Nancy Sinatra

With the second name of ‘Sinatra’ the actress, singer and former cover girl on Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine, hardly requires any introduction, added to which she has had a number one hit in the UK and the USA and has appeared with Elvis Presley in the movie ‘Speedway’.

Born in Jersey City, New Jersey on June 8^th 1940, Nancy Sinatra is the daughter of Frank Sinatra and his first wife Nancy Barbato. Nancy began her singing and dancing career when she enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles where she studied voice, dance and music, in the early 1950’s but she decided to drop out after just one year and instead began regular appearances on Frank’s TV special. It was there that she first met Presley and performed a singing and dancing duet with Frank, to the song, ’You Make Me Feel So Young’.

In 1960 Nancy married for the first time to fellow teen idol, Tommy Sands. The marriage survived just five years.

Nancy first attempted to break into the music business as a solo artist when she signed to Reprise Records and released the little known, ‘Cuff Links and a Tie Clip’. During her early career Nancy was best received in Europe and Japan rather than in the USA. But in 1965 she hit gold when she began recording with Lee Hazelwood.

Lee was responsible for transforming Nancy’s career and her look by giving her a Carnaby Street style image with shimmering lips, blonde hair pilled high and thick black mascara covering her eyes. It was with this image that she came to the attention of the US public when she released, ‘These Boots are Made for Walking’, written by Hazelwood.

The song became iconic and has since been recorded by Geri Halliwell, Jessica Simpson, Lil Kim and Billy Ray Cyrus.

Together with Hazelwood, Nancy notched up several hits including ‘Did You Ever’ and ‘Jackson’, which eventually, Johnny Cash and his wife June Carter Cash made their own.

The 1960’s saw Nancy making guest appearance on ’The Ed Sullivan Show’, ‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E.' starring Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, as well as in a number of television specials. These included the most notable in 1967, in the Emmy-winning special ‘Movin' With Nancy', in which she appeared with Hazelwood, her father Frank and his friends Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr.

In 1967 she recorded the theme song for the james Bond movie ‘You Only Live Twice' which starred Sean Connery as Bond. The track is generally regarded as one of the best Bond Themes to date.

It was in 1967 that Nancy and her father Frank Sinatra released the album ‘The World We Knew', which featured the now best known father and daughter song of all time, ’Something Stupid’. The song rose to number one on the US Singles Chart and won the elder Sinatra his first Gold single

In 1970 Nancy married her second husband Hugh Lambert with whom she had two daughters, Amanda and Angela. She remained with Hugh until his death in 1985.

Nancy Sinatra received her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in May 2006.

2007 has been a busy year for Nancy when she appeared in the April 29th episode ‘Chasing It' in the HBO drama ‘The Sopranos' with James Gandolfini and Michael Imperiloi and appearing as a guest on The Howard Stern Show where she discussed everything from her new affiliation with Sirius Satellite Radio to her music career to her sex life.

ABB