Like his singing, Frank Sinatra’s life was a study in contrasts

Friday, May 15, 1998 | 3:09 a.m.

He could be kind. Often he would read a news story- perhaps a family who had lost everything in a fire- and send a check. He insisted on keeping such gifts unpublicized.

He was gracious in helping other performers. Decades ago, he told Life magazine that Tony Bennett was the best singer in the business. Bennett credits that comment for elevating his career to a level he has maintained ever since.

But Sinatra could also be uncommonly cruel. The iconoclast Humphrey Bogart had been a hero of his, and after Bogie's death, the singer began courting his widow, Lauren Bacall. When a headline appeared, "SINATRA TO MARRY BACALL," he was furious. The romance was over.

"Actually, Frank did me a great favor- he saved me from the disaster our marriage would have been," Bacall wrote in her memoir "By Myself." "The truth is he was probably smarter than I: he knew it couldn't work. But the truth also is that he behaved like a complete s---."

During another period between marriages, Sinatra had a much publicized engagement with Juliet Prowse, with whom he appeared in "Can Can." The dancer had even chosen a wedding dress, but he abruptly called off the nuptials.

Some try to understand Sinatra by looking to his upbringing on the mean streets of Hoboken, N.J.

Born to an ineffectual father and a hot-tempered mother, he grew up in a wide-open town where bootleggers were both feared and admired.

Gangsters seemed to fascinate him. He worked for them early in his career in nightclubs and later in Las Vegas.

The legend persists that gangland pressure helped Sinatra escape his contract with the Tommy Dorsey band - a legend fictionalized in Mario Puzo's book "The Godfather" and the subsequent movie. (Sinatra blistered Puzo one night in Chasen's.)

Son of an immigrant family, he craved success and recognition. He savored his friendships with presidents, especially John Kennedy.

But when Kennedy canceled a stay in Sinatra's Palm Springs compound because Robert Kennedy had warned him of the singer's alleged mafia ties, Sinatra declared war on the Kennedys. A lifelong Democrat, he embraced Ronald Reagan and other Republicans.

The singer ranks with Elizabeth Taylor as the most publicized celebrities of the century, and much of his press could be considered negative. Always he responded defiantly, never apologizing, never walking away from a fight. In the end he outlived his critics and became recognized as a national treasure.

This reporter remembers seeing Sinatra for the first time in 1943 at the Paramount theater in downtown Los Angeles. He was the singer with Tommy Dorsey's band at the time. The house went dark except for one white spotlight shining on a skinny little guy singing "I'll Never Smile Again." The audience sat mesmerized.

He could take any song, even the most hackneyed, and turn it into a dramatic performance. It was exciting to hear him punch a word that made sense of the entire lyric.

It's the songs that will be remembered, the songs, the TV shows and a handful of his movies, long after the headlines are reduced to dust.

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