Tuesday, May 7, 2002 | 8:27 a.m.
Information
Frank Sinatra won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in the 1953 film "From Here to Eternity" for his portrayal of the character Angelo Maggio.
Frank Sinatra Jr. recently finished taping his part in the satirical television series "Son of the Beach." He plays a character called Stinkfinger.
Fans will be able to see Sinatra in the spoof of the James Bond film "Goldfinger" on the FX Network (Cox cable channel 24) when "Beach" resumes airing in June (the show is on hiatus).
Some might see the performances by the father and son and conclude that they are so different, there are no similarities.
Others might conclude that the son is cut from the same bolt of cloth as the father.
The elder Sinatra, who died of a heart attack in 1998 at age 82, was known for doing things his way without apology.
The younger Sinatra, who is 58, also does things his own way.
The primary difference may be that the father came from the streets of Hoboken, N.J., and his edges were rough, while the son is more of an intellectual with a polished veneer.
"I envy guys who can write funny," Sinatra, explaining his motivation for Stinkfinger, said during a recent interview in his suite at MGM Grand. "They sent me this script, and when I can read a script alone and laugh out loud, then it's really funny.
"So, when they asked me to be Stinkfinger, I was delighted."
Sinatra, looking and sounding more and more like his father as the years pass, will give a much more significant performance Wednesday, when he begins a weeklong gig at MGM Grand's Hollywood Theatre.
"Sinatra Sings Sinatra," which will feature a 36-piece orchestra, is a reminiscence.
"It's a simple premise," said Sinatra, who has had a 40-year career of his own. "For lack of a better expression, this is like Franklin Delano Roosevelt's fireside chats. I sit down and tell the audience, 'This is how it happened.' "
He mingles history with some of his father's best songs.
"They are as varied as he was," Sinatra said.
This isn't the first time Sinatra has sung Sinatra.
"In my own career, I used to do a Sinatra medley in every show, or at least sing one of his songs," he said. "I used to joke about it. 'You know, he doesn't do any of my songs.' "
The roots of the upcoming performance may be found in a 1995 concert honoring the elder Sinatra at Carnegie Hall.
"I got a symphony orchestra onstage and sat on a little stool with a stand in front of me and told the audience Sinatra stories, about where the songs came from, and people listened," Sinatra said.
Sinatra Jr. respected
Pianist Frank Leone, president of Las Vegas Musicians' Union No. 369, has grown familiar with Sinatra Jr.'s work over the years.
"Our players love him," Leone said. "He is great to work for. Like his father, he realizes that vocalists are in tandem with the orchestra, that neither one can do without the other."
Asked to compare the two Sinatras, Leone said that is difficult to do because the singers came from different eras. Some have described the younger Sinatra as somewhat aloof onstage, lacking the charisma of his father.
"It's more complicated than that," Leone said. "When the popular music in America began, entertainers achieving any success on radio or through their records immediately went on the well-established nightclub circuit, where they learned camaraderie.
"By the time Frank Jr. began his career, most of this stuff had disappeared."
Old-timers, Leone said, learned to interact with audiences in nightclubs. There is no such training ground today.
"I think when Frank Sinatra Jr. started, he had a threatrical show, a mini production that was not for nightclubs, but for sit-down theaters," Leone said. "Even today's young rock stars come out onstage with pre-acceptance. But put them around a nightclub, and it's a whole different experience."
Leone said young Sinatra is a great performer.
"He puts on a fine show," he said. "He sings beautifully. Like his father, he can sing the long line, with the breath control, the phrasing. He has the ability to sustain a line -- things musicians love to hear."
Kidnapping saga
One of the darkest events in the younger Sinatra's life occurred on Dec. 9, 1963, when three men kidnapped the then-19-year-old singer from Harrah's Lake Tahoe. The men were captured after the elder Sinatra paid a ransom of $240,000.
In 1998 Barry Keenan, one of the kidnappers, tried to sell his story to Columbia Pictures.
"For a time (publicity) about the event went away," Sinatra Jr. said. "Then in 1998, when I was 54 years old, I did something that I had never done before: I sued somebody for the first time in my life, and we've been in litigation ever since."
The kidnapping was a traumatic experience, one that he would prefer to forget. Sinatra Jr. is more interested in talking about the legal ramifications of the case.
In February the California Supreme Court ruled against Sinatra Jr., who argued that a criminal should not benefit from his crime, basing his case on the state's "Son of Sam" law.
New York passed the first "Son of Sam" in the late '70s, after the conviction of serial killer David Berkowitz, who called himself the Son of Sam. The law was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1991 on the grounds that it violated freedom of speech rights.
"After 40 years, (the kidnapping case) has reared its ugly head again," Sinatra said.
He said victims of crime in California may not be victimized twice.
"Think of it this way," he said. "Here I am a criminal. I'll carjack your car. If I don't get caught I've gotten away with that car. I can keep it, sell it, strip it down and sell parts. I've made money on it.
"If I do get caught, I can be put in prsion, get out, sell the story to newspapers, magazines, TV or movies and I've made money anyway."
But, he noted, there is potentially an even more chilling scenario:
"This guy you've seen on TV, the so-called (Sept. 11) 20th hijacker (Zacarias Moussaoui)," Sinatra said. "He's going to on trial in Virginia or Washington, D.C. If he were in California, while he was in his cell awaiting trial, he could make a deal with the National Enquirer or Globe or the London Daily Mail. He can make a deal with the a publisher or a movie studio. He can sell his story for $10 million and donate that money to terrorists."
The beat goes on
While Sinatra's lawyers prepare to take his legal battle to the U.S. Supreme Court, the singer is focusing on what may be a rejuvenation of his career.
Frank Sinatra may not be as popular as Elvis Presley when it comes to impressionists, but their numbers are growing. And who better to do a tribute than the son, who was his father's musical director for six years?
"When my father died I got word from people," Sinatra said. "I got letters, telegrams, faxes, e-mails.
"They said, 'We are not ready to give up this music ... we're looking for you to make it happen.' "
While some singers might have been reluctant to accept the challenge, preferring to bask in the glow of their own ego, Sinatra Jr. had no qualms. His ego doesn't need stroking.
"If I wanted to look at it on the negative side I could be insulted by it because they don't want to hear what I do," he said. "But on the positive side, it seems to me it's kind of touching. They're now reaching out to me to keep this alive.
"It's not an easy task, believe me. How the hell do you replace Frank Sinatra? There's no way anybody can do that. But as far as I'm concerned, if there is music to be made and I have to wear somebody else's clothes, I can't think of anybody's I'd rather wear."
He says he doesn't mind the proliferation of Sinatra-like singers.
"All it does is keep the name alive," Sinatra Jr. said.
The name was alive long before Sinatra Jr. was born in 1943. His father shot to stardom after being discovered in 1939 by band leader Harry James.
The younger Sinatra and his sisters, Tina and Nancy, grew up in a privileged world in Los Angeles.
"But I was very unaware of it when I was a little kid because I grew up in a town where everybody was an icon," he said.
Some of the children he played football with included Michael Douglas, Steve Lovejoy (actor Frank Lovejoy's son) and Steve Bogart (Humphrey Bogart's son).
"Who cared?" Sinatra Jr. said. "It didn't matter."
He described an experience early in life that helps keep his celebrity heritage in perspective.
"There was a kid I used to go to the beach with back when our mothers would throw a bunch of us into an old station wagon," Sinatra recalled. "Everyone had their bathing suits and the cheapest white terry cloth towel you could buy.
"All except this one kid. His white terry cloth towel was monogrammed with the initials LD IV. We were all 7 or 8 years old -- who cares? It was just a bunch of little boys."
The initials were for Laurence Doheny IV, heir to an oil fortune. His great grandfather was Edward Laurence Doheny (1856-1935), the entrepreneur who created Los Angeles' first oil boom in 1893, and who was acquitted on charges of bribing a U.S. senator in the infamous Teapot Dome scandal of 1924.
"As a young man in my 20s I read that Larry Doheny committed suicide," Sinatra Jr. said. "He was a poor little rich boy.
"That's when I started seeing things a little bit differently. This business of fame -- when people ask me what it was like growing up in this famous family, I say, 'When you take it seriously you're in a lot of trouble.' Larry Doheny the fourth took it seriously."
