Frank Sinatra

Frank Sinatra was an American singer and motion-picture actor who, through a long career and a very public personal life, became one of the most sought-after performers in the entertainment industry; he is often hailed as the greatest American singer of 20th-century popular music. Sinatra is among the world's best-selling music artists, with an estimated 150 million record sales globally. Sinatra forged a highly successful career as a film actor. After winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for From Here to Eternity (1953), he starred in The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) and The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Sinatra also appeared in musicals such as On the Town (1949), Guys and Dolls (1955), High Society (1956), and Pal Joey (1957), which won him a Golden Globe Award. Toward the end of his career, he frequently played detectives, including the title character in Tony Rome (1967). Sinatra received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1971. On television, The Frank Sinatra Show began on CBS in 1950, and he continued to make appearances on television throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
In 1983, Sinatra was honored at the Kennedy Center Honors. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1997. Sinatra received eleven Grammy Awards including the Grammy Trustees Award, Grammy Legend Award, and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He was included in Time magazine's compilation of the 20th century's 100 most influential people. American music critic Robert Christgau called him "the greatest singer of the 20th century" and he continues to be regarded as an iconic figure.
== Early life ==
Francis Albert Sinatra was born on December 12, 1915, in a tenement at 415 Monroe Street in Hoboken, New Jersey, the only child of Italian immigrants Natalina "Dolly" Garaventa and Antonino Martino "Marty" Sinatra, who boxed under the name Marty O'Brien. Sinatra weighed 13.5 pounds (6.1 kg) at birth and had to be delivered with the aid of forceps, which caused severe scarring to his left cheek, neck, and ear, and perforated his eardrum—remaining damaged for the rest of his life. His grandmother resuscitated him by running her grandson under cold water until he gasped his first breath. Due to his injuries, his baptism at St. Francis Church in Hoboken was delayed until April 2, 1916. A childhood operation on his mastoid bone left major scarring on his neck, and during adolescence he was further scarred by cystic acne. Sinatra was raised in the Catholic Church.
Sinatra's mother was energetic and driven; biographers believe that she was the dominant factor in the development of her son's personality and self-confidence. Sinatra's fourth wife Barbara would later claim that Dolly was abusive to him when he was a child, and "knocked him around a lot". Dolly became influential in Hoboken and in local Democratic Party circles. She worked as a midwife, and according to Sinatra biographer Kitty Kelley, ran an illegal abortion service that catered to Italian Catholic girls, for which she was nicknamed "Hatpin Dolly". She also had a gift for languages and served as a local interpreter.
Sinatra's illiterate father was a bantamweight boxer who later worked at the Hoboken Fire Department, working his way up to captain. Due to his illiteracy, he stressed the importance of "complete and full" education and had instilled in his son the desire to become a civil engineer and enroll at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken. Sinatra spent much time at his parents' tavern in Hoboken, working on his homework and occasionally singing for spare change. During the Great Depression, Dolly provided money to her son for outings with friends and to buy expensive clothes, resulting in neighbors describing him as the "best-dressed kid in the neighborhood". Excessively thin and small as a child and young man, Sinatra's skinny frame later became a staple of jokes during stage shows.
At a young age, Sinatra developed an interest in music, particularly big band jazz and listened to Gene Austin, Rudy Vallée, Russ Colombo, and Bob Eberly while idolizing Bing Crosby. For his 15th birthday, his uncle Domenico gave him a ukulele, with which he performed at family gatherings. Sinatra attended David E. Rue Jr. High School from 1928, and A. J. Demarest High School (since renamed as Hoboken High School) in 1931, where he arranged bands for school dances, but left without graduating after having attended only 47 days before being expelled for "general rowdiness". To please his mother, he enrolled at Drake Business School, but departed after 11 months. Dolly found her son work as a delivery boy at the Jersey Observer newspaper (since merged into The Jersey Journal), where his godfather Frank Garrick worked; he later worked as a riveter at the Tietjen and Lang shipyard. He began performing in local Hoboken social clubs and sang for free on radio stations such as WAAT in Jersey City. In New York, Sinatra found jobs singing for his supper or for cigarettes. To improve his speech, he began taking elocution lessons for a dollar each from vocal coach John Quinlan, one of the first people to notice his impressive vocal range.
== The band singer ==
Sinatra’s six-month tenure with the James band resulted in 10 commercial recordings featuring the young singer. On songs such as “From the Bottom of My Heart,”“My Buddy,” and “Ciribiribin,” Sinatra’s warm baritone and sensitivity to lyrics are well showcased. The best-known of the James-Sinatra sides is “All or Nothing at All”—a flop in 1939 but a million-seller when rereleased in 1943, after both men had become stars. Sinatra’s reputation among industry musicians grew swiftly, and James graciously freed Sinatra from his contract when the singer received a more lucrative offer from bandleader Tommy Dorsey in December 1939. The 83 commercial recordings (as well as several surviving air checks) that Sinatra went on to make with the Dorsey band from 1940 to 1942 represent his first major body of work.
Sinatra was enormously influenced by Dorsey’s trombone playing and strove to improve his breath control in order to emulate Dorsey’s seamless, unbroken melodic passages. It was also during this period that Sinatra proved his mastery of both ballads and up-tempo numbers, and Dorsey arrangers Axel Stordahl, Paul Weston, and Sy Oliver soon tailored their arrangements to highlight Sinatra’s skills. Often teamed with singer Connie Haines, or with Dorsey’s vocal group, The Pied Pipers (featuring future recording star Jo Stafford), Sinatra was featured on memorable sides such as “I’ll Never Smile Again,” “I’ll Be Seeing You,” “Without a Song,” and “Oh! Look at Me Now.” By 1942 Sinatra’s fame had eclipsed that of Dorsey, and the singer yearned for a solo career—a risky venture in the days when few big-band singers found success on their own. Dorsey enjoyed having such a popular performer in his band and became irate when Sinatra expressed his desire to leave, even though Sinatra offered to stay with the band for another year. After months of bitter negotiations, Sinatra left the Dorsey organization in late 1942; within weeks, he was a cultural phenomenon. Near-hysteria was generated by Sinatra’s appearances at New York’s Paramount theatre in January 1943, and such throngs of screaming, young female fans—known as “bobby-soxers”—had not been seen since the days of Rudolph Valentino. The singer was soon dubbed “Frankieboy,” “The Sultan of Swoon,” and, most popularly, “The Voice.”
== The Columbia years ==
A strike by the American Federation of Musicians against the major record companies curtailed Sinatra’s recording output during most of 1943–44. His solo recording career for Columbia Records began in earnest in November 1944, when he compensated for lost time by recording dozens of sides within a three-month period. Songs such as “If You Are But a Dream,” “ There’s No You,” “I Fall in Love Too Easily,” “Nancy,” and his theme song at that time, “Put Your Dreams Away,” are some of the first recordings in what would come to be known to fans as the “Columbia era” (1943–52). His chief arranger during these years was Axel Stordahl, who also left Dorsey in late 1942 to work exclusively with Sinatra. Stordahl’s spare string arrangements on beautiful recordings such as “You Go to My Head” (1945), “These Foolish Things” (1945), and “That Old Feeling” (1947) defined the sound of Sinatra’s Columbia years. 
A strike by the American Federation of Musicians against the major record companies curtailed Sinatra’s recording output during most of 1943–44. His solo recording career for Columbia Records began in earnest in November 1944, when he compensated for lost time by recording dozens of sides within a three-month period. Songs such as “If You Are But a Dream,” “ There’s No You,” “I Fall in Love Too Easily,” “Nancy,” and his theme song at that time, “Put Your Dreams Away,” are some of the first recordings in what would come to be known to fans as the “Columbia era” (1943–52). His chief arranger during these years was Axel Stordahl, who also left Dorsey in late 1942 to work exclusively with Sinatra. Stordahl’s spare string arrangements on beautiful recordings such as “You Go to My Head” (1945), “These Foolish Things” (1945), and “That Old Feeling” (1947) defined the sound of Sinatra’s Columbia years.
== The actor ==
Sinatra appeared in several films throughout the 1940s, the best among them being the musicals in which he costarred with dancer Gene Kelly. Of these, Anchors Aweigh (1945) and Take Me Out to the Ballgame (1949) are pleasant diversions, whereas On the Town (1949) ranks among the greatest of film musicals. It was acting, rather than music, that precipitated Sinatra’s comeback in 1953. He pleaded with Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn for the role of the scrappy, tragic soldier, Maggio, in From Here to Eternity (1953), and he agreed to work for scale. His performance was universally praised and earned him an Oscar for best supporting actor. Sinatra went on to become one of the top film stars of the 1950s and ’60s, and he delivered fine performances in quality films such as Suddenly (1954), Young at Heart (1954), The Man with the Golden Arm (1955; Academy Award nomination for best actor), Guys and Dolls (1955), The Joker Is Wild (1957), Pal Joey (1957), and Some Came Running (1958). The political thriller The Manchurian Candidate (1962) is perhaps Sinatra’s greatest film and features his best performance. With the possible exception of Bing Crosby, no other American entertainer achieved such a level of respect and popularity as both singer and actor. Although it is said that Sinatra stopped taking films seriously after The Manchurian Candidate, owing to his ongoing frustration with the tedious filmmaking process, his motion-picture résumé remains impressive. In later years, he was memorable in The Detective (1968), and in his final starring vehicle, The First Deadly Sin (1980).
== The Capitol years ==
In 1953 Sinatra’s musical style took a dramatic turn. He signed with Capitol Records and, throughout the next nine years, issued a series of recordings widely regarded as his finest body of work. He is credited (though perhaps not accurately so) with inventing the “concept album”—an LP collection of songs built around a single theme or mood. His new approach also demanded new arrangements, and the in-house arrangers at Capitol were among the best. He worked with veteran big-band musician Billy May on outstanding up-tempo albums such as Come Fly with Me (1958) and Come Dance with Me! (1959), and with the arranger-composer Gordon Jenkins, whose lush string arrangements heightened the melancholy atmosphere of Where Are You? (1957) and No One Cares (1959).
As excellent as the albums with May and Jenkins were, however, Sinatra’s collaboration with arranger Nelson Riddle was truly a legendary musical partnership. Riddle, a former big-band trombonist who had arranged for artists such as Nat King Cole and Ella Mae Morse, scored some of Sinatra’s first Capitol sessions in 1953, initiating a collaboration that would extend over two decades and hundreds of recordings. Riddle was, in Sinatra’s words, “the greatest arranger in the world,” and critics agreed. With an instinctive sense for the proper musical setting, Riddle employed everything from quartets to 50-piece orchestras for ballad arrangements that were often characterized by a dominant solo instrument (particularly a mournful trombone), and by Riddle’s “private melodies,” which served as counterpoint to Sinatra’s highly personal approach. For swing tunes, Riddle developed his trademark “heartbeat rhythm,” a steady, driving beat, slightly slower than most swing charts, and meant to emulate “the pulse rate of the human heart after a brisk walk,” in Riddle’s words. Virtually all of the albums the Sinatra-Riddle team made for Capitol—such as In the Wee Small Hours (1955), Songs for Swingin’ Lovers! (1956), and Only the Lonely (1958)—are masterpieces.
Despite the importance of the Capitol arrangers in determining Sinatra’s new sound, the resulting albums were still very much dominated by the singer himself. Sinatra’s voice, which Riddle often described as having the warm timbre of a cello, had deepened and grown in power; gone was the whispery crooning of the Columbia days. His failed marriage to Gardner infused his ballad singing with a heretofore unseen emotional urgency and plaintive quality, although he eschewed anything that approached heart-on-the-sleeve histrionics. He attacked swing numbers with abandon and displayed his jazz influences with an uncanny sense of syncopation and an innate knowledge of “blue notes,” which he incorporated into the melody line. Two of his most heralded recordings—“I’ve Got You Under My Skin” (1956) and “One for My Baby” (1958), both arranged by Riddle—illustrate well his varied approach to moods and tempos.
== The Rat Pack and the mob ==
During the late 1950s and early ’60s, Sinatra frequently appeared on stage and in films with his close-knit band of friends known variously as “The Clan,” “The Summit,” or, most popularly, “The Rat Pack.” Peripheral members included actors Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop, and Shirley MacLaine and honorary member John F. Kennedy, but the core group was always Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Dean Martin. The trio performed a largely ad-libbed act of boozy humor, captured well in a recording of a 1962 performance at Chicago’s Villa Venice nightclub, The Summit: In Concert (released 1999). Although the racial and misogynist humor seems dated to the contemporary listener, the act was seen as the height of swinging sophistication in the 1960s.
It was also about this time that Sinatra generated more controversy for his connections with organized crime. In retrospect, even his harshest critics now acknowledge that Sinatra’s association with underworld figures was largely one of involuntary servitude, but there is no question that his fraternizing with notorious individuals such as Sam Giancana eroded his fan base and jeopardized his political friendships. In 1960, at the behest of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., Sinatra acted as a liaison between Giancana and the Kennedy family during John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign, in order to ensure votes for Kennedy. Within a few years, however, the Kennedy administration launched its war on organized crime and disassociated itself from Sinatra, while Giancana, having lost a powerful political connection, did likewise. Sinatra continued to associate with mob figures throughout the years (“If you sing in joints, you’re gonna know the guys that run them,” was Sinatra’s standard defense), but his association with Giancana was perhaps the most publicized.
== The Reprise years ==
Sinatra founded Reprise Records in 1960 and was allowed to record there simultaneously with his Capitol contract, which expired in 1962. During the early 1960s, Sinatra recorded at a furious pace, releasing some 14 albums of new material during the years 1961–63. He still worked frequently with Riddle, May, and Jenkins, but new arrangers such as Johnny Mandel, Neal Hefti, and Don Costa contributed fresh ideas to his recordings. Sinatra’s prodigiousness during these years resulted in some quickly recorded albums of uneven quality, but there were also several classics on par with the best of his Capitol work. His two 1960s masterpieces, the Jenkins-arranged September of My Years (1965) and the partnership with Brazilian songwriter Antônio Carlos Jobim, Francis Albert Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim (1967), rank among Sinatra’s greatest albums. He also had chart success during the decade with the hit singles “Strangers in the Night” (1966), “That’s Life” (1967), and “My Way” (1969), but as the decade wore on, his output was increasingly marred by misguided attempts to capture the youth market or by questionable choices of collaborators.
== The mature years ==
By 1969 the “Woodstock generation” dominated the music market, leaving Sinatra to lament, “Nobody’s writing songs for me any more.” He announced his retirement in 1971, but by 1973 he was recording once again. In his last two decades as a recording artist, he chose his projects carefully and released only seven albums of new material. His voice grew increasingly gritty and coarse, the product of years of abuse from cigarettes and alcohol. But he had learned to turn vocal shortcomings into interpretive strengths, and some of his later recordings are among his most poignant. His well-regarded albums of later years include volume one of the ambitious three-disc Trilogy (1980), the ballad collection She Shot Me Down (1981), and L.A. Is My Lady (1984), which featured an all-star orchestra. He returned to the recording studio (and to his former label of Capitol Records) after nearly a decade’s absence to record Duets (1993) and Duets II (1994), which paired Sinatra with several contemporary popular singers. Though not critical favorites, the Duets albums sold millions of copies and were Sinatra’s final recordings. In addition to his curtailed recording activity, Sinatra virtually retired from films during his later years. He concentrated instead on live performance and gave hundreds of international concerts from the late 1970s, with his final public performance in 1995. Although he suffered from failing memory and various physical infirmities during his last few years, he remained a compelling showman to the end.
== Political views and activism ==
Sinatra held varied political views throughout his life. His mother Dolly was a Democratic Party ward leader, and after meeting President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944, he subsequently heavily campaigned for the Democrats in the 1944 presidential election. According to Jo Carroll Silvers, in his younger years Sinatra had "ardent liberal" sympathies and was "so concerned about poor people that he was always quoting Henry Wallace". He was outspoken against racism, particularly toward black people and Italians, from a young age. In the early 1950s, he was among those who campaigned to combine the racially segregated musicians' unions in Los Angeles. In November 1945 Sinatra was invited by the mayor of Gary, Indiana, to try to settle a strike by white students of Froebel High School against the "Pro-Negro" policies of the new principal. His comments, while praised by liberal publications, led to accusations by some that he was a communist, which he said were not true. In the 1948 presidential election, Sinatra actively campaigned for President Harry S. Truman. In 1952 and 1956, he campaigned for Adlai Stevenson.
Of all the U.S. presidents he associated with during his career, he was closest to John F. Kennedy. Sinatra often invited Kennedy to Hollywood and Las Vegas, and the two would womanize and enjoy parties together. In January 1961, Sinatra and Peter Lawford organized the Inaugural Gala in Washington, D.C., held on the evening before President Kennedy was sworn into office. After taking office, Kennedy distanced himself from Sinatra, due in part to Sinatra's ties with the Mafia. In 1962, Sinatra was snubbed by the President as, during his visit to his Palm Springs, Kennedy stayed with the Republican Bing Crosby instead of Sinatra, citing FBI concerns about the latter's alleged connections to organized crime. Sinatra had spared no expense upgrading the facilities at his home in anticipation of the President's visit, fitting it with a heliport, which he smashed with a sledgehammer after the rejection. Despite the snub, when he learned of Kennedy's assassination he reportedly sobbed in his bedroom for three days. Sinatra worked with Hubert H. Humphrey in 1968, and remained a supporter of the Democratic Party until the early 1970s. Although still a registered Democrat, Sinatra endorsed Republican Ronald Reagan for a second term as Governor of California in 1970. He officially changed allegiance in July 1972 when he supported Richard Nixon for re-election in the 1972 presidential election.
In the 1980 presidential election, Sinatra supported Ronald Reagan and donated $4 million to Reagan's campaign. Sinatra arranged Reagan's Presidential gala, as he had done for Kennedy 20 years previously. In 1985, Reagan presented Sinatra with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, remarking, "His love of country, his generosity for those less fortunate ... make him one of our most remarkable and distinguished Americans." Santopietro notes that Sinatra was a "lifelong sympathizer with Jewish causes". He was awarded the Hollzer Memorial Award by the Los Angeles Jewish Community in 1949. He gave a series of concerts in Israel in 1962 and donated his entire $50,000 fee for appearing in a cameo role in Cast a Giant Shadow (1966) to the Youth Center in Jerusalem. On November 1, 1972, he raised $6.5 million in bond pledges for Israel, and was given the Medallion of Valor for his efforts. The Frank Sinatra Student Center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was dedicated in his name in 1978.
From his youth, Sinatra displayed sympathy for black Americans and worked both publicly and privately all his life to help the struggle for equal rights. He blamed racial prejudice on the parents of children. Sinatra played a major role in the desegregation of Nevada hotels and casinos in the 1950s and 1960s. On January 27, 1961, Sinatra played a benefit show at Carnegie Hall for Martin Luther King Jr. and led his fellow Rat Pack members and Reprise label mates in boycotting hotels and casinos that refused entry to black patrons and performers. According to his son, Frank Jr., King sat weeping in the audience at one of his father's concerts in 1963 as Sinatra sang "Ol' Man River", a song from the musical Show Boat that is sung by a black American stevedore. When he changed his political affiliations in 1970, Sinatra became less outspoken on racial issues. Though he did much towards civil rights causes, it did not stop the occasional racial jibe from him and the other Rat Pack members toward Davis at concerts.
== Death and funeral ==
During the final years of his life, Sinatra was in ill health, and was frequently hospitalized for heart and breathing problems, high blood pressure, pneumonia and bladder cancer. He made no public appearances following a heart attack in February 1997. Sinatra died of another heart attack at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, on the night of May 14, 1998, at age 82, with his wife Barbara at his side. Barbara encouraged him to "fight" while attempts were made to stabilize him, and reported that his final words were, "I'm losing." Sinatra's daughter, Tina, later wrote that she and her siblings had not been notified of their father's final hospitalization, and it was her belief that "the omission was deliberate. Barbara would be the grieving widow alone at her husband's side." The night after Sinatra's death, the lights on the Empire State Building were turned blue, the lights at the Las Vegas Strip were dimmed in his honor, and the casinos stopped spinning for one minute. Significant increases in recording sales worldwide were reported by Billboard in the month of his death.
Sinatra's funeral was held at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills, California, on May 20, with 400 mourners in attendance and thousands of fans outside. Gregory Peck, Tony Bennett, and Sinatra's son, Frank Jr., addressed the mourners, who included many people from film and entertainment. Sinatra was buried in a blue business suit; his grave, adorned with mementos from family members, was next to his parents in Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California. The phrases "The Best Is Yet to Come", and "Beloved Husband & Father" were placed on Sinatra's modest grave marker. Sinatra's gravestone was changed as of 2021 to read "Sleep Warm Poppa", due to damage caused to the original gravestone under mysterious circumstances according to the magazine Palm Springs Life.
== Legacy and honors ==
Robert Christgau referred to Sinatra as "the greatest singer of the 20th century". His popularity is matched only by Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, and Michael Jackson. For Santopietro, Sinatra was the "greatest male pop singer in the history of America", who amassed "unprecedented power onscreen and off", and "seemed to exemplify the common man, an ethnic twentieth-century American male who reached the 'top of the heap', yet never forgot his roots". Santopietro argues that Sinatra created his own world, which he was able to dominate—his career was centred around power, perfecting the ability to capture an audience.
Gus Levene commented that Sinatra's strength was that when it came to lyrics, telling a story musically, Sinatra displayed a "genius" ability and feeling, which with the "rare combination of voice and showmanship" made him the "original singer" which others who followed most tried to emulate. George Roberts, a trombonist in Sinatra's band, remarked that Sinatra had a "charisma, or whatever it is about him, that no one else had". Biographer Arnold Shaw considered that "If Las Vegas had not existed, Sinatra could have invented it". He quoted reporter James Bacon in saying that Sinatra was the "swinging image on which the town is built", adding that no other entertainer quite "embodied the glamour" associated with Las Vegas as him. Sinatra continues to be seen as one of the icons of the 20th century, and has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in film and music.
In Sinatra's native Hoboken, he was awarded the Key to the City by Mayor Fred M. De Sapio on October 30, 1947. In 2003, the city's main post office was rededicated in his honor. A bronze plaque, placed two years before Sinatra's death in 1998, marks the site of the house where he was born. There is also a marker in front of Hoboken Historical Museum, which has artifacts from his life and conducts Sinatra walking tours through the city. Frank Sinatra Drive runs parallel to the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway. On the waterfront is Frank Sinatra Park, where a bronze plaque was placed in 1989 upon its opening. In the Frank Sinatra Park, a 6-foot (1.8 m) tall bronze statue of Sinatra was dedicated in 2021 on December 12, the date of Sinatra's birthday in 1915. A residence hall at Montclair State University in New Jersey was named in his honor. Other buildings named for Sinatra include the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Astoria, Queens, the Frank Sinatra International Student Center at Israel's Hebrew University in Jerusalem dedicated in 1978, and the Frank Sinatra Hall at the USC School of Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles, California, dedicated in 2002. Wynn Resorts' Encore Las Vegas resort features a restaurant dedicated to Sinatra which opened in 2008. There are several streets and roads named in honor of Frank Sinatra in several states of the U.S.
Various items of memorabilia from Sinatra's life and career, such as Frank Sinatra's awards, gold records, and various personal items are displayed at USC's Frank Sinatra Hall in Los Angeles and also at Wynn Resort's Sinatra restaurant in Las Vegas. Sinatra's three stars for recording, television, and motion pictures on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles The United States Postal Service issued a 42-cent postage stamp in honor of Sinatra in May 2008, commemorating the tenth anniversary of his death. The United States Congress passed a resolution on May 20, 2008, designating May 13 as Frank Sinatra Day. Sinatra received three Honorary Degrees during his lifetime. In May 1976, he was invited to speak at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) graduation commencement held at Sam Boyd Stadium. It was at this commencement that he was bestowed an Honorary Doctorate litterarum humanarum by the university. During his speech, Sinatra stated that his education had come from "the school of hard knocks" and that "this is the first educational degree I have ever held in my hand. I will never forget what you have done for me today". In 1984 and 1985, Sinatra received an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Loyola Marymount University and an Honorary Doctorate of Engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology. In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked Sinatra at No. 19 on their list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.
Category:Musicians
Category:Actors
Category:Male
Category:Caucasian-American