"Remembering Sinatra the style ......"
Song = "New York, New York"
What would Frank do?
Of all the gin joints in all the world, a bar on the third level of a floating casino in Aurora might have seemed an unlikely stopping-off place for Frank Sinatra. But that is where he arrived-plane to O'Hare [Chicago, IL.] and limo from there-one August day in 1993, giving the place and the town itself a touch of magic, a sense of style, that only he could bestow.
"I've been waiting here all night,'' said a 62-year-old accountant named Gerry Baker who was sitting in the casino that night. "I just want to see the man. The man's got style.''
Undoubtedly, but if Baker was trying to emulate that style he was doing so in almost clownish fashion, with a neon green shirt under his tuxedo, a thick cigar and conversation peppered with awkwardly placed profanities.
"I'm not------ Frank,'' he said. "There is only one.''
And now there is none.
But his style remains, like the shadow of a smile.
Style is, to be sure, a difficult thing to define. And it should be, for if it weren't it would be so easily aped as to be immaterial.
Theories abound, but in essence the Sinatra style was his ability, in this world gone increasingly stiff, to remain a symbol of reckless independence. If there was a high roller-a bit of freewheeling frolic-locked in the heart of everyone, Sinatra had the key.
Did you ever see a Sinatra crowd?
In appearance, it didn't differ vastly from the crowds that attend performances by other entertainers. But had you looked more closely you would have noticed that everything was slightly magnified. There was more jewelry, more limos, more suits, more attitude.
Men seemed to strut, women would slink.
During the latter part of his career, the mere mention-let alone the sound or sight-of Sinatra was able to evoke a time that passed: of days and nights of hard liquor and hard living. In a politically correct world, Sinatra was a symbol of individualism: "My Way,'' "All the Way'' and "All or Nothing at All.''
People who had never sipped hard liquor, who shooed away cigarette smoke in disgust, could still-and will for some time-get a pleasant tingle from Sinatra.
Gay Talese, in a Esquire magazine profile in the 1960s, put it this way: "Sinatra brings out the best and worst in people-some men will become aggressive, some women will become seductive, others will stand around skeptically appraising him, the scene will be somehow intoxicated by his presence.''
In a more recent profile in The New Yorker, John Lahr wrote, "The cocked hat, the open collar, the backward glance with the raincoat slung over his shoulder, the body leaning back with arms wide open in song-these images of perfect individualism.''
The Sinatra style appealed most irresistibly to men because he was, as Talese put it, "the embodiment of the fully emancipated male, perhaps the only one in America, the man who can do anything he wants, anything, can do it because he has the money, the energy, and no apparent guilt.''
It must be understood that all the roistering, womanizing and Rat Packing are as essential to the Sinatra style as was his singing.
As Lahr wrote, "Sinatra stood before an audience as a person who had caroused with killers and kings. He'd been married to the most beautiful woman in the world. He had won and lost and now won again. All this made him more interesting than anything he sang.''
In the same way that Babe Ruth, for instance, was of such soaring talent that he could be at once forgiven and celebrated for his excesses, so was Sinatra viewed. We withstood his bad behavior as the price of his talent.
On Rush Street there is a small and snazzy sliver of a saloon called Jilly's. It is named for Sinatra's late bodyguard, Jilly Rizzo, and it is where the Sinatra style hangs thick in the air.
"It was a kind of way he had about him. He was distinctive. He didn't take any crap,'' said 57-year-old Harry Pasten, a "deal maker,'' from Glenview. "Smoke your cigarette, get smashed on martinis.''
I've heard this argument and there's something to it, even though Sinatra much preferred bourbon to martinis. "I'm for anything that gets you through the night,'' he said, "be it prayer, tranquilizers or a bottle of Jack Daniel's.''
But he was the most visible icon of the new generation of nightspots offering martinis, cigars and a touch of '40s and '50s ring-a-ding-ding ambience; from Jilly's to a Wicker Park bar called The Deluxe. It's merely a retro phase, some club owners will tell you, a fancy as fleeting as disco.
The show-biz world of hard liquor and hard living-"the glitz of Las Vegas ... the glamour of Hollywood,'' in the words of the Aurora casino's slogan-that he so embodied and in which he so joyfully cavorted actually vanished while he aged away in Palm Springs. Las Vegas voluntarily gave up its lascivious luster, turning from its traditional naughty image and embracing a prim, family-driven face.
The party, in that sense, ended a long time ago, homogenized into a Planet Hard Hollywood Rock. In Bill Zehme's book on the Sinatra style, the author says that he was compelled to write the book because "men had gone soft and needed a leader.'' It seems likely that whenever a guy needs a jolt of courage, some emancipation, Sinatra might come to mind. (Who do you think he'd seek for inspiration, Bruce Willis?)
As Zehme writes, "For decades, lost men on bar stools would ask themselves the eternal drunken question: `What would Frank do?' ''
For decades hence, that question will continue to be asked.
Sinatra on...
...Jack Daniel's and Jackie Gleason: Any man who drank it was his friend. Sammy did, with Coke-a desecration, the Leader thought, but in the right ballpark at least. Call for it in his presence and his face would light up. His love affair with the beverage began in the '40s. "I feel like getting smashed,'' said an uninitiated Frank. "All right, said Gleason, who implicitly understood all such circumstances. Determined, Frank quietly tapped the bar top and asked. "Now what's a good drink?'' Gleason gave him the withering eye: "You mean you've never gotten smashed?'' Impossible but true: Sinatra shrugged no. Gleason bellowed: "Jack Daniel's! That's a good place to start!''
...ice: "Frank loves the clink of ice in well-filled glasses,'' wrote Time magazine 1995. On stage, mid-'70s, tasting a vodka, recoiling: "Can't this place afford an ice bucket?''
...how he likes it: Always three or four ice cubes, two fingers of Jack Daniel's, the rest water, in a traditional glass. "This,'' he would say, "is a gentleman's drink.''
...martinis: Martinis were to be taken seriously and made perfectly dry. Once, in 1949, he slugged a belligerent bartender who told him, "If you want it so special, mix it yourself.'' The perfect martini-Stoli or excellent British gin, well-stirred or shaken in ice, with the tiniest drop of vermouth, served in a cold glass and crowned by two olives.
...smoking: Frank never inhaled, saving his reed while maintaining la figure, the appearance, cupping them like Bogie did. After Lucky Strikes, he took up Camels, always unfiltered. Rarely did he take more than four drags before extinguishing.
...how to slant a hat: His back brim always curled aloft and the front snap was tugged down a couple of inches above his right brow. The move required two hands-after hiking up, for pulling down.
Source:
"The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin’"
by Bill Zehme.
