Frank Sinatra (1915-1998) was an American singer and actor. He had an illustrious career in music and film over several decades. He began as a singer for big bands in the 1930s-40s and became a huge star, known as "Ol' Blue Eyes." His career declined in the 1950s but had a major comeback with his Oscar-winning role in From Here to Eternity in 1953. He had many #1 hits in the 1950s-60s and worked with great arrangers. Sinatra was also known for his ties to organized crime and was investigated by the FBI for decades. He continued touring into his late 70s and died of a heart attack in 1998 at age 82

2. Bio Full name: Francis Albert Sinatra. Born: Dec. 12, 1915, in Hoboken, N.J. Wives: Last wife was Barbara Marx; formerly married to childhood sweetheart Nancy Barbato, actresses Ava Gardner & Mia Farrow. Children: Frank Jr. and Nancy Sinatra, who sang the hit 1970s song "These Boots Were Made for Walking." Names: Also known as Chairman of the Board, Ol' Blue Eyes and The Voice. Other names included Lean Lark, Croon Prince of Swing, Moonlight Sinatra, Groovy Galahad, and Svengali of Swing.

3. Early Life He left high school without graduating, having attended only 47 days before being expelled due to his rowdy conduct. His mother, known as Dolly, was influential in the neighborhood and in local Democratic Party circles, but also ran an illegal abortion business from her home; she was charged and convicted for this offense.

4. Early Life Frank's father Martin served with the Hoboken Fire Department. During the tough years of the 1930s, when the Great Depression hit North America very hard. Dolly nevertheless provided ready pocket money to her son Frank, the family's only child, for outings with friends and fancy clothes.

5. Early Life Frank then worked for some time as a delivery boy at the Jersey Observer newspaper,and as a riveter at the Tietjan and Lang shipyard. It was in the early 1930s that Sinatra began singing in public.

6. Birth of his career In 1935, he got his first break when his mother persuaded a local singing group, The Three Flashes, to let him join.

7. With Sinatra, the group became known as the Hoboken Four,and they sufficiently impressed Edward Bowes that they appeared on his show, Major Bowes Amateur Hour, and with a record 40,000 votes they won the first prize, a six month contract to perform on stage and radio across the United States.

8. Sinatra left the Hoboken Four and returned home in late 1935. His mother secured him a job as a singing waiter and MC at the Rustic Cabin in Englewood, New Jersey, for which he was paid $15 a week. On March 18, 1939, Sinatra made his first recording, of a song called "Our Love", with the Frank Mane band. In June, Harry James hired Sinatra on a one year contract of $75 a week.

9. Growing dissatisfied with the James band, Sinatra was approached by Tommy Dorsey in November 1939, and formally joined Dorsey's band the following January. In his first year with Dorsey, Sinatra released more than forty songs, with "I'll Never Smile Again" topping the charts for twelve weeks in mid-July.

10. Sinatra’s career declines & Sinatramania! In the autumn of 1940, Sinatra appeared in his first film, Las Vegas Nights. In May 1941, Sinatra was at the top of the male singer polls in the Billboard and Downbeat magazines.

11. Sinatra's relationship with Tommy Dorsey was tenuous, and Sinatra recorded his first solo sessions without the Dorsey band (but with Dorsey's arranger Axel Stordahl and with Dorsey's approval) in January 1942. Sinatra left the Dorsey band late in 1942.

12. His appeal to bobby soxers, as teenage girls of that time were called, revealed a whole new audience for popular music, which had been recorded mainly for adults up to that time. On December 31, 1942, Sinatra opened at the Paramount Theater in New York. It is there that 'Sinatramania' really began, an event which led Sinatra's rival Bing Crosby to jokingly declare: "Frank's the kind of singer that comes along once in a lifetime, but why did he have to come along in mine?"

13. During the musicians' strike of 1942–44, Columbia’s rereleased Harry James’ "All or Nothing at All", recorded in August 1939 and released before Sinatra had made a name for himself. The original release didn’t even mention the vocalist’s name. When the recording was re–released in 1943 with Sinatra’s name prominently displayed, the record was on the best–selling list for 18 weeks and reached number 2 on June 2, 1943.

14. In 1943, he signed with Columbia Records as a solo artist with initially great success, particularly during the musicians' recording strikes. Sinatra signed with Columbia on June 1, 1943, with the musicians' strike ten months old. And while no new records had been issued during the strike, he had been performing on the radio (on Your Hit Parade), and on stage.

15. Columbia wanted to get new recordings of their growing star as fast as possible, so Sinatra convinced them to hire Alex Wilder as arranger and conductor for several sessions with a vocal group called the Bobby Tucker Singers. These first sessions were on June 7, June 22, August 5, and November 10, 1943. Of the nine songs recorded during these sessions, seven charted on the best–selling list. When Sinatra returned to the Paramount in October 1944, 35,000 fans caused a near riot outside the venue because they were not allowed in.

16. In 1945, Sinatra co-starred with Gene Kelly in Anchors Aweigh. That same year, he was loaned out to RKO to star in a short film titled The House I Live In. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy, this film on tolerance and racial equality earned a special Academy Award shared among Sinatra and those who brought the film to the screen, along with a special Golden Globe for "Promoting Good Will." 1946 saw the release of his first album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra, and the debut of his own weekly radio show.

17. By the end of 1948, Sinatra himself felt that his career was stalling, something that was confirmed when he slipped to No. 4 on Down Beat's annual poll of most popular singers. 1949 saw an upswing, as Frank once again teamed up with Gene Kelly to co-star in Take Me Out to the Ball Game. It was well received critically and became a major commercial success. That same year, Sinatra would team up with Gene Kelly for a third time in On the Town.

18. After two years' absence, Sinatra returned to the concert stage on January 12, 1950, in Hartford, Connecticut. Sinatra's voice suffered and he experienced hemorrhaging of his vocal cords on stage at the Copacabana on April 26, 1950. Sinatra's career and appeal to new teen audiences declined as he moved into his mid-30s. In September 1951, Sinatra made his Las Vegas debut at the Desert Inn. A month later, a second series of the Frank Sinatra Show aired on CBS. Columbia and MCA dropped Sinatra in 1952.

19. Rebirth The rebirth of Sinatra's career began with the eve-of-Pearl Harbor drama From Here to Eternity (1953), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. This role and performance mark the turnaround in Sinatra's career, in which he went from being in a critical and commercial decline for several years to an Oscar-winning actor and, once again, one of the top recording artists in the world.

21. Frank Sinatra Sings For Only The Lonely (1958), and

23. Swing Easy! (1954),

24. Songs For Swingin' Lovers (1956),

26. Following on the heels of Can Can was Ocean's 11, the film that would become the definitive on-screen outing for "The Rat Pack".

27. On January 27, 1961, Sinatra played a benefit show at Carnegie Hall for Martin Luther King, Jr. and would go on to play a major role in the desegregation of Nevada hotels and casinos in the 1960s. Sinatra led his fellow members of the Rat Pack and label-mates on Reprise in refusing to patronize hotels and casinos that wouldn't allow black singers to play live or wouldn't allow black patrons entry. He would often speak from the stage on desegregation.

28. He would play more benefits for Martin Luther King, Jr. who, according to Frank Sinatra, Jr., at one point during a show in 1963 sat weeping as Sinatra sang Ol' Man River, the song from the musical Show Boat that, in the show, its sung by an African-American. Over September 11 and 12, 1961, Sinatra recorded his final songs for Capitol Records.

29. In 1962, along with Janet Leigh and Laurence Harvey, he starred in the political thriller The Manchurian Candidate as Bennett Marco. That same year, Sinatra and Count Basie collaborated for the album Sinatra-Basie. One of Sinatra's more ambitious albums from the mid-1960s was The Concert Sinatra, which was recorded with a 73-piece symphony orchestra on 35mm tape.

30. In the spring, That's Life appeared, with both the single and album becoming Top Ten hits in the US on Billboard's pop charts. Strangers in the Night went on to top the Billboard ,winning the award for Record of the Year at the Grammys. The album of the same name also topped the Billboard.

31. Sinatra would start 1967 with a series of recording sessions with Antonio Carlos Jobim. Later in the year, a duet with daughter Nancy, "Somethin' Stupid”. In December, Sinatra collaborated with Duke Ellington on the album Francis A. & Edward K..

32. With Sinatra in mind, singer-songwriter Paul Anka wrote the song "My Way" inspired from the French "Commed'habitude" ("As Usual"), composed by Claude François and Jacques Revaux. "My Way" would, perhaps, become more identified with him than any other over his seven decades as a singer.

33. Retirement and comeback On June 12, 1971 at the age of 55, Sinatra announced that he was retiring, bringing to an end his 36-year career in show business. Closing with the song "Angel Eyes," Sinatra exited the stage on the line “ ‘scuseme while I disappear", not returning for an encore. In 1973, Sinatra came out of retirement with a television special and album, both entitled Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back. The album, arranged by Gordon Jenkins and Don Costa, was a great success. The TV special was highlighted by a dramatic reading of "Send in the Clowns" and a song and dance sequence with former co-star Gene Kelly.

34. In January 1974, Sinatra returned to Las Vegas, performing at Caesars Palace. This occurred, despite vowing in 1970 never to play Caesars Palace again, after the manager of the resort, Sanford Waterman, had pulled a gun on him during a heated argument. In October 1974, Sinatra appeared at New York City's Madison Square Garden, in a televised concert that was later released as an album under the title The Main Event – Live. Back in Las Vegas, while celebrating 40 years in show business and his 64th birthday, he was awarded the Grammy Trustees Award during a party at Caesars Palace.

35. Duets and final performances In December, as part of Sinatra's birthday celebrations, Patrick Pasculli, the Mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey, made a proclamation in his honor, declaring that "no other vocalist in history has sung, swung and crooned and serenaded into the hearts of the young and old... as this consummate artist from Hoboken". The same month Sinatra would give the first show of his Diamond Jubilee Tour at the Meadowlands Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

36. In 1993 Sinatra made a surprise return to Capitol Records and the recording studio for Duets, which was released in November. Sinatra’s duet with Bono on "I've Got You Under My Skin" contributed to the album's great commercial success, which reached #2 on the Billboard charts, and eventually selling over 2 million copies in the US alone.

37. The artists who added their vocals to the album worked for free, and a follow-up album (Duets II) was released in 1994, which reached #9 on the Billboard charts. Duets II marked Sinatra's last recording with Antonio Carlos Jobim, as well as his last studio recordings, bringing to an end his 60-year recording career. Still touring, despite various health problems, Sinatra would remain a top concert attraction on a global scale during the first half of the 1990s. At times, his memory seemed to fail him, and a fall onstage in Richmond, Virginia in 1994 signaled further problems.

38. Sinatra was awarded the Legend Award at the 1994 Grammy Awards. He was introduced by Bono. In 1995, To mark Sinatra's 80th birthday, the Empire State Building glowed blue. A star-studded birthday tribute at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles would be his last televised appearance.

39. Controversy Sinatra gained considerable attention due to his alleged personal and professional links with organized crime. Among these figures included Sam Giancana, Lucky Luciano, and Joseph Fischetti. The Federal Bureau of Investigation kept records amounting to 2,403 pages on Sinatra. The FBI kept Sinatra under surveillance for almost five decades beginning in the 1940s.

40. For a year Hoover investigated Sinatra's alleged Communist affiliations, but came up empty-handed. Readers learn that the budding star, to get an exemption from military service, told draft-board doctors that he had an irrational fear of crowds. The files include his rendezvous with prostitutes, and his extramarital affair with Ava Gardner, which preceded their marriage.

41. Celebrities mentioned in the files are Dean Martin, Marilyn Monroe, Peter Lawford, and Giancana's girlfriend, singer Phyllis McGuire. The FBI's secret dossier on Sinatra was released in 1998 in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.

42. Death After suffering a heart attack, Frank Sinatra died at 10:50 pm on May 14, 1998 , his wife Barbara by his side. He was 82 years old. Sinatra's final words, spoken as attempts were made to stabilize him, were "I'm losing." The next night the lights on the Las Vegas Strip were dimmed in his honor.

43. On May 20, 1998 at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills, Sinatra's funeral was held, with 400 mourners in attendance and hundreds of fans outside. A private ceremony was held later that day at St. Theresa's Catholic Church in Palm Springs. Sinatra was buried following the ceremony next to his parents in Cathedral City, a quiet cemetery on Ramon Road at the border of Cathedral City and Rancho Mirage. The words "The Best Is Yet to Come" are imprinted on his tombstone.

44. “I think my greatest ambition in life is to pass on to others what I know.”