The legend of Frank Sinatra is probably one of the most powerful legends in a country full of them. His career spanned more than fifty years, and in each it is said that he knew how to reinvent himself as an artist and became a symbol of many aspirations, attracting the attention of the not always of the same kind public. The American working class thus forming an opinion about the most popular United States. Twenty-five years after the death of Old Blue Eyes, La voz was published. Why Sinatra Matters (Libros del Kultrum) is a text no fan should be aware of, and is also an excellent example of the excellence of North American journalism in the latter half of the 20th century. Its writer, Pete Hamill, was both a fan and a friend, but that doesn’t stop him from taking an objective, analytical look at the character, identifying his weaknesses as well as his strengths.
Hamill could ideally be placed in a league of star journalists made up of Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Norman Mailer and his colleague Jimmy Breslin, all linked to New York. This information is important because it allows Hamill, the son of Irish growing up in Brooklyn, to replace the young Sinatra, who is also the son of Italian immigrants and is also a neighborhood boy in Hoboken, New Jersey. With the Big Apple silhouette in the background, it would be easy to imagine it whistling in New York City, New York, had the song not been written in 1977.
From the immigration ghetto
During Sinatra’s lifetime, an attempt was made for Hamill to write his autobiography for him, but it did not bear fruit and most likely regained that effort in this text after his death, a personal and brilliant portrait that not only recounts Sinatra. rather that the singer is a mirror in which the public has looked at him for generations. The self-taught type who climbs to the top without losing the original qualities that make him equal to any neighbor’s son.
From the end of the 19th century to World War I, four and a half million Italians came to the United States. Sinatra’s trajectory is that of the boy who came out of that ghetto and prospered in the emerging media, radio, and record industries that, despite ethnic reservations, strongly embraced immigrants as braces of hard work. The singer struggled to preserve her identity, refusing to change her Sicilian surname, among other things. Deleting Origin was pretty common back then. “They asked me to call me Frank Satin. If I did, I’d be singing on cruise ships now,” she explained.
son of the mafia
Sinatra’s father worked for a time as a shipper for the first alcohol dealers. He was a child at the time, but his connection to the Mafia would continue over time, years later, when he allowed himself to be photographed with Lucky Luciano on a visit to Havana in 1947. He was one of the most popular figures on the show at the time, but years later the image that would crystallize in the low-hours singer character of Jimmy Fontane, a copy of the singer in The Godfather, began to take shape there.
Sinatra deeply hated Mario Puzo, the author of the novel, for wanting to associate his people with crime and stereotypes. He would defend himself contemptuously, he had known these men since his skinny youth. The author accuses this never-proven mafia link with a Hearts campaign against the social democratic ideals of the New Deal that Sinatra had embraced at the time. In his later years, he contradictedly supported Nixon, despite the thorns he launched against the Italian-American community.
a man forever
Among the various reincarnations of the artist, men were born in World War II. equivalent? When the girls grew up, they disappeared as fans. The end of the competition was not a good time for him. The conservative family aired their exaltation, and the star of the moment committed the sin of abandoning her own for Ava Gardner. He formed a violent and self-destructive relationship with her, which accompanied the rise of the actress and the destruction for her. Known to be saved by appearing as an actor on From Here to Eternity, Ava – thanks to him, not a horse’s head in bed – ended her marriage, and it’s a favor that would have earned her an Oscar. .
At the same time, based on both his voice and his demeanor, he knew how to transform it into a refined style suited to the mature audiences that characterized him. He went from Columbia to Capitol Records, where he would make his best recordings, and gradually one of the Americans’ favorite liberation episodes took place. It would never again fall from the public eye. Their myths strengthened under the Las Vegas intellectuals in the company of Rat Pack supporters, though somewhat hardened in later years. Hamill does not hesitate to criticize the arrogance and polite indifference with which the singer acts. But it was a big one. Today, his postmortem fame has even managed to bridge the digital divide. The youngest can still recognize him, something only Marilyn Monroe or Mickey Mouse can achieve.