Frank Sinatra

Francis Albert Sinatra, the voice of an era, died on May 14th 1998, aged 82

The story goes that Frank Sinatra asked John Paul II to hear his confession. The pope declined, despite Mr Sinatra’s promise to see him right. The story may have been made up, perhaps by Mr Sinatra’s own publicists; little that is reported about showbiz can be taken on trust. But it sounds right. Frank Sinatra liked to say he dealt only with the best, and the best could be bought or intimidated like anyone else. The great singer would give his greatest performance, this time to God, recounting how the ten commandments, the seven deadly sins, had been broken: his way.

Mr Sinatra did meet a predecessor of John Paul at a reception in Rome. This pope did not seem to have heard of him before and politely inquired what operas he had sung in. Such ignorance; but it has no doubt been shared this past week by many in the world’s younger generations, baffled by the huge headlines and the yards of articles about Mr Sinatra in newspapers, and the hours about him on television. Who was this octogenarian getting all the attention? That was the immortal Ol’ Blue Eyes, darling. Newspapers and television are mostly run by the middle-aged middle class, and Frank Sinatra was part of their youth.

Go back to the 1960s and 1970s. There were the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, of course, twanging their guitars and shouting themselves hoarse, and Elvis lewdly rotating his pelvis. But the Sinatra light baritone backed by a thousand strings was preferred by those who still liked to dance cheek to cheek. The words were often banal, but don’t laugh; lose yourself; it’s schmaltz that makes the world go round. Al Jolson produced the same effect, and in the 1920s was an idol too, down on his knees crying for “Mammy”. It seems unlikely that Jolson and Sinatra were faking it. Much has been made of Frank Sinatra’s short temper, his intolerance of criticism, his links with gangsters, but this may only prove a point. “Sentimentality is a superstructure covering brutality,” wrote Carl Jung.

Was that then the secret of Frank Sinatra’s success, a listenable voice and a reputation for roughness? His longevity must have helped. He was born in a slum district of New Jersey to Italian immigrants (father a fireman, mother a nurse) and had a first-generation American’s determination to succeed. He never willingly retired and had to be carried off the stage in 1994 when he collapsed in the middle of singing “My Way”.

Other singers had their moment of fame and were quickly gone, but he endured. When Mr Sinatra was making his first records with the swing bands of Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, the foremost pop singer in America was Bing Crosby. He seemed unsurpassable in popular esteem. He had an easy and wholesome style. Pope John Paul would have had no problem with Crosby. Frank Sinatra sang the same ballads, but made them sound sexier. Crosby, you felt, would be happy with a kiss; Sinatra sought possession of the whole body. Cole Porter demanded to know why he sang so many of his songs if he did not like the way they were written. But Frank Sinatra had captured the public’s new mood for licentiousness rather than mere romance, and received the reward of fame and money.

You could not get away from him. There were dozens of films, most of them forgettable. According to Billy Wilder, afilm director, Frank Sinatra had talent but did not have the discipline to be a great actor. He had a fleshy private life that was remarkable even for Hollywood. There were many affairs and four marriages. A reporter asked him what he looked for in a woman. “A sense of humour,” he said. His fourth wife, Barbara, had been married to one of the Marx brothers.

It was not much fun for the reporters whose job it was to follow him around. They were, he said, “a bunch of hags”, and the women were “hookers”. Frank Sinatra needed continuous publicity to stay ahead, but loathed the stories he could not control. People were only mildly interested in accounts of his concerts for charity. They were absorbed by his appearance before a commission investigating his links with organised crime, which he denied. “Bugsy Siegel? He’s a gangster?” They were incredulous about a report that he washed his hands obsessively, especially when an obliging newspaper pointed to a reference in Macbeth: “What, will these hands ne’er be clean?” After that he was called Lady Macbeth, at least behind his back.

There was an unpleasant side to Frank Sinatra, and more dirt will probably come out now that he is beyond the protection of libel laws and the mob. More important though, much more than this, may be that he characterised an era. It was a less gentle time than Crosby’s, but not that different. Frank Sinatra sang about a mating game in which men and women played their timeless roles. Today’s pop singers, with their hermaphrodite looks, their taste for drugs and violence, suggest a darker era. Or so it may seem to the middle-aged who write about them.