Sinatra Quotes

“In December, Angela Lansbury had been signed to play Raymond’s mother, the arch-villainess Eleanor Shaw Iselin. Apparently, Sinatra originally wanted Lucille Ball for the role, a fascinating casting notion, as Tom Santopietro points out: “As Ball aged, she grew into an increasingly hardened performer, losing all traces of the vulnerability that so informed her brilliant multiyear run on television’s I Love Lucy. The resulting quality of toughness would have suited the role of [Eleanor] very well, although it is anyone’s guess whether or not Ball would have felt comfortable delving into the dark recesses of [her] warped character.”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“By all accounts, John Frankenheimer was singularly obsessed with The Manchurian Candidate, a film that, according to Daniel O’Brien, the director regarded “as his first truly personal project, feeling that the story made an all too valid point regarding the political manipulation and conditioning of American society.”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“the writer said that when the music began and I started to sing, I was “honest.” That says it as I feel it. Whatever else has been said about me personally is unimportant. When I sing, I believe. I’m honest. If you want to get an audience with you, there’s only one way. You have to reach out to them with total honesty and humility. This isn’t a grandstand play on my part; I’ve discovered—and you can see it in other entertainers—when they don’t reach out to the audience, nothing happens. You can be the most artistically perfect performer in the world, but an audience is like a broad—if you’re indifferent, endsville.”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“I’m for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers or a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“Then Frank said, ‘Have you ever heard that when five o’clock comes, it’s martini time? We could be right in the middle of a scene, but it’s over for me, because it’s martini time. Did you ever hear that?”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“He swung so hard, you could’ve turned him upside down and shaken every piece of change out of his pocket, and he would have never missed a beat.”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“Why don’t you steal the pattern out of Kenton’s ‘23 Degrees North, 82 Degrees West’?” the trombonist, an alumnus of Stan Kenton’s big band, said.”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“In the car going home, I said, “We should have stayed.” Bogie said, “No, we shouldn’t. You must always remember we have a life of our own that has nothing to do with Frank. He chose to live the way he’s living—alone. It’s too bad if he’s lonely, but that’s his choice. We have our own road to travel, never forget that—we can’t live his life.”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“purse, and the word got back to him,” recalled the pianist Monty Alexander, who began playing at Jilly’s”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“Sinatra would hate “Strangers in the Night” ever after. “He thought it was about two fags in a bar!” said Warner-Reprise’s Joe Smith. (Singing it for audiences, he sometimes changed the lyric “Love was just a glance away/a warm embracing dance away” to “a lonesome pair of pants away.”) In 1975, in a concert in Jerusalem, Frank would introduce it thus: “Here’s a song that I cannot stand. I just cannot stand this song. But what the hell.”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“I hate cops. You're either a cop or a reporter. And I hate cops and newspapermen.”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“Don’t you ever do that!” he shouted at the man. “You don’t throw things at a lady, you understand?” “It’s all right, Frank,” I said. “I’m not hurt—” “That’s beside the point! You bring the box, you creep, and you offer a Kleenex—you got that? You offer a Kleenex!” Frank let the man go and came over to me to be sure that I was all right. Often, over the years, whenever I pulled a Kleenex out of a box, I thought of Frank.”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“Francis, I’d play the Godfather for you,” he told the startled director. “I wouldn’t do it for those guys at Paramount, but I’d do it for you.”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“She stopped me cold when she said, ‘What color is the wind?’ ”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman