1) It is useless to complain. 2) Don't even think about taking your place back.
Sinatra in The Voice is an extremely narcissistic, selfish, cold-blooded, tyrannical womanizer for whom the word no was only a slower version of the word yes.
Sinatra in The Voice is an extremely narcissistic, selfish, cold-blooded, tyrannical womanizer for whom the word no was only a slower version of the word yes.
But he had reasons for being this way: A domineering mother, a weak father, and an all-consuming talent for singing that pushed him to seek out the spotlight no matter who was in front of him.
He's not a bad guy, really, just born that way.
"...the overaggressive, loud-talking bantamweight who snarls to hide his terrors," is how Kaplan describes Sinatra at the book's start. "He's never apologized in his life," he quotes gofer Nick Sevano saying at the other end of the book.
And Sinatra's temper was a thing of legend. Trying to push his way into a job at the local newspaper, he screamed expletives at his own godfather when he was caught trying to occupy someone else's desk. Later, as a star, he made people around him suffer as a matter of habit.
"When Frank felt humiliated, his first reaction was to bark commands," Kaplan writes. "If others were humiliated in the process, all the better."
All that being said, Kaplan's narrative, which details Sinatra's life from birth to his 1953 Oscar-winning comeback in the film From Here To Eternity, makes the point that Sinatra's lasting greatness, as recording artist and as cultural icon, was in large part a matter of sheer nerve, and the tough attitude that goes with it. At an audition for Harry James, the first of many big names Sinatra would attach himself to, the Voice does alright but James has one request: The name's too ethnic. How about changing it to something everyone can enjoy, like Frankie Satin?
As the author relates from the first-hand testimony of one who was there, singer Connie Haines, the hungry kid from Hoboken's answer was to the point: "You want the singer, take the name." And then, Haines recalls, Sinatra just walked away.
This type of all-or-nothing attitude went great when it came to establishing his name. Sinatra was the rare talent which not only blossomed but grew over time. The more attention he demanded, the more he achieved.
But the flip side to all this was the fact Sinatra could never turn it down. His hunger, his raw greed for what he wanted, when he wanted it, made him an impossible husband, an absentee father, and an unreliable friend. Kaplan here presents Sinatra's mother Dolly as the main force behind his self-made misery, a nasty piece of work who resented anyone who told her no and bred that attitude into her sponge-like son. In his father, young Frank saw an emasculated male, the type he wanted nothing to do with as an adult.
Kaplan's theory is probably cut-rate psychology at its core, entirely too reductionist to account for the whole of a person's life. I'd complain more about this aspect of The Voice, in that whinging way Sinatra fans do when confronted with more overt bilge like Kitty Kelley's infamous steaming pile, but for the fact it helps the author tell a good story. Kaplan has his thesis, and for the 700-plus pages of this book (including some marvelous footnotes), it works in making for a terrific read.
Also a plus are Kaplan's engagingly offhanded descriptions of Sinatra's world and its inhabitants. Harry James, he writes, "was a hot artist: a hepcat, a weed-puffing wild man. He was also a strangely self-defeating character – alcoholic, remote, and persistently broke." Ava Gardner, the woman Frank eventually left his wife for, is a hard-charging "diva" for whom Sinatra could never get enough, much to his later dismay. "Jealousy was their emotional ammunition," Kaplan writes.
The big negative for me of The Voice was too much Ava. She dominates its last three hundred pages like the whale in Moby-Dick. By contrast, Kaplan skirts aspects of Sinatra's rise such as his attaching himself to a semi-professional singing group known as the Hoboken Four (who, Kaplan intimates without getting much into, resented the little creep so much they beat him up between sets). Sinatra's filmwork, a huge component of his rise to superstardom, is cursorily dealt with but for From Here To Eternity, where he works out his scenes with method actor Montgomery Clift in a way that demonstrates his unerringly instinctual approach to art.
The descriptions of Frank as singer are where Kaplan shines brightest, the way he sang so intimately to such large numbers of people, and made young girls so excited the theater seats smelled like a lavatory after every performance. In the recording booth, he was even better, working to the microphone and against the beat in a way that was always to his advantage. "First, find the peak of the song and build the whole arrangement to that peak, pacing it as he paces himself vocally," his 1950s arranger Nelson Riddle explained. "Second, when he's moving, get the hell out of the way."
Bad or not, Sinatra always got his way. The crazy thing about The Voice is how often Kaplan has you rooting for him regardless.
He's not a bad guy, really, just born that way.
"...the overaggressive, loud-talking bantamweight who snarls to hide his terrors," is how Kaplan describes Sinatra at the book's start. "He's never apologized in his life," he quotes gofer Nick Sevano saying at the other end of the book.
And Sinatra's temper was a thing of legend. Trying to push his way into a job at the local newspaper, he screamed expletives at his own godfather when he was caught trying to occupy someone else's desk. Later, as a star, he made people around him suffer as a matter of habit.
"When Frank felt humiliated, his first reaction was to bark commands," Kaplan writes. "If others were humiliated in the process, all the better."
All that being said, Kaplan's narrative, which details Sinatra's life from birth to his 1953 Oscar-winning comeback in the film From Here To Eternity, makes the point that Sinatra's lasting greatness, as recording artist and as cultural icon, was in large part a matter of sheer nerve, and the tough attitude that goes with it. At an audition for Harry James, the first of many big names Sinatra would attach himself to, the Voice does alright but James has one request: The name's too ethnic. How about changing it to something everyone can enjoy, like Frankie Satin?
As the author relates from the first-hand testimony of one who was there, singer Connie Haines, the hungry kid from Hoboken's answer was to the point: "You want the singer, take the name." And then, Haines recalls, Sinatra just walked away.
This type of all-or-nothing attitude went great when it came to establishing his name. Sinatra was the rare talent which not only blossomed but grew over time. The more attention he demanded, the more he achieved.
But the flip side to all this was the fact Sinatra could never turn it down. His hunger, his raw greed for what he wanted, when he wanted it, made him an impossible husband, an absentee father, and an unreliable friend. Kaplan here presents Sinatra's mother Dolly as the main force behind his self-made misery, a nasty piece of work who resented anyone who told her no and bred that attitude into her sponge-like son. In his father, young Frank saw an emasculated male, the type he wanted nothing to do with as an adult.
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| Sinatra was arrested in 1938 for enticing a woman to have sex with him under false promise of marriage. As Kaplan relates, the woman withdrew the charge under another false promise of apology. Apology was not the Sinatra way. Image from https://www.amazon.com/SINATRA-GLOSSY-POSTER-PICTURE-mugshot/dp/B01MQM146B |
Also a plus are Kaplan's engagingly offhanded descriptions of Sinatra's world and its inhabitants. Harry James, he writes, "was a hot artist: a hepcat, a weed-puffing wild man. He was also a strangely self-defeating character – alcoholic, remote, and persistently broke." Ava Gardner, the woman Frank eventually left his wife for, is a hard-charging "diva" for whom Sinatra could never get enough, much to his later dismay. "Jealousy was their emotional ammunition," Kaplan writes.
The big negative for me of The Voice was too much Ava. She dominates its last three hundred pages like the whale in Moby-Dick. By contrast, Kaplan skirts aspects of Sinatra's rise such as his attaching himself to a semi-professional singing group known as the Hoboken Four (who, Kaplan intimates without getting much into, resented the little creep so much they beat him up between sets). Sinatra's filmwork, a huge component of his rise to superstardom, is cursorily dealt with but for From Here To Eternity, where he works out his scenes with method actor Montgomery Clift in a way that demonstrates his unerringly instinctual approach to art.
The descriptions of Frank as singer are where Kaplan shines brightest, the way he sang so intimately to such large numbers of people, and made young girls so excited the theater seats smelled like a lavatory after every performance. In the recording booth, he was even better, working to the microphone and against the beat in a way that was always to his advantage. "First, find the peak of the song and build the whole arrangement to that peak, pacing it as he paces himself vocally," his 1950s arranger Nelson Riddle explained. "Second, when he's moving, get the hell out of the way."
Bad or not, Sinatra always got his way. The crazy thing about The Voice is how often Kaplan has you rooting for him regardless.
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