Part 1 Sinatra: All or Nothing at All

This programme contains some strong language.

MUSIC: Summer Wind by Frank Sinatra

TV: 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.

An idol of mine and millions. And a great Italian-American,

a great American. And a great actor, by the way.

I think every American would have to smile

and say he really did do it his way.

They dimmed the lights on the Vegas strip in his honour.

Here, and in dozens of cities across the country,

radio stations have been playing nothing but Sinatra.

VINYL CRACKLES

MUSIC: One For My Baby by Frank Sinatra

IN FRENCH:

# It's quarter to three

# 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 a jukebox,

it was in a dark bar on a Sunday afternoon,

when my mother and I went in searching for my father.

And, er, she said...

I will always remember, she said, "Listen to that.

"That's Frank Sinatra. He's from New Jersey."

# Make it one for my baby... #

And while his music became synonymous with black tie,

the good life, best booze, women, sophistication,

it was the deep blueness of Frank's voice that affected me the most.

# I got the routine... #

He was the poet laureate of loneliness.

His songs were haunted by it.

For all his fame, he loved solitude.

# Feeling so bad... #

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 gotta be

# True to your code... #

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."

One afternoon, by the pool,

Dad was, with his black flair pen,

making his music list, his song list.

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.

Ladies and gentlemen...

Frank Sinatra.

APPLAUSE

MUSIC: All Or Nothing At All

And this was the beginning.

# All or nothing at all... #

APPLAUSE

# Half a love

# Never appealed to me... #

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 that might... #

What startled me about that film

was that it has that rough, hand-held 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.

# ..dizzy at all... #

MAIN MIC DROPS OUT

People holding those cameras were as swept up

in the moment as everybody in the audience,

and people on stage, the orchestra, Sinatra himself.

They knew this was the end of the line for this great artist.

# So, you see

# I've got to say no...

# No... #

These were some of the milestone points

in his career, musically.

# All...

# Or nothing at all. #

APPLAUSE

Going back to the very beginning,

there has been conflicting stories about your childhood in Hoboken

quoted by people who've done interviews with you.

There's this kind of general version of the...

your slum conditions, in Hoboken,

and then there are others.

There was an article some years ago by a very good magazine writer

who said this isn't so.

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...

HE COUGHS

Pardon me. ..about my young days, or my childhood,

were rather dreamed up, rather fictitious.

I've read many of them,

and I've said to myself I don't remember this,

this is really strange.

# The mist on the meadow

# Is drifting away... #

I was born on in 1915, on December 12, and I weighed 12 and 3/4 pounds,

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...

Funny, they sent up a flare for a doctor,

and upon removing me,

I was pretty well damaged on the 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... LAUGHTER

..she knew what to do with me.

And she stuck me under the ice-cold water in a cold-water flat.

And apparently got some blood moving around,

whacked me around a little bit.

And I have blessed that day, that moment, in her honour, ever since.

-Hi.

-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 to have you come to the phone.

I know the last time Frank was in town,

you weren't feeling very well, and...you're fully recovered now?

Well, yes, I feel pretty well, now.

And Frank called me, only recently, while I was in the hospital...

# Fools rush in

# Where angels fear to tread... #

I was the only child. And she was tough on me.

-I mean, she was very strict with me.

-Yeah.

-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 that I was down there, at the railroad tracks,

she'd whack me around, out of fear. Out of fear.

# Then I don't care... #

I think the first thing that I was ever conscious of was

the drive that she had all the time.

Her constant seeking was to do better,

to constantly do better.

Dolly Sinatra was an earth mother.

Everybody became her son, her daughter,

everybody's problems became her problems.

And that went from psychological problems to physical problems.

Grandma had become a midwife, in her neighbourhood.

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 necessity.

She did what needed to be done.

My father was withdrawn, he was a shy man.

He spoke perfect English, but he couldn't put words together,

he was still at these, thems and those.

Remember that he had to be intimidated by mother's...

innate knowledge.

Because 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 Genovese were the original bankers. They were lawyers.

And she used to say to me, "I think that I'm half Italian, half Jew."

I said, "Maybe you are, Ma." She said, "Well, I'm smart."

She said, "That's where they came. Where I came from."

And consequently, she succeeded,

she made her way in life,

she did very well, considering.

MUSIC: I've Got Rhythm by George Gershwin

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 submachine gun.

And of course Sinatra, growing up where he did,

when he did,

understood that that guy with the machinegun was real.

My father, at the time, was rarely at home,

because he was a protector for the bootlegging trucks.

They used to have a car that would follow the truck,

so it wouldn't get hijacked.

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, and he was bleeding everywhere,

and my father, as a little boy, woke up and saw this.

# 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.

I was about eight or nine years old.

The old man opened a saloon,

it was called Marty O'Brien's Bar.

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.

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 him with a club,

put it under the bar, and kept talking.

They had, in the bar, a piano with a roll in it.

You put a nickel in it, it would play the songs.

And occasionally one of the men in the bar would pick me up

and put me up on the piano and I'd sing with the roll.

And it was a horrendous voice, terrible, I mean, like a siren.

LAUGHTER

You know...

HIGH AND STRAINED: # 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.

HE COUGHS 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.

MUSIC: Boulevard Of Broken Dreams by Ted Weems

In my hometown the city was, as I said,

the square mile was almost divided in quarters.

One quarter was Italian,

another quarter was 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 of 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.

# The boulevard of broken dreams... #

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 realise 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.

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.

In Italy, there were 55 discrete dialects of the Italian language.

My grandmother spoke all 55.

This put her in a position where people came to her

as the neighbourhood interpreter.

The next logical step in the '20s, she went into politics.

Then they wanted to reward my mother,

and give my father a job,

on a city payroll, right.

A cop or a fireman, right, so she made him a fireman.

Hoboken had about six movie theatres, we're only one mile square.

We had the Lyric Theatre, the US Theatre,

the Broadwalk houses ended 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,

then I saw jugglers, and all that kind of thing.

But I'm still thinking about singing,

I'd never lost that thing about singing back there.

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... #

Bing Crosby was the first great pop singer in America,

and the first white singer to completely internalise

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.

# I like New York in June

# How about you?

# I like a Gershwin tune

# How about you? #

I started singing more in school, with the dances on Friday nights.

Every other Friday night, we had 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.

-Before then, I sang through a megaphone. You wouldn't know what that is.

-Rudy Vallee.

-That's what you sing through.

-You actually used a megaphone?

I had a megaphone, and guys would throw pennies into...

-See if they could get me to swallow them.

-Go right down you!

-A lot of fun, those days.

-They try it with shot glasses now.

But I used to move a great deal, so they couldn't hit it.

Then came the microphone age,

and I thought, "Jesus, 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.

When did you first discover that Frank found out that he could sing?

Well, I first discovered it when he didn't want to go to school

any more, 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.

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, chance, chance."

He said, "Ten years from now," he said, "You'll still be looking for chance, you'll be a bum," he said.

# All or nothing at all

# If it's love

# There ain't no in between

# Why begin and stop something that might have been?

# I know I'd rather...

# Rather have nothing at all... #

Where did you first meet Frank?

In Long Branch, New Jersey,

which is on the coast.

I knew his family,

his aunt and uncle and their children.

Across the street, Nancy's father and mother had a house.

And I saw this very pretty little girl sitting on their front stoop.

And he called across the street and says, "Hi, what are you doing?",

And I said, "I'm giving myself a manicure."

He said, "Would you give me one?" I said, "Sure."

And I gave him a manicure, and that's how I met him.

Well, I have a funny feeling that she may have had eyes for me,

because she was sitting out there alone, just staring, across the street.

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.

And we went together for about four and a half, five years,

or five and a half years, I can't remember exactly,

I know that before Major Bowes, we were going together.

We're proud indeed of the brilliant careers that have been launched

through the radio forum in New York City.

To get a start, there was a man on radio called Major Bowes,

who had an amateur programme,

and you went and you auditioned.

I went over and I auditioned,

and they said, "OK. 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. Three Aces.

Oh, boy, they took a lot of time to think that out.

LAUGHTER

And Major Bowes loused that up by saying you'll be the Hoboken Four,

that took care of that whole situation like that.

We have now the Hoboken Four.

They call themselves the singing and dancing fools.

Who will speak for the group?

I will, I'm Frank.

We're looking for jobs. How about it?

LAUGHTER

Everyone that's ever heard us liked us,

we think we're pretty good.

All right, what do you want to sing, or dance, or whatever it is you do?

-We're going to sing Shine.

-All right, let's have it. 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... #

We performed, and we won the first prize, and we went out on the road

all over the United States, most of the United States anyway.

And we started out on the train,

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 it up

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 any more.

And I told the guys, and they stayed.

Well, you know, he used to write me letters, he was lonely,

-I'll tell you that.

-Did you keep those letters?

-I tore them all up.

I kept one.

I had enough money and I bought a plane ticket.

I landed at Newark.

And Nancy's brother borrowed a car,

and they came out and met me at the airport,

and then, of course, is when I...

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, and they'd say,

"Hey, listen, come on over and sing if you want to 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, this particular morning,

said to me...

"Why don't you just get out of the house and go out on your own?"

It was 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...

..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.

When Frank Sinatra was young,

New York was the centre of American popular music.

The radio networks at that point were centred in New York.

The music business itself, Tin Pan Alley,

these were centred 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 said this is the place that I have to go

in order to become what I want to become.

I just kind of bummed around, I had about 60 in a savings account,

and I just hung around, I got odd jobs.

I used to hang round the music publishing houses, and I got to know

Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Connor, 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 that they could do it on the radio

but I wasn't a big enough man as an artist

to be focused on by a guy like van Heusen.

A couple of times, when I was really kind of short,

I bunked with a musician of one of the bands,

in the Forest Hotel.

About that point...

..was the Christmas that came that I went home.

And I thought my old man was on 24-hour shifts,

but I had the day screwed up, he was off 24 hours and he was at home.

And I brought two presents over to leave them there,

because he didn't speak to me for a long time. Didn'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 marvellous.

MUSIC: Here Comes The Night by Frank Sinatra

# Here comes the night my cloak of blue

# Here comes the night

# With dreams of you... #

But seven 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 George Washington Bridge.

Got the job at The Rustic Cabin.

Shortly after that, we got word that the WNEW dance parade

was going to pick up The Rustic Cabin,

every night of the week, 11 to 11:15, or 11:15 to 11:30, whatever it was.

Suddenly, he, my dad,

became the proudest man in the world, you know.

He couldn't wait to tell anybody, everybody, or anybody,

that I was on a 15-minute dance remote programme

from New Jersey in some roadhouse somewhere, you know.

And they'd all sit around the radio and listen, 11 o'clock 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 got on the radio in the early days of radio was a very big star.

MUSIC: I've Got A Heartful Of Music by Benny Goodman

On my night off at The Rustic Cabin is 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,

who 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 at The Brass Rail,

he said, the restaurant, he said, his name is Quinlan, 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 only got to talk to him. So I went up and he was surly.

I think he was hungover, anyway.

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 a singer

"because I feel that I have an idea about singing."

"Oh," he said, "you've 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 tell you what we'll do.

"If you can handle three dollars a week," he said, "I'll give you three lessons a week."

And I started, three lessons a week.

I couldn't wait to get there every time we had a lesson.

I couldn't wait, because I knew that I was learning something.

He was teaching me the proper way to sing.

And I still use the same exercises, and then I developed some of my own.

Matter of fact, I once put out a book with him,

we put out a paperback, vocal calisthenics book, after I made it,

and we had drawings made of the mouth formation, you know.

The E sound, and the Oo sound and the Er.

And there's no such thing as a Ah, it's wrong.

Never sing Ah, you sing Uh.

U H. Uh.

That's across, up the roof of the mouth, into the mass.

If you sing Ah, 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!

You'll get a bill next week.

I worked with him for a long time.

And then I began to get the jobs. I got a couple of jobs.

I went to WNEW, I didn't get any money,

and Diana Shore and I split a half hour,

she had 15 minutes, I had 15 minutes.

Don't you remember the early, early, early show we used to do on WNEW?

-Do I? Every time I think about it, I get tired.

-Yeah.

-Imagine having to sing love songs at six o'clock in the morning?

-Oh, yeah.

-And not even finishing the chorus, there was never enough time.

-All the emotion into it. Gee-whiz.

But then we were lucky though

cos they used to give us free coffee.

-Yeah.

-And who could afford breakfast in those days?

-Yeah.

# Here we are...

BOTH: # Out of cigarettes

# Holding hands and yawning

# Look how late it gets... #

Now I was on the air twice.

Once at night and one in the morning.

And then I got fan mail.

And 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, really, we see the difference in what's happening.

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.

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.

# How to make two lovers

# Old friends... #

APPLAUSE

MUSIC: The Right Girl For Me by Frank Sinatra

# 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 and the light in her smile... #

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.

When Nancy and I got married

the Italian custom is that the bride has a white satin bag

with a drawstring on it, and you'd give envelopes,

which is the most sensible thing in the world,

instead of a whole bunch of phoney gifts that you never use,

and all the song cats chipped in.

I think there must have been 30 of them,

and they put 2 apiece, or something.

They gave us 60 for our wedding, 50 or 60.

Sweet, you know, really touching.

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.

She was making 22 a week and I was at the Rustic Cabin making 15 a week.

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 rest of the cabins and I heard a singer,

so I said, "Well, 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 a 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... #

Harry James is listening to me all the time and I don't know this.

He was with Benny Goodman. He was the first trumpet player with him.

He said to me, "We're all going to 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 about tonight?"

So now I leave and I go with Harry, we go on the road.

When you're on a road with a dance band,

you're moving all the time,

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, knew I was reaching, trying to find things,

like a pitcher 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 fill in with notes

and Harry would do the Noodle with the trumpet and Stardust,

which I hated, cos everybody used to sing it and I'd had it up to here.

And a lot of the wives, it was like baseball wives,

they all came across the country in a car.

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?

He's always thinking ahead.

This man thinks a great deal, always did, as a kid even.

He always had an ambition.

He said that he wanted to be very big in the industry.

He wanted to be... When he saw Bing, he felt that that was his ambition.

# I'm dreaming of a white Christmas

# Just like the ones I used to know... #

And Bing Crosby ruled the airwaves completely.

Every radio show in those days had 15, 20 minutes of Bing Crosby.

A single record... It's called White Christmas.

To this day, it's the biggest record that ever sold.

It sold 50 million records.

# I'm dreaming

# Of a white Christmas... #

All the time I was with Harry, I just kept thinking about the next step.

I'd listened to Tommy Dorsey's band

and I'd listened to the singer with the band.

Jack Leonard was with the band.

What 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.

# All or nothing at all... #

When I quit, the first guy he contacted was Frank.

He said, "How'd you like to work for me?"

"Oh," I said, "Jesus, Tom," I said, "I've got a two-year deal with Harry

"and I don't know."

I said, "I'm dying to sing for you," cos Tommy was...

He and Glenn Miller, they were the two top orchestras,

so I didn't sleep all night.

My eyes were jumping, I was so excited.

I even went to the theatre 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."

He was still signed with me.

I hadn't given him a written release, I just said,

"Sure, go ahead, Frank," cos really I've always lived that way.

The word is stronger than a pen with me.

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.

And I joined Tommy with a lot of malevolence in the band,

a lot of bad vibes.

They resented me for the fact that their friend, Jack Leonard, quit.

ORCHESTRA PLAYS

When you're with a band, it's very cliquey

and when a new person comes in, it's like,

"You prove yourself, kiddo, 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... #

He sang about eight bars and that whole theatre

became so quiet you could have heard a pin drop.

You just knew that you were hearing something quite unique.

# And I am once again with you

# When our love was new... #

Tommy Dorsey had this incredible, incredible breath control.

Without breathing... I guess...

TROMBONE PLAYS

I watched him and I could never see him breathe.

16 bars at a time. I wonder how he does that.

If you can visualise 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.

# ..and always will remain

# Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo

# My stardust melody

# The memory of love's refrain. #

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.

He said, "Hey, anybody awake yet? We're in a war with Japan.

"They bombed the Pearl Harbor."

'With the unbounding determination of our people

'we will gain the inevitable triumph,'

-so help us, God.

-APPLAUSE

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.

# 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 with the laughing face... #

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.

# But summer could take a few lessons from her

# She was a tomboy in lace

# That's Nancy with the laughing face... #

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.

# 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 the laughing face... #

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 the girl real close and dance.

# Poor you

# I'm sorry you're not me

# For you will never know

# What loving you can be... #

Frank had a style, almost a sexy style, you know, very warm.

With those eyes and that smile,

I think he could almost pinpoint them at one particular girl.

They just fell in love with him.

# Poor you

# You'll live your whole life through

# And yet you'll never know

# The thrill of loving you. #

CHEERING

The kids were just enamoured with Frank.

And you could hear when Tommy would be playing, the kids were aware

that it'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 any more.

It wasn't Tommy that was getting the crowd,

it was Frank that was getting the crowd.

# He's a new man

# Better than Casanova... #

And that's what Tommy couldn't stand.

If you've got an organisation

and the boy singer is taking it away from you, who needs that act?

# I'm so proud I'm busting... #

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.

# But look at him now

# Jack, I'm ready

# Look at him now... #

It was pandemonium all the time, chaos.

The reaction from the crowds in those days was absolutely phenomenal.

They were squealing and yelling and screaming.

The kids would scream every time I'd come out on the stage.

WOMAN WAILS AND SHOUTS

LAUGHTER

-How are you, Frank?

-Oh, I feel fine, Mr Crosby.

Let's declare a little moratorium on the formality, Frankie.

Just call me Bing.

Oh, no, I wouldn't dream of calling a man of your years

by his first name. LAUGHTER

Now I figured that Crosby was the only man on top,

he was the only guy at the top, and I thought to myself,

"Somebody's got to challenge this bum.

"Some time or other, it's going to happen."

So I began to think to myself, "Why don't I do it for myself?"

I know this guy's signed me and I've got a deal with him.

Tommy was a man who was more of a proprietary 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,

"I think in about a year I'd like to leave the band,"

and he kind of left it, just grinned at me.

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, Goddamn it,

"you fucking ingrate."

So, 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'd been accused that the mob got me out of the band.

Some unidentifiable creature went to Tommy Dorsey and said,

"You better let him out of the contract."

Well, that never happened.

The man who did 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."

He said, "I want one third of his salary for the rest of his life,

"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 any more you won't."

LAUGHTER

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.

I was just happy to be home.

Nancy was now two years old.

# You can't resist her... #

I spent about three, four weeks just sitting at home.

And I can just picture it, you know?

They were poor times but they were good times.

As poor as they always were, they were never that bad.

# My Nancy with the laughing face... #

Cos then when the real work started, he worked like a dog.

I was living in Hasbrouck Heights

and I found out there was a theatre there where they had vaudeville

and I went around, spoke to the manager

and I said, "I'd like to play here for a couple of nights,

"maybe a weekend." He said, "OK."

Each booker from the theatres in New York, the Roxy, the Strand,

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've 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.

In those days, they called you an extra added attraction.

I got into New York and I look at the marquee...

Holy...

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.

If I'm not good in the Paramount Theatre

under these circumstances, I'm dead.

Jesus, I was nervous.

ORCHESTRA PLAYS

Benny did a whole section of music and then he would finish that section

with Sing, Sing, Sing, and it would get rowdy, it would tear the joint.

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."

SCREAMING AND CHEERING

And they screamed like a banshee.

He turned around and he looked at the audience and he said to nobody,

"What the fuck is that?" he said.

# I 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 cos I thought she was precipitating a riot.

I tried to pull her out and she was like a tigress,

so I called some of the guys.

I had four lads pulling her out and carrying her

and she wouldn't go!

I mean, there's nothing that you can do

when you have 3,000 people standing up and screaming at something.

What are you going to say, "Sit down"?

But this is the kind of hysteria that came there.

# And I'll be there... #

The next day, the reviews came out. They were very kind.

It was holiday season, it was jumping.

I was booked for two weeks.

# Never saw the sun shining so bright

# Never saw things looking so right... #

Parents would take their children to the theatres

at four o'clock in the morning and wait with them until daylight,

and what a difference in a child in those days.

They use to come up scrubbed up,

their pink cheeks with their hair combed and bobbysocks.

# 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 for 35 cents. We sat there all day.

We were poorer but we always had money to go to the Paramount

and see Sinatra.

When he'd walk out and the band would play the intro to his songs,

oh, you'd get goose bumps.

It was little wonder that throughout the nation feminine listeners

formed Frank "Swoonatra" fan clubs

and one organisation called itself

the Sighing Society of Swooning Sinatra Slaves.

The Voice, as he was nicknamed, was no flash in the pan.

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 theatre.

But everybody in America pretty much either had a radio

or had access to one, and you could use it for free.

-RADIO:

-Kids, Your Hit Parade!

Here's Frank with your fifth-place favourite Swinging On A Star.

# 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... #

The Hit Parade came along.

The next thing happened, I was still at the Paramount,

there's a new club opening on 57th Street called the Riobamba,

and they called and made an offer.

I said to my agents, "That sounds interesting."

They said, "We don't think so cos 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 it."

It all happened in 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

# And all the monkeys... #

The show at the Paramount, I came on the stage at about a quarter of nine,

and the radio show on at nine o'clock.

And it was like you'd put an animal in a cage.

The ambulance would back up, up on the sidewalk,

they'd open the door so I could jump in.

As you pulled away, they'd close the door

cos there were thousands of kids in the street.

And in the ambulance they would have a malted milk and a sandwich

and I would devour that by the time I got the ten blocks

up to the radio station.

I was so busy working. I was really working my ass off trying to help out

with the war effort

the best I could.

'Super War Bond Salesman 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, worn when he won the Santa Anita handicap.

-Do you think it'll fit me?

-LAUGHTER

'Now War Bond buyers get orchids with The Voice as the pin-up boy.'

And we have a squeal with each orchid, ladies and gentlemen.

'The Super War Bond special is the duet of the century.'

# People will say we're in love. #

LAUGHTER

# I'll never smile again

# Until I smile at you

# I'll never laugh again... #

Ruth Lowe was a Canadian woman. Her husband got killed.

He was a Canadian flyer. Right at 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.

# To smile again

# Until I smile

# At you. #

APPLAUSE

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 got to work on that.

"Who the hell is he not to be in the service?"

"Boys are getting killed in Europe and this guy's singing songs

"to their wives and their 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... #

I'm stationed in Foggia, Italy,

and 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.

# ..take a hike through Hitler's Reich

# And change that "Heil" to "What ya know, Joe"... #

The real creeps were the guys who were in uniform

but had safe jobs at Fort Dix and Fort Totten in Long Island.

They were the guys who threw the tomatoes and eggs

at the big sign on top of the marquee at the Paramount Theatre.

It was childish.

They wouldn't have guts enough to face me alone.

But I got the second notice and I had to reappear for an 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.

And I went to the New York Army with 6,000 other guys

and there were cameramen and radio guys

and 1,000 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 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 are lolling on their beds

and they walked towards me and one guy shook my hand.

He said, "I'm glad to meet you. I've been a big fan."

He said, "If you need any magazines or comic books,

"I've got a lot of stuff."

Well, do know how many phone calls I made?

I must have made 700 phone calls to everybody's family

all over the United States,

cos they would call their family and put me on.

There were seven phone booths, the kids were making them one at a time.

I'm running from one to another making the call.

"Hello, Mrs so-and-so," or the wife of a guy.

"Hello, Angie. He's fine. "No, he looks great." "Are you sure?"

"Oh, my God, you're calling me up. "Is it really you?"

"Yeah." "Sing something!"

The next afternoon, I get word to go down to the psychiatrist

and he said, "Before we do anything, I've got an 11-year-old

"who's absolutely crazy about you." And I signed it to his little girl.

When he put it away he said, "I've read your whole medical report.

"Even a rifle's shot could deafen you if the guy's 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 once you go back to your ward,

"get yourself dressed and then go back to New York."

I got on the ferry boat, put my coat collar up like this,

there's 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 start to cry.

# Time after time

# I tell myself that I'm

# So lucky

# To be loving you... #

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 Emanuel Sinatra.

My brother says it's Francis.

I think he was putting you on, hon.

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.

I came on for Roosevelt - I loved him!

And then I went on and 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,

where it might be like... We did one in Jersey,

where it's 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."

I didn't make any kind of a fancy speech.

And then Welles would walk out, and he was dynamite.

He was absolute dynamite.

There was great criticism heaped upon me because I was so active

in that particular campaign for Mr Roosevelt.

Newspaper writers like Lee Mortimer and Westbrook Pegler,

who were never in favour of the Democratic position,

they suddenly began to attack Sinatra.

I was stamped. They stamped me a communist right there.

I said, "Bullshit. I don't know who you are but you're wrong."

-Yeah?

-Good morning. My name is Frank Sinatra.

What?

SHE SIGHS

I did the first picture at RKO called Higher And Higher.

My family was still at home but I looked for a house.

At that point, Nancy put our house on the market and I called her

and said, "I've found a great house."

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.

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... #

I was home. Figured I did a movie and I'm going to do another movie.

I didn't get many movies done at RKO cos Mr Mayer saw me

in an old building downtown, the Shrine.

In that show we used to buy the whole row.

# As long as there's music

-# There's always romance

-Oo-ooh

# The spell of a theme

# Starts you to dream

-# There's always a chance

-Oo-oo-ooh

# As long as there's music

# Whatever the song... #

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 a guy sitting next to him.

Mayer said, "I want that boy."

I went to Metro and I got a 130,000 picture.

# What a dish, what a dream what a dame

# And she lives alone... #

A problem arose when I started at MGM.

We did a picture called Anchors Aweigh.

What struck me at first about Frank

was that he 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, "Frank, 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 we were training for the heavyweight championship.

He really worked very hard.

I did four vocals in Anchors Aweigh.

I said, "Well, Mr Sinatra, who do you want to write the songs?

The Gershwins, Kern, Porter Oscar Hammerstein, Rodgers?

Who do you want? He said, "Sammy Cahn."

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."

And they said, "You know we've got about ten arrangers."

I said, "No, no, I'm sorry, I have my own arranger."

Axel Stordahl, whom I now had engaged, who would not believe Tommy,

I finally convinced him. I got him 1,250 in 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

# Cos I've been fooled

# In the past

# And still I fall in love

# Too easily

# I fall in love

# Too fast. #

Anchors Aweigh opened

to rave reviews in big box offices

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 and my family was on welfare.

We were just a hoofing act.

And Frank found us and we went into the Capitol Theatre

and he paid us 1,750, all the money in the world.

Frank would come out, open up, sing a couple of songs,

then he introduced us. 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 up."

Frank has been one of the main moving forces with me

cos he stood up and was counted long before it became fashionable.

Putting his convictions on the line, Dad played himself

in The House I Live In,

a ten-minute short made in 1945.

And it fitted me to a T

because I was involved in anti-bigotry motions.

We got ten 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 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 fathead?

That film deeply moved me.

It was one of the most engaging documents that I'd 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.

Now I've got to 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?

# The 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. #

As an Italian-American growing up

when the most virulent anti-Italian thing was still in the land,

stereotypes of fractured English,

Life With Luigi radio shows...

-ITALIAN ACCENT:

-Dear Mama Mia...

LAUGHTER

Sinatra, he's a very big singer and he's an Italiano boy.

..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.

-NEWSREEL:

-New Oscars for Hollywood's top movie-makers.

At Grauman's Chinese Theatre over 2,000 stars are on hand

for the 18th annual Motion Picture Academy Awards.

Frank Sinatra,

he is honoured with a special award for his short The House I Live In.

-NEWSREEL:

-The last day of World War II.

Here and across the nation, yes, from coast to coast,

uncorks 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 new-found stardom

he was seen around town squiring "Sweater Girl" Lana Turner

and starlet Marilyn Maxwell, among other women.

# 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 anyway.

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.

# Making 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, the sauce is made.

"And I'll have the kids and we'll raise a family."

And that was what was important to her.

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.

I said to her, "I know where you got that."

She just looked up, aghast that I would be brave enough.

She went and told Frank, and Frank said to me, "You know,

"you should apologise," and I said, "Frank, you're mixed up.

"She has to apologise to me."

I feel 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.

# 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