Posted on 03/13/2015 5:03:00 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The New York Public Library and the Grammy Museum in LA have collaborated to produce a most unique exhibition on display at the Lincoln Center entitled Frank Sinatra: An American. The exhibition commemorates the legend of a man who would have turned one hundred years old in 2015. The title epitomizes what Sinatra has become in our society: an icon of the American dream.
The son of Italian immigrants, Sinatra supported himself with a paper-route and came of age with a strong spirit molded by a youth in the Great Depression. He then went on to become one of the best-selling musicians of all time and an idol during the Golden Age of Hollywood. The blue-eyed-bad-boy mixed classy with rebellious and reached a level of fame unmatched at its peak and a successful career that spanned over half a century. The exhibition offers intimate glimpses into Frank Sinatra’s private life and includes many personal items that the curator acquired from Sinatra’s family members.This show reveals a tender, humanized, side of the legend of a man and explores what went into making his career.
The impeccably curated exhibitions offers a complex understanding of this “american icon” including a re-creation of Sinatra’s childhood home in Hoboken and visual scenes of the 1930’s New York City landscape that Sinatra lived in (and later sang about in his most inspirational American anthem New York, New York). This tender childhood scene is juxtaposed beside an exhibit of Sinatra’s mugshot. The idol was literally arrested for “seduction,” which scribbled below his smug, youthful, face (apparently seduction and adultery were illegal at the time).The mug shot and the tender childhood scene reveal how Sinatra’s bad-boy image somehow worked with his innocence to create his lovable image throughout his career.
Many people don’t know that Sinatra was also a visual artist and produced many paintings and drawings that he never publicly shared. According to the exhibition, Sinatra used art as a way to deal with the stress and pressures that his lifestyle placed on him. This was the one art form that Sinatra produced only ever for himself. He would make paintings and sometimes give them to close friends and family members. One abstract painting has ‘Grandpa’ scribbled in the corner by Sinatra’s own brushstroke. The exhibition of Sinatra’s visual art reveals a tender side of the womanizing Hollywood bad boy with rumored associations with the Chicago mafia.
The Golden Age of Hollywood fashion may seem overly dated and irrelevant in the ripped-jeans, minimalist, era of fashion today, but Sinatra’s style is timeless. Displays of black-and-white photographs of Sinatra, accessorized with his signature fedora and perfectly tailored suits show a class and character that could never go out of style.
For those of you staying in NYC over spring break the exhibition is free and open to the public at the New York Public Library Center for the Performing Arts in the Lincoln Center and truly an inspiring glimpse into the world of an American legend.
Sinatra also seems to have had dreams of attending Stevens Institute of Technology and becoming an engineer.
It’s too bad. He might have ended up somewhere in life...
He was a pretty good actor too.
During WWII, Stars and Stripes ran a poll of the soldiers as to their favorite singer.
It came down to Sinatra and Roy Acuff. Acuff won.
His album “September of my years” released in 1965 is one of my favorites, a great work,
I always liked Sinatra’s movies.
My Mom could not stand him. She said that when she was a phone operator in Indianapolis in the 40’s Sinatra would come to town and call up the operators from his hotel room and try to get them to come over and have sex with him. He was married at the time.
In 1938 he was arrested adultery and seduction. (When he was 21 it was a very good year)
The Capitol-Nelson Riddle era was my favorite Sinatra period.
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Jeanne Carmen said he was a lousy lover. She probably was an expert too.
Old Blue Eyes was mafia. And Sammy Davis made Bill Cosby look like a saint.
He wasn’t a bad dancer either. I can’t remember the name of the song and dance movie he made with Gene Kelly.
Wasn’t he also a spouse abuser, aka, beater?
Mafia ties aren't that bad.
Mafia are better than communist
On the Town 1949. He had a good teacher.
The golden boy of the mob!!
[Mafia ties aren’t that bad.
Mafia are better than communist]
I hear that crap all the time. But I wrote Harry Reid’s only biography and it is filled with mafia links. Reid and Oscar Goodman have helped destroy America, a bunch of low lifes.
You can look up Ole Blue Eyes FBI files, there isn’t any doubt.
He had Mafia friends and acquaintances but was not a member. Story goes that he was once punched by a goodfella. Frank is said to have called his Mafia buddies to ask that the offending gangster be whacked but was refused because he, Sinatra, was not a member of the Mob.
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