Frank Sinatra

http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/17640

Amongst all the homages to Frank Sinatra that have saturated the media since his death, the Sinatra who did not always break bread with Republicans, hang out with the Mafia, insult women or sing anthems celebrating individualism, was largely absent.

There was a time when Ol' Blue Eyes was decidedly pink, when "the Voice" was used in the cause of the poor, not the rich, for "the family of man", and not the profits of the show business industry.

Born in 1915, Francis Albert Sinatra was the son of Italian working-class migrants in Hoboken, New Jersey. His style, grounded in the 1930s big swing bands of Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra's sexual allure, velvety voice and seductive phrasing created an earlier version of Beatlemania.

But the young Sinatra was more than a successful crooner with good looks. He had a social conscience and was outspoken in his liberal views. Like his mother, who was an activist in the local Democratic Party, Sinatra believed in improving the lot of the working poor by redistributing wealth and fighting the ethnic, racial and religious divisions between them.

In 1945, Sinatra starred in the RKO short film, The House I Live In, scripted by Communist Party member Albert Maltz. In it, Sinatra sang and spoke of the need for tolerance and brotherhood — racial and religious differences "make no difference except to a Nazi or somebody who's stupid", his character announced. Profits from the film went to charity and to the California Union School, a school for trade unionists.

Four years later, Sinatra's career was in ruins, following a campaign by the anticommunist right based on his alleged links with the Mafia and the Communists. He was dumped by the radio and movie bosses and red-baited by the press.

Sinatra weathered the storm and made a stunning comeback, one that sadly involved a gradual slide from the left-liberal side of the political spectrum to the hard right of Republican politics.

Sinatra was relatively close to the Communist Party of the 1940s. Still in its Popular Front guise of democratic reform and alliances with liberal Democratic Party politics, the Communist Party attracted many performers and artists. Sinatra blasted the fascist dictator, Franco, when only the hard left still cared about Spain, and he spoke in support of integrated schools.

Sinatra served as vice-president of the Hollywood Independent Citizens' Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions, a Popular Front organisation of liberals and leftists in the artistic and professional fields then in mortal combat with the red-baiters and black-listers of HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee).

After Sinatra's film and music comeback in 1953, he remained a Democratic Party activist. He campaigned for John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election and challenged the Hollywood black list that had banned left-wingers from the movies ever since the 1947 HUAC hearings.

Sinatra planned to direct a film using his old CP associate, the black-listed Albert Maltz, as screenwriter. After a dogged public defence of Maltz, however, Sinatra abruptly pulled the plug, under pressure from Democrat king-maker Joe Kennedy, who did not want his son's presidential ambitions thwarted by a public display of Sinatra's links with communists.

It was Sinatra's links to the Mafia which caused the Kennedy Democrats — with utter hypocrisy — to dump him. Sinatra, who grew up with gangsters as neighbours and friends, had got Kennedy money from Sam Giancana, Chicago Mafia boss, for his 1960 election campaign.

Sinatra admitted in 1992 that he had acted as middle man between Kennedy and Giancana, who owned a Nevada nightclub with Sinatra. The Kennedys made promises to get the FBI to go easy on the Mafia if elected, and then showed Sinatra the door so as not to compromise their squeaky clean image.

Sinatra's break with the Democrats led to the collapse of his flimsy liberal principles. Sinatra sang for Nixon, who had been a member of HUAC in the late '40s when it destroyed Sinatra's career.

As a member of the Las Vegas "Rat Pack" with Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr and Peter Lawford, the misogynist and infantile regressive in Sinatra was on full display on stage with crude jokes and abuse of women.

Sinatra's musical evolution paralleled his political trajectory. His later hits from this period, "My Way" and "New York, New York" were anthems to individualism, perfectly befitting the bourgeois lie that capitalism has no barriers to individual fulfilment and success.

The commitment to equality and brotherhood of The House I Live In days were long gone. Wealth, women, fame and power were his. The system had swallowed the left-leaning immigrant working-class boy.

"In his day, undeniably an excellent jazz singer", wrote Marxist historian and jazz aficionado Eric Hobsbawm, "Sinatra's style switched from the jazz of the big bands to the blander sound of the fifties, his most productive decade with 18 albums for Capitol backed by the smooth, more commercial sound of Nelson Riddle's orchestra. Lyrically, Sinatra sung inward-looking sentimental, romantic songs of love and loss. Sinatra's style congealed during this period and the rest of his career bogged down in the rut of show business and cabaret. Less jazz, more schmaltz. Less art, more money. Nevertheless, his great style and presentation could still be seen through the glitz . He could swing hard with great tunes like 'New York New York', but the lyrical content was less than great."

Sinatra could have been the white Paul Robeson — he had the voice, he started out with the politics, but he finished up as "the Voice" for the Republican right. A great talent gone to waste.

The red-baiters and conservatives got the last encore from Sinatra. In the end, he did it their way.