Frank Sinatra

Frank was born Dec. 12, 1915, the only child of working-class Italian-American immigrants, in a tenement at 415 Monroe St. in Hoboken.

His father, Anthony, was a boxer-turned-fireman; his mother, Natalie "Dolly" Frank, was a former barmaid who often sang at family gatherings. Their home and their neighborhood rang with the sweet sounds of the Italian bel canto style of singing; the boy drank it in through his pores, then sang along.

In high school, he saw his hero, crooner Bing Crosby, perform live, an event that inspired him to become a solo vocalist.

Between working various jobs at The Jersey Observer, Frank sang with a neighborhood vocal group, the Hoboken Four, and appeared in neighborhood theater amateur shows, where first prize was usually $10 or a set of dishes.

His first professional gig was at the Rustic Cabin roadhouse in Englewood Cliffs, where Frank sang, told jokes and played the role of emcee when he wasn't waiting tables.

He enrolled in Hoboken's Stevens Institute of Technology to please his mother, then dropped out after 1½ semesters. But he continued his 4-year love affair with hometown sweetheart Nancy Barbato, who would later become his first wife and the mother of his three children - Nancy, born in 1940, Frank Jr. in '43 and Tina in '48.

In 1939, Trumpeter Harry James heard one of Frank's Rustic Cabin gigs on New York radio station WNEW and hired him as a vocalist for his band.

Frank toured with James until December, when he met another of his idols, trombonist Tommy Dorsey. The two hit it off instantly, and Frank left James' band for Dorsey's.

Artistically, it was the most important decision the singer ever made. Frank coveted Dorsey's awesome breath control, the wellspring of his musical genius. The trombonist phrased notes the way a fine singer phrases words.

In September 1942, Frank decided to go solo. A year later, he had his first lead movie role, in the musical "Higher and Higher," but he didn't stay put in Hollywood. Instead, he toured as part of a concert series devoted to movie music; did two radio shows a week, including "Your Hit Parade," and performed up and down the West Coast.

He shaped himself into an entertainment commodity that came to be known as The Voice - a winsome romantic crooner whose deep tenor love songs caused crowds of bobby-soxers to scream and swoon. An abbreviation of a phrase invented by a PR company ("The Voice That Is Thrilling Millions!"), it became Frank's principal nickname throughout the first half of his life.

During the World War II years, Frank - who was exempted from service by a punctured eardrum - and Axel Stordahl, his chief arranger and conductor, introduced "Nancy (With the Laughin' Face)." Originally presented to Frank's oldest child on her fourth birthday, it became one of his signature tunes in a fertile period that also brought forth "When Your Lover is Gone," "The Song Is You," "Fools Rush In," "Begin the Beguine"and "I've Got a Crush on You."

By December 1946, Frank - longing to put his sex-symbol identity behind him and be taken seriously - ordered teenagers banned from attending his radio broadcasts. Refining the lessons he'd learned from Crosby and Dorsey, he began popularizing slower but still swinging arrangements, phrasing his lyrics with unheard-of precision and expressiveness.

He collaborated on a World War II-themed oratorio, "Ballad for Americans," and preached the virtues of racial tolerance and national unity in the 1945 short film, "The House I Live In," which won a special Academy Award the following year. b

In February 1947, another blow: A gossip column placed him in Havana partying with deported mobster Charles "Lucky" Luciano. It was the first of many press reports and government inquests that sought to link him with infamous gangsters from Bugsy Siegel to Jimmy "The Weasel" Fratianno.

There was worse to come. Beginning in the late '40s, newspaper reports introduced the public to Frank as a volatile bully who verbally and physically attacked others, from busboys and bartenders to movie stars and columnists. The House Un-American Activities Committee labeled him a Communist sympathizer and forced him to come to Washington to deny it. He was fired from his radio show and cut loose by MGM studios. It all took a toll on Frank's body and soul. He dropped 30 pounds, lost himself in a boozy haze and suffered two throat hemmorhages that devastated his voice.

In the process, he won more than the love of fans he won artistic respect. But lady luck was about to deal Frank a series of punishing hands. He fell hard for sultry actress Ava Gardner. Their very public and doomed affair eventually led Frank's wife, Nancy, to divorce him. Frank married Gardner in 1951, was separated from her within two years and divorced in 1957. His failure to hold on to her devastated him, a loss from which he never completely recovered.

Then, in 1953, came the coveted role of Private Maggio in the film "From Here to Eternity." Frank's soulfulness and actorly precision in portraying the skinny, street-wise Italian-American caught critics and audiences by surprise and earned in an Oscar in 1954. His triumph led to a lucrative second career as a mature movie star, playing Nathan Detroit opposite Marlon Brando in "Guys and Dolls," a junkie card sharp in the ground-breaking heroin-addiction drama "The Man with the Golden Arm" and a prying journalist in "High Society," the musical version of "The Philadelphia Story."

He also became active in politics, supporting Democratic candidates and fighting against racism in pop culture and the rest of American life. Though he wasn't above making back-slapping, racist jibes onstage, his eagerness to share the spotlight with black entertainers earned him admirers.

Most significantly, he made a stunning return to the recording studio, burying his ingenue image and recasting himself as a sophisticated man of the world, scarred by love but not averse to new romance. His voice was deeper and richer now; every note he sang was suffused with the exquisite awareness of innocence lost forever.

He allied himself with top arrangers and conductors, including Nelson Riddle, Billy May and Gordon Jenkins. His albums from this period - including "Songs for Young Lovers," "In the Wee Small Hours" and "Only the Lonely" - were acclaimed as masterworks of popular romantic storytelling.

Frank's political efforts continued. He performed at the 1956 Democratic convention for presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson and befriended John and Robert F. Kennedy, later rewriting "High Hopes" as JFK's presidential campaign theme song.

Enamored of the charismatic president, Frank offered up his then-girlfriend, Judith Campbell Exner to the randy Commander-in-Chief. But when it became known that the singer had also set Exner up with Chicago gangster Sam Giancana, JFK distanced himself from his former pal, opening a rift between the singer and the Democratic Party that never healed.

By 1961, Frank had set up his own label, Reprise, producing such albums as "Moonlight Frank," "Strangers in the Night" and "Frank and Strings," along with two LPs with the legendary Count Basie.

Now a bachelor in his 40s, Frank entered a middle-aged crazy phase, cavorting in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Hollywood and stops in between. His entourage, nicknamed the Rat Pack, included Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop and Shirley MacLaine, who called Frank "Chairman of the Board" and "Il Padrone." Their escapades were immortalized in escapist pictures like "Ocean's 11" and "Robin and the 7 Hoods."

But fame wasn't all dice games with barons and earls. On Dec. 18, 1963, Frank's only son, 20-year old Frank Jr., was kidnapped and held for $240,000 ransom. To the nation's relief, he was released unharmed three days later.

Despite his increasingly hedonistic private life, Frank did not ignore his artistic ambitions. In 1966 alone, he released four hit tunes ("Strangers in the Night," "It Was a Very Good Year," "Summer Wind" and "That's Life"). He won five Grammys in 1965 and '66 and capped the decade with the single that would become his theme song until he died: "My Way."

In 1962 he gave his finest film performance, playing a Korean War vet in the 1962 Cold War thriller, "The Manchurian Candidate." (When JFK was assassinated in 1963, Frank was so horrified that he withdrew the film from circulation for 25 years.)

In 1966, he wed actress Mia Farrow, who, at 20, was three decades his junior. They divorced 17 months later.

The late '60s brought more hard luck. His father died in 1969. Nine months later, the New Jersey State Commission on Organized Crime subpoenaed him to appear before an investigative committees; Frank fought the subpoena to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled against him, 4-3.

By 1971, a profound exhaustion had subsumed him. On March 23, he announced his retirement - though the lure of the stage was so powerful his resolve lasted barely two years.

Three decades after his early success, America had changed - and so had Frank. Increasingly disenchanted with liberalism, he drifted rightward through the late '60s, then made his conversion official in 1972, supporting President Richard Nixon's re-election campaign.

He made periodic attempts to stay current, recording tunes by such contemporary songwriters as Stephen Sondheim, Neil Diamond and Stevie Wonder. For the most part, though, he seemed resigned to being seen as a proud survivor of a bygone era.

This did not, however, affect his selling power. His 1973 comeback album, "Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back," went platinum (1 million copies), and his televised 1974 Madison Square Garden concert, "The Main Event," drew a worldwide viewership estimated in the hundreds of millions.

In 1976, he married again, to Barbara Marx, former wife of Marx Brother Zeppo. The fourth time was the charm: The couple remained together until Frank's death more than two decades later.

Frank's post-1980 years were relatively sedate, marked primarily by his friendship with Ronald Reagan - he performed "Nancy (With the Laughin' Face") for the First Lady at the 1985 inaugural gala - and his insistence on touring (with Frank Jr. as bandleader) despite his age and health problems.

He was handed many high-profile awards, including the simultaneous receipt, on May 23, 1985, of an honorary degree from Stevens Institute in Hoboken and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian accolade. A tireless philanthropist, Frank also funded many nonprofit foundations, including a wing at the Atlantic City Medical Center.

But age did not mellow him. In 1983, Frank and Dean Martin verbally abused an Atlantic City blackjack dealer, resulting in a rift with state gaming officials that led him to boycott New Jersey stages for 14 months. In January 1985, angered by a Washington Post article, he warned a roomful of reporters: "You're dead, every one of you!"

But as Frank edged past 70, his facade of fearsome invincibility finally began to crack - and his critics pounced. Biographer Kitty Kelley published the unauthorized (and best-selling) muckraker, "His Way," in 1985. That same year, "Doonesbury" cartoonist Garry Trudeau drew a series of strips depicting Frank alongside famous mobsters.

His musical output slowed. In the last 16 years of his life, Frank recorded only five new studio albums. (The most popular - "Duets I & II," which paired him with past and present recording stars - won him two more Grammys.)

In the '90s, his image became ubiquitous once more, thanks to the success of "Duets" and the Frank family's newfound eagerness to license his music and likeness to sell products as disparate as ties, credit cards and Lipton's iced tea. The tactic caused a rift within the family: For years, Barbara feuded with Tina, Nancy and Frank Jr. over who owned the rights to which Frank songs.

There was a market At this time, the cocktail culture of Frank's Rat Pack period made an unexpected and colorful reappeared; suddenly, people who weren't even born when Frank retired wanted to hear his music and embrace the image of the sharp-dressed, hard-drinking, lounge-hopping swinger. A flood of biographies, musical appreciation books and Frank-themed films and TV shows flooded popular culture, along with reissued Frank discs and vintage films of Frank and friends in concert.

And in the end, it is the music that matters: the Voice. The Voice that defines Frank, eclipsing talk of darkness and scandal and domestic strife, encouraging introspection and celebration, defiance and romance, making the simple act of living feel heroic.

"One of Frank's favorite toasts to make with a glass in hand was, 'May you live to be 100 and may the last voice you hear be mine,'" recalled crooner Tony Bennett, a longtime friend. "The master is gone but his voice will live forever."

Frank died on May 15, 1998 at the age of 82 from a Heart attack. Frank was survived by Wife Barbara, two daughters Nancy and Tina, one son, Frank Jr.