Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. The first multimedia star, Crosby was a leader in record sales, radio ratings, motion picture grosses from 1931 to 1954, his early career coincided with recording innovations that allowed him to develop an intimate singing style that influenced many male singers who followed him, including Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Dick Haymes, Dean Martin. Yank magazine said that he was "the person who had done the most for the morale of overseas servicemen" during World War II. In 1948, American polls declared him the "most admired man alive", ahead of Jackie Robinson and Pope Pius XII. In 1948, Music Digest estimated that his recordings filled more than half of the 80,000 weekly hours allocated to recorded radio music. Crosby won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Father Chuck O'Malley in the 1944 motion picture Going My Way and was nominated for his reprise of the role in The Bells of St. Mary's opposite Ingrid Bergman the next year, becoming the first of six actors to be nominated twice for playing the same character.
In 1963, Crosby received the first Grammy Global Achievement Award. He is one of 33 people to have three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in the categories of motion pictures and audio recording, he was known for his collaborations with longtime friend Bob Hope, starring in the Road to... films from 1940 to 1962. Crosby influenced the development of the postwar recording industry. After seeing a demonstration of a German broadcast quality reel-to-reel tape recorder brought to America by John T. Mullin, he invested $50,000 in a California electronics company called Ampex to build copies, he convinced ABC to allow him to tape his shows. He became the first performer to pre-record his radio shows and master his commercial recordings onto magnetic tape. Through the medium of recording, he constructed his radio programs with the same directorial tools and craftsmanship used in motion picture production, a practice that became an industry standard. In addition to his work with early audio tape recording, he helped to finance the development of videotape, bought television stations, bred racehorses, co-owned the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team.
Crosby was born on May 3, 1903 in Tacoma, Washington, in a house his father built at 1112 North J Street. In 1906, his family moved to Spokane and in 1913, his father built a house at 508 E. Sharp Avenue; the house sits on the campus of Gonzaga University. It functions today as a museum housing over 200 artifacts from his life and career, including his Oscar, he was the fourth of seven children: brothers Laurence Earl, Everett Nathaniel, Edward John, George Robert. His parents were Harry Lowe Crosby, a bookkeeper, Catherine Helen "Kate", his mother was a second generation Irish-American. His father was of English descent. Through another line on his father's side, Crosby is descended from Mayflower passenger William Brewster. On November 8, 1937, after Lux Radio Theatre's adaptation of She Loves Me Not, Joan Blondell asked Crosby how he got his nickname: Crosby: "Well, I'll tell you, back in the knee-britches day, when I was a wee little tyke, a mere broth of a lad, as we say in Spokane, I used to totter around the streets, with a gun on each hip, my favorite after school pastime was a game known as "Cops and Robbers", I didn't care which side I was on, when a cop or robber came into view, I would haul out my trusty six-shooters, made of wood, loudly exclaim bing! bing!, as my luckless victim fell clutching his side, I would shout bing! bing!, I would let him have it again, as his friends came to his rescue, shooting as they came, I would shout bing! bing! bing! bing! bing! bing! bing! bing!"Blondell: "I'm surprised they didn't call you "Killer" Crosby!
Now tell me another story, Grandpa! Crosby: "No, so help me, it's the truth, ask Mister De Mille."De Mille: "I'll vouch for it, Bing."That story was pure whimsy for dramatic effect and the truth is that a neighbor - Valentine Hobart - named him "Bingo from Bingville" after a comic feature in the local paper called "The Bingville Bugle" which the young Harry liked. In time, Bingo got shortened to Bing. In 1917, Crosby took a summer job as property boy at Spokane's "Auditorium," where he witnessed some of the finest acts of the day, including Al Jolson, who held him spellbound with ad libbing and parodies of Hawaiian songs, he described Jolson's delivery as "electric."Crosby graduated from Gonzaga High School in 1920 and enrolled at Gonzaga University. He did not earn a degree; as a freshman, he played on the university's baseball team. The university granted him an honorary doctorate in 1937. Today, Gonzaga University houses a large collection of photographs and other material related to Crosby.
In 1923, Crosby was invited to join a new band composed of high school students a few years younger than himself. Al Rinker, Miles Rinker, James Heaton, Claire Pritchard and Robert Pritchard, along with drummer Crosby, formed the Musicaladers, who performed at dances both for high school students and club-goers; the group disbanded after two years. Crosby and Al Rinker obtained work at the Clemmer Theatre in Spokane. Crosby was a member of a vocal trio called'The Three Harmo
Record producer
A record producer or music producer oversees and manages the sound recording and production of a band or performer's music, which may range from recording one song to recording a lengthy concept album. A producer has varying roles during the recording process, they may gather musical ideas for the project, collaborate with the artists to select cover tunes or original songs by the artist/group, work with artists and help them to improve their songs, lyrics or arrangements. A producer may also: Select session musicians to play rhythm section accompaniment parts or solos Co-write Propose changes to the song arrangements Coach the singers and musicians in the studioThe producer supervises the entire process from preproduction, through to the sound recording and mixing stages, and, in some cases, all the way to the audio mastering stage; the producer may perform these roles themselves, or help select the engineer, provide suggestions to the engineer. The producer may pay session musicians and engineers and ensure that the entire project is completed within the record label's budget.
A record producer or music producer has a broad role in overseeing and managing the recording and production of a band or performer's music. A producer has many roles that may include, but are not limited to, gathering ideas for the project, composing the music for the project, selecting songs or session musicians, proposing changes to the song arrangements, coaching the artist and musicians in the studio, controlling the recording sessions, supervising the entire process through audio mixing and, in some cases, to the audio mastering stage. Producers often take on a wider entrepreneurial role, with responsibility for the budget, schedules and negotiations. Writer Chris Deville explains it, "Sometimes a producer functions like a creative consultant — someone who helps a band achieve a certain aesthetic, or who comes up with the perfect violin part to complement the vocal melody, or who insists that a chorus should be a bridge. Other times a producer will build a complete piece of music from the ground up and present the finished product to a vocalist, like Metro Boomin supplying Future with readymade beats or Jack Antonoff letting Taylor Swift add lyrics and melody to an otherwise-finished “Out Of The Woods.”The artist of an album may not be a record producer or music producer for his/her album.
While both contribute creatively, the official credit of "record producer" may depend on the record contract. Christina Aguilera, for example, did not receive record producer credits until many albums into her career. In the 2010s, the producer role is sometimes divided among up to three different individuals: executive producer, vocal producer and music producer. An executive producer oversees project finances, a vocal producers oversees the vocal production, a music producer oversees the creative process of recording and mixings; the music producer is often a competent arranger, musician or songwriter who can bring fresh ideas to a project. As well as making any songwriting and arrangement adjustments, the producer selects and/or collaborates with the mixing engineer, who takes the raw recorded tracks and edits and modifies them with hardware and software tools to create a stereo or surround sound "mix" of all the individual voices sounds and instruments, in turn given further adjustment by a mastering engineer for the various distribution media.
The producer oversees the recording engineer who concentrates on the technical aspects of recording. Noted producer Phil Ek described his role as "the person who creatively guides or directs the process of making a record", like a director would a movie. Indeed, in Bollywood music, the designation is music director; the music producer's job is to create and mold a piece of music. The scope of responsibility may be one or two songs or an artist's entire album – in which case the producer will develop an overall vision for the album and how the various songs may interrelate. At the beginning of record industry, the producer role was technically limited to record, in one shot, artists performing live; the immediate predecessors to record producers were the artists and repertoire executives of the late 1920s and 1930s who oversaw the "pop" product and led session orchestras. That was the case of Ben Selvin at Columbia Records, Nathaniel Shilkret at Victor Records and Bob Haring at Brunswick Records.
By the end of the 1930s, the first professional recording studios not owned by the major companies were established separating the roles of A&R man and producer, although it wouldn't be until the late 1940s when the term "producer" became used in the industry. The role of producers changed progressively over the 1960s due to technology; the development of multitrack recording caused a major change in the recording process. Before multitracking, all the elements of a song had to be performed simultaneously. All of these singers and musicians had to be assembled in a large studio where the performance was recorded. With multitrack recording, the "bed tracks" (rhythm section accompaniment parts such as the bassline and rhythm guitar could be recorded first, the vocals and solos could be added using as many "takes" as necessary, it was no longer necessary to get all the players in the studio at the same time. A pop band could record their backing tracks one week, a horn section could be brought in a week to add horn shots and punches, a string section could be brought in a week after that.
Multitrack recording had another pro
Guys and Dolls
Guys and Dolls is a musical with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows. It is based on "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown" and "Blood Pressure", which are two short stories by Damon Runyon, borrows characters and plot elements from other Runyon stories – most notably "Pick the Winner"; the premiere on Broadway was in 1950. It won the Tony Award for Best Musical; the musical has had several Broadway and London revivals, as well as a 1955 film adaptation starring Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons, Frank Sinatra and Vivian Blaine. Guys and Dolls was selected as the winner of the 1951 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. However, because of writer Abe Burrows' troubles with the House Un-American Activities Committee, the Trustees of Columbia University vetoed the selection, no Pulitzer for Drama was awarded that year. Guys and Dolls was conceived by producers Cy Feuer and Ernest Martin as an adaptation of Damon Runyon's short stories; these stories, written in the 1920s and 1930s, concerned gangsters and other characters of the New York underworld.
Runyon was known for the unique dialect he employed in his stories, mixing formal language and slang. Frank Loesser, who had spent most of his career as a lyricist for movie musicals, was hired as composer and lyricist. George S. Kaufman was hired as director; when the first version of the show's book, or dialogue, written by Jo Swerling was deemed unusable and Martin asked radio comedy writer Abe Burrows to rewrite it. Loesser had written much of the score to correspond with the first version of the book. Burrows recalled: Frank Loesser's fourteen songs were all great, the had to be written so that the story would lead into each of them. On, the critics spoke of the show as'integrated'; the word integration means that the composer has written songs that follow the story line gracefully. Well, we accomplished; the character of Miss Adelaide was created to fit Vivian Blaine into the musical, after Loesser decided she was ill-suited to play the conservative Sarah. When Loesser suggested reprising some songs in the second act, Kaufman warned: "If you reprise the songs, we'll reprise the jokes."
A pantomime of never-ceasing activities depicts the bustle of New York City. Three small-time gamblers, Nicely-Nicely Johnson, Benny Southstreet, Rusty Charlie, argue over which horse will win a big race; the band members of the Save-a-Soul Mission, led by the pious and beautiful Sergeant Sarah Brown, call for sinners to "Follow the Fold" and repent. Nicely and Benny's employer, Nathan Detroit, runs an illegal floating crap game. Due to local policeman Lt. Brannigan's strong-armed presence, he has found only one spot to hold the game: the "Biltmore garage." Its owner, Joey Biltmore, requires a $1,000 security deposit, Nathan is broke. Nathan hopes to win a $1,000 bet against Sky Masterson, a gambler willing to bet on anything. Nathan proposes a bet he believes he cannot lose: Sky must take a woman of Nathan's choice to dinner in Havana, Cuba. Sky agrees, Nathan chooses Sarah Brown. At the mission, Sky claims he wants impressing Sarah with his knowledge of the Bible, he offers Sarah a deal: He will bring the mission "one dozen genuine sinners" if she will accompany him to Havana the next night.
Sarah rebuffs him, telling him that she plans to fall in love with an moral man. Sky replies. Sky kisses Sarah, she slaps him. Nathan goes to watch his fiancée of 14 years, perform her nightclub act. After her show, she asks him, as she has many times before, to go down to city hall and get a marriage license, she tells Nathan that she has been sending her mother letters for twelve years claiming that they have been married with six kids. She is distraught to find out, she consults a medical book, which tells her that her chronic cold is a psychosomatic reaction to her frustration with Nathan's failure to marry her. The next day and Benny watch as Sky pursues Sarah, Nathan tries to win back Adelaide's favor, they declare. General Cartwright, the leader of Save-a-Soul, visits the mission and explains that she will be forced to close the branch unless they succeed in bringing some sinners to the upcoming revival meeting. Sarah, desperate to save the mission, promises the General "one dozen genuine sinners", implicitly accepting Sky's deal.
The gamblers, including a notorious gangster from Chicago named Big Jule, are waiting for Nathan to secure the spot for the game, Lt. Brannigan becomes suspicious. To convince him of their innocence, they tell Brannigan their gathering is Nathan's "surprise bachelor party"; this satisfies Brannigan, Nathan resigns himself to eloping with Adelaide. Adelaide goes home to pack; the Save-A-Soul Mission band passes by, Nathan sees that Sarah is not in it. In a Havana nightclub, Sky buys a "Cuban milkshake" for Sarah, she doesn't realize that the drink contains Bacardi rum, innocently drinks multiple glasses, becoming progressively tipsier. Outside the club, Sarah kisses Sky and proclaims that she is enjoying herself for the first time in her life, she wants to stay in Havana with Sky. Sky is surprised to find, that he cares about Sarah's welfare, he insists that they go back to the airport and return to New
Frank Loesser
Frank Henry Loesser was an American songwriter who wrote the lyrics and music to the Broadway musicals Guys and Dolls and How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, among others. He won separate Tony Awards for the music and lyrics in both shows, as well as sharing the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the latter, he wrote numerous songs for films and Tin Pan Alley, many of which have become standards, was nominated for five Academy Awards for best song, winning once, for "Baby, It's Cold Outside". Loesser was born to a Jewish family in New York City to Henry Loesser, a pianist, Julia Ehrlich, he grew up in a house on West 107th Street in Manhattan. His father had moved to America to avoid Prussian military service and working in his family's banking business, he came to America and married Berthe, had a son in 1894, Arthur Loesser. In 1888, Berthe's sister Julia arrived in America. Julia and Henry soon fell in love and Julia loved Arthur, but Berthe sent her to Washington D. C. Berthe died in childbirth and Julia moved back in and married Henry in 1907.
Their first child, was born in December of that year. Both his parents, secular German Jews, prized high intellect and culture, Loesser was educated musically in the vein of European composers, but although Henry was a full-time piano teacher, he never taught his son. In a 1914 letter to Frank's older half-brother Arthur Loesser, Henry wrote that the 4-year-old Frank could play by ear "any tune he's heard and can spend an enormous amount of time at the piano." Loesser did not like his father's refined taste of music and resisted when he wrote his own music and took up the harmonica. He was expelled from Townsend Harris High School, from there went to City College of New York, he was expelled from the CCNY in 1925 after one year for failing every subject except English and gym. After his father died in 1926, Loesser was forced to seek work in order to support his family, he held various jobs like restaurant reviewer, process server, classified ad salesman for the New York Herald Tribune, political cartoonist for The Tuckahoe Record, sketch writer for Keith Vaudeville Circuit, knit-goods editor for Women’s Wear Daily, press representative for a small movie company, city editor for a short-lived newspaper in New Rochelle, New York called New Rochelle News.
After his many various jobs, he decided that he wanted to write in Tin Pan Alley and signed several contracts with music publishers before his contracts were terminated. His first song credit is listed as "In Love with the Memory of You", with music by William Schuman, published in 1931. Loesser's early lyrics included two hit songs of 1934, "Junk Man" and "I Wish I Were Twins". However, they did not help his reputation, in years, he never mentioned them. In the mid-1930s he would sing for his suppers at The Back Drop, a night spot on east 52nd Street along with composer Irving Actman, but during the day he worked on the staff of Leo Feist Inc. writing lyrics to Joseph Brandfon's music at $100 a week. After a year, Feist had not published any of them, he fared only better collaborating with the future classical composer William Schuman, selling one song, that would flop, to Feist. Loesser described his early days of learning the songwriting craft as having "a rendezvous with failure." But while he dabbled in other trades, he returned to the music business.
The Back Drop turned out to have some substantial connections. Due to his work there he was able to secure his first Broadway musical, The Illustrator’s Show, a 1936 revue written with Back Drop collaborator Irving Actman, lasted only four nights; the year before, while performing at the Back Drop, he met Lynn Garland. He proposed in a September 1936 letter that included funds for a railroad ticket to Los Angeles where Loesser's contract to Universal Pictures had just ended; the couple married in a judge's office. Loesser was subsequently offered a contract by Paramount Pictures, his first song credit with Paramount was "Moon of Manakoora" written with Alfred Newman for Dorothy Lamour in the film The Hurricane. He wrote the lyrics for many popular songs during this period, including "Two Sleepy People" and "Heart and Soul" with Hoagy Carmichael and "I Hear Music" with Burton Lane, he worked with Arthur Schwartz, Joseph J. Lilley. One of his notable efforts was "See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have", with music by Friedrich Hollaender sung by Marlene Dietrich in Destry Rides Again.
In 1941, he wrote "I Don't Want to Walk Without You" with Jule Styne included in the 1942 film Sweater Girl and sung by Betty Jane Rhodes. Irving Berlin was a huge fan of the song, once played it over and over again telling Loesser why he believed it was the greatest song he wished he'd written. Members of the Western Writers of America chose the 1942 song "Jingle Jangle Jingle", for which he wrote the lyrics, as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time, he stayed in Hollywood until World War II. During World War II, he was in the Army Air Force, continued to write lyrics for films and single songs. Loesser wrote the popular war song "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition" inspired by words spoken by navy chaplain William Maguire. Loesser wrote songs to a "dummy" tune, meaning the music was just a stand-in until more suitable music could be composed. After the positive reaction to Loesser writing both mu
Kiss Me, Kate
Kiss Me, Kate is a musical written by Samuel and Bella Spewack with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The story involves the production of a musical version of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and the conflict on and off-stage between Fred Graham, the show's director and star, his leading lady, his ex-wife Lilli Vanessi. A secondary romance concerns Lois Lane, the actress playing Bianca, her gambler boyfriend, who runs afoul of some gangsters; the original production starred Patricia Morison, Lisa Kirk and Harold Lang. Kiss Me, Kate was Porter's response to Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! and other integrated musicals. The musical premiered in 1948 and proved to be Porter's only show to run for more than 1,000 performances on Broadway. In 1949, it won the first Tony Award for Best Musical; the musical was inspired by the on-stage/off-stage battling of husband-and-wife actors Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne during their 1935 production of Shrew, witnessed by future Broadway producer Arnold Saint-Subber.
In 1947 he asked the Spewacks to write the script. After a 3½-week pre-Broadway tryout at the Shubert Theatre in Philadelphia starting December 2, 1948, the original Broadway production opened on December 30, 1948, at the New Century Theatre, where it ran for nineteen months before transferring to the Shubert, for a total run of 1,077 performances. Directed by John C. Wilson with choreography by Hanya Holm, the original cast included Alfred Drake, Patricia Morison, Lisa Kirk, Harold Lang, Charles Wood and Harry Clark; the 1949 original cast recording has been inducted into the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry for the album's "cultural, artistic and/or historical significance to American society and the nation's audio legacy". The original West End production opened on March 8, 1951, at the Coliseum Theatre, ran for 400 performances. Directed by Sam Spewack with choreography again by Holm, this production starred Patricia Morison, Bill Johnson, Adelaide Hall and Julie Wilson.
The original Australian production played from February 1952 at His Majesty's Theatre, before seasons in Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide until 1954. The production featured Joy Turpin. A London revival opened in December 1970 at the London Coliseum, in a production by the Sadler's Wells Opera; the cast featured Emile Belcourt, Judith Bruce, Eric Shilling, Ann Howard, Francis Egerton and Robert Lloyd, with direction by Peter Coe and choreography by Sheila O'Neill. Coe did a translation for British audiences, including having "a tea wagon", included "traditional English music hall jokes"; this revival had a "brief run", according to the Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre. The Royal Shakespeare Company staged a production which opened at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, on February 10, 1987, toured the UK from March to May, played at London's Old Vic Theatre from May 19, 1987. Directed by Adrian Noble and staged by Ron Field, the production starred Nichola McAuliffe and Paul Jones as Lilli/Kate and Fred/Petruchio, with Tim Flavin and Fiona Hendley as Bill/Lucentio and Lois/Bianca.
The gangsters were played by Emil Wolk and John Bardon, who shared the 1987 Olivier Award for Outstanding Performance of the Year by an Actor in a Musical, while McAuliffe won the Olivier for Outstanding Performance of the Year by an Actress in a Musical. The production moved to the Savoy Theatre on January 1988, with a new cast. A short-lived Broadway revival ran at the Broadway Theatre in January 1952, it was choreographed by Hanya Holm. Holly Harris and Robert Wright starred as Fred. A Broadway revival opened at the Martin Beck Theatre on November 18, 1999 and closed on December 30, 2001 after 881 performances and 28 previews. Directed by Michael Blakemore, Produced by Richard Godwin, choreographed by Kathleen Marshall and Rob Ashford, the opening night cast included Marin Mazzie, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Amy Spanger, Michael Berresse, Ron Holgate, Lee Wilkof and Michael Mulheren; this production won the Tony Awards for Best Revival of a Musical and Best Actor in a Musical for Mitchell. A West End revival opened at the Victoria Palace Theatre on October 30, 2001, closed on August 24, 2002.
As with the 1999 Broadway revival, Michael Blakemore was the director with choreography by Kathleen Marshall. Brent Barrett and Marin Mazzie co-starred. Chichester Festival Theatre's 2012 revival of the show transferred to the Old Vic Theatre on London's South Bank in November 2012, with an official opening in December, it starred Hannah Waddingham as Alex Bourne as Fred Graham. The production was directed by Trevor Nunn; the show received positive reviews from audiences. Hannah Waddingham and Alex Bourne were both nominated for the 2013 Olivier Awards as Best Actress/Actor in a Musical for their performances. In September 2015 Opera North presented a revival directed by Jo Davies, choreographed by Will Tuckett; the production opened at the Leeds Grand Theatre before touring to Theatre Royal Newcastle, The Lowry Salford, Theatre Royal Nottingham. The production was co-produced with the Welsh National Opera who continued to tour it in 2016, first as part of the Shakespeare400 season at the Wales Millennium Centre, to Liverpool Empire Theatre, Bristol Hippodrome, New Theatre O
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert Sinatra was an American actor and singer, one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century. He is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 150 million records worldwide. Born to Italian immigrants in Hoboken, New Jersey, Sinatra began his musical career in the swing era with bandleaders Harry James and Tommy Dorsey. Sinatra found success as a solo artist after he signed with Columbia Records in 1943, becoming the idol of the "bobby soxers", he released his debut album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra, in 1946. Sinatra's professional career had stalled by the early 1950s, he turned to Las Vegas, where he became one of its best known residency performers as part of the Rat Pack, his career was reborn in 1953 with the success of From Here to Eternity, with his performance subsequently winning an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. Sinatra released several critically lauded albums, including In the Wee Small Hours, Songs for Swingin' Lovers!, Come Fly with Me, Only the Lonely and Nice'n' Easy.
Sinatra left Capitol in 1960 to start his own record label, Reprise Records, released a string of successful albums. In 1965, he recorded the retrospective September of My Years and starred in the Emmy-winning television special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music. After releasing Sinatra at the Sands, recorded at the Sands Hotel and Casino in Vegas with frequent collaborator Count Basie in early 1966, the following year he recorded one of his most famous collaborations with Tom Jobim, the album Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim, it was followed by 1968's Francis Edward K. with Duke Ellington. Sinatra retired for the first time in 1971, but came out of retirement two years and recorded several albums and resumed performing at Caesars Palace, reached success in 1980 with "New York, New York". Using his Las Vegas shows as a home base, he toured both within the United States and internationally until shortly before his death in 1998. Sinatra forged a successful career as a film actor.
After winning an Academy Award for From Here to Eternity, he starred in The Man with the Golden Arm, received critical acclaim for his performance in The Manchurian Candidate. He appeared in various musicals such as On the Town and Dolls, High Society, Pal Joey, winning another Golden Globe for the latter. Toward the end of his career, he became associated with playing detectives, including the title character in Tony Rome. Sinatra would receive the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1971. On television, The Frank Sinatra Show began on ABC in 1950, he continued to make appearances on television throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Sinatra was heavily involved with politics from the mid-1940s, campaigned for presidents such as Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. In crime, the FBI investigated his alleged relationship with the Mafia. While Sinatra never learned how to read music, he had an impressive understanding of it, he worked hard from a young age to improve his abilities in all aspects of music.
A perfectionist, renowned for his dress sense and performing presence, he always insisted on recording live with his band. His bright blue eyes earned him the popular nickname "Ol' Blue Eyes". Sinatra led a colorful personal life, was involved in turbulent affairs with women, such as with his second wife Ava Gardner, he married Mia Farrow in 1966 and Barbara Marx in 1976. Sinatra had several violent confrontations with journalists he felt had crossed him, or work bosses with whom he had disagreements, he was honored at the Kennedy Center Honors in 1983, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan in 1985, the Congressional Gold Medal in 1997. Sinatra was the recipient of eleven Grammy Awards, including the Grammy Trustees Award, Grammy Legend Award and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, he was collectively included in Time magazine's compilation of the twentieth century's 100 most influential people. After his death, American music critic Robert Christgau called him "the greatest singer of the 20th century", he continues to be seen as an iconic figure.
Francis Albert Sinatra was born on December 12, 1915, in an upstairs tenement at 415 Monroe Street in Hoboken, New Jersey, the only child of Italian immigrants Natalina "Dolly" Garaventa and Antonino Martino "Marty" Sinatra. Sinatra weighed 13.5 pounds at birth and had to be delivered with the aid of forceps, which caused severe scarring to his left cheek and ear, perforated his eardrum—damage that remained for life. Due to his injuries at birth, 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, during adolescence he suffered from cystic acne that further scarred his face and neck. Sinatra was raised Roman Catholic. Sinatra's mother was energetic and driven, biographers believe that she was the dominant factor in the development of her son's personality traits and self-confidence. Sinatra's fourth wife Barbara would claim that Dolly was abusive to him as a child, "knocked him around a lot".
Dolly became influential in local Democratic Party circles. She worked as a midwife, earning $50 for each delivery, 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 had a gift for languages and served as a local interpreter. Sinatra's illiterate father was a bantamweight boxer who fought under the name Mar
McGuire Sisters
The McGuire Sisters were a singing trio in American popular music. The group was composed of three sisters: Ruby Christine McGuire Dorothy "Dottie" McGuire Phyllis McGuire Among their most popular songs are "Sincerely" and "Sugartime", both number-one hits; the McGuire sisters were born in Middletown and grew up in Miamisburg near Dayton. Their mother, was a minister of the Miamisburg First Church of God, where as children they sang in church at weddings and revivals; when they started singing in 1935, the youngest sister, was four years old. They sang at occasions outside church, by 1949 were singing at military bases and veterans' hospitals, performing a more diverse repertoire than they had in church; the McGuire Sisters signed with Coral Records in 1952. In the same year, they appeared on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, Godfrey hired them for his other shows, where they remained for seven years; the November 1953 issue of Cosmopolitan called them "Godfrey's Merry McGuires". The sisters were compared to the Andrews Sisters.
Maxene Andrews said in an interview with Joe Franklin on WOR radio in 1979, "The McGuire Sisters were fine once they stopped imitating the Andrews Sisters." While working on the Godfrey show, the McGuires befriended the singer Lu Ann Simms and attended her wedding to the music publisher Loring Buzzell in July 1956. Buzzell's publishing firm, Hecht-Lancaster & Buzzell Music provided two songs for the McGuire Sisters, "May You Always" and "Theme from The Unforgiven"; the McGuire Sisters and the Andrews Sisters met several times during their careers. Phyllis credited Patty, LaVerne Andrews during a television interview with Maxene in the 1990s, hosted by Sally Jessy Raphael, saying that her sisters and she met the Andrews Sisters in New York in the early 1950s and received important advice; the McGuires moved when they sang executing dance routines in lavish production numbers on countless television specials. The Andrews Sisters performed in films in the 1940s, were the first female vocal group to move when they sang, rather than just standing at a microphone.
The sisters had mimicked that style, as well as those of the Mills Brothers and the Dinning Sisters since they were young, when they would perform short shows for family and friends in their parents' living room. Phyllis McGuire recounted that she and her sisters did not know any popular songs when they became famous, the trio imitated other singing groups long before their success, they performed for five Presidents of the United States, for Queen Elizabeth II. In 1958, their mother appeared; the sisters maintained a busy television schedule, making frequent appearances on popular variety programs hosted by Ed Sullivan, Dean Martin, Danny Kaye, Milton Berle, Andy Williams, Perry Como, Red Skelton. The trio was dressed and coiffed identically and performed synchronized body movements and hand gestures with military precision, their recordings of "Sincerely", "Picnic", "Sugartime" all sold more than one million copies. They retired from public appearances in 1968, giving their last performance that year on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Phyllis McGuire continued to perform solo for a time. The demise of the group is attributed to Phyllis' long-standing personal relationship with mobster Sam Giancana, which blacklisted the group. During one of his 1960s court appearances for which Phyllis was subpoenaed, Giancana told reporters outside the courthouse, "Phyllis knows everything" about the rumored unethical behaviors of John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert. Phyllis has resided in a famously showcased mansion in Las Vegas for decades, boasting its own beauty parlor, a swan moat, a replica of the Eiffel Tower which rose through the home's roof; when asked by Barbara Walters during a 1980s ABC-TV 20/20 interview from within the mansion if any of the money to build the lavish home came from Giancana, Phyllis denied the innuendo, claiming that she invested in oil when the sisters were at the height of their popularity. In the same interview, she acknowledged that her relationship with Giancana was in fact a love affair, saying, "When I met him, I did not know who he was, he was not married, I was an unmarried woman.
And according to the way I was brought up, there was nothing wrong with that. And I didn't find out until sometime really who he was, I was in love."The sisters reunited in 1986, performing at Toronto's Royal York Hotel for the first time since their retirement. Numerous nightclub engagements followed in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, New York City's Rainbow & Stars, showcasing the group and Phyllis' impersonations of Peggy Lee, Judy Garland, Pearl Bailey, Ethel Merman, Louis Armstrong. Singing their greatest hits as part of their act, they were featured performing specialty numbers such as the frantic "I Love a Violin", the a cappella "Danny Boy", a segment during which Phyllis retired backstage as Christine and Dorothy shared the spotlight playing a concert arrangement of "The Way We Were" on twin pianos. Other highlights in the act were a comical Trinidad-flavored tune, a soft rendering of "Memory" from Broadway's Cats, a "Money Medley", which they performed live on the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon in 1994.
Since the sisters had made occasional public appearances together
