415 MONROE STREET - SINATRA AT 100

Ah, yes, Frank Sinatra - my very favorite singer of all time. I wrote this piece for this month's issue of our community magazine, but seeing as how most of you don't live here, I wanted to get it into my blog.        

Does the address 415 Monroe Street, Hoboken, NJ, seem familiar? Hoboken? Right across the East River from New York, New York? At that address, on December 12^th, one hundred years ago this month, Hoboken’s most famous son, one Francis Albert Sinatra, was born.

Is there anyone reading this article who doesn’t recognize the name or face of Frank Sinatra? His music spans generations, from those who were the “Bobbysoxers”, on through to the “Gen-Xers” and today’s “Millennials”. His vintage vinyl recordings are collectors’ items, and there is a brisk business today in Sinatra CDs and downloaded music.

There are many biographies, memoirs, and critical books about Frank Sinatra. Even without reading any of them, people know the outline of his life: his birth to Italian immigrant parents, his luck in landing a job with Harry James and the great bands thereafter, his early mid-life crisis around 1950, when his marriage and his life seemed to fall apart, and his redemption and Academy Award for his role as Angelo Maggio in From here to Eternity. His career was reborn, and in later years he went on to outstanding success in several fields, not the least of which were his savvy business investments.

Sinatra was the singer’s singer. His timing, phrasing, and enunciation were what sold a song. You understood every word. He had a great instinct for choosing the right song, the right arrangement, and the right band or orchestra to back him. Luciano Pavarotti might be the only serious contender who comes to mind as having Sinatra’s equivalent cultural impact, and the two, admirers of each other, got along well. Both were “larger than life”, flamboyant entertainers who knew how to engage and enthrall an audience.

Except for little bits and pieces like the fact that is favorite color was orange, there’s probably nothing new any article on him could tell us. But it’s good to be celebrating his centennial, just as it’s always good to hear a Sinatra song by chance. We stop, listen, smile, and the day just got better. He sang the best of songwriters from Irving Berlin to Jimmy Webb. The titles sing in our minds just reading the names of some of his hits: Angel Eyes, Strangers in the Night, That’s Life, Gone With the Wind, Witchcraft, All or Nothing at All, Blues in the Night, You Go to My Head, Time After Time, Fly Me to the Moon, I’ll ever Smile Again, The World We Knew, Ebb Tide. Most appreciated by those of us from the “Silent Generation” and the “Baby Boomers”: It Was a Very Good Year. 

“Old Blue Eyes” began life in a cold water flat on the east coast, known only to his family. He died 82 years later in Los Angeles, known to the world.

SINATRA BY THE NUMBERS

1 – First of Billboard Magazine’s Number-one Singles: I’ll Never Smile Again, 1940

2 – Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor in From Here to Eternity in 1953, and the 

      Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1970

3 - His children: Nancy, Frank Jr., and Tina

4 - His wives: Nancy Barbato, Ava Gardner, Mia Farrow, and Barbara Marx

5 - Members of the Rat Pack: Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis, Jr., 

         and Joey Bishop

11 - Grammy Awards

42 - The denomination of the “Sinatra” U.S. Postage Stamp issued in 1980

57 - Movies he was in from 1944 to 1988

61 - Record albums – not including countless single titles that number around 1,000.

100+ Nominations and awards, documentaries, cameos, radio and television shows and concerts, all too numerous to mention

THAT'S INTERESTING

One day last month I read the following entry at The Writer’s Almanac:

“And today is the birthday of travel writer and novelist Mary Morris (books by this author), born in Chicago (1947). She grew up on the north shore of Lake Michigan, in Highland Park, which was largely rural at that time. She spent her free time roaming the woods and horseback riding through the cornfields. On one outing, she rode her horse across Adlai Stevenson’s front yard. He came out and gave her a wave. She went to college at Tufts University and spent her junior year at a study-abroad program in Paris, which kindled her interest in travel. As the old song goes, “How Ya Gonna Keep ’Em Down on the Farm (After They’ve Seen Paree)?” Morris went to graduate school first at Harvard, and then at Columbia, and although she often writes about the Midwest, she never returned to Illinois for any length of time. She lives in Brooklyn now, and teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College.”

Interesting entry to be sure. This gal is about my age, just a bit younger, and seems to have had an interesting life, one that allowed her to roam and write about it. What made me do a mental double-take was the inclusion of that bit about Adlai Stevenson waving to her as she rode by. Why did the Almanac writer include that? And what did that have to do with the price of rice in China? Is that her real claim to fame? I wouldn’t think so.

So it got me to thinking: what brushes have I had with the famous folks? Not that any of them made much of a difference in my life – except that I can sometimes, as the Brits say, dine on the stories.

Well, there was the time at the 1957 dedication of the new Girl Scout headquarters in New York City that I was approached by Averill Harriman. He was interested in the patches I’d just bought, and it wound up that he and a group of us scouts got our picture on the first page of the second section of the New York Times.

Then there was the time in Barbados that I got to the hotel just a week after Bennett Cerf, Roz Russell, and Frank Sinatra (be still my heart) and their spouses. Why did everyone there have to tell me what I missed?!

I once did have a door at a New York City bank held for me by Howard Cosell, and Frank and I did sleep in a bed once slept in by Bill Gates and his wife in a Provençal chateau.

Are you impressed? Oh, please look impressed!   (Nah! I wouldn't be impressed either.)