At 100, Sinatra Remains Compelling, Legendary

Have you seen the four-hour HBO documentary Sinatra: All Or Nothing At All?
We've finished viewing the first two hours and from what we've seen so far we can tell you that it's very thorough, fair and, as far as well can tell, accurate.
The story is told as much through Sinatra's music as it is through his songs. And what's reveled here is that much of his music is sad, melancholy, brooding. The music reflects the man. Large swaths of his life lonely, disenchanted, separated, set apart.
The story in the documentary is also told by Sinatra's grown children and his wife, Nancy who is now in her 90s. It's great to hear Nancy's voice and, after all these years, hear her side of the story. And she doesn't hold back -- even though she clearly remained in love with 'old blue eyes and pretty much devoted to him to the end of his days.
Along with the James Kaplan masterful work Frank, The Voice (the first volume of a two-volume biography, the second of which appears this October) and the Sinatra centennial exhibition at the New York Public Library's Library for the Performing Arts, this documentary gives us a real three-dimensional view of Sinatra with all his complexities and all the many layers of his life: his driving ambition; his bravado; his mastery of his art; his fame; his power; his loves and hates and some of the parts of him which never seemed to leave Hoboken, New Jersey.
We were not huge Sinatra fans. We never swooned over his music or rushed out to buy his records or regarded him as a particularly accomplished actor. But we always recognized the man as an enormous talent -- an artist who's appeal spanned decades and generations; someone who managed not just to survive in the rough and tumble world of show business but to preside over it like a potentate. Even now, Sinatra is simply impossible to ignore.
And that is the mark of a legend.

Below, our review of the book:
It's a tome of a book.
At more than 700 pages you would think that James Kaplan's big new book on Sinatra entitled Frank, The Voice would cover the entirety of Sinatra's life.
That's what I thought.
But I didn't bother to read the book jacket very carefully. This book only covers the years from 1915 to 1954. It chronicles Sinatra's rise and fall and then his amazing comeback via his Oscar-winning performance as Maggio in From Here To Eternity. The book proves the truth of an old saying: A setback is nothing more than a setup for a comeback.
I've lived that saying -- but that's another story.
And wow, did Sinatra have to work for his comeback. Still, his then-wife, the ravishing Ava Gardner really helped him to achieve his goal.
But Frank and Ava were just too much alike -- and too combustible. True, they were very much in love and their love was passionate. Yet, it was not to be. The fights were legendary and invariably involved wandering eyes, vivid imaginations and petty jealousies. She was so beautiful and alluring to men and he was so charismatic and attractive to women that they just couldn't seem to trust one another.
The stress of being one of the most famous couples in the world also got to them.
Was Ava an alcoholic? She could through them back alongside any man, that's for sure. She could match most men one-for-one. Was Frank bipolar? Even though the term didn't exist then, his mood swings were huge. He was volcanic one moment and sullen and introspective the next. He had to take downers late at night and uppers when he finally awoke in the afternoon.
Ava once said that the problems between the two of them were not in the bedroom. Rather, she explained the problems arose "on the way to the bidet."
Indeed, they were both said to be remarkably adept sexually, if only by virtue of their endowments. And those endowments allowed them to gain a good deal of early experience in the boudoir before they even hooked up. Ava was undeniably voluptuous and Frank, though relatively short and pencil-thin, was big in just the right place.
In this book there's a story about a reporter peppering Ava backstage during one of Frank's performances at a point in his career when Frank was hard-pressed to fill the seats in even a medium-sized auditorium.
"What do you see in him, Ava?" The reporter asked. "He's just a 119-pound loser."
"Yeah," Ava answered, "but he's 19-pounds of c - - k."
That was enough to silence the reporter.
And in early 1950s America, no reporter could print such a quote.
Anyway, it wasn't until I was more than 550 pages into this book that I realized that it only covered the first portion of Sinatra's life. I have a habit of picking up a book and reading the first 20 or 30 pages and if I like it, I just keep reading. I never look to see how many pages it has and I never jump ahead or skip pages.
I've always been this way with every book I've ever read ever since I was a child.
So, I was worried for the author because I could tell that I was about three-quarters of the way (or more) through the book and Kaplan was still chronicling the events of 1952. I should have known.
I presume that Kaplan will produce another volume. I hope so. He's a damned good writer.
Oh, here's another interesting fact from the book: While she was married to Sinatra, Ava Gardner slept with director John Farrow who was then directing her in one of her films. Farrow was the father of Mia Farrow who later hooked up with Sinatra for a notorious May-December pairing. So, Sinatra eventually married the daughter of one of his wife's lovers.
Ahhh . . . . . Hollywood!