Exposed: Sinatra’s secret Rat Pack
Exclusive candid pictures show Ol’ Blue Eyes, as always, doing it His Way...
FAME, fortune and the attention of the world’s most glamorous women may still have been a few years away, but even from an early age Frank Sinatra loved to hang out with a Rat Pack.
Stunning never-before-seen photographs, published in The Mail on Sunday’s Event magazine today, give an intimate glimpse into the private world of the legend who would have celebrated his 100th birthday this year. They include one of Sinatra in his early teens with seven young friends at the swimming pool in Palisades Park, New Jersey. The singer later recalled that he was the only one of his friends to have a card allowing entry to the pool, so he would go in then pass it out through a fence so that the others could join him.
All went well until the day an attendant caught them and gave Sinatra a severe beating. He said: ‘I was hurt all right, but I was hurting from something more. All those times I got those guys into the swimming pool, but when I was getting clobbered not one of them came over to help me. They just... scramsville.’
Many of the photographs in the new collection are candid shots, often taken by friends or family, but Sinatra still shines out as a star. His daughter Tina said: ‘The one thing I can say about my dad with absolute certainty is that he never took a bad picture. Was it his to-die-for blue eyes? Or was it his gleaming white teeth and warm engaging smile? Personally I think he was just gorgeous.’
Sinatra died on May 14, 1998, but as his other daughter Nancy said: ‘For me, and millions of others, he has never left us and he never will.’