(From the Guestbook page and the online book Frank Sinatra: An American Legend by Nancy Sinatra )

SEPTEMBER 17–22, 1984: Six shows at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

SEPTEMBER 13–23, 1982: At a Carnegie Hall concert... [See September 13th]

SEPTEMBER 8–20, 1981: He played a two-week engagement with George Shearing at Carnegie Hall. George, who was blind, called Frank "Old Blue Eyes" and himself "Old No Eyes."

SEPTEMBER 8–20, 1980: Frank returned to London for memorable concerts at the Royal Festival and Royal Albert Halls. [See September 8th]

SEPTEMBER 17–19, 1979: More recording sessions for the Trilogy collection, this time at Western Recorders in L.A. The songs: "The Song Is You," "But Not for Me," "Street of Dreams," "More Than You Know," "New York, New York" and "My Shining Hour." McClintick: "Outside the recording studio on Sunset Boulevard the temperature hovers just under 90 degrees. Brush and forest fires are sprinkling soot on this seedy and vaguely menacing stretch of Hollywood from a sky that has turned from beige to rust to black as the sun has set. It is a Nathanael West sort of evening, and thus is a perfect foil for the magical contrast one finds inside the studio. For inside, it is unmistakably a Mabel Mercer sort of evening. Frank Sinatra, Billy May, a twelve-voice choir and a 55-piece orchestra are making a record of "My Shining Hour," an extraordinary song composed for the Fred Astaire film The Sky's the Limit in 1948. 'I can't believe we never got to this one—I've been wanting to do it for 35 years,' says Sinatra. On these sooty September evenings Sinatra is rerecording several renditions that he and May had completed two months earlier and that seemed perfectly acceptable then. But after listening repeatedly to cassettes of the July recordings, Sinatra decided he could do better. He changed a few keys, slowed a few tempos and generally gained further internal command of the songs." [See also August 20–22, 1979]

FS with the Trilogy arrangers: Billy
May, Don Costa and Gordon Jenkins.

SEPTEMBER 8–20, 1975: FS, Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald co-headlined for two hugely successful weeks at New York's Uris Theater, grossing more than $1 million. [See September 8th]

SEPTEMBER 4–18, 1974: Dad and Frankie and I played Harrah's in Lake Tahoe and then headed a bill at Caesars in Vegas. It was a family affair, with my mother, Hugh and A.J. along as well.

SEPTEMBER 15–18, 1962: Frank and Dean Martin did four days at the Sands Hotel.

SEPTEMBER 17, 1952: In New York, Dad recorded "Why Try to Change Me Now?" with Percy Faith. This was the last song he would sing for Columbia Records before ending his 10-year relationship with the company.

SEPTEMBER 10–30, 1947: Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler, fueled by Lee Mortimer and the FBI, resumed his attacks on my father... [See September 10th]

[Dates of new entries highlighted in blue]

SEPTEMBER 17, 1952: In New York, Dad recorded "Why Try to Change Me Now?" with Percy Faith. This was the last song he would sing for Columbia Records before ending his 10-year relationship with the company.

See also: September 17, 1952 - "Why Try To Change Me Now?"

[Gail]

Thanks, Bob - appreciate your new formatting, i.e.,
[Dates of new entries highlighted in blue]

(From the Guestbook page and the online book Frank Sinatra: An American Legend by Nancy Sinatra )

SEPTEMBER 17–22, 1984: Six shows at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

SEPTEMBER 13–23, 1982: At a Carnegie Hall concert... [See September 13th]

SEPTEMBER 8–20, 1981: He played a two-week engagement with George Shearing at Carnegie Hall. George, who was blind, called Frank "Old Blue Eyes" and himself "Old No Eyes."

SEPTEMBER 8–20, 1980: Frank returned to London for memorable concerts at the Royal Festival and Royal Albert Halls. [See September 8th]

SEPTEMBER 17–19, 1979: More recording sessions for the Trilogy collection... [See September 17th]

SEPTEMBER 8–20, 1975: FS, Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald co-headlined for two hugely successful weeks at New York's Uris Theater, grossing more than $1 million. [See September 8th]

SEPTEMBER 4–18, 1974: Dad and Frankie and I played Harrah's in Lake Tahoe and then headed a bill at Caesars in Vegas. It was a family affair, with my mother, Hugh and A.J. along as well.

SEPTEMBER 15–18, 1962: Frank and Dean Martin did four days at the Sands Hotel.

SEPTEMBER 18, 1955: FS made an unscheduled guest appearance on The Colgate Comedy Hour, hosted that week by Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.

SEPTEMBER 10–30, 1947: Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler, fueled by Lee Mortimer and the FBI, resumed his attacks on my father... [See September 10th]

[Dates of new entries highlighted in blue]

(From the Guestbook page and the online book Frank Sinatra: An American Legend by Nancy Sinatra )

SEPTEMBER 19, 1993: Dad and Barbara hosted a fund-raising dinner at Chasen's restaurant in Los Angeles to support the mayoral reelection bid of Teddy Kollek of Jerusalem. The affair, attended by such luminaries as Gregory Peck, Barbra Streisand and Marvin Davis, was another demonstration of my father's abiding dedication to Israel and to his friendship with Kollek.

SEPTEMBER 17–22, 1984: Six shows at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

SEPTEMBER 13–23, 1982: At a Carnegie Hall concert... [See September 13th]

SEPTEMBER 8–20, 1981: He played a two-week engagement with George Shearing at Carnegie Hall. George, who was blind, called Frank "Old Blue Eyes" and himself "Old No Eyes."

SEPTEMBER 8–20, 1980: Frank returned to London for memorable concerts at the Royal Festival and Royal Albert Halls. [See September 8th]

SEPTEMBER 17–19, 1979: More recording sessions for the Trilogy collection... [See September 17th]

SEPTEMBER 8–20, 1975: FS, Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald co-headlined for two hugely successful weeks at New York's Uris Theater, grossing more than $1 million. [See September 8th]

SEPTEMBER 19, 1959: Dad hosted a luncheon honoring Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and attended by more than 400 Hollywood stars where Khrushchev and 20th Century Fox president Spyros Skouras debated the relative merits of capitalism and communism. Visiting a movie set, the Khrushchevs enjoyed watching my father film a scene from Can-Can—but the Russian premier proceeded to denounce the can-can itself as a decadent example of Western culture. [See also September 1959] When they were denied permission to visit Disneyland for security reasons, my father offered to escort Mrs. Khrushchev there personally—an offer vetoed by the Secret Service. But later he sat with her and looked patiently at photos of her grandchildren.

Soviet Premier and Mrs. Nikita Khrushchev visit the set of Can-Can in 1959.
Khrushchev called the can-can dance number "immoral." Reporting that
advance ticket sales for the film were bigger than those for Ben-Hur,
Newsweek added: "being condemned by Khrushchev may be an even
bigger commercial asset than being banned in Boston."

SEPTEMBER 19, 1955: In a prestigious television appearance—aired in a new process NBC called "living color"—Dad played the Stage Manager in a television version of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, starring Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint. One of the songs introduced in it, Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen's "Love and Marriage," would win an Emmy and become one of Dad's biggest hits. This was Jimmy's first formal job for my father and he told me that "when the time came to run through the score for him, I went to your home. Conditions there made it slightly difficult to hear the seven songs for the first time. Tina and Frankie and you were all over his lap and your mother was in the kitchen getting some beautiful food ready and with the clatter of plates and kids underfoot it was not easy to impress him with my clever cantatas. Those were the lean years for him but there was nothing lean about his love for his family. And I watched it all, first with impatience because my cadenzas got clobbered, but later with the great wish that I were as lucky as he."

SEPTEMBER 10–30, 1947: Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler, fueled by Lee Mortimer and the FBI, resumed his attacks on my father... [See September 10th]

[Dates of new entries highlighted in blue]

[Nancy]

Lee Mortimer and Westbrook Pegler! What a pair.

[Karyn]

Thanks Bob and Tina for the link

(From the Guestbook page and the online book Frank Sinatra: An American Legend by Nancy Sinatra )

SEPTEMBER 17–22, 1984: Six shows at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

SEPTEMBER 13–23, 1982: At a Carnegie Hall concert... [See September 13th]

SEPTEMBER 8–20, 1981: He played a two-week engagement with George Shearing at Carnegie Hall. George, who was blind, called Frank "Old Blue Eyes" and himself "Old No Eyes."

SEPTEMBER 8–20, 1980: Frank returned to London for memorable concerts at the Royal Festival and Royal Albert Halls. [See September 8th]

SEPTEMBER 8–20, 1975: FS, Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald co-headlined for two hugely successful weeks at New York's Uris Theater, grossing more than $1 million. [See September 8th]

SEPTEMBER 20, 1973: My husband, Hugh Lambert, did the choreography and staging for the television event Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back. Gene Kelly was Frank's special guest star. The audience invited to the taping was jeweled, black-tied and glamorous—who's who of Hollywood, a guest list that could unnerve even the most seasoned performer. Gene and Frank were visibly excited and nervous. The show was a hit. But Dad said later, "When I haven't sung for a while, my reed gets rusty. If you don't sing all the time, when you go back it's a whole new voice. No bottom; you gotta pound on it for a while." He reached out to his old friend, Metropolitan Opera star Robert Merrill, for help: "We met at his hotel, the Waldorf Towers. He sang for me and I gave him exercises—scales to do to relax his throat. See, the trick of singing well is to have the throat open, relaxed."

[Photo by Ed Thrasher, Warner Bros.]

Robert Merrill: "You have to let [the voice] flow. It's like getting out of a sickbed and trying to walk right away. You have to practice and vocalize. Frank understood and he did the exercises and his ten performances with no problems. Then he went on TV and talked about the trouble he'd had and said, 'I have a great teacher—Bob Merrill,' Well, I'm not a teacher professionally, and suddenly I started getting calls from all sorts of people who wanted to study with me!"

Dad and Gene rehearsing "Can't Do
That Anymore" for Ol' Blue Eyes Is
Back. [Photo: 1973, David Sutton]

SEPTEMBER 20, 1965: In Assault on a Queen, Dad starred opposite Virna Lisi as a modern-day pirate who salvaged a sunken German U-boat in a bid to hijack the luxury liner Queen Mary and loot its cargo and its well-heeled passengers. The most memorable things about this film are the fact that Duke Ellington wrote the score and Rod Serling wrote the screenplay.

SEPTEMBER 10–30, 1947: Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler, fueled by Lee Mortimer and the FBI, resumed his attacks on my father... [See September 10th]

[Dates of new entries highlighted in blue]

[ARIES3032]

Tho' I have the books, reading it on this forum is especially dear to my heart. Thank you Bob & Nancy.

(From the Guestbook page and the online book Frank Sinatra: An American Legend by Nancy Sinatra )

SEPTEMBER 17–22, 1984: Six shows at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

SEPTEMBER 21–25, 1983: He returned to the Golden Nugget in Atlantic City with Dean Martin.

SEPTEMBER 13–23, 1982: At a Carnegie Hall concert... [See September 13th]

SEPTEMBER 10–30, 1947: Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler, fueled by Lee Mortimer and the FBI, resumed his attacks on my father... [See September 10th]

LATE SEPTEMBER 1945: Broke, out of work and sharing a two-dollar-a-night hotel room with his dad and uncle, young hoofer Sammy Davis Jr. waited at the KFWB stage door in Hollywood for Dad to finish signing autographs. Reminded that they appeared on the same bill with Tommy Dorsey in Detroit five years earlier, Dad left a pass allowing Sammy to watch the next week's broadcast from the studio audience. After the show, he invited Sammy to stop by his dressing room. It was the start of a beautiful friendship. [See also May 1947]

[Dates of new entries highlighted in blue]

[Nancy]

My dad was devoted to Sam and vice versa.

(From the Guestbook page and the online book Frank Sinatra: An American Legend by Nancy Sinatra )

SEPTEMBER 17–22, 1984: Six shows at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

SEPTEMBER 21–25, 1983: He returned to the Golden Nugget in Atlantic City with Dean Martin.

SEPTEMBER 13–23, 1982: At a Carnegie Hall concert... [See September 13th]

SEPTEMBER 22, 1981: Frank and Barbara attended the National Multiple Sclerosis Society Ball in Washington, D.C., with President and Mrs. Reagan.

SEPTEMBER 22–24, 1975: Ella, Basie and Frank played Philadelphia, Cleveland and Chicago, where Mayor Richard J. Daley presented Dad with the gold Medallion of Citizenship in a City Hall ceremony recognizing Dad's role in letting the world know that Chicago is "My Kind of Town."

Fitzgerald, Basie and Sinatra.

FRANK ON ELLA FITZGERALD: I love working with Ella. She's as good a musician and vocalist as anybody will ever hear for the next hundred years. She is so free and thinks so freely and is completely wrapped up in what she does—that's all she ever thinks about. In that way, she's like Benny Goodman, who thought only about the clarinet. Like Ella, he was what he does—a very bright and erudite man, sure, but his life was the clarinet. Once, many years ago, when we were at a Madison Square Garden Christmas benefit, I caught up with him off in a corner, quietly noodling on the licorice stick. Everybody else was sitting around having a sip of booze or something, and I walked over and said, "Every time I see you, Benny, you're practicing. Why do you do that so often?" He said, "Purely because if tonight I'm not great, I'm at least good." I never forgot that because it's true. If you work hard at it all the time and you have a slow period, whether it's your own emotional problems or you're thinking, I don't feel like working as hard as I did last night, you work and it's still never below the standard, still better than the other guy. I've tried to live up to that and I know Ella has, too.

SEPTEMBER 22, 1975: In his first in-depth television interview... [See Frank Opens Up]

SEPTEMBER 10–30, 1947: Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler, fueled by Lee Mortimer and the FBI, resumed his attacks on my father... [See September 10th]

LATE SEPTEMBER 1943: He continued his public appearances in support of the war effort, performing almost every night in one rally or another around New York.

[Dates of new entries highlighted in blue]

On September 22, 1975, in his first in-depth television intervew, Frank Sinatra spoke with Bill Boggs on WNEW in New York:

ON RETURNING FROM RETIREMENT: I was struggling, really fighting my way out of the doldrums. Because when I quit, I let everything go. And it all fell down. It's like somebody who lifts weights and then stops for a while—a matter of consistency, you have to do it every day. The greatest training that any youngster can have, if he really wants to become a pop singer, is to sing all the time, every day. So I was having a tough time vocally, trying to do what I wanted to do. But I was working very hard at it, and when I appeared at the Uris Theater it was purely like I was back in the very beginning of my career as a vocalist. I had to really concentrate hard.

ON PREPARING FOR A CONCERT: It begins by keeping in physical condition. I vocalize about an hour and a half a day, every day. I break it up in stages. Just to keep the muscles warm. I keep thinking to myself, Am I warm enough? Am I really ready to pitch? Or, if I've got 10 minutes to curtain, should I run into the dressing room and get a hold of Bill Miller and sing four or five minutes of exercises—the middle area of the scale? I'll go up to an F and hit it once or twice and know that I'll probably never use it, but it's there if I need it. Which is what I didn't do during retirement. I wouldn't even hum for anybody. Not a [musical] sound did I make. And I really didn't miss singing. But I had a great time for almost two years, the most wonderful time of my life. I just wanted to stop working for a while.

ON HIS MUSICAL ROLE MODELS: I go back to Mabel Mercer, Billie Holiday, Bob Eberly—and Jack Leonard, when he was with Tommy Dorsey. He did some marvelous pieces of phraseology that went on and on. It was fascinating to hear him do it. And Robert Merrill, who is probably the greatest baritone I've ever heard. Even now, every once in a while when I feel that I'm faulting myself, we meet and we do a clinic. And he straightens me out about something. I'd like to do it more, but he's busy, too. And I don't want to hang him up by trying to make him just a teacher.

ON TODAY'S POPULAR SINGERS: One of the things that I think is sad about the new school of singing is that the kids have nowhere to go to learn. There are no orchestras that do one-nighters 300 dates a year. But when you work every single night, you're learning something every time. And if you want to go into the acting business, you begin to learn to use the lyric of a song as a script for a scene in a movie. I didn't know that at the time, but that's what I was doing.

ON SELECTING SONGS FOR A PERFORMANCE: I choose the material that I think is best and also material that I think my audience wants to hear. Strangely enough, I often find myself thinking like a baseball pitcher when I'm performing. I will turn around and say to Bill Miller, "Skip the next two tunes and go to the third one," because there's something about the audience—I'm not getting vibes from anybody, so we go to something that might grab them a little bit more. So you throw a knuckler, and you throw a slider and you throw a fast ball. And that way it not only amuses them and entertains them, but it mystifies them a little. They don't quite understand why you're switching around like that.

ON HEARING HIS OWN RECORDS: I can't stand that. If I'm out visiting someone, I say to them, "If you play my records, I'm going home." Because often I was a little impatient in making a record, and I said, "That's it, press it, print it." And there was one little note in it that isn't right. And every time I hear that record, it comes back to me. If I'm in my car listening to the radio, I cringe before the note comes and I think to myself, Why didn't we do it one more time? Just one more time.

ON BEING A PUBLIC FIGURE: I think if you handle it carefully and tastefully, it can be done. That doesn't mean that if I wanted to go to Coney Island for an afternoon, I could go. I can't go—that would be absolute bedlam. But I can go shopping, I can walk up Fifth Avenue and go in and out of shops and people say, "Hello, how are you?" It's fine. Sign an autograph, fine. That's never any problem. That's a great delight, as a matter of fact, great flattery. And yet I know performers, who will be nameless, who just refuse to sign an autograph. And I really don't understand why. It's a simple thing to make somebody happy. And then I have the quiet moments. For instance, many times through the years, when I'm in New York, I like to take a walk at night when there's nobody around. I love to take a walk up Park Avenue or Fifth Avenue. And look in the windows at Saks. There are other strollers, you know, and I know they're saying, "is that really him?" But of course there comes the other side, which is, by the way, extremely rare, where you get the rude guy who comes up when you've got your steak on a fork halfway to your mouth, and he says "Could you come over to my table for a minute?" And you say, "Would you please get away from here or I'm gonna have the guy throw you out of the restaurant." You either get that blunt or you say to him, "May I finish my dinner and I'd be delighted to come over." But that's terribly rare because most people have better sense than that, they really do.

ON HIS GRATITUDE TO HIS FANS: I've been overly rewarded in my lifetime, and that's not buttering anybody up, it's a fact. I appreciate what's happened to me, and I wish everybody who is viewing us, or even if they aren't, if they just hear about it, I wish them thousands of times more than I've gotten in my life. And I wish everybody in the world a lot of sweet things, and pleasant dreams, and soft touching, hugging and kissing.

[Nancy]

Thanks for posting that wonderful interview, Bob. It's enlightening to see it again.

[Dan]

That's a great interview to read. I wonder if there is a taped interview for purchase with Frank and Bill somewhere in Sinatra Land..

Originally Posted by Dan

I wonder if there is a taped interview for purchase

No, there is not.

BTW, the Bill Boggs interview was taped in Philadelphia, for later broadcast in New York on WNEW-TV, November 30, 1975. This is the thread in the Frank on TV forum:

A Conversation With Frank Sinatra (1975)

[Dan]

Thank You.

Thanks Bob! What a guy Frank was!

Bob I found this regarding the interview.

This photo was taken from the interview.

Lots of good info regarding the interview here:

http://www.worldjewishnewsagency.org...ette_attie.htm



http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...=&pagewanted=1

Thanks, Mel. See also another photo I just posted in the Frank on TV thread: Post #7.