Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was born December 12, 1915, in Hoboken, New Jersey. The only child of Sicilian immigrants, a teenaged Sinatra decided to become a singer after watching Bin Crosby perform. He dropped out of high school, where he was a member of the glee club, and began to sing at local nightclubs.
Between 1943 and 1946, Sinatra's solo career blossomed as the singer charted 17 different Top 10 singles. The mobs of bobby-soxer fans Sinatra attracted with his dreamy baritone earned him such nicknames as "The Voice" and "The Sultan of Swoon." "It was the war years, and there was a great loneliness," recalled Sinatra, who was unfit for military service due to a punctured eardrum. "I was the boy in every corner drugstore who'd gone off, drafted to the war. That was all."
In September 1935, Sinatra took part in a talent contest organized by Edward Bowes, and won first prize: this led to a national tour. When the tour was over, Sinatra took a job as a singing waiter and MC at a venue called the Rustic Cabin. The pay was only $15 per week, but the Rustic Cabin gigs were also broadcast across New York on the WNEW radio station. Sinatra’s voice was now being heard by a far wider audience than before. In 1939, the wife of bandleader and trumpet player Harry James heard Sinatra singing on the radio, and persuaded her husband to give Sinatra a job. Harry hired Sinatra for the princely sum of $75 per week, and the two artists made their first joint recording in July 1939, as war was looming in Europe.
Sinatra made his movie acting debut in 1943, in Higher and Higher. In 1945, he won a special Academy Award for The House I Live In, a 10-minute short made to promote racial and religious tolerance on the home front. Sinatra's popularity began to slide in the postwar years, however, leading to a loss of his recording and film contracts in the early 1950s. In 1953, he made a triumphant comeback, winning an Oscar for his portrayal of the Italian-American soldier Maggio in From Here to Eternity. Although this was his first non-singing role, Sinatra quickly found a vocal outlet when he received a new recording contract with Capitol Records in the same year. In his music, the Sinatra of the 1950s brought a more mature sound with jazzier inflections in his voice.
“Sinatra-Mania” was now in full swing - Sinatra scored a phenomenal 23 top ten singles between 1940 and early 1943 alone: to show their appreciation of his talent, his American fans affectionately nicknamed him “The Voice”.
Frank Sinatra was also well known for stormy love life and colourful relationships, which were frequently the object of tabloid attention. Frank married no less than four times; his first marriage was to his childhood sweetheart, Nancy Barbato, with whom he had three children - Nancy, Frank Sinatra Jr., and Christina. The marriage hit the rocks when Sinatra had an affair with actress Ava Gardner. She became wife No. 2, when he married her in 1951. But rumour has it that Sinatra still loved Nancy’s cooking so much, that he would send someone by to pick up her homemade specialities many years after they had parted.
Failing health kept him out of the public eye after his 80th birthday, and he suffered a heart attack and stroke in 1996, and a further heart attack in 1997. After suffering his 3rd and final heart attack, Frank Sinatra died on 14 May 1998. His funeral in Beverly Hills was a star-studded occasion, with a list of mourners that included Liza Minnelli, Tony Curtis and Gregory Peck. Legend has it that he was buried in a blue suit, with a bottle of Jack Daniels, a pack of Camels cigarettes, a Zippo lighter - and a roll of dimes for good luck.
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http://www.biography.com/people/frank-sinatra-9484810
http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biographies/frank-sinatra.html
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