
She was a hokey fan.
1044
01:20:47,427 --> 01:20:48,637
We went to the courtroom,
1045
01:20:48,720 --> 01:20:50,722
and my mother
who was a nurse and a midwife
1046
01:20:50,805 --> 01:20:52,766
said to the judge,
"I'd like to examine this woman."
1047
01:20:53,183 --> 01:20:54,559
And all of a sudden there was no case.
1048
01:20:54,643 --> 01:20:55,727
They threw everything out.
1049
01:21:05,946 --> 01:21:09,533
You see those things were driving me crazy,
in that period.
1050
01:21:10,325 --> 01:21:13,495
Bogie once said,
"You have to remember one thing, Frank.
1051
01:21:13,662 --> 01:21:17,582
"There's only one way
that anyone can fight a newspaper.
1052
01:21:17,666 --> 01:21:19,918
"And that's with a newspaper.
1053
01:21:20,669 --> 01:21:25,549
"If you have altercations with the press,
you're gonna be fighting a losing battle."
1054
01:21:25,632 --> 01:21:28,885
And this was Humphrey Bogart's
sage and sane advice,
1055
01:21:29,427 --> 01:21:32,764
which his friend Frank Sinatra
promptly proceeded to ignore.
1056
01:21:33,723 --> 01:21:35,225
Peggy Lee was opening at Ciro's
1057
01:21:35,308 --> 01:21:38,144
and Ciro's was one of the in-joints to go to.
1058
01:21:38,228 --> 01:21:39,729
She was marvellous.
1059
01:21:48,488 --> 01:21:51,283
And behind us I knew an Oriental voice.
1060
01:21:51,366 --> 01:21:53,994
She said, "That's Frank Sinatra."
1061
01:21:54,077 --> 01:21:57,080
And I hear the male voice say,
"Yeah, I saw that guinea bastard."
1062
01:21:57,163 --> 01:21:58,456
I didn't know who it was.
1063
01:21:58,540 --> 01:22:01,126
I just kind of rounded,
and sure enough it's him
1064
01:22:01,209 --> 01:22:04,296
'cause I had seen his picture
on the top of the column.
1065
01:22:04,379 --> 01:22:07,632
I hear the chairs being scraped on the floor
and they get up.
1066
01:22:11,011 --> 01:22:13,555
Peggy went off stage and people
were still applauding and all that stuff,
1067
01:22:13,930 --> 01:22:16,224
and I said to everybody at my table,
1068
01:22:16,308 --> 01:22:19,352
"Excuse me a minute."
And this after he'd been bludgeoning me.
1069
01:22:19,436 --> 01:22:22,397
He called me a red,
he called me a communist.
1070
01:22:22,480 --> 01:22:24,316
He did everything he could.
1071
01:22:24,399 --> 01:22:26,901
I had enough of him. I had it up to here.
1072
01:22:26,985 --> 01:22:29,279
So I walked out
and I tapped him on the shoulder.
1073
01:22:29,362 --> 01:22:30,447
He turned around.
1074
01:22:30,530 --> 01:22:33,241
I hit him so fucking hard,
I broke the whole front of his face,
1075
01:22:33,325 --> 01:22:34,909
and he banged his head.
1076
01:22:46,254 --> 01:22:47,505
And the son of a bitch, he was funny,
1077
01:22:47,589 --> 01:22:49,799
he said, "I'll write about this,"
and he takes a piece of paper out.
1078
01:22:49,883 --> 01:22:50,842
"You're gonna do more than that," I said
1079
01:22:50,925 --> 01:22:52,802
"I'm gonna bury you
right under the street like this."
1080
01:22:52,886 --> 01:22:54,763
And before I can make another move,
1081
01:22:54,846 --> 01:22:57,057
two guys grabbed me
and they walked me right back in the club.
1082
01:22:57,140 --> 01:22:59,309
The people were running outside
to get an ambulance
1083
01:22:59,392 --> 01:23:00,685
and all that kind of bullshit.
1084
01:23:01,061 --> 01:23:03,271
And I just walked through the whole crowd.
1085
01:23:06,524 --> 01:23:09,069
There were no charges, no arrests,
no nothing.
1086
01:23:09,611 --> 01:23:10,987
He just wanted a civil suit.
1087
01:23:11,071 --> 01:23:12,864
$9,000 judgment.
1088
01:23:12,947 --> 01:23:15,033
That was it. Nothing ever happened.
1089
01:23:16,785 --> 01:23:17,952
As a matter of fact,
1090
01:23:18,036 --> 01:23:20,580
what I did to him through the ensuing years,
1091
01:23:20,664 --> 01:23:24,042
every time I saw him at a restaurant,
I'd spit at him
1092
01:23:24,376 --> 01:23:26,294
and dare him to get up
and take a punch at me.
1093
01:23:32,133 --> 01:23:36,554
Can you be objective and tell me
what kind of a father you are?
1094
01:23:36,638 --> 01:23:38,098
Or is that too tough?
1095
01:23:39,432 --> 01:23:40,975
Yeah, it's a tough question.
1096
01:23:51,945 --> 01:23:55,865
Tina was the California girl.
She was born in Los Angeles.
1097
01:23:56,241 --> 01:24:00,203
Dad nearly went crazy
going through red lights and stop signs
1098
01:24:00,286 --> 01:24:02,163
to get to the hospital.
1099
01:24:02,789 --> 01:24:04,541
He wanted a girl,
1100
01:24:04,624 --> 01:24:07,293
and she was born on Father's Day.
1101
01:24:07,377 --> 01:24:09,379
That's how lucky he is.
1102
01:24:10,171 --> 01:24:12,966
Tina as a child, growing up,
1103
01:24:13,049 --> 01:24:14,509
never got to spend a lot of time with me.
1104
01:24:14,592 --> 01:24:16,136
You know, I was probably a stranger to her.
1105
01:24:16,219 --> 01:24:19,973
"Who's this guy? Comes in every six months,
he comes to see me?"
1106
01:24:26,229 --> 01:24:29,441
He was away so much of his career,
you know,
1107
01:24:30,900 --> 01:24:34,654
that the real great experience
of being the son of this man,
1108
01:24:34,738 --> 01:24:35,822
as far as I am concerned,
1109
01:24:36,740 --> 01:24:38,992
didn't actually come until later years.
1110
01:24:41,494 --> 01:24:44,831
I think that Dad, when he was rushing
and going on with his career,
1111
01:24:45,123 --> 01:24:49,294
knew that I was there taking care of the kids,
and he didn't have to worry about it.
1112
01:24:52,338 --> 01:24:54,924
Daddy wanted me to have a lot of children.
1113
01:24:55,008 --> 01:24:58,178
The way things were going,
I knew that it was not looking right.
1114
01:24:58,261 --> 01:25:01,765
I figured I'd be stuck having to care for more.
1115
01:25:01,848 --> 01:25:03,558
Now, about that time,
1116
01:25:04,809 --> 01:25:07,520
is when I got tied up with Ava,
somewhere in there.
1117
01:25:40,345 --> 01:25:43,973
Well, the first time we met was 1943.
1118
01:25:44,057 --> 01:25:45,475
I was out with Mickey.
1119
01:25:45,558 --> 01:25:46,684
We were married then.
1120
01:25:47,852 --> 01:25:49,229
Frank came over to the table.
1121
01:25:50,313 --> 01:25:52,816
Jesus, he was like a god in those days.
1122
01:25:52,899 --> 01:25:56,694
If gods can be sexy, he reeked of sex.
1123
01:25:56,778 --> 01:25:57,987
He said something like,
1124
01:25:58,071 --> 01:26:00,949
"if I had seen you first, honey,
I would've married you myself."
1125
01:26:01,032 --> 01:26:03,827
I paid no attention to that.
I knew he was married.
1126
01:26:03,910 --> 01:26:06,246
He had a kid, for Christ's sake.
1127
01:26:07,080 --> 01:26:11,960
The next time we met was when we had
that famous Metro group picture taken.
1128
01:26:12,085 --> 01:26:13,628
He was a terrible flirt.
1129
01:26:13,753 --> 01:26:15,255
He couldn't help it.
1130
01:26:15,547 --> 01:26:19,509
I took a look at her and I said, "Jesus,
you got prettier than the last time I saw you."
1131
01:26:19,592 --> 01:26:22,637
This was not the young little girl
from Carolina at the studio.
1132
01:26:22,720 --> 01:26:24,597
This was a woman who was glorious.
1133
01:26:26,266 --> 01:26:28,893
She had an air
that the other girls didn't have.
1134
01:26:28,977 --> 01:26:29,978
No question.
1135
01:26:33,189 --> 01:26:37,360
Very natural and of all the stars of that time,
1136
01:26:37,443 --> 01:26:40,738
she had less star mannerism
than anyone I ever met.
1137
01:26:42,115 --> 01:26:44,242
She was sort of one of the boys.
1138
01:26:44,325 --> 01:26:48,079
I think she pretty much was always with men.
1139
01:26:58,548 --> 01:26:59,674
Here's your drink, lady.
1140
01:27:01,676 --> 01:27:03,428
I said, here's your drink, lady.
1141
01:27:06,222 --> 01:27:07,473
Thank you very much.
1142
01:27:18,026 --> 01:27:21,779
I think a lot of his fantasies
were bound up in her.
1143
01:27:22,196 --> 01:27:26,743
I think he brought to it
what a young man brings to that almost
1144
01:27:27,160 --> 01:27:32,165
unbelievable romance that may never happen
to him kind of thing you do fantasise about.
1145
01:27:58,191 --> 01:27:59,901
Lana Turner told me,
1146
01:27:59,984 --> 01:28:02,195
"I've been there, honey. Don't do it."
1147
01:28:06,616 --> 01:28:09,577
I should've listened to her.
The girl had been around.
1148
01:28:18,211 --> 01:28:20,964
But he was good in the feathers.
1149
01:28:21,047 --> 01:28:24,133
You don't really listen to what people tell you
when a guy is good in the feathers.
1150
01:28:30,348 --> 01:28:32,308
He is a disciplined man in many respects,
1151
01:28:32,392 --> 01:28:35,353
but he's never disciplined emotionally
about women.
1152
01:28:36,521 --> 01:28:38,481
I think that that did him in.
1153
01:28:38,564 --> 01:28:42,235
He would come home once or twice a week
and see her all the time,
1154
01:28:42,318 --> 01:28:43,987
and figured it was gonna keep me quiet.
1155
01:28:44,070 --> 01:28:46,531
And I couldn't handle it, I was sick.
1156
01:28:46,614 --> 01:28:48,658
I was breaking down.
1157
01:28:48,741 --> 01:28:50,952
He was never looking for long-range things.
1158
01:28:51,035 --> 01:28:52,704
It was always for the moment.
1159
01:28:53,413 --> 01:28:55,498
Foregoing gossip columnists,
1160
01:28:55,707 --> 01:28:57,917
they write that your marriage is in trouble,
these kinds of things.
1161
01:28:58,001 --> 01:28:59,377
Normal people don't read
about these kinds of things.
1162
01:28:59,460 --> 01:29:02,171
What're you gonna say
about gossip columns?
1163
01:29:02,255 --> 01:29:05,466
Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons,
Sheilah Graham
1164
01:29:05,550 --> 01:29:07,510
and other nationally syndicated columnists
1165
01:29:07,593 --> 01:29:12,181
had already been berating my father
for a host of extramarital affairs.
1166
01:29:12,265 --> 01:29:14,851
He could ignore columnists very easily.
1167
01:29:15,059 --> 01:29:18,730
But Louis B. Mayer warned
that he would cancel his contract early.
1168
01:29:18,813 --> 01:29:20,356
Dad responded.
1169
01:29:20,440 --> 01:29:22,316
He moved us closer to his work
1170
01:29:22,400 --> 01:29:25,945
to a $250,000 mansion
not far from Hollywood.
1171
01:29:26,946 --> 01:29:28,906
But he continued to see Ava.
1172
01:29:29,782 --> 01:29:33,828
Mr Mayer was a man who was
completely void of a sense of humour.
1173
01:29:33,911 --> 01:29:37,707
And I was always doing pranks
and having fun and all that stuff.
1174
01:29:37,874 --> 01:29:40,251
And Mayer loved to have people...
1175
01:29:40,334 --> 01:29:41,961
Well, not people, me,
1176
01:29:42,295 --> 01:29:45,298
come to his office whenever he was lonely.
1177
01:29:45,673 --> 01:29:49,135
He had a white Formica desk,
looked like Howard Hughes' cockpit.
1178
01:29:49,260 --> 01:29:52,430
And I'd go in and sit down
and hold my hat in my lap and...
1179
01:29:52,930 --> 01:29:55,850
In a period of five years,
I bet I was there 50 times.
1180
01:29:59,687 --> 01:30:01,898
He had a string of wonderful race horses.
1181
01:30:01,981 --> 01:30:05,735
And he also had horses that he would ride
on Sunday afternoons, his own horses.
1182
01:30:05,818 --> 01:30:08,988
And one Sunday something happened
that spooked the horse,
1183
01:30:09,072 --> 01:30:10,907
and he had a fractured pelvic bone,
1184
01:30:10,990 --> 01:30:14,494
and he was in a cast from here to his knees.
1185
01:30:14,619 --> 01:30:15,912
We felt badly about it
1186
01:30:16,037 --> 01:30:18,247
and we were sitting around
commiserating about the fact
1187
01:30:18,331 --> 01:30:21,959
that it would take him a long time to heal
because he had fallen off the horse,
1188
01:30:22,043 --> 01:30:24,796
and I said, "No, he didn't.
He fell off Ginny Simms."
1189
01:30:27,673 --> 01:30:31,886
He was courting this girl named
Ginny Simms, you see, fellas and girls.
1190
01:30:34,347 --> 01:30:36,307
And I get kicked out of the studio.
1191
01:30:36,474 --> 01:30:37,475
That's it.
1192
01:30:42,188 --> 01:30:44,565
Frank Sinatra found himself
in the unhappy position
1193
01:30:44,649 --> 01:30:46,317
of being considered finished.
1194
01:30:46,692 --> 01:30:48,986
His record sales slumped severely.
1195
01:30:49,320 --> 01:30:50,738
Now, is this true?
1196
01:30:51,114 --> 01:30:54,200
Earned $11 million in six years,
1197
01:30:54,575 --> 01:30:57,912
but you spent money like crazy
and you couldn't pay your taxes?
1198
01:30:58,329 --> 01:30:59,705
Had you spent all your money?
1199
01:30:59,789 --> 01:31:01,332
- Pretty much all of it.
-Okay.
1200
01:31:01,457 --> 01:31:02,834
I mean, I was broke.
1201
01:31:04,627 --> 01:31:07,463
It was an enormous sense of foreboding
1202
01:31:07,547 --> 01:31:10,508
in the American psyche
immediately after the war.
1203
01:31:10,716 --> 01:31:13,386
What was going to happen next?
1204
01:31:14,011 --> 01:31:16,806
Would we really be able to sustain the peace
1205
01:31:16,889 --> 01:31:19,350
that we finally achieved in 1945?
1206
01:31:19,642 --> 01:31:23,813
Or was the roof going to fall in on us
even more than it had before?
1207
01:31:25,106 --> 01:31:28,526
You see anxiety in
Abstract Expressionist painting.
1208
01:31:28,651 --> 01:31:33,239
You see it in bebop,
a jazz of extreme intensity of style.
1209
01:31:33,739 --> 01:31:36,909
But American commercial popular music
1210
01:31:37,201 --> 01:31:41,747
responded to this anxiety
with the musical equivalent of comfort food.
1211
01:31:52,049 --> 01:31:54,260
When I wasn't doing that well
with the record business,
1212
01:31:54,385 --> 01:31:56,596
'cause Mitch Miller was put in charge.
1213
01:31:56,721 --> 01:31:59,640
And he decided to bring into the world
a new kind of music
1214
01:31:59,765 --> 01:32:02,226
which was a hokey-pokey kind of music.
1215
01:32:02,351 --> 01:32:04,520
And I just resented it.
1216
01:32:04,937 --> 01:32:08,649
Frank Sinatra finds himself
being produced by Mitch Miller,
1217
01:32:08,816 --> 01:32:11,444
who had a kind of perverse genius
1218
01:32:11,611 --> 01:32:14,614
in gimmicky pop records
that sold by the car load.
1219
01:32:14,822 --> 01:32:18,618
And Miller expected him
to make records like this.
1220
01:32:19,827 --> 01:32:21,662
He says, "I won't do any of that shit."
1221
01:32:23,122 --> 01:32:24,373
So, what do I do?
1222
01:32:24,665 --> 01:32:26,834
Who tells Sinatra what to do?
1223
01:32:27,001 --> 01:32:29,212
Who ever told Sinatra what to do?
1224
01:32:29,545 --> 01:32:32,340
He made it his business going through
1225
01:32:32,465 --> 01:32:36,302
the deterioration,
aesthetically of the music at that time
1226
01:32:36,469 --> 01:32:39,513
and still finding good songs to record.
1227
01:32:40,389 --> 01:32:43,017
I was 14 at the time
and I was allowed to drink
1228
01:32:43,309 --> 01:32:45,770
in McMillan's at 94th and Third.
1229
01:32:47,104 --> 01:32:49,815
And I had loaded the jukebox
with Sinatra stuff.
1230
01:32:50,107 --> 01:32:51,108
And suddenly...
1231
01:33:05,998 --> 01:33:09,293
The Birth of the Blues literally
brought me to my knees.
1232
01:33:09,710 --> 01:33:12,713
The singing is so virile, sensational.
1233
01:33:12,797 --> 01:33:15,049
It's one of the great Sinatra records.
1234
01:33:19,845 --> 01:33:22,765
I played it over and over.
Dimes, dimes, dimes.
1235
01:33:22,932 --> 01:33:25,685
Drinking and drinking and drinking,
a 14-year-old.
1236
01:33:26,769 --> 01:33:30,106
He was abuzz in my young life.
1237
01:33:33,025 --> 01:33:36,654
But he wasn't selling records,
no one was going to see the movies,
1238
01:33:36,737 --> 01:33:40,366
and he was making everyone angry with him,
he owed a lot of money.
1239
01:33:42,201 --> 01:33:44,704
People don't remember the climate then.
1240
01:33:45,579 --> 01:33:49,292
Frank made so many good records
at that time that did not sell.
1241
01:33:49,458 --> 01:33:52,378
His behaviour made him persona non-grata,
1242
01:33:52,461 --> 01:33:56,590
and I thought, "if you can't sell a good one,
let's try novelty."
1243
01:34:04,598 --> 01:34:07,226
So I said, "Okay, I'll do it your way now."
1244
01:34:07,393 --> 01:34:09,520
"I'll do the songs. Let's see what happens."
1245
01:34:13,399 --> 01:34:17,403
My heart wasn't in it and I didn't even
understand what the hell I was doing.
1246
01:34:42,720 --> 01:34:46,891
When his records didn't sell
and it came time for his renewal,
1247
01:34:47,266 --> 01:34:49,435
Columbia just didn't want to re-sign him.
1248
01:34:49,769 --> 01:34:53,773
It ended up finally as a very unhappy parting.
1249
01:34:54,148 --> 01:34:58,861
They were, I think, very happy
to get rid of each other at the time.
1250
01:35:22,968 --> 01:35:24,929
If somebody in my family left me
a lot of money,
1251
01:35:25,012 --> 01:35:26,472
I probably would never have worried about it.
1252
01:35:26,555 --> 01:35:27,848
But I think I was concerned
1253
01:35:27,973 --> 01:35:31,227
that I can't take care of my problems,
my family and everything.
1254
01:35:36,941 --> 01:35:39,318
I was working hard to pay bills.
1255
01:35:39,610 --> 01:35:41,153
I was working too hard.
1256
01:35:41,278 --> 01:35:44,949
Three shows a night at the Copacabana
and I got booked at the Capitol Theatre.
1257
01:35:45,032 --> 01:35:46,992
Every week was a week of Mondays.
1258
01:35:47,493 --> 01:35:50,454
And it rained every Monday,
that kind of feeling.
1259
01:35:56,460 --> 01:35:58,337
I was hurting, I was struggling,
1260
01:35:58,504 --> 01:36:02,299
but I was managing to make it because we
lowered the keys, all that kind of stuff.
1261
01:36:06,178 --> 01:36:08,139
And a perfect setting for what happened.
1262
01:36:08,264 --> 01:36:11,100
It was a February blizzard night,
big snowfall.
1263
01:36:11,350 --> 01:36:14,478
Sixty people in a room
because the weather was so bad.
1264
01:36:42,256 --> 01:36:45,718
Suddenly I felt some kind of a snap,
something in my throat
1265
01:36:45,801 --> 01:36:47,970
and I went for a note and nothing came out.
1266
01:36:48,053 --> 01:36:50,556
I could feel myself
swallowing my own blood.
1267
01:36:51,223 --> 01:36:53,559
I looked at the audience
and they looked at me,
1268
01:36:54,059 --> 01:36:56,770
and everybody knew that
something quite serious had happened.
1269
01:36:56,979 --> 01:37:00,232
And I leant in to the microphone
and I said, "Good night."
1270
01:37:00,399 --> 01:37:03,152
And I walked up the stairs
and I went right to the hotel.
1271
01:37:06,655 --> 01:37:10,409
A lot of his friends
and lot of his associates just left him.
1272
01:37:12,578 --> 01:37:15,831
All the guys that made hundreds
of thousands of dollars with me
1273
01:37:15,998 --> 01:37:17,958
never called and said,
"What can we do for you?
1274
01:37:18,125 --> 01:37:19,168
"Do you need any money?"
1275
01:37:19,251 --> 01:37:20,377
At that point I had nobody.
1276
01:37:20,461 --> 01:37:22,213
The only guy who ever talked to me was
Jimmy Van Heusen
1277
01:37:22,296 --> 01:37:24,048
and he'd give me a few dollars for my pocket.
1278
01:37:26,008 --> 01:37:27,510
He was in a terrible state.
1279
01:37:27,885 --> 01:37:31,222
His ego and his self-esteem
were at the lowest ebb.
1280
01:37:31,597 --> 01:37:35,601
And particularly bad because
mine was frankly at the peak.
1281
01:37:41,273 --> 01:37:44,276
This is appropriate for me because
1282
01:37:44,902 --> 01:37:46,946
having been a saloon singer all my life,
1283
01:37:48,447 --> 01:37:51,617
I've become an expert on saloon songs.
1284
01:37:52,451 --> 01:37:54,537
The kind of things that
1285
01:37:56,080 --> 01:37:58,499
cause men to cry in their beers.
1286
01:38:00,042 --> 01:38:03,921
Because they're in trouble with their girls.
1287
01:38:05,506 --> 01:38:08,300
And they seek little bars
1288
01:38:09,009 --> 01:38:13,305
and it's really a caricature
of one such person.
1289
01:39:13,032 --> 01:39:17,036
It was another one of those nights when
I ended up refusing to sleep with Frank.
1290
01:39:17,453 --> 01:39:19,830
I was half asleep in my room across the suite
1291
01:39:19,913 --> 01:39:21,540
and I heard this gun shot.
1292
01:39:21,957 --> 01:39:23,709
It's scared the bejesus out of me.
1293
01:39:23,792 --> 01:39:27,046
I didn't know what I was going to find,
his brains blown out?
1294
01:39:28,255 --> 01:39:29,882
He was always threatening to do it.
1295
01:39:37,014 --> 01:39:42,269
Instead, he was sitting on the bed
grinning like a goddam drunken school kid,
1296
01:39:42,561 --> 01:39:45,230
a smoking gun in his hand.
1297
01:39:45,564 --> 01:39:48,817
He'd fired the gun into the fucking pillow.
1298
01:39:50,194 --> 01:39:51,654
What a night that was.
1299
01:39:52,196 --> 01:39:53,656
It was a cry for help.
1300
01:39:54,073 --> 01:39:56,075
I always fell for it.
1301
01:39:56,992 --> 01:39:59,703
And they were together
late one night in the car
1302
01:39:59,787 --> 01:40:01,747
and I could tell they'd both been drinking.
1303
01:40:02,206 --> 01:40:04,249
We had a buzzer at the gate
1304
01:40:04,333 --> 01:40:08,379
and he said, "Nancy, will you please tell Ava
that I've asked you for a divorce?"
1305
01:40:08,462 --> 01:40:10,297
I said, "Frank, you're out of your mind."
1306
01:40:10,422 --> 01:40:11,590
And I hung up.
1307
01:40:11,757 --> 01:40:13,425
Wouldn't tolerate it.
1308
01:40:16,095 --> 01:40:18,555
And she was a real bitch, too.
1309
01:40:21,517 --> 01:40:25,354
In the beginning the press had been
really condemning Frank and Ava,
1310
01:40:25,437 --> 01:40:28,482
and condoning Nancy for her conduct.
1311
01:40:32,027 --> 01:40:34,279
Over time, I think that began to change.
1312
01:40:34,613 --> 01:40:35,948
The press flipped.
1313
01:40:36,782 --> 01:40:41,120
Mom began to take flack
for keeping Romeo and Juliet apart.
1314
01:40:43,664 --> 01:40:47,167
But she got legal guidance
and she let him go.
1315
01:40:47,626 --> 01:40:50,838
I thought by letting him go
that they would end their romance.
1316
01:40:52,172 --> 01:40:54,675
And in time I always felt he'd come back.
1317
01:40:55,718 --> 01:40:56,927
Always felt that.
1318
01:41:03,350 --> 01:41:05,811
Only days after his divorce from Nancy
became final,
1319
01:41:06,103 --> 01:41:07,855
we had gotten married.
1320
01:41:08,731 --> 01:41:11,650
We were really, deeply in love,
almost too much in love.
1321
01:41:12,818 --> 01:41:14,653
Things all of a sudden didn't fall in place.
1322
01:41:14,820 --> 01:41:16,488
She was working at Metro.
1323
01:41:16,655 --> 01:41:17,823
Picture here, picture there.
1324
01:41:17,990 --> 01:41:20,659
Then came a job to do a picture in Spain.
1325
01:41:22,077 --> 01:41:24,163
This is Pandora.
1326
01:41:24,955 --> 01:41:26,957
She was bold and beautiful.
1327
01:41:27,875 --> 01:41:31,170
Desired by every man who met her.
1328
01:41:31,336 --> 01:41:34,506
He was having a very bad time
with Ava Gardner.
1329
01:41:35,674 --> 01:41:37,968
She was terrible to him, terrible.
1330
01:41:38,802 --> 01:41:40,679
Just grinding her feet
1331
01:41:41,472 --> 01:41:44,016
into his face in the dust, you know.
1332
01:41:45,184 --> 01:41:47,603
This was a turmoil
that the whole world knew about
1333
01:41:47,686 --> 01:41:49,313
when I was chasing it around the world,
1334
01:41:49,396 --> 01:41:51,231
that I was borrowing money
to go visit with her.
1335
01:41:51,356 --> 01:41:53,609
I was running away from Frank.
1336
01:41:53,692 --> 01:41:56,069
Desperately trying to break up with him.
1337
01:41:56,570 --> 01:41:59,364
I knew that I just couldn't
live with him any more.
1338
01:41:59,907 --> 01:42:03,368
I still loved him,
but the marriage was never going to work.
1339
01:42:07,122 --> 01:42:09,249
The trouble was,
1340
01:42:09,708 --> 01:42:11,335
Frank and I were too much alike.
1341
01:42:15,047 --> 01:42:17,174
He met his match with her.
1342
01:42:17,257 --> 01:42:21,011
She was sexually free and gorgeous.
1343
01:42:21,470 --> 01:42:23,055
She couldn't be conquered.
1344
01:42:29,686 --> 01:42:33,816
The fact the we were no longer
in the same city, let alone the same country.
1345
01:42:33,899 --> 01:42:35,609
That took the bottom out of everything.
1346
01:42:41,073 --> 01:42:45,118
I became an out and out drunk.
I mean, I was bombed all the time.
1347
01:42:45,285 --> 01:42:47,913
God bless Tootsie's,
I never paid a tab at Tootsies.
1348
01:42:50,749 --> 01:42:54,545
So at 4:00, of course this night,
"Hey, dago", he said. "You better go home."
1349
01:42:56,630 --> 01:42:58,382
Now he was on 52nd Street,
1350
01:42:58,465 --> 01:43:00,676
I was staying at Jimmy's, 57th Street.
1351
01:43:00,759 --> 01:43:03,720
I walked out and it was like 20 degrees.
1352
01:43:05,305 --> 01:43:07,182
So I started walking,
and walking and walking.
1353
01:43:07,266 --> 01:43:08,725
Suddenly I don't know where the hell I am.
1354
01:43:08,809 --> 01:43:10,352
'Cause the booze really hit me.
1355
01:43:10,519 --> 01:43:12,104
It really hit me like a sledgehammer.
1356
01:43:12,229 --> 01:43:14,690
And the next thing I know,
there was a flashlight in my eye
1357
01:43:14,773 --> 01:43:16,233
and somebody was shaking me.
1358
01:43:18,235 --> 01:43:20,362
"You're gonna have to get out of here.
Come on, get up."
1359
01:43:20,612 --> 01:43:23,699
And the cop grabbed my arm
and then he looked at me.
1360
01:43:24,032 --> 01:43:25,450
"Are you Sinatra?"
1361
01:43:31,206 --> 01:43:34,293
I was in somebody's car in New York.
1362
01:43:34,459 --> 01:43:37,963
We stopped at a light and I saw him coming
past the Capitol, like this,
1363
01:43:39,631 --> 01:43:41,842
walking down the street,
1364
01:43:42,467 --> 01:43:46,138
coat collar up, a hat and was alone.
1365
01:43:46,513 --> 01:43:48,849
It was the first time
I had ever seen him alone.
1366
01:43:48,932 --> 01:43:51,393
And nobody was stopping him
and nobody was doing anything.
1367
01:43:51,476 --> 01:43:53,186
And nobody cared.
1368
01:43:53,270 --> 01:43:54,646
And nobody cared.
1369
01:44:01,486 --> 01:44:06,533
Is the man going to talk about his dark ages,
when his career had that little stroke?
1370
01:44:06,867 --> 01:44:08,577
When his voice ran away from home?
1371
01:44:08,660 --> 01:44:11,163
When his records started selling
like used Edsels.
1372
01:44:11,496 --> 01:44:12,497
Nope.
1373
01:44:12,915 --> 01:44:15,042
The man is an incorrigible optimist.
1374
01:44:15,125 --> 01:44:16,668
A firm believer in cliches.
1375
01:44:17,085 --> 01:44:19,046
He has a philosophy about trouble.
1376
01:44:19,296 --> 01:44:21,256
Don't feed it, maybe it'll go away.
1377
01:44:22,049 --> 01:44:25,093
Sure, I've met frustration
and I don't like him either.
1378
01:44:25,427 --> 01:44:28,513
I know discouragement, despair
and all those other cats.
1379
01:44:29,181 --> 01:44:33,435
But I guess I knew that sooner or later
something good was bound to happen to me.
1380
01:44:33,769 --> 01:44:35,646
And here's one of the best things
that ever did.
1381
01:44:46,198 --> 01:44:48,492
When I read the book From Here To Eternity,
1382
01:44:48,659 --> 01:44:50,577
I said, "I gotta play Maggio."
1383
01:44:50,702 --> 01:44:52,955
I've known 100 Maggios
in my neighbourhood.
1384
01:44:53,538 --> 01:44:54,998
And I may have been one.
1385
01:44:56,708 --> 01:45:00,003
When the news broke in the trade papers that
1386
01:45:00,253 --> 01:45:02,756
Columbia had bought it
and they were going to make the film of it,
1387
01:45:03,215 --> 01:45:06,927
I spoke to Harry Cohn,
who was then the head of Columbia Pictures,
1388
01:45:07,052 --> 01:45:08,720
and I said, "I'd like to play that."
1389
01:45:08,804 --> 01:45:10,931
He said, "You've never done a dramatic role.
1390
01:45:11,014 --> 01:45:13,308
"You're a guy who sings
and dances with Gene Kelly."
1391
01:45:13,392 --> 01:45:16,311
And I said, "But that's the kind of thing
I think I can do."
1392
01:45:16,687 --> 01:45:21,775
Sinatra from the beginning
kept sending cables to Harry Conn and to me
1393
01:45:21,900 --> 01:45:23,360
calling himself Maggio,
1394
01:45:23,902 --> 01:45:25,237
signing Maggio.
1395
01:45:25,487 --> 01:45:28,156
Saying that he was the person
to play that part.
1396
01:45:28,949 --> 01:45:31,243
But I do suspect that Ava
1397
01:45:32,077 --> 01:45:35,622
went to Harry Cohn and said,
"You gotta give him the job.
1398
01:45:35,956 --> 01:45:37,749
"Or he'll jump off a building or something."
1399
01:45:38,917 --> 01:45:43,296
Their marriage was not going swimmingly,
but he had to get back on his feet.
1400
01:45:43,380 --> 01:45:45,257
She knew that better than anybody.
1401
01:45:45,549 --> 01:45:47,384
She placed a call to Harry and said,
1402
01:45:47,592 --> 01:45:50,262
"You know who should play Maggio,
don´t you?
1403
01:45:50,387 --> 01:45:52,305
"That son of bitch husband of mine."
1404
01:45:54,099 --> 01:45:55,642
It's pretty funny, yeah.
1405
01:45:56,435 --> 01:45:59,604
So finally they said,
"All right, let's test Sinatra."
1406
01:46:00,105 --> 01:46:02,649
Sinatra came up to my office
on the day of the test
1407
01:46:02,733 --> 01:46:04,401
and said, "How do I play this scene?"
1408
01:46:04,484 --> 01:46:08,488
I said, "it's easy. All you do is make them
laugh and cry at the same time."
1409
01:46:08,697 --> 01:46:10,949
Anyway he went down and he made the test.
1410
01:46:11,491 --> 01:46:14,369
There's a scene where I'm talking
to the hooker in the bar.
1411
01:46:14,453 --> 01:46:17,039
I just did what I thought
was a natural thing to do.
1412
01:46:17,122 --> 01:46:20,417
And we did it once, it was very short.
I don't think it was more than three minutes.
1413
01:46:21,460 --> 01:46:23,837
And they said thank you very much and I left.
1414
01:46:24,004 --> 01:46:27,215
When I heard that Eli Wallach,
who's my dearest friend,
1415
01:46:27,299 --> 01:46:29,092
and one of the finest actors in the world...
1416
01:46:29,259 --> 01:46:31,720
When I heard that he tested for it,
I said forget it.
1417
01:46:32,137 --> 01:46:35,182
He gonna win it because
he's a seasoned actor
1418
01:46:35,265 --> 01:46:39,436
and he's really good, a fine performer.
1419
01:46:45,233 --> 01:46:47,527
For years and years there's this story
1420
01:46:48,820 --> 01:46:52,699
that Frank Sinatra got the role
in From Here To Eternity
1421
01:46:52,949 --> 01:46:57,287
'cause his mafia friends threatened
the producers of that movie.
1422
01:46:58,121 --> 01:47:02,542
If I had this part in the picture, you know,
it puts me right back up on top again.
1423
01:47:03,376 --> 01:47:05,545
I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse.
1424
01:47:08,590 --> 01:47:09,674
That's absurd.
1425
01:47:09,758 --> 01:47:10,926
The Godfather thing is...
1426
01:47:11,093 --> 01:47:13,220
The Godfather thing is a wonderful story.
1427
01:47:13,303 --> 01:47:16,431
It just doesn't happen to be true,
as documentary.
1428
01:47:17,390 --> 01:47:21,269
Wallach's agent asked for twice
what Wallach had made
1429
01:47:21,353 --> 01:47:23,897
and Cohn absolutely refused to do that.
1430
01:47:23,980 --> 01:47:26,983
That was not the way
that Harry ran his studio.
1431
01:47:27,400 --> 01:47:31,488
But I said, "Let's go back
and look at the Sinatra test again.
1432
01:47:31,696 --> 01:47:33,532
"Maybe it's better than we thought it was."
1433
01:47:33,824 --> 01:47:37,452
Wallach looked like prize fighter,
like he can take care of himself.
1434
01:47:38,411 --> 01:47:41,289
Sinatra looked like a plucked chicken,
just pitiful,
1435
01:47:41,373 --> 01:47:44,543
and that helped the characterisation.
1436
01:47:44,626 --> 01:47:47,420
It was all there, you didn't have to play it.
1437
01:47:49,756 --> 01:47:51,675
So, we started to shoot the picture.
1438
01:48:05,689 --> 01:48:09,025
And all I did was go to work every morning,
be in bed at 10:30.
1439
01:48:09,234 --> 01:48:12,237
Once I got it, I said I'm gonna
work my ass off for this thing.
1440
01:48:13,572 --> 01:48:15,574
One, two, three, four.
1441
01:48:15,657 --> 01:48:17,784
One, two, three, four.
1442
01:48:18,451 --> 01:48:21,037
The best help I ever had
was from Monty Clift.
1443
01:48:21,496 --> 01:48:24,749
And Monty was a wonderful
dissector of the script.
1444
01:48:25,000 --> 01:48:27,919
And we made changes,
little tiny changes constantly.
1445
01:48:29,296 --> 01:48:31,339
A couple times I said to Fred,
"This is new to me.
1446
01:48:31,423 --> 01:48:34,676
"I wanna check with you to find out
if the approach I have is proper."
1447
01:48:34,759 --> 01:48:36,595
And he would brush me off
about the whole thing.
1448
01:48:37,179 --> 01:48:38,847
A month out in Honolulu with Freddy,
1449
01:48:38,930 --> 01:48:40,473
I said, "There must be something
missing in my script.
1450
01:48:40,557 --> 01:48:44,102
"It went from scene number 162 to 164."
1451
01:48:44,227 --> 01:48:47,772
And he said, "Well, do something.
What would a drunk do at the bar?"
1452
01:48:47,939 --> 01:48:49,691
And I said,
"Drunks do a lot of the things at bars."
1453
01:48:49,774 --> 01:48:52,319
Bartender! A whisky, a large whisky.
1454
01:48:53,778 --> 01:48:54,779
Excuse me.
1455
01:48:55,030 --> 01:48:56,740
Hey, buddy.
1456
01:48:57,574 --> 01:48:58,909
Sam.
1457
01:49:00,035 --> 01:49:04,122
Hey, coming out, fellas,
the terror of Gimbels' basement.
1458
01:49:04,206 --> 01:49:07,626
Stand back there now.
Here we go, seven for daddy, five deuce.
1459
01:49:07,876 --> 01:49:09,419
Hey, seven.
1460
01:49:10,795 --> 01:49:11,838
Snake eyes.
1461
01:49:13,131 --> 01:49:14,299
That's the story of my life.
1462
01:49:16,676 --> 01:49:20,096
Sinatra was doing the movie for $8,000
for eight weeks' work,
1463
01:49:20,180 --> 01:49:23,016
which was okay if you're a mechanic,
1464
01:49:23,099 --> 01:49:24,851
but was not big star money.
1465
01:49:25,477 --> 01:49:27,562
I did it because I knew I was gonna survive,
1466
01:49:27,687 --> 01:49:31,816
and I knew that one day I was gonna wake up
and say, "Okay, it's all over."
1467
01:49:32,484 --> 01:49:34,194
I cleaned the house.
1468
01:49:34,319 --> 01:49:36,196
Clean sweep is what I did.
1469
01:49:36,321 --> 01:49:39,658
Got rid of my accountant.
I straightened myself out, I stopped drinking.
1470
01:49:40,533 --> 01:49:42,577
I was vice president in charge
of artists and repertoire
1471
01:49:42,661 --> 01:49:45,705
and Sinatra had hit bottom
and I mean bottom.
1472
01:49:45,997 --> 01:49:48,124
And Frank could not get a record contract.
1473
01:49:49,000 --> 01:49:51,253
And I didn't know Frank, I'd never met him
and I got a call one day
1474
01:49:51,336 --> 01:49:54,089
from the William Morris Agency,
a man named Sam Weisbord.
1475
01:49:54,256 --> 01:49:57,926
And he said,
"We've just taken on Sinatra as his agents."
1476
01:49:58,009 --> 01:49:59,678
He said,
"Would you be interested in signing him?"
1477
01:49:59,761 --> 01:50:01,012
And I said, "Sure."
1478
01:50:01,263 --> 01:50:03,139
And he said, "You would?"
1479
01:50:03,265 --> 01:50:07,102
I said, "Sure, there's talent still there.
Bring him in. I'd like to sign him."
1480
01:50:15,110 --> 01:50:18,029
On the 30th of April, 1953,
1481
01:50:18,238 --> 01:50:22,075
he recorded I've Got The World On A String
and Don't Worry 'bout Me
1482
01:50:22,409 --> 01:50:24,160
and didn't look back.
1483
01:50:30,041 --> 01:50:32,043
It was a brand new guy
1484
01:50:32,127 --> 01:50:35,380
and a certain confidence
after coming through hell
1485
01:50:35,463 --> 01:50:37,799
and getting a contract at Capitol.
1486
01:50:40,302 --> 01:50:42,012
When I went over to Capitol Records,
1487
01:50:42,095 --> 01:50:44,597
Nelson was what they call
the house arranger.
1488
01:50:44,764 --> 01:50:47,726
And he was writing for practically everybody,
all of the singers on the label.
1489
01:50:47,809 --> 01:50:51,479
And we got started pretty good
and we just left it that way.
1490
01:50:56,735 --> 01:50:58,695
Well, a lot of the things
that we laid out together
1491
01:50:59,863 --> 01:51:02,407
were done with his suggestive phrases.
1492
01:51:02,490 --> 01:51:04,909
Frank had enough background
in classical music
1493
01:51:05,076 --> 01:51:07,287
to be able to describe what he wanted.
1494
01:51:09,331 --> 01:51:11,958
He just became in charge of everything.
1495
01:51:12,542 --> 01:51:17,255
That control, which had always been
hovering in Sinatra's soul,
1496
01:51:17,630 --> 01:51:19,758
was now accepted.
1497
01:51:21,509 --> 01:51:23,303
I went to the art department,
1498
01:51:23,428 --> 01:51:26,306
I said, "Can you sketch me
a cover of a street corner
1499
01:51:26,389 --> 01:51:28,683
"with a guy leaning against
a lamppost smoking a cigarette?"
1500
01:51:28,767 --> 01:51:31,478
Then I sat with Nelson and I said,
"Okay, we want songs
1501
01:51:31,561 --> 01:51:34,773
"belonging to a title called
Songs for Young Lovers."
1502
01:51:35,690 --> 01:51:37,525
And that was the album.
1503
01:51:38,485 --> 01:51:41,112
And this thing took off like a goddam rocket.
1504
01:51:57,629 --> 01:52:02,384
From Here To Eternity marked
a change in his career forever,
1505
01:52:02,467 --> 01:52:05,678
because people were forced to accept him
1506
01:52:05,804 --> 01:52:08,681
as force in drama.
1507
01:52:09,182 --> 01:52:11,643
And I don't think they ever saw him like that.
1508
01:52:12,143 --> 01:52:13,353
Prew,
1509
01:52:14,145 --> 01:52:15,814
Prew, listen.
1510
01:52:16,689 --> 01:52:18,566
Fatso done it, Prew.
1511
01:52:18,650 --> 01:52:20,652
He likes to whack me in the gut.
1512
01:52:21,152 --> 01:52:23,113
He asked me if it hurts.
1513
01:52:23,446 --> 01:52:25,407
And I spit at him like always.
1514
01:52:26,157 --> 01:52:29,744
I think what made people enjoy it and like it
1515
01:52:30,328 --> 01:52:32,831
was my inner love for doing it
1516
01:52:32,956 --> 01:52:35,500
and wanting it and needing it so badly.
1517
01:52:35,750 --> 01:52:38,420
I had to get out, Prew. I had to get out.
1518
01:52:40,672 --> 01:52:45,135
At Hollywood's Pantages Theatre, it's the
motion picture industry's night of nights.
1519
01:52:45,218 --> 01:52:47,345
And the film capital's top stars
1520
01:52:47,429 --> 01:52:50,682
turn out for the annual presentation
of the coveted Oscars.
1521
01:52:51,099 --> 01:52:53,351
Tell me about your recollections
of Oscar night.
1522
01:52:53,768 --> 01:52:57,647
I bought a gold coin with an Oscar on it,
1523
01:52:57,897 --> 01:52:59,274
like he was going to win.
1524
01:52:59,357 --> 01:53:01,359
And he came to my house for dinner
1525
01:53:01,526 --> 01:53:04,320
and he took Nancy and Frankie with him.
1526
01:53:04,529 --> 01:53:06,698
That was quite a night, I was 10.
1527
01:53:07,699 --> 01:53:10,368
I looked so cute in my navy blue suit.
1528
01:53:11,161 --> 01:53:14,789
Little Nancy was wearing my little urban cape
that he'd given me.
1529
01:53:14,873 --> 01:53:18,418
It was a thrill and he was jubilant.
1530
01:53:18,710 --> 01:53:20,211
And I said, "You're gonna get it."
1531
01:53:21,754 --> 01:53:24,716
The winner is Frank Sinatra
in From Here To Eternity.
1532
01:53:46,571 --> 01:53:48,031
That's a clever opening.
1533
01:53:50,575 --> 01:53:51,993
Ladies and gentlemen,
1534
01:53:53,703 --> 01:53:56,956
I'm deeply thrilled and very moved.
1535
01:53:58,333 --> 01:54:02,754
And I really don't know what to say
because this is a whole new kind of thing.
1536
01:54:04,756 --> 01:54:06,591
Song and dance man type stuff.
1537
01:54:07,383 --> 01:54:10,261
And I'm terribly pleased
1538
01:54:10,345 --> 01:54:13,181
and if start thanking everybody,
I'll do a one-reeler up here,
1539
01:54:13,264 --> 01:54:14,599
so I'd better not.
1540
01:54:15,099 --> 01:54:18,436
And I'd just like to say, however, that
1541
01:54:19,312 --> 01:54:22,565
they're doing a lot of songs here tonight
but nobody asked me...
1542
01:54:24,984 --> 01:54:28,446
I love you, though, thank you very much.
I'm absolutely thrilled.
1543
01:55:09,988 --> 01:55:13,575
He was very, very moved by that.
It stunned him.
1544
01:55:19,831 --> 01:55:23,876
I think that everybody was disappointed
there wasn't some extended celebration.
1545
01:55:24,002 --> 01:55:25,837
He wanted to be with himself.
1546
01:55:26,004 --> 01:55:29,424
And he said, "I just went home,
parked the car and I walked."
1547
01:55:31,426 --> 01:55:32,760
"And Walked."
135756
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