Frank: The Voice by James Kaplan

Old Blue Eyes himself – very up close and personal. I never knew much about Frank Sinatra but you always hear about him, you actually hear him in every elevator; he plays a melodic part in almost every romance movie. This is a spoilt, lazy boy from Hoboken, NJ who became a cultural phenomenon that changed the way music was experienced and how fans interacted with their icons (The Beatles could probably blame/thank Frank for starting the crazy idolization by fans thing).

Frank started out as a do nothing brat with an overbearing mother (he told Shirley MacClaine “she scared the shit outta me. Never knew what she’d hate that I’d do”) and a pretty quiet father. He bought his way into his early bands in true Draco Malfoy fashion but was never satisfied and was always convinced he deserved more, he WOULD be the best. I never knew that he had several slump years where people were pretty much writing him off – he couldn’t get a gig, couldn’t get a real part in a movie, couldn’t manage his personal life – Frank wasn’t the cool cat we think of for many years.

The parts on his personal life (it does go in to his mob connections but not very deep) were positively insane – what he put his first wife through (though it does sound like she got him in the end) and then his relationship with Ava Gardner – wowza, talk about textbook crazy pants – all of that combined is such an interesting look at a classic narcissist.

My one complaint about the book is despite how very long it is, it stops when he is in his late 30s – right as he won his Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. He lived for 50 more years! Was he a watered down version of his footloose and fancy free self that last half of a century that the author didn’t want to bother or is there sequel coming out?

I completely recommend – it was such an all-encompassing, real portrait of someone who is a part of all of our lives just about every day! Warning though, I couldn’t get his songs out of my head the whole time I was reading it and still have “That Lady is a Tramp” in my head just about every other day!