The legend of Frank Sinatra is possibly one of the most powerful in a country full of them. His career spanned more than five decades and in every single decade it could be said that he knew how to reinvent himself as an artist and to attract the attention of audiences that weren’t always the same type of audience a symbol of many aspirations of the American working class, thereby establishing a certain notion of the most popular United States. 25 years after the death of “Old Blue Eyes” has been released ‘The voice. “Why Sinatra Matters” (Kultrum Books)a text that should be unfamiliar to any admirer and, moreover, a perfect example of the narrative excellence achieved by North American journalism in the second half of the 20th century.
Its author, Pete Hamill, was both a fan and a friend, but that doesn’t stop him from taking an objective, analytical look at the character, highlighting his strengths as well as his weaknesses. Hamill can be placed in an ideal league of star journalists consisting of Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Norman Mailer and his colleague Jimmy Breslin, All are linked new York. This information is important because it allows Hamill, the son of Brooklyn-raised Irishmen, to slip into the role of young Sinatra, himself the son of Italian expats and also a boy from the Hoboken, New Jersey neighborhood of With the With the Big Apple skyline in the background, it would be easy to imagine him whistling “New York, New York” if the song hadn’t been written in 1977.
From the ghetto of emigration
There was an attempt to do so during Sinatra’s lifetime Hamill wrote his autobiography that did not materialize and very likely after his death he regained his commitment to this text, a personal and luminous portrait that not only tells of Sinatra, this dizzying career full of great successes, quiet failures and resurgence until he became the legendary reached artist consensus, but as the singer was a mirror in which the public viewed itself for generations. The self-made guy who climbs to the top without losing his original qualities that put him on par with any neighbor’s son.
From the late 19th century to World War I, four and a half million Italians came to the United States, a large part of the 24 million Europeans who crossed the Atlantic. Sinatra’s trajectory is that of Boy who comes from this ghetto and despite ethnic restraint, it triumphs in the emerging media, the radio and record industry, who strongly embrace emigration as a substitute for hard work. The singer struggled to maintain his identity by refusing to change his Sicilian surname, among other things. Clearing the origin was quite common back then. “They wanted me to call myself Frank ‘Satin.’ Introduce yourself. If I had done it now, I would be singing on cruise ships,” he explained.
son of the mob
Never mind that it affected a few citizens, hethe Mafiainto which the Jews and Irish also fit, became more powerful thanks to Prohibition. Sinatra’s father worked for a time as a transporter for the first alcohol dealers. He was still a child at the time, but this relationship would endure through the years when, years later, in 1947, he posed for a photograph while visiting Havana Lucky Luciano. He was one of the most popular characters on the show at the time, but it was there that the image took shape that would crystallize years later in the character of ‘The Crooner’ in the Evenings Jimmy Fontane, a transcript of the singer in The Godfather. Sinatra deeply hated Mario Puzo, the novel’s author, for what he meant by associating his people with crime and stereotypes. He would defend himself with contempt, he’d known these guys since he was a skinny teenager. “If Francisco de Asís was a singer and worked in bars, he would have met the same guys… They came into the dressing room. They thanked you. You offered them something to drink. That was it,” says Hamill that Sinatra mattered. The author blames this unproven mafia connection with a Hearts campaign against the New Deal social-democratic ideals that Sinatra represented at the time. In his later years he contradictedly supported Nixon, despite the puyas instituted by him against the Italian-American community.
A man for eternity
Belongs to the various reincarnations of the artist the sensitive boy who fascinates young girls with his velvety voice while the boys went off to World War II – with the added grief for them that Sinatra never fought. The counterpart? As the girls got older, they disappeared as fans. The end of the competition was not a good time for him. There was a conservative streak of family overestimation, and he committed the “sin” of abandoning his family for the star of the moment. Ava Gardner. With her, he formed a violent and self-destructive relationship that coincided with the rise of the actress and the debacle for him. It was easy for the tabloids to catch him drunk licking his wounds in some trendy place. He was famously saved by his performance as an actor ‘From Here To Eternity’a favor that Ava, thanks to her and not a horse’s head in bed, ended their marriage and would earn him an Academy Award for.
At the same time, he knew how to transform himself into something through both his voice and his attitude that refined style, suitable for a mature audience, which distinguished him. He went from Columbia to Capitol Records, where he made his best recordings and, over time, one of them Redemption episodes that Americans love so much. He would never fall out of public favor again. His myth grew more powerful, even as he became somewhat sclerotic in his later years in the company of his world cronies rat pack under the lights of Las Vegas. Hamill cannot avoid criticizing the arrogance and courtly complacency with which the singer moved. But it was a big problem. Today, his postmortem fame has even managed to bridge the digital divide. The youngest are still able to recognize him, which is only possible for Marilyn Monroe or Mickey Mouse.
