Frank Sinatra grew up in Hoboken and began singing in local clubs while he was a young adult. He joined the singing group The Hoboken Four and later the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra as a singer where he rose to fame. After an up and down singing career in the 1940s and 1950s, Frank Sinatra solidified his celebrity status with a role in the film From Here to Eternity in 1953. He won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance, and Sinatra continued to wow audiences and critics in many films.

Around this time, he also found a faithful audience as a Las Vegas performer. He and his friends Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop performed together and played together in Vegas. They became known as the famous Rat Pack and were as famous for their social lives as they were for their performances.

Frank Sinatra was well connected and not just in Hollywood and Vegas, but he was also politically connected to John F Kennedy. It is alleged that Frank Sinatra helped Kennedy win some key elections with his other connections – the mob. When Frank Sinatra’s connections to the mob became public, Kennedy distanced himself from Frank Sinatra.

Frank Sinatra is also famous for his series of marriages. His first was to his childhood sweetheart, Nancy Barbato in 1939. The two had three children, Nancy, Frank Jr., and Christina. The marriage failed when Frank Sinatra’s affair with actress Ava Gardner became public. Ten days after his divorce to his first wife was final, he married Ava Gardner in 1951, but they divorced in 1957, after four years of separation.

In between his divorce to Gardner and his next marriage, Frank Sinatra was linked to Lauren Bacall (after Humphrey Bogart’s death), dancer Juliet Prowse, and Judith Exner who was also linked to John F Kennedy. In 1966 the fifty-one-year-old Frank Sinatra married twenty-one-year-old Mia Farrow. That marriage lasted two years.

In 1976 he married Barbara Blakely Marx who had formerly been married to Zeppo Marx. Frank and Barbara Sinatra remained married until his death on May 14, 1998.

Frank Sinatra’s legacy lives on years after his death. His music is still popular and new compilations such as Christmas with the Rat Pack in 2002 and various "best of" albums still sell well.

YUDDY