"(instrumental music playing)" "Frank Sinatra, dead tonight at the age of 82, which brought to an end a remarkable life that was on one kind of stage or another for six decades." "Martin Scorsese:" "Idol of mine and millions, and a great Italian American, great American." "And great actor, by the way." "Bill Clinton:" "I think every American would have to smile and say he really did do it his way." "British reporter:" "They dimmed the lights on the Vegas Strip in his honor." "Here, and in dozens of cities across the country, radio stations have been playing nothing but Sinatra." "(song playing)" "(Charles Aznavour speaking in French)" "_" "_" "_" "_" "Frank Sinatra:" "♪ It's quarter to 3:00 ♪" "♪ There's no one in the place ♪" "♪ 'Cept you and me ♪" "♪ So set 'em up, Joe ♪" "♪ I got a little story ♪" "♪ I think you should know... ♪" "My first recollection of Frank's voice was coming out of the jukebox." "It was in a dark bar on a Sunday afternoon when my mother and I went in searching for my father." "And she said-- I'll always remember, she said, "Listen to that." "That's Frank Sinatra." "He's from New Jersey."" "♪ Make it one for my baby... ♪" "Springsteen:" "And while his music became synonymous with black tie, good life, the best booze, women, sophistication, it was the deep blueness of Frank's voice that affected me the most." "♪ I got the routine... ♪" "Pete Hamill:" "He was the poet laureate of loneliness." "His songs were haunted by it." "♪ In the machine... ♪" "For all his fame, he loved solitude." "♪ Feelin' so bad... ♪" "Alex Gibney:" "We don't know what he thought about his own life, because he never wrote it down in a book, but there was one mysterious moment when he gave us all a clue." "It was when, at the very peak of his career, he suddenly decided to retire." "♪ I could tell you a lot ♪" "♪ But you've got to be ♪" "♪ True to your code... ♪" "Frank Sinatra, Jr.:" "The beginning of March that year," "I was working somewhere in Florida, and he called me, and he said," ""I think I'm going to hang it up."" "Tina Sinatra:" "One afternoon by the pool," "Dad was with his black flare pen, making his music list, his song list." "Gibney:" "He never showed the set list to anybody." "But in the run-up to the show at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, he must have been thinking about it." "11 songs to tell the story of a life." "Rosalind Russell:" "Ladies and gentleman," "Frank Sinatra." "(applause)" "(band begins playing)" "And this was the beginning." "♪ All or nothing at all ♪" "(applause)" "♪ Half a love ♪" "♪ Never appealed to me... ♪" "Nancy Sinatra, Jr.:" "The night itself was star-studded and exciting and sad and a lot of mixed emotions." "♪ All or nothing at all ♪" "♪ If it's love ♪" "♪ There ain't no in-between ♪" "♪ Why begin and stop something... ♪" "What startled me about that film was it has that rough handheld look to it." "And how appropriate that it should be at this particular event that we don't see the concert film of Sinatra where everything is perfectly controlled." "♪ Don't smile, I'll be lost ♪" "♪ Beyond recall ♪" "♪ The kiss in your eyes, the touch of your hand... ♪" "You can hear the guy backstage kicking the cord out of the socket, and suddenly the mic goes bad." "(sound fades)" "People holding those cameras were as swept up in the moment as everybody in the audience or the people onstage, the orchestra, Sinatra himself." "They knew this was the end of the line for this great artist." "(voice faded) ♪ So you see, I've got to say no ♪" "♪ No, no!" "♪" "These were some of the milestone points in his career, musically." "♪ All ♪" "♪ Or nothing at all. ♪" "(applause)" "Walter Cronkite:" "Going back to the very beginning, there have been conflicting stories about your childhood in Hoboken, quoted by people who have done interviews with you." "There's this kind of general version of the near-slum conditions in Hoboken." "And then there are others-- there was an article some years ago by a very good magazine writer who said that this isn't so, you had all the toys you needed, that you even had a Chrysler at the age of 15." "Most of the-- of the biographies I've read, or articles I've read, pardon me, about my young days or my childhood, were rather dreamed up, rather fictitious." "I read many of them and I said to myself," ""I don't remember this." "This is really strange."" "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ The mist on the meadow... ♪" "Sinatra:" "I was born in 1915, on December 12th and I weighed 12 3/4 lbs." "And when I was removed from her womb by a midwife, there was a problem." "I didn't want to come out of there." "(laughter)" "And they finally-- they sent up a flare for a doctor." "And upon removing me, I was pretty well damaged on my left side of my neck and ear and face." "And my grandmother, who had more sense than anybody in the room as far as I'm concerned, because she" "(laughter) She knew what to do with me." "And she stuck me under the ice-cold water in the cold-water flat and apparently got some blood moving around and whacked me around a little bit." "And I have blessed that day, that moment in her honor ever since." "Operator:" "Hi." "Hy Gardner:" "Yes, dear." "I've been able to contact Mr. and Mrs. Martin Sinatra." " Hello, Mrs. Sinatra?" " Hello?" "Yes, Mr. Gardner." "Just one moment." " Hello, Mrs. Sinatra." " Hello, Mr. Gardner." "It's awfully nice to talk to you and have you come to the phone." "I know the last time Frank was in town, you weren't feeling very well." "Are you fully recovered now?" "Well, yes, I feel pretty well now." "And Frank called me only recently while I was in the hospital." "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ Fools rush in ♪" "♪ Where angels fear to tread... ♪" "Sinatra:" "I was the only child." "And she was tough on me." "I mean, she was very strict with me, my mother was." "Always strict." "She told me to stay away from the railroad tracks because a kid one time-- one day, a kid lost an arm." "About three years later, another guy-- a little guy lost his leg." "And if she found out I was down there by the railroad tracks, she would whack me around out of fear-- out of fear." "♪ Then I don't care... ♪" "Sinatra:" "I think the first thing I was ever conscious of was the drive that she had all the time." "Her constant seeking for us to do better, to constantly do better." "Frank, Jr.:" "Dolly Sinatra was an Earth mother." "Everybody became her son, her daughter." "Everybody's problems became her problems." "Tina:" "And that went from psychological problems to physical problems." "Grandma had become a midwife in her neighborhood." "When there were families with children they couldn't afford to feed, then was it right to bring another child into that neediness?" "And she was a good Catholic." "I don't think she thought that abortion was a great thing, but I think in those days, in that Depression, it was-- it was necessity." "She did what needed to be done." "Sinatra:" "My father was withdrawn, he was a shy man." "He spoke perfect English, but he couldn't put words together." "He was still a "dese, dems and dose."" "I remember that he had to be intimidated by my mother's innate knowledge." "She was innately bright, my mother was." "They both came over, different families came over." "They came into Ellis Island." "One from Catania the other from Genoa." "The Genoese were the original bankers." "They were lawyers." "And she used to say to me," ""I think that I'm a half Italian, half Jew."" "I said, "Maybe you are, Ma." She said, "Well, I'm smart."" "She said, "That's where they came from, where I came from."" "And consequently, she succeeded." "She made her way in life, she did very well considering." "(swing music playing)" "Teachout:" "When Sinatra was young, being an Italian American was being the object of bigotry." "You were part of a minority group, one that was stereotyped as being either comical and absurd-- the organ grinder with the monkey-- or dangerous and threatening-- the guy with the sub-machine gun." "And of course, Sinatra growing up where he did, when he did, understood that that guy with the machine gun was real." "Sinatra:" "My father at the time was rarely at home because he was a protector for the bootlegger trucks." "They used to have a car that would follow the trucks, so it wouldn't get hijacked." "Frank, Jr.:" "During Prohibition, my grandfather had taken a job as a lookout on a truck that carried 90 proof contraband." "And apparently, the truck was hijacked by a rival gang mob, and he didn't duck fast enough and somebody hit him on the head, and he had a skull fracture." "He was bleeding everywhere." "My father as a little boy woke up and saw this." "Man:" "♪ Who could ask for anything more?" "♪" "♪ Who could ask for anything more?" "♪" "In those days, there were sayings." "In order to be an attorney or an accountant, you had to be a Jew." "In order to be a singer, you had to be an Italian." "In order to be a prize fighter, you had to be Irish, which is why he took the name Marty O'Brien." "(piano playing)" "Sinatra:" "I was about eight or nine years old." "The old man opened a saloon." "It was called Marty O'Brien's Bar." "John Lahr:" "The bar that they ran, they didn't run it as the Sinatras." "They took an Irish name." "Because the Italians were lower than the Irish in Hoboken, right?" "Hamill:" "Dolly-- he said she was the kind of woman who kept a little club behind the bar." "If somebody gave her some shit, she hit them with the club, put it under the bar, and kept talking." "Sinatra:" "They had in the bar a piano with a roll in it." "You put a nickel in it and it would play the songs." "And occasionally one of the men in the bar would pick me up and put me on the piano and I'd sing with the roll." "It was a horrendous voice, terrible." "I mean it was like a siren, you know." "♪ "Honest and truly I'm in love with you!" ♪" "Way up there like that." "(laughter)" "It's a wonder I ever got anywhere starting that way, is what kills me." "So one day I got a nickel or a dime, whatever it was, and I said," ""This is the racket." "This is what you got to be doing."" "(orchestral music playing)" "Sinatra:" "In my hometown, the city was, as I said, the square mile was almost divided in quarters." "One quarter was Italian, another quarter was of the Jewish families, except that we were also intermingled in the tenement houses." "Then the other quarter was the Irish, who politically ran the city." "They were outvoted any day of the week, but for some reason, when election time came, they would give coal and gifts and clothing to all of the other families and they would vote for the Irishmen all the time." "The blacks, of course, were kept in one part of the town." "They were such a small matter that we never knew they were there at all." "I don't remember too many black children in my classes." "Man:" "♪ The Boulevard of broken dreams ♪" "Teachout:" "I think it's easy for us to forget that he was also a boy and a young man at a time when everybody's life was difficult, when everybody was at risk." "The Depression was an all-encompassing experience for anybody who grew up in it." "And above all, it caused you to realize that life was hard." "It was not just going to be hard for you to make a living, it might actually be hard for you to survive." "♪ Always walking up and down ♪" "♪ But I left my soul ♪" "This was not theoretical for somebody like Sinatra, it was real." "It shaped his whole idea of professionalism, of his feeling that he had to be the best performer, the best professional that he could possibly be, because if you're going to survive in the '30s," "you had to do it by working very hard and being very lucky." "Frank, Jr.:" "In Italy, there were 55 discreet dialects of the Italian language." "My grandmother spoke all 55." "This put her in a position where people came to her as the neighborhood interpreter." "The next logical step in the '20s, she went into politics." "Sinatra:" "Then they wanted to reward my mother and give my father a job on the city payroll, right?" "A cop or a fireman, right?" "So she made him a fireman." "(orchestral music playing)" "Sinatra:" "Hoboken had about six movie theatres." "We only had one mile square." "We had the Lyric Theatre, the US Theatre, the Vaudeville Houses with a movie, we had the Rialto, we had the City Theatre." "And every time I saw somebody, I wanted to be them." "I wanted to be a ventriloquist, but then I saw jugglers and all that kind of jazz." "But I'm still thinking about singing." "I never lost that thing about singing in my head." "And I went to see performers." "I mean, not anybody famous, until I saw Bing." "♪ But now I'm back to cry my heart out ♪" "♪ For just one more chance... ♪" "Teachout:" "Bing Crosby was the first great pop singer in America and the first white singer to completely internalize the innovations of jazz, which he got directly from Louis Armstrong." "Sinatra heard these things and he said," ""That's what I want to do." "I want to be like that."" "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ I like New York in June ♪" "♪ How about you?" "♪" "♪ I like a Gershwin tune ♪" "♪ How about you?" "♪" "Sinatra:" "I started singing more in school with the dances on Friday nights." "Every other Friday night, we'd have a dance in the gymnasium." "And people would say to me, "Hey, you're pretty good."" "And that began to register in my head." "♪ How about you?" "♪" "When I went to the publishing houses, they would give away free orchestrations if they knew you-- complete stock orchestrations." "And I built a library and then I saved enough money and I bought a public address system." "Because before that, I sang through a megaphone." "Sinatra:" "You wouldn't know what that is." "(Bill Boggs) Rudy Vallée?" "(Sinatra)Yeah, Rudy Vallée." "Boggs:" "You actually used a megaphone?" "I had a megaphone and guys would throw pennies to try to see if they could get me to swallow the pennies." "A lot of fun those days." "Try it with shot glasses." "But I used to move a great deal." "They couldn't hit it." "Sinatra:" "Then came the microphone age and I thought, Jeez, if I could save some money..." "So for $60, I bought a whole outfit." "The microphone allowed for a new kind of singing because it magnified the voice so you didn't have to project." "What Sinatra sang was this longing and passion that was controlled in song." "Gardner:" "When did you first discover that Frank found out that he could sing?" "Dolly Sinatra:" "Well, I first discovered it when he didn't want to go to school anymore, outside of just going into these glee clubs all the time." "Uh-huh." "And how old was he at the time?" "At the time, he was about 16." "Uh-huh." "And naturally the principal sent for me and said he was just taking up space." "Was there a family crisis when you dropped out of high school?" "Oh, it was disastrous, absolutely disastrous." "My dad, you know, who never had too much of a formal education, was terribly disappointed." "He just couldn't understand it." "I pleaded with him, I said, "You've got to give me a chance to work on what I want to do."" "And he said something about, "Sure, chances and chances." ""10 years from now," he said, "you'll still be looking for chances." "You'll be a bum."" "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ All or nothing at all ♪" "♪ If it's love ♪" "♪ There ain't no in-between ♪" "♪ Why begin and stop ♪" "♪ Something that might have been?" "♪" "♪ You know, I'd rather ♪" "♪ Rather have nothing at all... ♪" "Charlie Pignone:" "Where did you first meet Frank?" "Nancy Sinatra, Sr.:" "In Long Branch, New Jersey, which is on the coast." "I knew his family, his aunt and uncle and their children." "Sinatra:" "Across the street," "Nancy's father and mother had a house." "And I saw this very pretty little girl sitting on the front stoop." "Nancy, Sr.:" "And he called across the street." "He says, "Hi, what are you doing?"" "And I said, "I'm giving myself a manicure."" "He said, "Would you give me one?" "And I said, "Sure." And I gave him a manicure." "And that's how I met him." "Sinatra:" "Well, I have a funny feeling that she was have-- she may have had eyes for me, because she was sitting out there alone, just staring across the street." "Nancy, Sr.:" "He lived in Hoboken, which was four miles from Jersey City, and I'd never been there." "So he called me after we met and he started to come over." "(band continues)" "And we went together for four and half, five years, or five and a half years." "I can't remember exactly." "I know that before Major Bowes, we were going together." "Major Bowes:" "Proud indeed of the brilliant careers that have been launched through the radio forum in New York City." "Sinatra:" "To get a start, there was a man on the radio called Major Bowes, who had an amateur program." "And you went and you auditioned." "I went over and I auditioned." "And they said, "Okay," ""we'll put you on the radio."" "And there were three other kids from my hometown who had-- who made up a trio, called The Three Aces-- very intelligent title for a group, The Three Aces." "Oh, boy, they took a lot of time to think that out." "(laughter)" "And Major Bowes loused that up by saying," ""You're gonna be The Hoboken Four."" "That took care of that whole situation like that." "Bowes:" "We have now The Hoboken Four." "They call themselves the singing and dancing fools." "Who'll speak for the group?" "Sinatra:" "I will." "I'm Frank." "We're looking for jobs." "How 'bout it?" "(laughter)" "Everyone that's ever heard us liked us." "We think we're pretty good." "Bowes:" "All right, what do you want to sing, or dance, or whatever it is you do?" "Sinatra:" "Well, we're gonna sing "Shine."" "Bowes:" "All right, let's have it." "The Hoboken Four." "♪ Shine and sway your blues'ies ♪" "♪ Why don't you shine?" "♪" "♪ Start with your shoes'ies ♪" "♪ Shine each place up, make it look like new ♪" "♪ Shine your face up ♪" "♪ I want to see you wear a smile or two ♪" "♪ Oh, shine your these and thoseies ♪" "♪ You'll find... ♪" "Sinatra:" "We performed and we won the first prize." "And we went out on the road, all over the United-- mostly over the United States, anyway." "And we started out on the train, we-- first stop was Chicago." "And I remember I was getting 75 bucks a week." "And I sent most of it home because we were living in the best hotels in the United States for a dollar a night." "But then when we got-- we got up around Seattle," "I decided that I'd had enough." "I got homesick, and also I wanted to go back to what I really started to do, to become a solo singer." "I didn't want to be part of it anymore." "And I told the guys and they stayed." "Nancy, Sr.:" "Well, you know, he used to write me letters." "He was lonely, I'll tell you that." "Pignone:" "Did you keep those letters?" "Nancy, Sr.:" "I tore them all up." "I kept one." "Sinatra:" "I had enough money and I bought a plane ticket." "I landed at Newark." "And Nancy's brother borrowed a car, so they came out and met me at the airport." "Then of course is when-- that's when I began to have trouble with my family." "I wasn't doing well because, you know, if an orchestra got a job on a Saturday night to play, they had six-- four men or six men." "They didn't have enough money to hire a singer." "But a lot of the guys I knew, they said," ""Well, listen, come on over and sing if you wanna sing, but we can't give you anything." You know." "So I did." "Shortly following that was when my old man one morning woke me up when he came home from the night shift..." "And he at this particular morning said to me," ""Why don't you just get out of the house and go out on your own?" is really what he said, you know?" ""Get out."" "And I think the egg was stuck in here for about 20 minutes." "I couldn't swallow it or get rid of it anyway." "My mother, of course, was nearly in tears, and-- but we agreed that it might be a good thing." "And I packed up a small case that I had and I came to New York." "Teachout:" "When Frank Sinatra was young," "New York was the center of American popular music." "The radio networks at that point were centered in New York." "The music business itself, Tin Pan Alley, these were centered in New York." "As a young man in New Jersey," "New York would have been Oz-- the magic city that he looked at from a distance, and say this is the place that I have to go in order to become what I want to become." "Sinatra:" "I just kind of bummed around." "I had about $60 in a savings account and I just hung around and got odd jobs." "I used to hang out at the publishing houses-- music publishing houses-- and I got to know Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn," "Saul Chaplin and all those guys." "That's how far back we go." "Jimmy Van Heusen was a piano player who would teach the singers the company's new songs so they could do it on the radio." "But I wasn't a big enough band-- artist to be taught the song by a guy like Van Heusen." "Couple of times when I was really kinda short," "I bunked with a musician of one of the bands in the Forrest Hotel." "About that point was the Christmas that came that I went home." "And I thought my old man was on 24 hour shift, but I had the days screwed up." "He was off 24 hours and he was at home." "And I brought two presents over to leave them there, 'cause he didn't speak to me for a long time." "He wouldn't talk to me." "And he met me at the door." "And of course it was a great homecoming." "He started to cry and I was teary, and it was just marvelous." "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ Here comes the night ♪" "♪ My cloak of blue ♪" "♪ Here comes the night ♪" "♪ With dreams of you... ♪" "Sinatra:" "But several months after the Christmas incident, a musician friend of mine told me there was a joint called The Rustic Cabin and they were forming a new band, and they were looking for a boy singer." "I went up and auditioned in Englewood Cliffs, up near the George Washington Bridge." "(phone ringing) I got the job at The Rustic Cabin." "Shortly after that, we got word that the WNEW Dance Parade was gonna pick up The Rustic Cabin every night of the week 11:00 to 11:15, or 11:15 to 11:30, whatever it was." "Suddenly my dad became the proudest man in the world, you know?" "He-- he couldn't wait to tell everybody or anybody that I was on a 15-minute dance remote program from New Jersey in some roadhouse somewhere, you know?" "And they'd all sit around the radio and listen at 11:00 at night for 15 minutes." "And in those days, I couldn't sing my way out of a paper bag, but they thought I was a big star, you know." "Anybody who got out on radio in the early days of radio was a very big star." "Sinatra:" "On my night off at The Rustic Cabin was when I would take Nancy out and we would go to see somebody." "I was always going out to see somebody else work." "That's when I ran into one of the men in the music business." "He said to me-- "Listen," he said," ""why don't you take some lessons?"" "And I said, "What kind of lessons?"" "He said, "Vocal lessons." He said, "You know, guys do that."" "I said, "Well, where do you find these guys?"" "He said, "There's a guy up over The Brass Rail."" "He said, "the restaurant." He said, "his name is Quinlan."" "He said, "He's an old drunk." He said, "He used to be at the Met" ""and he got kicked out of the Met."" "And he said, "You ought to go up and talk to him."" "So I went up and he was surly." "I think he was hungover anyways." "He said, "Who are you and how long have you been singing and why do you want to be a singer?"" "And all that kind of stuff." "I said, "Well, I'd like to be singer because I feel that I have an idea about singing."" ""Oh," he said, "you already got an idea."" "He said, "Why do you need me?"" "I said, "No, what I mean is, I just need some direction."" "He said, "I'll tell you what we'll do." "If you can handle $3 a week," he said," ""I'll give you three lessons a week."" "So I started, three lessons a week." "And I couldn't wait to get there every time I had a lesson." "I couldn't wait because I knew that I was learning something." "He was teaching me the proper way to sing." "I still use the same exercises, and then I developed some of my own." "As a matter of fact, I once put out a book with him." "We put out a paperback vocal calisthenic book, after I made it." "And we had drawings made of the mouth formation." "Man:" "Oh, right." "Sure." "You know, the "ee" sound, and the "oo" sound, and the "uhh." And there's no such thing as an "ahh."" "It's wrong." "Never sing "ahh."" "You sing "uh," U-H." "Uh." "Uh?" "That's across, up the roof of the mouth into the mask." "If you sing "ahh," it goes back into the throat, and it can break." "It can snap." "Now that's my first vocal lesson with you." " I'm ready." " And you'll get a bill next week." "Sinatra:" "I worked with him for a long time and then I began to get the jobs." "I got a couple little jobs." "I went to WNEW." "I didn't get any money, but car fare." "And Dinah Shore and I split a half hour." "She had 15 minutes and I had 15 minutes." "Don't you remember the early, early, early, early show we used to do on WNEW?" "Do I?" "Every time I think about them, I get tired." "Yeah." "Imagine having to sing love songs at 6:00 in the morning." "Oh, yeah." "And not even finishing the chorus." "There was never enough time." " And put all the emotion into it." " Yeah." "Gee whiz." "In a way, we were lucky, though, 'cause they used to give us free coffee." " Yeah." " And who could afford" " breakfast in those days?" " Yeah." "Together:" "♪ Here we are ♪" "♪ Out of cigarettes ♪" "♪ Holding hands and yawning ♪" "♪ Look how late it gets... ♪" "Sinatra:" "Now I was on the air twice, once at night and one in the morning." "Sinatra and Shore:" "♪ ...by dawn's early light... ♪" "And I got fan mail." "I'd get little postcards, two postcards, three postcards." "And girls would write to me, you know, penny postcards." "And I'd go and look in there right away and see how much mail-- did it get any bigger?" "It never got any bigger." "People began to hear me." "And they were saying, "Jesus, you're getting better." "You're really-- we see the difference in what's happening."" "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ How we met ♪" "♪ So the world... ♪" "He's singing about youthful essentially naive romance." "And he's doing it in a voice that is distinctly different from what anybody else was doing back then." "It is so clearly the voice of a young man." "♪ To tell them... ♪" "The ambition of being the greatest pop singer of his time, of his generation, was an ambition that couldn't have existed in Sinatra's imagination when he was young." "♪ When my book ends ♪" "♪ How to make ♪" "♪ Two lovers ♪" "♪ Of friends. ♪" "(applause)" "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ If her voice ♪" "♪ Is a song ♪" "♪ And her walk is a dance ♪" "♪ And if her laugh ♪" "♪ Is warm and free ♪" "♪ If I suddenly seem ♪" "♪ To be seeing a dream ♪" "♪ She's the right girl ♪" "♪ For me ♪" "♪ If the glow in her eyes... ♪" "Pignone:" "Do you remember when he asked you to marry him?" "Well, see, he was supposedly involved with other girls while we were going together, and I really don't know if that was true." "But he, believe me, wanted to get married." "Sinatra:" "When Nancy and I got married, you know, the Italian custom is to-- the bride has a satin, a white satin bag with a drawstring on it." "And you give envelopes, which is the most sensible thing, by the way, in the world, instead of a whole bunch of phony gifts that you never use." "And all the song guys chipped in." "I think there must have been 30 of them." "And they put like $2 a piece, or something." "And they gave me-- they gave us $60 for our wedding," "$50 or $60." "Sweet, you know, really touching." "Nancy, Sr.:" "I got married in '39, 1939." "I took a course in secretarial work," "I think I was earning" "I don't remember, very little a week." "Sinatra:" "She was making $22 a week, and I was at The Rustic Cabin making $15 a week." "Nancy, Sr.:" "And the minute we married, the career started to get better all the time." "♪ For me ♪" "♪ She's the right girl ♪" "♪ For me. ♪" "When we finished our last show at the Paramount," "I went home and I turned the radio on and I heard this remote coming from The Rustic Cabin." "And I heard a singer." "So I said, "Gee, this kid really sounds great." ""Maybe I'll take a run out there, and see if I can see him and listen to him."" "♪ Saturday night ♪" "♪ Is the loneliest night of the week ♪" "♪ I sing the song that I sang ♪" "♪ For the memories I usually seek ♪" "♪ Until I hear you ♪" "♪ At the door ♪" "♪ Until you're in my arms once more ♪" "♪ Saturday night is the loneliest night ♪" "♪ Of the week. ♪" "Sinatra:" "Harry James is listening to me all the time, and I don't know this, you see." "He was with Benny Goodman." "He was the first trumpet player with him." "He said to me, "We're all gonna start our own band." "How soon can you get out of here?"" "I said, "I have no contract here."" "I said, "How about tomorrow, how 'bout tonight?"" "So now I leave, and I go with Harry." "We go on the road." "When you're on the road with a dance band, you're moving all the time." "I mean, the action is going all the time, you know?" "And you could try things." "And nobody's saying, "Well, what are you doing?"" "Harry knew what I was doing." "He knew I was reaching and trying to find things." "Like a pitcher, you're trying a new curveball." "He had no arrangements made up for me yet, so we were faking things." "And we would do "Embraceable You,"" "and the band would kind of fill in with notes, and Harry would noodle with the trumpet, and "Stardust," which I hated, because everybody used to sing it and I had it up to here." "And a lot of the wives, it was like baseball wives." "You know, they all came across the country in a car." "Nancy, Sr.:" "I met him in Chicago." "That's where Nancy was conceived." "Our plan was not to get pregnant that fast." "In those days, there wasn't much money, and we were paying off a new car." "And I'm pregnant and he's worried, you know?" "(trumpet continues)" "He's always thinking ahead." "This man thinks a great deal." "Always did, as a kid even." "He always had an ambition." "He said he wanted to be very big in the industry." "He wanted to be-- When he saw Bing, you know, he felt that that was his ambition." "♪ I'm dreaming ♪" "♪ Of a white Christmas ♪" "♪ Just like the ones ♪" "♪ I used to know... ♪" "Tony Bennett:" "And Bing Crosby ruled the airwaves completely, you know?" "I mean every radio show in those days had 15, 20 minutes of Bing Crosby." "A single record, its called "White Christmas,"" "to this day, it's the biggest record that ever sold." "Sold 50 million records." "Crosby:" "♪ I'm dreaming ♪" "♪ Of a white Christmas... ♪" "Sinatra:" "All the time I was with Harry," "I just kept thinking about the next step." "I'd listen to Tommy Dorsey's band, and I'd listen to the singer with the band" "Jack Leonard was with the band." "But I had heard through the grapevine" "Tommy tried to screw him out of $3,000, and they were fighting." "To my knowledge, I was the first guy to tell Tommy about Frank." "A friend" " A girlfriend, she said, "Frank Sinatra has a record out called "All Or Nothing At All."" "And she said, "It is fantastic."" "And I mentioned it to Tommy." "Sinatra:" "♪ All or nothing at all... ♪" "Leonard:" "When I quit, the first guy he contacted was Frank." "Sinatra:" "He said, "How would you like to work with me?"" ""Oh," I said, "Jesus, Tom," I said," ""I got a two year deal with Harry." "I don't know."" "I said, "I'm dying to sing for you."" "'Cause Tommy was-- he and Glenn Miller, they were the two top orchestras." "So I didn't sleep all night, my eyes were jumpin', you know, I was so excited." "I went to the theater very early," "I was just sitting in the dressing room." "And Harry came." "I finally got up and I walked into his room." "And I walked in and I walked out, I walked in and I walked out." ""What are you, nervous?"" "I said, "Well, Jesus, I am nervous, Harry."" "I said, "I know what I'm going to ask you is a very tough thing."" "And he said, "Tommy Dorsey wants to hire you."" "Harry James:" "He was still signed with me." "I hadn't given him a written release," "I just said, "Sure, go ahead, Frank."" "You know, 'cause, really, I mean, I've always lived that way." "That word is stronger than the pen with me." "Sinatra:" "I was so happy and it even affected my singing now, it began to get more lofty than it was." "And I was doing better things." "I joined Tommy with a lot of malevolence in the band." "Oh, a lot of-- a lot of bad vibes." "They resented me for the fact that their friend Jack Leonard quit." "When you're with a band, it's very cliquey." "And when a new person comes in, it's like," ""You prove yourself, kiddo, you know, before you become one of the group."" "We were just sitting on the bandstand when Tommy announced this new singer." "Out on the stage walked this very skinny, unprepossessing-looking young man, and I thought, "Wow!"" "♪ Sometimes ♪" "♪ I wonder ♪" "♪ Why I spend ♪" "♪ The lonely nights ♪" "♪ Dreaming... ♪" "Stafford:" "He sang about eight bars and that whole theater became so quiet, you could have heard a pin drop." "You just knew you were hearing something quite unique." "♪ Once again with you ♪" "♪ When our love was new... ♪" "Tommy Dorsey had this incredible, incredible breath control." "(mimics horn playing) Without breathing." "(Dorsey playing)" "Sinatra:" "I watched him and I could never see him breathe." "16 bars at a time, I wonder how he does that." "If you could visualize a trombone player holds the mouthpiece, he was breathing in the corner of his mouth." "And that was my theory, do not break a phrase if you can do that, and keep the audience listening for the rest of the phrase." "He would be able to sing four lines of that song." "There was a seamlessness, a smoothness, and not one person is looking at anybody else." "They are completely under the spell of Sinatra's story." "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ Always will ♪" "Back-up singers:" "♪ Doo doo, doo doo ♪" "Sinatra:" "♪ My stardust melody ♪" "♪ The memory ♪" "♪ Of love's refrain. ♪" "Sinatra:" "We came to Los Angeles to open the Palladium, a great new dance hall." "We got bombed, everybody did the night before." "And I remember the bellboy came in and said," ""Hey!" "Everybody awake yet?" "We're in a war with Japan." "They bombed the Pearl Harbor."" "Franklin D. Roosevelt:" "With the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God." "Sinatra:" "Now we were getting angry." "If I had been single, I probably would have said," ""Hey, I want to volunteer." But I had a child." "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ If I don't see her ♪" "♪ Each day ♪" "♪ I miss her ♪" "♪ Gee, what a thrill ♪" "♪ Each time I kiss her ♪" "♪ Believe me, I've got a case ♪" "♪ On Nancy ♪" "♪ You with the laughing face ♪" "Nancy, Jr.:" "Dad was in Hollywood with the band when I was born back in Jersey City." "Band singer Jo Stafford recalled that he was so excited that all he did was talk about his new baby girl." "Sinatra:" "♪ But summer could take ♪" "♪ A few lessons from her ♪" "♪ She was a tomboy ♪" "♪ In lace ♪" "♪ That's Nancy ♪" "♪ With the laughing face... ♪" "Nancy, Sr.:" "Oh, my God, it was beautiful." "I was the first in the family of seven children to have a baby." "And the whole family spoiled her, loved her." "And he was wonderful with her." "He loved it." "Sinatra:" "♪ When she speaks ♪" "♪ You would think it was singing ♪" "♪ Just hear her say ♪" "♪ Hello ♪" "♪ Keep Betty Grable ♪" "♪ Lamour and Turner ♪" "♪ She'll make your heart ♪" "♪ A charcoal burner ♪" "♪ No angel could replace ♪" "♪ Nancy ♪" "♪ With a laughing ♪" "♪ Face. ♪" "Bennett:" "It was a different era, it was a sweet era, it was a dance era." "You did a ballad with long lines so that you could hold a girl real close and dance." "♪ Poor you ♪" "♪ I'm sorry you're not me ♪" "♪ For you will never know ♪" "♪ What loving you can be... ♪" "Tony Mottola:" "Frank had a style, almost a sexy style, you know, very warm." "With those eyes and that smile, it was almost like he could pinpoint them at one particular girl, and they just fell in love with him." "♪ Poor me ♪" "♪ Poor you ♪" "♪ You'll live your whole life through ♪" "♪ And yet you'll never know ♪" "♪ The thrill of loving you. ♪" "Mottola:" "The kids were just enamored of Frank." "And you could hear, like, when like Tommy would be playing the kids were aware that there's a modulation for Frank's vocal, and nobody would be dancing." "They'd all just crowd around the bandstand." "The kids came not to see Tommy Dorsey anymore." "It wasn't Tommy that was getting the crowds, it was Frank that was getting the crowds." "Chorus:" "♪ He's a new man ♪" "♪ Better than Casanova... ♪" "And that's what Tommy couldn't stand." "♪ At his best... ♪" "That you've got an organization and the boy singer is taking it away from you." "Who needs that action?" "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ I'm so proud, I'm busting my vest... ♪" "So there was a conflict." "He kept trying to push him down and Frank wouldn't let him." "In 15 months, he became the hottest new singing star in the country, especially among teenagers." "Chorus:" "♪ But look at him now ♪" "Sinatra:" "♪ Jack, I'm ready ♪" "Chorus:" "♪ Look at him now!" "♪" "It was pandemonium all the time, chaos." "Sinatra:" "The reaction from the crowds in those days was absolutely phenomenal." "I mean, they were squealing and yelling and screaming." "The kids would scream every time I would come out onstage." "(woman moaning, groaning) (audience laughing)" "Bing Crosby:" "How are ya, Frank?" "Sinatra:" "Oh, I feel fine Mr. Crosby." "Let's declare a little moratorium on the formalities, Frank." "You just call me Bing." "Oh no, I wouldn't dream of calling a man of your years by his first name." "(laughter)" "Sinatra:" "Now I figure that Crosby was the only man on top." "He was the only guy on top." "And I thought to myself," "Somebody's gotta challenge this bum sometime or other." "It's gotta happen." "So I began to think to myself," "Jesus, why don't I do it for myself?" "I mean, I know this guy signed me and I got a deal with him." "Tommy was a man who was more of a proprietory attitude." "Tommy was almost like a father, and if a guy left, he was a son who was leaving, you see." "After the first year I was with him, I said," ""Tommy, I think in about a year, I'd like to leave the band."" "And he kind of laughed at me, just grinned at me." "And after four months went by, I said it to him again, but he didn't smile too broadly this time." "He said, "I don't want to talk to you, God damn it."" "He said, "You fucking ingrate."" "I left Tommy's band, signing a piece of paper which said, he gets the rest of my life, one third of my salary." "He sued me..." "And I've been accused of the mob got me out of the band." "Some unidentifiable creature went to Tommy Dorsey, said, "You better let him out of the contract."" "Well, that never happened." "The man that straightened it out was the secretary of the American Federation of Radio Artists." "He went to Mr. Dorsey." "He said, "I think we can come to a settlement quite simply."" "Tom said, "No, no, no, no."" "He said, "I want one-third of his salary for the rest of his life, for as long as he lives." So Jaffe said to him," ""Do you enjoy playing music in hotel rooms and having the nation hear you on the radio?"" "And he said, "Sure, I do."" "He said, "Not anymore, you won't!"" "(laughter)" "Sinatra:" "He never said goodbye to me or nothing." "And I didn't know where I was going." "I didn't know where I was going, but I went home." "I bought a little house for Nancy and myself in Hasbrouck Heights, and I was just happy to be home." "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ I swear to... ♪" "Nancy was now two years old." "♪ You can't resist her ♪" "I spent about three, four weeks just sitting at home." "♪ Sorry for you... ♪" "And I can just picture it, you know." "Interviewer:" "They were poor times, but they were good times." "Nancy, Sr.:" "Always-- as poor as they always were, they were never that bad." "Sinatra:" "♪ My Nancy ♪" "♪ With a laughing face. ♪" "Nancy, Sr.:" "'Course then when the real work started, he worked like a dog." "Sinatra:" "I was living in Hasbrouck Heights." "And, uh, I found out there was a theater there where they had vaudeville." "And I went around, spoke to the manager, and I said, uh, "I'd like to play here for a couple nights, maybe a weekend." And he said, "Okay."" "Each booker from the theaters in New York," "The Roxy, The Strand, The Loew's State, The Paramount, they sent their scouts over to see what all the noise was about." "Why were the kids screaming and yelling and running up and down the aisles?" "The Paramount Theatre manager said," ""I would like you to open at New Year's Eve."" "And he said, "You got Benny Goodman's Orchestra and a Crosby picture," and I fell right on my butt." "I couldn't believe what he said to me." "And in those days, they called you an "extra added attraction."" "I got into New York and I look at the marquee." "Holy Christ!" "So we get ready to go and I'm excited, and it's the opening day and this is the moment that's going to make me or break me." "This-- if I'm not good in the Paramount Theatre, under these circumstances, I'm dead." "Jesus, I was nervous." "Benny did a whole section of music, and then he would finish that section with "Sing, Sing, Sing."" "And it would get-- it was rowdy, they would tear the joint up." "You know?" "It ran about eight minutes." "He finished "Sing, Sing, Sing" and he took a bow." "And he went over to the microphone and he said, "Now Frank Sinatra!"" "(women screaming)" "And they screamed, like a banshee." "And he turned around, and he looked at the audience and he said to nobody, "What the fuck is that?" he said." "♪ I'll walk alone ♪" "♪ They'll ask me why ♪" "♪ And I'll tell them ♪" "♪ I'd rather ♪" "♪ There are dreams ♪" "♪ I must gather... ♪" "There was one girl that was making so much noise and screaming so much and I wanted her out, 'cause I thought she was precipitating a riot." "And I tried to pull her out, and she was like a tigress." "So I called some of the guards." "I had four guards pulling her out and carrying her, and she wouldn't go." "I mean, there was nothing that you could do when you had 3,000 people standing up and screaming at something." "What are you gonna say? "Sit down"?" "I mean, this was the kind of hysteria that came there." "♪ And I'll be there... ♪" "Sinatra:" "The next day, the reviews came out and they were very kind." "I mean, business was mobbed, holiday season." "We were all jumping." "I was booked for two weeks." "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ Never saw the sun ♪" "♪ Shining so bright ♪" "♪ Never saw things looking so right... ♪" "Sinatra:" "Parents would take their children to the theaters at 4:00 o'clock in the morning, and wait with them until daylight." "And what a difference in a child in those days." "I mean, they used to come scrubbed up with their pink cheeks, with their hair combed and their bobby socks." "♪ Nothing but blue skies ♪" "♪ From now on... ♪" "It was incredible." "It was like a mass hypnosis." "That was the thrill of our life." "We used to go there, 35 cents, you sat there all day." "Like, we were poor, but we always had money to go to the Paramount and see Sinatra." "When he'd walk out and then the band would play the intro to his songs, you'd get goose bumps." "Radio announcer:" "It was little wonder that throughout the nation feminine listeners formed Frank "Swoonatra" fan clubs, and one organization called itself the "Sighing Society of Swooning Sinatra Slaves."" "The Voice, as he was nicknamed, was no flash in the pan." "Teachout:" "When Frank Sinatra was becoming famous, movies were the ultimate tool of creating celebrity, but after the Depression, not everybody could even afford a ticket to the theater." "But everybody in America pretty much either had a radio or had access to one and you could use it for free." "Radio Announcer:" "Here's your hit parade!" "Here's Frank with your fifth place favorite," ""Swinging on a Star."" "(music playing)" "♪ Would you like to swing on a star?" "♪" "♪ Carry moonbeams home in a jar?" "♪" "♪ And be better off than you are?" "♪" "♪ Or would you rather... ♪" "Sinatra:" "The hit parade came along." "The next thing happened, I'm still at the Paramount, there's a new club opening on 57th street called the Riobamba and they-- they called and made an offer." "I said to my agents, "Jeez, that sounds interesting"." "They said, "We don't think so, 'cause you're a Coca-Cola seller and this is a champagne joint."" "I said, "I'm fucking well ready for anything, right now."" "I said, "Book 'em!"" "It all happened in like a period of two to three months." "The opening at the Paramount, the Riobamba and the Hit Parade." "♪ You may grow up to be a fish... ♪" "The show at the Paramount," "I came off the stage at about 8:45, and the radio show went on at 9:00 o'clock." "And it was like you put an animal in a cage-- the ambulance would back up, up by the sidewalk, they'd open the door like that so I could jump in as he pulled away and they would close the door" "because there were thousands of kids in the street." "And in the-- in the ambulance, they would have a malted milk and a sandwich." "And I would devour that by the time I got there, the 10 blocks up to the radio station." "(song ends) (applause)" "I was so busy working." "I was really working my ass off trying to help out with the war effort the best I could." "Announcer:" "Super war-bond salesmen say let's all back the attack." "It's an auction with the biggest buyers of war bonds getting souvenirs." "$20,000, Bob Hope has got Seabiscuit's shoe." "Wore 'em when he won the Santa Anita Handicap." "Do you think it'll fit me?" "Announcer:" "Now war bond buyers get orchids with the Voice as the pin-up boy." "And we have a squeal with each orchid, ladies and gentleman." "The super war-bond special is the duet of the century." "Both:" "♪ People will say ♪" "♪ We're in love!" "♪" "(applause)" "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ I'll never smile ♪" "♪ Again ♪" "♪ Until I smile ♪" "♪ At you ♪" "♪ I'll never laugh again... ♪" "Sinatra:" "Ruth Lowe, who was a Canadian woman, her husband got killed." "He was a Canadian flier." "Right in the beginning of the war, he got killed." "She wrote that song and brought it down, personally, to New York." "♪ For tears ♪" "♪ Would fill my eyes... ♪" "That song, it followed my dad his whole life." "And I think it probably was because so many people identified with it in the first place." "You know, with their personal losses." "Sinatra:" "♪ To smile again ♪" "♪ Until I smile ♪" "♪ At you. ♪" "(applause)" "Sinatra:" "I was declared a 4-F." "I got a reject slip from Uncle Sam because of a perforated eardrum from my birth." "And the press started to work on me." ""Who the hell is he to not be in the service?" ""Boys are getting killed in Europe and this guy is singing songs to their wives and girlfriends."" "♪ There'll be a hot time ♪" "♪ In the town of Berlin ♪" "♪ When the lads go marching in ♪" "♪ I'd like to be there, boy ♪" "♪ And spread some joy ♪" "♪ When they take old Berlin... ♪" "Norman Lear:" "I'm stationed in Foggia, Italy, all we knew overseas about Frank Sinatra was he was not serving because of a punctured eardrum, and the women were crazy about him." "So our girlfriends, our wives, were nuts about Frank Sinatra." "There was a great dislike, at the least, for this figure." "♪ To take a hike ♪" "♪ Through Hitler's Reich ♪" "♪ And change that "Heil" to "What you know, Joe?" ♪" "Sinatra:" "The real creeps were the guys who were in uniform, but had safe jobs at Fort Dix," "Fort Totten in Long Island." "They were the guys who threw the tomatoes and the eggs at the big sign on top of the marquee at the Paramount Theatre." "It was childish." "They were not gutsy enough to face me alone." "When I got the second notice and I had to reappear for the examination," "I couldn't believe it." "In other words, I wasn't being treated like an ordinary citizen." "I was a special case all of a sudden, right?" "And I went to the Newark armory with 6,000 other guys and there were cameramen and radio guys and a thousand people on the street, the kids, you know-- "Frankie, baby, don't let them push you around,"" "and all that kind of jazz." "And when I got finished, they put me in a station wagon with two rifled infantrymen and a driver and they put me-- took me to Governors Island." "First of all, when I walked into the ward, they knew I was coming-- the word was out that I was coming." "And these guys were kind of lolling in their beds." "And they walked toward me and one guy shook my hand." "And he said, "I'm glad to meet you."" "He said, "I've been a big fan." He said," ""You need any magazines or comic books,"" "he said, "I got a lot of stuff."" "Well, you know how many phone calls I made?" "I must have made 700 phone calls to everybody's family all over the United States." "(phones ringing)" "Because they would call their family and put me on." "And there were about seven phone booths there, you know, and the kids would make them one at a time and I'm running from one booth to another." ""Oh, yeah, hello, Mrs. So-and-so," or the wife of a guy, you know? "Hello, Angie?" "He's fine." "No, he looks great."" ""Are you sure?" "Oh my God, you're calling me!" "It's really you!" "Sing something!"" "The next afternoon," "I get word to go down to see the psychiatrist." "And he said, "Before we do anything," "I got an 11 year old who's absolutely crazy about you."" "And I signed it to his little girl." "And he put it away and said," ""I've read your whole medical report." ""Even a rifle shot could deafen you if the guy is next to you." "That's why they reject people with holes in their ears."" "He said, "I'm recommending that you are absolutely rejected from the service."" "He said to me, "Now, why don't you go back to your ward, get yourself dressed, and go back to New York?"" "I got on the ferryboat, put my coat collar up, like this, the snow on my face, and suddenly the city began to come alive through the snow, the lights of Wall Street downtown." "All the buildings were lit, and I started to cry." "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ Time after time ♪" "♪ I tell myself ♪" "♪ That I'm so lucky ♪" "♪ To be loving you... ♪" "Nancy, Jr.:" "Frankie was born at the Margaret Hague Hospital in Jersey City." "Somewhere along the line," "Daddy said he named him for Franklin Roosevelt, so it was Franklin Wayne Emmanuel Sinatra." "My brother says it's Francis." "Frank, Jr.:" "I think he was putting you on." "My name was never Franklin and I was not named after Franklin Delano Roosevelt." "But Dolly Sinatra said he was the greatest president that we had ever had." "Her son began to believe it and when he became famous, he worked for Franklin D. Roosevelt many, many times." "Sinatra:" "I came out for Roosevelt." "I loved him!" "And then I went on, and I worked my ass off for him." "Orson Welles and myself did a lot of the campaigning, and particularly if it was a large Italian area, we might be like-- We did one in Jersey, with all of the dagos in the audience," "almost all Italians." "And I said, "If you don't vote for this man, you're all going to be in a lot of trouble!"" "(man laughing) I didn't make any kind of a fancy speech." "And then Welles would walk out, and he was dynamite when he went on." "He was absolute dynamite." "There was great criticism heaped upon me because I was so active in that particular campaign for Mr. Roosevelt." "Frank, Jr.:" "Newspaper writers like Lee Mortimer and Westbrook Pegler, who were never in favor of the Democratic position, they suddenly began to attack Sinatra." "Sinatra:" "I was stamped, like that." "They stamped me a Communist right away." "I said, "Bullshit."" "I said, "I don't know who you are, but you're wrong."" "Yeah?" "Good morning." "My name is Frank Sinatra." "What?" "Ahh!" "Sinatra:" "I did the first picture at RKO called Higher and Higher." "My family was still at home, but I looked for a house." "That point, Nancy put our house on the market." "And I called her, I said, "I found a great house."" "Nancy, Sr.:" "And I couldn't have been happier, because I loved California." "Lovely, lovely." "It was right on the lake." "We had a kayak, a canoe." "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ When whippoorwills call... ♪" "Toluca Lake was so beautiful." "We had a wonderful life there." "Dad came home a lot." "He wasn't just a voice on the radio." "♪ My blue heaven... ♪" "Sinatra:" "I was home." "I figured, I did a movie, and I'm going to do another movie." "And then I didn't get many movies down at RKO, because Mr. Mayer saw me at a big old building downtown, the Shrine." "Metro used to buy the whole row." "♪ As long as there's ♪" "♪ Music ♪" "♪ There's always romance ♪" "♪ The spell of a theme ♪" "♪ Starts you to dream ♪" "♪ There's always a chance ♪" "♪ As long as there's music ♪" "♪ Whatever the song... ♪" "Sinatra:" "And I'm standing up there singing." "I'd never met Mayer." "And I see him sitting there, and he's crying." "And he whispered something to the guy sitting next to him." "Mayer said, "I want that boy."" "I went to Metro, and I got $130,000 a picture." "Both:" "♪ What a dish, what a dream, what a dame ♪" "♪ And she lives alone... ♪" "Sinatra:" "A problem arose when I started at MGM." "We did the picture called Anchors Aweigh." "What struck me at first about Frank was that here was the best-known, most popular performer in America." "And the first two pictures he made at RKO were, let's face it, flops." "So, I said to him, "Frankie," ""there's one big thing you have to do." ""You can't be thought of as a guy who just stands there." ""You don't have to be a great, great dancer, but you have to move." "You have to dance a little bit, period."" "I said, "That means a lot of sweat and work."" "He said, "Great, when do we start?"" "He worked as if he were training for the heavyweight championship." "He really worked very hard." "Sinatra:" "I did four vocals in "Anchors Aweigh."" "Cahn:" "They said, "Well, Mr. Sinatra," ""who do you want to write these songs?" ""The Gershwins, Kern, Porter, Oscar Hammerstein," "Rodgers, who do you want?"" "He said, "Sammy Cahn."" "And they said, "We don't mind hiring him." "Who is he?"" "And Sinatra typically said," ""Since you're not singing the songs, don't let it bother you."" "Sinatra:" "And they said, "You know, we got about 10 arrangers."" "I said, "No, no, sorry." "I have my own arranger."" "Axel Stordahl, whom I now had engaged, who would not leave Tommy." "I finally convinced him." "I got him $1250 an arrangement." "He said, "I never saw so much money in my life!"" "♪ I fall in love ♪" "♪ Too easily ♪" "♪ I fall in love ♪" "♪ Too fast ♪" "♪ I fall in love ♪" "♪ Too terribly hard ♪" "♪ For love to ever ♪" "♪ Last ♪" "♪ My heart should be ♪" "♪ Well schooled ♪" "♪ 'Cause I've been fooled ♪" "♪ In the past ♪" "♪ And still I fall ♪" "♪ In love too easily ♪" "♪ I fall in love ♪" "♪ Too fast. ♪" "Nancy, Jr.:" "Anchors Aweigh opened to rave reviews, and big box office around the country." "Overnight, Frank Sinatra became a major movie star, having already become a recording and radio star." "At that point, his attitude was, fate has now suddenly put me into the position to do something about unfairness." "In his lifetime, he had seen abject poverty." "He had seen terrible things done to people, and it upset him." "I was living in Harlem." "Now my family was on welfare." "We were just a hoofing act." "And Frank found us, and we went into the Capitol Theater and he paid us $1750, all the money in the world." "But Frank would come out, open up, sing a couple of songs." "Then he introduced us, you know, and he'd say little things like, "I want you to keep an eye on this little kid in the middle."" "He said, "Boy, he's going to be something one of these days." "You watch him." "He burns the stage out."" "Frank has been one of the main moving forces with me 'cause he stood up and was counted long before it became fashionable." "(shouting)" "Putting his convictions on the line," "Dad played himself in "The House I live In,"" "a 10-minute short made in 1945." "Sinatra:" "And it fitted me to a tee because I was involved in anti-bigotry motions." "We got 10 little kids, and then you hear the rumpus in the alley outside, where they back up one little boy." "They don't use any words on him, but you know they're either saying "You guinea bastard!"" "or "You Jew bastard!" or something to him." "And I'd do a little short speech." "My dad came from Italy, but should I hate your father because he came from Ireland or France or Russia?" "Wouldn't I be a first-class fat head?"" "That film deeply moved me." "It was one of the most engaging documents that I had ever seen on the issue of race." "A lot of movies had been made before that time that attempted to deal with the issues of race, but nobody from the height of pop culture had done it quite the way Sinatra did." "Think about that, fellows." "Use your good American heads." "Don't let anybody make suckers out of you." "Well, I gotta go to work." "What do you work?" "I sing." "Aw, you're kidding." "Come here." "You all stand here, and no hissing allowed." "♪ What is America ♪" "♪ To me?" "♪" "♪ A place I work in ♪" "♪ The worker at my side ♪" "♪ The little town or city ♪" "♪ Where my people lived and died ♪" "♪ The "howdy" and the handshake ♪" "♪ The air of feeling free ♪" "♪ And the right to speak my mind out ♪" "♪ That's America to me. ♪" "Hamill:" "As an Italian American growing up, and the most virulent anti-Italian thing was still in the land." "Stereotypes of their fractured English," ""Life With Luigi" radio shows." "Dear mamma mia!" "(laughter)" "Sinatra, he's a very "big-a singer"" "and he's Italiano boy." "Hamill:" "For him to come along and deal with that, to insist that he was going to change the way people thought about Italian Americans, through his diction, which was impeccable on those songs, through the style that he presented himself with," "I think was crucial." "(intro music playing)" "Announcer:" "New Oscars for Hollywood's top moviemakers." "At Grauman's Chinese Theatre, over 2,000 stars are on hand for the 18th annual Motion Picture Academy Award." "The Frank Sinatras-- he is honored with a special award for his short," ""The House I Live In."" "(upbeat music playing)" "The last day of World War II." "Here and across the nation, guests from coast to coast have uncorked the pent-up emotions of almost four years." "Downtown, they see sailors lift automobiles, soldiers kiss pretty girls, and the carrying off of beautiful maidens." "♪ Night and day ♪" "♪ Why is it so ♪" "♪ That this longing for you ♪" "♪ Follows wherever I go?" "♪" "♪ In the roaring traffic's boom ♪" "♪ Or in the silence ♪" "♪ Of my lonely room ♪" "♪ I think of you... ♪" "Hollywood was Dad's oyster and he was befriending a wide circle of the famous." "During this heady period of newfound stardom, he was seen around town squiring sweater girl Lana Turner and starlet Marilyn Maxwell, among other woman." "♪ There's an oh, such a hungry yearning ♪" "♪ Burning inside of me ♪" "♪ And its torment won't be through ♪" "♪ Till you let me spend my life ♪" "♪ Making love to you ♪" "♪ Day and night ♪" "♪ Night and day... ♪" "All the rich, glamorous girls were after the celebrity." "He was attractive, he was oriented that way, in a way." "He felt he had to possess any woman he thought attractive." "A lot of men are like that." "And they get that way more so with more success." "♪ Love to you ♪" "♪ Day and night ♪" "♪ Night and day. ♪" "With Frank, it was the martinis in the dressing room, the lavishness, gold cigarette lighters," ""Let's have fun." "Where are the laughs?" "Where are the people in this new world that I love?"" "Nancy was always the Italian wife." "The house has got to be spotless." "If you want peppers or pasta, and the sauce is made." ""And I'll have the kids, and we'll raise a family."" "And that was what was important to her." "Nancy, Jr.:" "On the last day of 1946, my mother discovered a diamond bracelet in the glove compartment of the new Cadillac convertible that Dad was teaching her to drive." "Figuring it was a gift for her, she said nothing." "But, that night, at the family's New Year's Eve party, she spied Marilyn Maxwell wearing the bracelet." "Nancy, Sr.:" "I said to her, "I know where you got that."" "She just walked out, aghast that I would be brave enough." "She went and told Frank." "And Frank said to me, "You know, you should apologize to her."" "And I said, "Frank, you're mixed up." "She has to apologize to me."" "You know, it was like part of growing up, that he would eventually have his fill of all this routine and appreciate what he had." "We made up and he said," ""It's going to be different." "It's going to be better." "It's going to be fine."" "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ She may be waiting ♪" "♪ Just anticipating ♪" "♪ Things she may never possess ♪" "♪ While she's without them ♪" "♪ Try a little tenderness ♪" "♪ It's not just ♪" "♪ Sentimental ♪" "♪ She has her grief and her care ♪" "♪ And a word that's soft and gentle ♪" "♪ Makes it easier ♪" "♪ To bear ♪" "♪ You won't regret it ♪" "♪ Women don't forget it ♪" "♪ Love is their whole ♪" "♪ Happiness ♪" "♪ And it's all so easy ♪" "♪ Try a little ♪" "♪ Tenderness.♪" "(applause) Sinatra:" "Al Viola." "Sinatra:" ""Nancy," I said," ""It's Valentine's Day coming up, and I'm finished with my work here in New York." "How would you like to be my valentine in Acapulco?"" "She said, "Oh, that'd be marvelous."" "Now in the meantime, I went to Miami, but the next morning was a shitty day, and I said, "I'm not going to sit down here." "I'm going to go where the sun is, Cuba."" "(samba music playing)" "And I checked into the famous hotel, Nacional Hotel." "We went down to the bar and 66 gangsters are standing there, 48 years of good behavior." "And I knew several of the fellows from New Jersey and New York, including the Fischetti brothers." "They were Capone's guys, when he was alive." "They were really tough." "At that time, the boys were dealing with Cuba." "They handled all their gambling over there, right?" "One of them said, "Hey Frank, come here." "I want you to meet Charlie Luciano."" "I said, "How do you do?"" "Radio announcer:" "Charlie "Lucky" Luciano, shackled to his henchmen, the overlord of a $12 million-a-year vice ring goes to prison." "Phil Kuntz:" "When he got out, he was deported." "The United States Bureau of Narcotics didn't like the fact he ended up in Cuba because they didn't want him setting up an operation so close to their shores." "This was in the '40s." "Lucky Luciano was being watched closely." "Sinatra:" "And of course, it went on the wire service that I shook hands with Charlie Luciano." "Writers picked it up and all that crap went on." "Kuntz:" "And that was the public's first taste of what became Sinatra's persona for the rest of his life-- buddies with the mob." "Sinatra:" "From that moment, I couldn't beat these guys." "They went to press every day." "Then of course at that point..." "Lee Mortimer picked up a picture of me getting off the plane." "Kuntz:" "And then the FBI got the photo from Mortimer, who was a famous muckraking journalist who was trying to identify the people in the photo that are with Sinatra." "Sinatra:" "They start to dream up all these things about me." "Said I went to Cuba and delivered $2 million and I brought back drugs into the country." "Now my luggage, of course, was on the airplane, but I carried a sketchpad in a thin attaché case." "Now this was the bag I was supposedly bringing the $2 million in, right?" "Kuntz:" "There's no evidence of it." "The only mentions of it in government documents are recounting that it's been in the press." "The investigators, they would read something in the press and then investigate it, giving it the patina of truth." "It was in some ways a vicious cycle." "It led to yet another investigation of his arrest in the late '30s." "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ When the moon ♪" "♪ Hangs low in Napoli ♪" "♪ There's a handsome gondolier... ♪" "Sinatra:" "But that was an old, old charge, way back when I was a kid, when I first got the job at The Rustic Cabin." "Some dame claimed that I'd seduced her and she was pregnant." "She wasn't pregnant at all!" "She was a hokey fan!" "We went to the courtroom and my mother, who was a nurse and a midwife, said to the judge," ""I'd like to examine this woman."" "And all of a sudden, there was no case." "They threw everything out." "♪ And his heart beats so ♪" "♪ Fortissimo ♪" "♪ When she raises ♪" "♪ her Venetian shade... ♪" "Sinatra:" "You see, those things were driving me crazy in that period." "Bogey once said, "You have to remember one thing, Frank." ""There's only one way that anyone can fight a newspaper" ""and that's with a newspaper." ""If you have altercations with the press, you're going to be fighting a losing battle."" "And this was Humphrey Bogart's sage and sane advice, which his friend Frank Sinatra promptly proceeded to ignore." "Sinatra:" "Peggy Lee was opening at Ciro's." "Ciro's was one of the in joints to go to." "She was marvelous." "Peggy Lee:" "♪ Yes, it's a good day ♪" "♪ For singing a song ♪" "♪ And it's a good day ♪" "♪ For moving along... ♪" "Sinatra:" "And behind us, I hear an Oriental voice," ""Oh," she said, "That's Frank Sinatra!"" "And I hear the male voice say," ""Yeah, I saw the Guinea bastard." I didn't know who it was." "I just kind of rounded, and sure enough, it's him, because I'd seen his picture in the top of the column." "I hear the chairs being scraped on the floor, and they get up." "Lee:" "♪ A good day from morning till night... ♪" "Sinatra:" "Peggy went offstage and people were still applauding and all that stuff." "I said to everybody at my table," ""Excuse me a minute."" "Now this is after he had been bludgeoning me." "He called me a Red." "He called me a Communist." "He did everything he could." "I had enough of him." "I had it up to here." "So I walked out and I tapped him on the shoulder." "He turned around." "I hit him so fucking hard." "I broke the whole front of his face, and he banged his head." "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ You do ♪" "♪ Something to me ♪" "♪ Something that simply ♪" "♪ Mystifies me... ♪" "And the son of a bitch, he was funny." "He said, "I'll write about this."" "And he takes a piece of paper out." ""You're going to do more than that," I said." ""I'm going to bury you right under the street like this."" "And before I could make another move, two guys grabbed me and they walked me right back in the club." "The people were running outside to get an ambulance, and all that kind of bullshit." "And I just walked through the whole crowd." "There were no charges, no arrests, no nothing." "He just wanted a civil suit." "$9,000 judgment." "That was it." "Nothing ever happened." "As a matter of fact, what I did to him through the ensuing years, every time I saw him at a restaurant," "I'd spit at him and dare him to get up and take a punch at me." "Can you be objective and tell me how-- what kind of a father you are?" "Or is that too tough?" "Sinatra:" "That's a tough question." "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ How much ♪" "♪ Do I love you?" "♪" "Nancy, Jr.:" "Tina was the California girl." "She was born in Los Angeles." "Dad nearly went crazy going through red lights and stop signs, to get to the hospital." "He wanted a girl, and she was born on Father's Day." "That's how lucky he is." "Sinatra:" "Tina as a child, growing up, never got to spend a lot of time with me, but, you know, I was probably a stranger to her." ""Who's this guy?" "He comes in every six months, he comes to see me."" "♪ How far ♪" "♪ Would I travel?" "♪" "He was away so much of his career, you know, that the real great experience of being the son of this man, as far as I'm concerned, didn't actually come until later years." "♪ From here to a star... ♪" "I think that Dad, when he was rushing and going on with the career, knew that I was there taking care of the kids, and he didn't have to worry about it." "Daddy wanted me to have a lot of children." "The way things were going," "I knew that it was not looking right." "I figured I'd be stuck having to care for more." "Sinatra:" "Now about that time is when I got tied up with Ava, somewhere in there." "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ It's quarter to 3:00 ♪" "♪ There's no one in the place ♪" "♪ Except you and me ♪" "♪ So set 'em up, Joe ♪" "♪ I got a little story ♪" "♪ You ought to know ♪" "♪ We're drinking, my friend... ♪" "Ava Gardner:" "Well, the first time we met was 1943." "I was out with Mickey." "We were married then." "Frank came over to the table." "Jesus, he was like a God in those days, if Gods can be sexy." "He reeked of sex." "He said something like, "If I'd seen you first, honey," "I would have married you myself."" "I paid no attention to that." "I knew he was married." "He had a kid, for Christ's sake." "The next time we met was when we had that famous Metro group picture taken." "He was a terrible flirt." "He couldn't help it." "Sinatra:" "I took a look at her." "I said, "Jesus, you got prettier than the last time I saw you."" "This was not the young little girl from Carolina at the studio." "This was a woman who was glorious." "♪ ...could tell you a lot... ♪" "Gloria Romanoff:" "She had an air that the other girls didn't have." "No question." "♪ True to your code... ♪" "Very natural, and of all the stars at that time, she had less star mannerism than anyone I'd ever met." "She was sort of one of the boys." "I think she pretty much was always with men." "♪ The more I know of love ♪" "♪ The less I know... ♪" "Here's your drink, lady." "♪ The more I give... ♪" "I said, here's your drink, lady." "♪ The more I always... ♪" "Oh, thank you very much." "♪ Hmm hmmm hmmm hmmm ♪" "♪ Dah dah dee dah ♪" "♪ Dah dah... ♪" "Romanoff:" "I think a lot of his fantasies were bound up in it." "I think he brought to it what a young man brings to that almost unbelievable romance that may never happen to him kind of thing, you do fantasize about it." "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ I'm wild again ♪" "♪ Beguiled again ♪" "♪ A simpering, whimpering ♪" "♪ Child again ♪" "♪ Bewitched ♪" "♪ Bothered and bewildered ♪" "♪ Am I... ♪" "Gardner:" "Lana Turner told me, "I've been there, honey." "Don't do it."" "♪ Couldn't sleep... ♪" "I should have listened to her." "The girl had been around." "♪ Love came and told me ♪" "♪ I shouldn't sleep ♪" "♪ Bewitched... ♪" "But he was good in the feathers." "You don't really listen to what people tell you when a guy is good in the feathers." "♪ Am I... ♪" "Nancy, Sr.:" "He was a disciplined man in many respects, but he was never disciplined emotionally about women." "I think that that did him in." "He would come home once or twice a week and see her all the time, and figure he was going to keep me quiet." "And I couldn't handle that." "I was sick." "I was breaking down." "He was never looking for long-range things." "It was always for the moment." "Larry King:" "How about when gossip columnists say that-- they write that your marriage is in trouble, these kind of things." "Normal people don't read about these kind of things." "Sinatra:" "Ahh, what are ya gonna say about gossip columnists?" "Nancy, Jr.:" "Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons, Sheila Graham, and other nationally syndicated columnists had already been berating my father for a host of extramarital affairs." "He could ignore columnists very easily." "But Louis B. Mayer warned that he would cancel his contract early." "Dad responded." "He moved us closer to his work, to a $250,000 mansion not far from Hollywood." "But he continued to see Ava." "Sinatra:" "Mr. Mayer was a man who was completely void of a sense of humor." "And I was always doing pranks and having fun and all that stuff." "And Mayer loved to have people-- well, not people, me, come to his office whenever he was lonely." "He had a white Formica desk, looked like Howard Hughes' cockpit." "And I'd go in and sit down and hold my hat in my lap, and in a period of five years," "I bet I was there 50 times." "He had a string of wonderful racehorses." "And he also had horses that he would ride on Sunday afternoons, his own horses." "And one Sunday, something happened that spooked the horse, and he had a fractured pelvic bone and he was in a cast from here to his knees." "We felt badly about it and we were sitting around commiserating about the fact that it would take him a long time to heal because he had fallen off the horse." "And I said, "No he didn't." "He fell off Ginny Simms."" "Because..." "(laughter) he was courting this girl named Ginny Simms, you see, fellas and girls." "And I get kicked out of the studio." "That's it." "♪ I'm feeling low ♪" "♪ Mighty low... ♪" "Man:" "Frank Sinatra found himself in the unhappy position of being considered finished." "His record sales slumped severely." "Interviewer:" "Now is this true?" "Earned $11 million in six years, but you spent money like crazy and you couldn't pay your taxes?" "Had you spent all your money?" "Sinatra:" "Pretty much all of it." "Okay." "I mean, I was broke." "♪ When the sun goes down... ♪" "Teachout:" "There was an enormous sense of foreboding in the American psyche immediately after the war." "What was going to happen next?" "Would we really be able to sustain the peace that we finally achieved in 1945?" "Or was the roof going to fall in on us even more than it had before?" "You see anxiety in abstract expressionist painting, you see it in bee-bop, a jazz of extreme intensity of style, but American commercial popular music responded to this anxiety with the musical equivalent of comfort food." "♪ How much is that doggy in the window?" "♪" "♪ Ruff ruff!" "♪" "♪ The one with the waggily tail?" "♪" "Sinatra:" "And I wasn't doing that well with the record business because Mitch Miller was put in charge, and he decided to bring into the world a new kind of music which was hokey-pokey kind of music." "And I just resented it." "Teachout:" "Frank Sinatra finds himself being produced by Mitch Miller, who had that kind of perverse genius in gimmicky pop records that sold by the carload." "And Miller expected him to make records like this." "Mitch Miller:" "He says, I won't do any of that shit." "So what do I do?" "Who tells Sinatra what to do?" "Whoever told Sinatra what to do?" "He made it his business going through the deterioration aesthetically of the music at that time and still finding good songs to record." "I was 14 at the time and I was allowed to drink in McMillan's 94th and 3rd." "And I had loaded the jukebox with Sinatra stuff." "And suddenly... (band playing)" "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ These are the blues ♪" "♪ Nothin' but blues... ♪" ""The Birth of the Blues"" "literally brought me to my knees." "The singing is so virile, sensational." "It's one of the great Sinatra records." "♪ They say some people ♪" "♪ Long ago... ♪" "I played it over and over-- dimes, dimes, dimes, dimes." "Drinking and drinking and drinking and drinking." "14-year-old." "He was abuzz in my young life." "But he wasn't selling records, no one was going to see the movies and he was making everyone angry with him." "He owed a lot of money." "Miller:" "People don't remember the climate then." "Frank made so many good records at that time that did not sell." "His behavior made him persona non grata." "And I thought, if he can't sell a good one, let's try novelty." "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ My feet were killing me ♪" "♪ My dogs were barking'... ♪" "Sinatra:" "So I said, "Okay, I'll do it your way now." "I'll do the songs." "Let's see what happens."" "♪ And then I dreamed two dogs were talking... ♪" "My heart wasn't in it, and I didn't even understand what the hell I was doing." "♪ It was the doggone-est thing ♪" "♪ You ever heard ♪" "♪ She said... ♪" "Dagmar:" "♪ Mama will bark ♪" "Sinatra:" "♪ You look so lovely in the moonlight ♪" "Dagmar:" "♪ Yes, but Papa will bark ♪" "Sinatra:" "♪ Your eyes are shining like the starlight ♪" "Dagmar:" "♪ Yes, but Mama will bark ♪" "Sinatra:" "♪ Your lips are so inviting, darling ♪" "♪ Give me one more kiss ♪" "Dog:" "♪ (howls) ♪" "When the records didn't sell, and it came time for his renewal," "Columbia just didn't want to resign him." "It ended up finally as a very unhappy parting." "They were, I think, very happy to get rid of each other at the time." "(applause)" "(orchestra playing)" "♪ I'm gonna love you ♪" "♪ Like nobody loves you ♪" "♪ Come rain or come shine ♪" "Sinatra:" "And if somebody in my family left me a lot of money," "I probably would have never worried about it, but I think I was concerned that I can't take care of my-- my problems, my family and everything." "♪ Come rain or come shine... ♪" "I was working hard to pay bills." "And I was working too hard." "I had three shows a night at the Copacabana, and then I got booked in the Capitol Theatre." "Every week was a week of Mondays." "And it rained every Monday." "That kind of feeling, you know." "♪ But don't you ever ♪" "♪ Bet me... ♪" "I was hurting, I was struggling." "but I was managing to make it because we lowered the keys and all that kind of stuff." "♪ And you're gonna love me... ♪" "And a perfect setting for what happened, it was a February blizzard night, big snowfall." "60 people in the room because the weather was so bad." "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ It seems we stood ♪" "♪ And talked like this ♪" "♪ Before ♪" "♪ We looked at each other ♪" "♪ In the same way then ♪" "♪ But I can't remember ♪" "♪ Where or when... ♪" "Sinatra:" "Suddenly I felt some kind of snap, something went soft." "And I went for a note and nothing came out." "I could feel myself swallowing my own blood." "I looked at the audience and they looked at me." "And everybody knew that something quite serious had happened." "And I leaned into the microphone, I said," "(whispering) "Good night."" "And I walked up the stairs and went right to the hotel." "A lot of his friends and a lot of his associates just left him." "Sinatra:" "All the guys who made hundreds of thousands of dollars with me never called and said, "What can we do for you?" "Do you need any money?" At that point, I had nobody." "The only guy I could talk to was Jimmy Van Heusen and he'd give me a few dollars for my pocket." "He was in a terrible state." "His ego and his self-esteem were at the lowest ebb, and particularly bad because mine was frankly at the peak." "Sinatra:" "This is-- It's appropriate for me because having been a saloon singer all my life," "I'd become an expert on saloon songs, the kind of things that cause men to cry in their beers because they're in trouble with their girls." "And they seek little bars and it's really a caricature of one such person." "♪ Hey, drink up ♪" "♪ Drink up, all you people ♪" "♪ Order anything that you see ♪" "♪ And have fun ♪" "♪ All you happy people ♪" "♪ The drinks and the laughs ♪" "♪ On me ♪" "♪ I tried to think ♪" "♪ That love's not around ♪" "♪ But it's uncomfortably near ♪" "♪ My poor heart... ♪" "It was another one of those nights when I ended up refusing to sleep with Frank." "I was half-asleep in my room across the suite, and I heard this gunshot." "(gunshot)" "It scared the bejesus out of me." "I didn't know what I was going to find." "His brains blown out?" "He was always threatening to do it." "♪ Angel eyes ♪" "♪ That old devil's scent... ♪" "Instead, he was sitting on the bed, grinning like a goddamn drunken school kid, a smoking gun in his hand." "He'd fired the gun into the fucking pillow." "♪ Need I say... ♪" "What a night that was." "It was a cry for help." "I always fell for it." "And then they were together late one night in the car." "And I could tell they'd both been drinking." "We had a buzzer at the gate, and he said," ""Nancy, will you please tell Ava that I've asked you for a divorce?"" "I said, "Frank, you're out of your mind."" "And I hung up." "I wouldn't tolerate it." "And she was a real bitch too." "♪ Anything that you see♪" "Tina:" "In the beginning, the press had been really condemning Frank and Ava and condoning Nancy for her conduct." "♪ Have lots of fun ♪" "♪ You lovely people... ♪" "Over time, I think that began to change." "The press flipped." "Mom began to take flack for keeping Romeo and Juliet apart." "But she got legal guidance and she let him go." "Nancy, Sr.:" "I thought by letting him go, that they would end their romance." "And in time, I always felt he'd come back." "Always felt that." "Gardner:" "Only days after his divorce from Nancy became final, we had gotten married." "Sinatra:" "We were really deeply in love, almost too much in love." "Things all of sudden didn't fall in place." "She was working at Metro, a picture here, a picture there." "Then came a job to do a picture in Spain." "Trailer voiceover:" "This is Pandora." "She was bold and beautiful, desired by every man who met her." "He was having a very bad time with Ava Gardner." "She was terrible to him." "Terrible." "Just grinding her feet into his face in the dust, you know." "Sinatra:" "This was a turmoil that the whole world knew about, and I was chasing it around the world." "And I was borrowing money to go visit with her." "Gardner:" "I was running away from Frank, desperately trying to break up with him." "I knew that I just couldn't live with him anymore." "I still loved him, but the marriage was never going to work" "The trouble was... ♪ Angel eyes... ♪" "Frank and I were too much alike." "♪ That old devil's scent... ♪" "Lahr:" "He met his match with her." "She was sexually free and gorgeous." "She couldn't be conquered." "♪ Need I say, need I say... ♪" "Sinatra:" "The fact that we were no longer in the same city, let alone the same country." "That took the bottom out of everything." "♪ Misspent with angel eyes tonight... ♪" "I became an out-and-out drunk." "I mean, I was bombed all the time." "God bless Tootsie's." "I never paid a tab at Tootsie's." "♪ Drink up, drink up, all you people... ♪" "So at 4:00 o' clock, of course, this night," ""Hey, dago," he said, "you better go home."" "♪ Order... ♪" "Now he was on 52nd Street." "I was staying at Jimmy's, 57th Street." "I walked out and it was like 20 degrees." "So I started walking." "I'm walking and walking." "Suddenly I don't know where the hell I am, because the booze really hit me." "It really hit me like a sledgehammer." "And the next thing I knew, there was flashlight in my eye, and somebody was shaking me." "♪ And the laughs on me ♪" ""You're going to have to get out of here." "Come on, get up."" "And the cop grabbed my arm, and then he looked at me." ""You Sinatra?"" "Sammy Davis, Jr.:" "I was in somebody's car in New York." "We stopped at a light and I saw him coming past the Capitol." "Like this, walking down the street, coat collar, a hat." "And he was alone." "It was the first time I had ever seen him alone." "And nobody was stopping him and nobody was doing anything." "And nobody cared." "And nobody cared." "(piano playing)" "Sinatra:" "Is the man going to talk about his dark ages when his career had that little stroke?" "When his voice ran away from home?" "When his records started selling like used Edsels?" "Nope." "The man is an incorrigible optimist, a firm believer in clichés." "He has a philosophy about trouble." "Don't feed it." "Maybe it'll go away." "Sure, I've met frustration, and I don't like him either." "I know discouragement, despair, and all those other cats." "But I guess I knew that sooner or later, something good was bound to happen to me." "And here's one of the best things that ever did." "Sinatra:" "When I read the book From Here to Eternity," "I said, "I got to play Maggio."" "I'd known a hundred Maggios in my neighborhood, and I may have been one." "When the news broke in the trade papers that Columbia had bought it and they were going to make the film of it," "I spoke to Harry Cohn, who was then the head of Columbia Pictures." "And I said, "I'd like to play that."" "And he said, "Well, you've never done a dramatic role." "You're a guy who'll sing and dance with Gene Kelly."" "And I said, "But that's the kind of thing I think I can do."" "Fred Zinnemann:" "Sinatra from the beginning, kept sending cables to Harry Cohn and to me, calling himself Maggio, signing Maggio." "And saying that he was the person to play that part." "Sinatra:" "But I do suspect that Ava went to Harry Cohn and said, "He'll die if you don't give him a job, or he'll jump off a building or something."" "Their marriage was not going swimmingly, but he had to get back on his feet." "She knew that better than anybody." "She placed a call to Harry and said..." ""You know who should play Maggio, don't you?" "That son-of-a-bitch husband of mine."" "(laughs) It's pretty funny, yeah." "So finally they said, "All right, let's test Sinatra."" "Sinatra came up to my office the day of the test and said, "How do I play this scene?"" "I said, "Jeez, all you do is make them laugh and cry at the same time."" "Anyway, he went down and he made it." "He made the test." "Sinatra:" "They did a scene where I'm talking to the hooker in the bar." "I just did what I thought was the natural thing to do." "And we did it once, it was very short." "I don't think it was more than three minutes." "And they said, "Thank you very much," and I left." "When I heard that Eli Wallach, who's my dearest friend, and one of the finest actors in the world, when I had heard that he tested for it," "I said, "Forget it, he's gonna win it."" "Because he's a seasoned actor and he's-- he's really good, a fine-- fine performer." "("Godfather Theme" playing)" "For years and years, there's this story that Frank Sinatra got the role in From Here To Eternity because his mafia friends threatened the producers of that movie." "If I had this part in the picture, you know, it puts me right back up on top again." "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse." "That's absurd." "Man:" "The Godfather thing isn't true?" "The Godfather thing is a wonderful story, it just doesn't happen to be true, as documentary." "Wallach's agent asked for twice what Wallach had made." "Cohn absolutely refused to do that." "That was not the way Harry ran his studio." "But I said, "Let's go back and look at the Sinatra test again." "Maybe it's better than we thought it was."" "Wallach looked like the prizefighter, like he could take care of himself." "Sinatra looked like a plucked chicken, just pitiful, and that helped in the characterization." "It was all there, you didn't have to play it." "Sinatra:" "So we started to shoot the picture." "(orchestral music playing)" "And all I did was go to work every morning, be in bed at 10:30." "Once I got it," "I said, "I'm going to work my ass off on this thing."" "Count!" "All:" "One, two, three, four!" "One, two, three, four." "The best help I ever had was from Monty Clift." "And Monty was a wonderful dissector of a script." "And we made changes, little tiny changes, constantly." "A couple times I said to Fred, "This is new to me." ""I want to check with you to find out if the approach that I have is proper."" "And he would brush me off about the whole thing." "A month out in Honolulu and, "Freddy," I said," ""there must be something missing in my script." "It went from scene number 162 to 164."" "And he said, "Well, do something." "You know, what would a drunk do at the bar?"" "And I said, "Well, drunks do a lot of things at bars."" "Bartender, a whiskey!" "Large whiskey." "Excuse me." "Hey, buddy?" "Sam?" "Hey, come on out, fellas, to Terry Gimmel's basement." "(exhales) Stand back there now." "Here we go." "Seven for Daddy, five deuce." "Hey, seven." "Snake eyes." "(all laughing) That's the story of my life." "Hamill:" "Sinatra was doing the movie for $8,000 for eight weeks' work, which was, you know, okay if you're a mechanic but it was not big star money." "Sinatra:" "I did it because I knew I was going to survive, and I knew one day I was gonna wake up and say," ""Okay, it's all over."" "I cleaned the house-- clean sweep was what I did." "Got rid of my accountant, straightened myself out," "I stopped drinking." "Alan Livingston:" "I was Vice President in charge of Artists and Repertoire, and Sinatra had hit bottom, and I mean bottom." "And Frank could not get a record contract." "And I didn't know Frank." "I'd never met him." "And I got a call one day from the William Morris Agency, a man named Sam Weisbord." "And he said, "We've just taken on Sinatra as his agents."" "He said, "Would you be interested in signing him?"" "And I said, "Sure." And he said, "You would?"" "I said, "Sure, his talent's still there." "Bring him in." ""I'd like to sign him."" "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ What a world ♪" "♪ What a life, I'm in love ♪" "On the 30th of April, 1953, he recorded "I've Got the World on a String"" "and "Don't Worry About Me,"" "and didn't look back." "♪ Lucky me ♪" "♪ Can't you see I'm in love?" "♪" "It was a brand new guy, a certain confidence after coming through hell and getting a contract at Capitol." "♪ I'd be a silly so-and-so... ♪" "Sinatra:" "When I went over to Capitol Records," "Nelson was what they called the house arranger." "And he was writing for practically everybody, all of the singers on the label." "And, uh, we got started pretty good, and we just left it that way." "♪ Got the string around my finger ♪" "♪ What a world... ♪" "Well, a lot of the things that we laid out together were done with his suggestive phrases." "Frank had enough background in classical music to be able to describe what he wanted." "Schwartz:" "He just became in charge of everything." "That control, which had always been hovering in Sinatra's soul, was now accepted." "Sinatra:" "I went to the art department." "I said, "Can you sketch me a cover of a street corner with a guy leaning against a lamppost smoking a cigarette?"" "Then I sat with Nelson and I said," ""Okay, we want songs belonging to a title called 'Songs For Young Lovers.'"" "And that was the album." "And this thing took off like a goddamn rocket." "Shoom!" "♪ I'm so in love!" "♪" "(intro music playing)" "Nancy, Jr.:" "From Here to Eternity marked a change in his career forever because people were forced to accept him as a force in drama." "And I don't think they ever saw him like that." "Prew?" "Prew, listen." "Fatso done it, Prew." "He likes to whack me in the gut." "He asked me if it hurts." "And I spit at him like always." "Sinatra:" "I think what made people enjoy it and like it was my inner love for doing it and wanting it and needing it so badly." "I had to get out, Prew." "I had to get out." "(orchestral music playing)" "Announcer:" "At Hollywood's Pantages Theatre, it's the motion picture industry's night of nights." "And the film capital's top stars turn out for the annual presentation of the coveted Oscars." "Gibney:" "Tell me about your recollections of Oscar night." "I bought a gold coin with an Oscar on it, like he was going to win." "And he came to my house for dinner." "And he took Nancy and Frankie with him." "Oh, that was quite a night." "I was 10." "I looked so cute in my navy blue suit." "Nancy, Sr.:" "Little Nancy was wearing my little ermine cape that he had given me." "It was a thrill." "And he was jubilant." "And I said, "You're going to get it."" "The winner is Frank Sinatra in From Here to Eternity." "Um, that's a clever opening." "(laughter)" "Ladies and gentlemen," "I'm" " I'm deeply thrilled and-- and very moved." "And I really-- really don't know what to say, because this is a whole new kind of thing, you know, I-- song-and-dance man type stuff." "And, uh, I'm" " I'm terribly pleased." "And if I start thanking everybody, I'll do a one-reeler up here, so I'd better not." "And, uh, I'd just like to say, however, that they're doing a lot of songs here tonight, but nobody asked me." "(laughing)" "I love you, though." "Thank you very much." "I'm absolutely thrilled." "Sinatra (singing):" "♪ Fairy tales ♪" "♪ Can come true ♪" "♪ It can happen to you ♪" "♪ If you're young at heart ♪" "♪ For it's hard, you will find ♪" "♪ To be narrow of mind ♪" "♪ If you're young at heart ♪" "♪ You can go to extremes ♪" "♪ With impossible schemes ♪" "♪ You can laugh... ♪" "He was very, very moved by that." "It stunned him." "♪ And life gets more exciting ♪" "♪ With each passing day... ♪" "Tina:" "I think that everybody was disappointed there wasn't some extended celebration." "He wanted to be with himself." "He said, "I just went home, parked the car, and I walked." "I walked."" "♪ And here is the best part ♪" "♪ You have a head start ♪" "♪ If you are among the very young ♪" "♪ At heart. ♪" "(piano playing)" "♪ There's a somebody I'm longing to see ♪" "♪ I hope that she ♪" "♪ Turns out to be ♪" "♪ Someone who'll watch ♪" "♪ Over me ♪" "♪ I'm a little lamb ♪" "♪ Who's lost in the wood ♪" "♪ I know I could ♪" "♪ Could always be good ♪" "♪ To one who'll watch ♪" "♪ Over me ♪" "♪ Although I may not ♪" "♪ Be the man some ♪" "♪ Girls think of ♪" "♪ As handsome ♪" "♪ But to her heart ♪" "♪ I'll carry ♪" "♪ The key ♪" "♪ Won't you tell her, please ♪" "♪ To put on some speed ♪" "♪ Follow my lead ♪" "♪ Oh, how I need ♪" "♪ Someone to watch ♪" "♪ Over me. ♪"