The sultan of swoon

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/11/2015 (3928 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Frank Sinatra was a singer, an actor, a legend. He was a generous humanitarian, a kind friend and a loving husband and father.

He was also a grown-up street thug who wanted to play with the big Mafia boys, a man with his eye on the prize at every given moment and often a cruel companion to his friends and lovers in moments of embarrassment, stress or humiliation.

With all those contradictions to talk about, it’s no wonder writer, reviewer and bestselling author James Kaplan’s newest biography takes nearly 1,000 pages to chronicle just 17 years of Sinatra’s life, between 1954 and 1971. What’s particularly unexpected is how compelling the story is and how every one of those pages is eminently readable.

Kaplan’s extensive research, eye for detail and skill at turning a phrase make Sinatra: The Chairman a worthy followup to his 2010 New York Times bestseller Sinatra: The Voice.

He picks up where the first book left off, as Sinatra begins his comeback in March 1954 by accepting a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in From Here to Eternity. This volume’s filled to the brim with tidbits about Sinatra and other stars of the era, such as Bogie and Bacall, Bing Crosby, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.

After winning the Oscar, Sinatra kept busy making movies, recording albums, performing in Las Vegas and making television appearances. The story shifts from Miami to Las Vegas to New York to Hollywood, back and forth, again and again, following a man who is unable to be alone or spend time with his own thoughts, and always travels with an entourage.

Kaplan delivers lines with a panache befitting Sinatra himself. “Dooby dooby doo was the new ring-a-ding-ding,” he says of the success of Strangers in the Night, managing not to sound slick or flippant. He has a real knack for looking at several points of view and offering plausible explanations as to what motivated Sinatra’s actions without apologizing for the behaviour, good or bad.

Sinatra’s dramatic personal life is also recounted in detail. He would divorce actress Ava Gardner in 1957 and get into, and then out of, an ill-fated marriage to Mia Farrow in the late 1960s before marrying Barbara Marx in 1976. But no matter his marital status, he kept busy with many women at once, including starlets Peggy Connelly and Kim Novak, as well as the widowed Lauren Bacall among oh-so-many others.

Sinatra’s blazing temper and capacity for icy coolness to those who displeased him made being around him unpredictable. The crooner known for inhabiting the emotion of almost every song he sang seemed incapable of doing the same in his daily life, as Kaplan discovers through interviews with surviving family and friends, as well as media coverage of the day and other biographies.

Kaplan’s reviewing background makes his sections on Sinatra’s career particularly interesting, providing almost mini-reviews of the scores of albums and movies Sinatra worked on during this period. He’s not afraid to criticize a poor performance or praise a good one, and makes the history relevant by, for example, describing a character in a Sinatra movie as a proto-Don Draper, creating a link between 60 years ago and today.

The late 1950s was also when the infamous Rat Pack concept was formed. The name originated at a party at the home of Humphrey Bogart, but after Bogie’s death, the name began to be applied to the entourage surrounding Sinatra.

Kaplan notes the legend of the Rat Pack greatly outweighed the real thing:

“The Rat Pack was an idea, even more than it was a reality. And though Frank, Dean (Martin) and Sammy (Davis Jr.) were three real men, their respective myths tend, to this day, to jostle reality aside. Throw in Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford as window dressing, or ballast, and you’ve got a sharkskin-suited, skinny-tied, chain-smoking, chain-drinking Dionysian parade float. Watch it trundle down Main Street, cheer as it goes by. We won’t see its likes again. Even if it wasn’t quite there in the first place.”

Most of the legend relates to a time when the crew was in Vegas filming Ocean’s Eleven, when they all took to the stage for two shows a night of never-before-seen debauchery and off-colour jokes at the Sands.

Kaplan also highlights Sinatra’s connection to both John F. Kennedy and the Mafia, in particular Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, as well as later connections to U.S. presidents Johnson, Nixon and Reagan.

In Sinatra: The Chairman, Kaplan’s grasp of the fears, emotions and inner turmoil of a legend is masterful, and leaves the reader hanging on every word.

 

Julie Kentner is a Winnipeg writer who now knows more about Frank Sinatra than she ever thought she would.