Frank Sinatra biography

This period also marked his Las Vegas debut, where he continued on for years as a main attraction at Caesars Palace. As a founding member of the "Rat Pack," alongside Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop, Sinatra came to epitomize the hard-drinking, womanizing,

gambling swinger--an image constantly reinforced by the popular press and Sinatra's own albums. With his modern edge and timeless class, not to mention hits like 1968's iconic "My Way," even the radical youth had to pay Sinatra his due. As Jim Morrison of the Doors once said, "No one can touch him."

After a brief retirement in the early 1970s, Sinatra returned to the music scene with the album "Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back" (1973) and also became more politically active. Having first visited the White House in 1944 while campaigning for Franklin D. Roosevelt in his bid for a fourth term in office, Sinatra worked eagerly for John F. Kennedy's election in 1960 and later supervised JFK's inaugural gala in Washington. The relationship between the two soured, however, after the president canceled a weekend visit to Sinatra's house due to the singer's connections to Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana. By the 1970s, Sinatra had abandoned his long-held Democratic loyalties and embraced the Republican Party, supporting first Richard Nixon and later his close friend Ronald Reagan, who presented Sinatra with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, in 1985.

Personal Life

Frank Sinatra married his childhood sweetheart, Nancy Barbato, in 1939. They had three children together before their marriage unraveled in the late 1940s. In 1951, Sinatra married actress Ava Gardner; after they split, Sinatra remarried a third time, to Mia Farrow in 1966. That union, too, ended in divorce, and Sinatra married for a fourth and final time in 1976 to Barbara Blakely Marx, the widow of comedian Zeppo Marx. The two remained together until Sinatra's death more than 20 years later.

Death and Legacy

In 1987, author Kitty Kelley published an unauthorized biography of Sinatra, accusing the singer of relying on mob ties to build his career. Such claims failed to diminish Sinatra's widespread popularity. In 1993, at the age of 77, Sinatra gained legions of new, younger fans with the release of Frank Sinatra Duets, a collection of 13 Sinatra standards that he rerecorded alongside the likes of Barbra Streisand, Bono, Tony Bennett and Aretha Franklin.

Sinatra performed in concert for the last time in 1995 at the Palm Desert Marriott Ballroom in California. On May 14, 1998, Frank Sinatra died of a heart attack at Los Angeles' Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He was 82 years old and had, at last, faced his final curtain. With a show business career that spanned more than 50 years, Sinatra's continued mass appeal can best be explained in the man's own words: "When I sing, I believe. I'm honest."

© 2013 A+E Networks. All rights reserved.