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Drazhev's Hobbies: Frank Sinatra

Born in Hoboken, New Jersey as the son of a quiet father and a talented, tempestuous mother, Sinatra decided to become a singer after hearing Bing Crosby on the radio. He began singing in small clubs in New Jersey and eventually attracted the attention of trumpeter and band-leader Harry James.

After a brief stint with James, he joined the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra in 1940 where he rose to fame as a singer. His vast appeal to the "bobby soxers", as teenage girls were then called, revealed a whole new audience for popular music, which had appealed mainly to adults up to that time. He was the first singing teen idol.

He later signed with Columbia Records as a solo artist with some success, particularly during the musicians' recording strikes. Vocalists were not part of the musician union and were allowed to record during the ban by using a capella vocal backing.

Sinatra's singing career was in decline in the late 1940s and early 1950s when he made a spectacular comeback as an actor in From Here to Eternity (1953), which won him a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award. He later appeared in many films, the most noteworthy being The Man with the Golden Arm, and The Manchurian Candidate. In 1954, Sinatra played a crazed, coldblooded assassin determined to kill the President in the thriller Suddenly also starring Sterling Hayden. Critics have found Sinatra's performance one of the most chilling portrayals of a psychopath ever committed to film. Sinatra, however, insisted the film be removed from distribution after he learned that Lee Harvey Oswald had watched it shortly before he assassinated President Kennedy.

Soon after his film debut, Sinatra's singing career rebounded. During the 1950s, he signed with Capitol Records, where he worked with many of the finest arrangers of the era, most notably Nelson Riddle and Billy May, and with whom he made a series of highly regarded recordings. By the early 1960s, he was a big enough star to start his own record label: Reprise Records. His position with the label earned him the long-lasting nickname "The Chairman of the Board".

In the 1950s and 1960s, Sinatra was a popular attraction in Las Vegas. He was friends with many other entertainers, including Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. Together, along with actor Peter Lawford and comedian Joey Bishop, they formed the core of the Rat Pack, a loose group of entertainers who were friends and socialized together.

Sinatra played a major role in the desegregation of Nevada hotels and casinos in the 1960s. Sinatra led his fellow members of the Rat Pack in refusing to patronize hotels and casinos that denied service to Sammy Davis Jr., an African-American. As the Rat Pack became the subject of great media attention due to the release of the film Ocean's Eleven, many hotels and casinos, desiring the attention that would come from the presence of Sinatra and the Rat Pack in their properties, relented on their policies of segregation.

On December 1, 1983 while playing Blackjack at the Golden Nugget Casino in Atlantic City Sinatra and fellow ratpacker Dean Martin had intimidated the Blackjack dealer and several casino employees into breaking New Jersey casino laws by making the dealer deal the cards by hand instead of by a shoe which is required by law. Although Sinatra and Martin were implicated as the direct cause of the violation neither were fined by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission, The Golden Nugget on the other hand received a $25,000.00 fine and four employees including the dealer, a supervisor and pit boss were suspended from their jobs without pay. New Jersey Casino Control Commissioner Joel Jacobsen called Sinatra "an obnoxious bully" with a "bloated ego." This statement angered Sinatra who vowed never to play in Atlantic City ever again, However this threat was short lived because a year later Sinatra returned to Atlantic City performing at Bally's.