the night the men in the bar were either silent or crying:
'The world has now lost
one of its most precious
commodities...'
Ernest Borgnine
'The world has now lost
one of its most precious
commodities...'
Ernest Borgnine
IT WAS ON A MIDNIGHT IN 1998. A HARD SPRING RAIN...
HAD EMPTIED THIRD AVENUE, AND THE NEON LIGHTS scribbled garishly across the glistening black asphalt. From the window of P.J. Clarke's saloon, you could see a few taxis cruising slowly among the spokes of the broken umbrellas, and a trash basket lying on its side, its contents turning to rainy pulp. Across the street two old rummies huddled in the doorway of an art store. On this night in the rain-drowned city, men and women were safe in the back room of the saloon. Clark's was, and remains, a place out of another time, all burnished wood and chased mirrors, Irish flags and browning photographs of prizefighters. A few aging men at the long, bright bar were gazing down at their drinks as I entered; while others stared out the windows to where the Third Avenue El once stood. They were each drinking alone and looked as if they remembered other nights too, evoked by the music of the jukebox where a famous voice was crooning:
'And now the end is near and so I face the
final curtain...My friend I'll say it clear
I'll state my case of which I'm certain...
I've lived a life that's full I've travelled
each and every highway...
And more, much more than
this...I did it my way...'
It was on the 15th day of May in 1998.
The the man singing for the lonesome men and women at the bar had died the day before...
...His name was Frank Sinatra...
...The news made the front pages of newspapers all over the world. Many ran extra editions and followed with special supplements. There was little sense of shock; he had been a long time dying, and so the obituaries were full of his life and times. When he heard the news, President Clinton said: 'I think every American would have to smile and say he really did do it his way...' P.J. Clarke's had been one of his favorite hangouts when he was in the City of New York. The man I was going to meet was a friend who told me stories of how Sinatra would sit with his back against the wall in the muted light of the room with Danny Lavezzo, who ran Clarke's; William B. Williams who had christened him 'the Chairman of the Board'; and Jilly Rizzo who ran a bar across town; with young women whose faces were too perfect; and the sportswriter Jimmy Cannon. My friend's name was Earl Murrillo, who was a writer and had known Sinatra for a number of years. Earl had told me that whenever Sinatra was at P.J. Clarke's the table was always crowded with glasses, ashtrays, bowl of peanuts and pretzels and that Lavezzo made certain the other customers were kept at a distance by seating them as far from Sinatra's table as possible.
I had my own memories of Frank Sinatra. There was a radio on the window ledge in the kitchen of our Denver home. Through that window, past the vast Rocky Mountain Range, and out in the backyards, we could see the skyline of the city all tinged in light-blue with puffed white clouds. From the Philco radio, we heard about the invasion of North Africa and the assault on Sicily and the fighting at Anzio. The story of the war was all mixed up with the crooning of Bing Crosby and the score from Oklahoma! and the Andrews Sisters and Glenn Miller and, at some point, Frank Sinatra singing: 'All or nothing at all...' There was a thin, even trembling tone to his singing, unlike the confident baritone of Crosby, but there was a kind of defiance in them too. I was 5 when the war started in 1941 and I was too innocent to connect to the meaning of the words to a longing for women. They seemed to be about unconditional surrender, as declared by Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose picture was up on our kitchen wall. It was as if Sinatra were saying to Tojo or Mussolini or Hitler: 'We're coming to get you. And it's all or nothing at all.'
There were always the newspapers, The Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post and they began printing stories about Sinatra. The Voice. Swoonatra. Hysterical girls roaring at the Paramount Theater in New York. In June 1944 the Allies had invaded France, heading for Berlin, and the lights went on again in my city. For weeks after D-Day I would go out into my backyard alone and stare at the skyline, glittering and impossibly beautiful, like the towers of Oz. And from the open windows of the neighborhood I could hear the battle between Sinatra and Crosby. I was too young to choose sides. But my Dad was definitely a Crosby fan and my Mom loved Sinatra. She would sing along with him while washing dishes in a light soprano voice. He was all over the radio. He was sunny. He was optimistic. He was casual. He said we had to 'accentuate the positive, ee-liminate the negative, and not mess with mister in-between...'
...Meanwhile Crosby was playing a priest in Going My Way. A catholic priest, for God's sake, whose best friend from Ireland, and older priest played by Barry Fitzgerald, in which Crosby saved Father Fitzgerald's run-down parish. The whole neighborhood went to see it during the summer of 1944. My Father was delighted. My Mom said that Crosby couldn't act his way out of a paper bag. In the neighborhood I began to hear arguments among the kids just older than I was. Crosby versus Sinatra arguments. They had nothing to do with the words. They had more to do with whether you were of Italian or Irish heritage and whether or not you had gone off to fight the war. I was too young to choose sides. Crosby had not gone to the war because he was too old, but Sinatra was a separate case; he was the right age and he had two arms and two legs. Why couldn't he do what such stars as Clark Gable and Jimmy Stewart were doing, and insist on being taken by one of the armed forces: Why couldn't he do a USO tour like Crosby had done? He's a draft dodger, my Dad would say. He's not a draft dodger, my Mom would reply, he's got a punctured ear drum. He tried to join 3 times, and they turned him down. It was in the newspapers.
Walking into P.J. Clarke's, I could remember all that argument and my own youthful wonder about its passion. At 10, I was too young to understand what Sinatra was doing with his music. I did know it was different. Crosby made me feel comfortable, but there was a tension in Sinatra, an anxiety that I was too young to name but old enough to feel. During the final months of the European war, when men were dying by the thousands in the Battle of the Bulge, it was confusing to hear songs that contained so much anguish. Or loss. Or loneliness. I could see young women pushing strollers, their men off to war, see them looking at the front pages of the newspaper, see the way their faces clenched, and I wished that Bing Crosby could sing to them and make them feel better. It took me a long while to understand that it was Frank Sinatra who was giving words and the voice to the emotions of their hearts and souls.
My friend Earl Murrillo was a professor at Interboro Institute where I also taught and had first met Sinatra in 1953, after his return from eight exhilarating weeks of work on From Here to Eternity. Earl was interviewing Sinatra for an article in Photoplay Magazine and he said that Sinatra knew just how good he had been in the movie. The two of them had remained friends down through the years. He had not experienced Sinatra's fierce temper, his brutalities, his drunken cruelties. Earl stated that he was funny. He was vulnerable. I never saw the snarling bully of legend, Earl said. Music was the engine of his life. When I was with him, I knew that I was in the company of an intelligent man, reader of books, a lover of painting and classical music and sports, gallant with women, graceful with men. I liked him liked him enormously.
Which was why Earl greeted me with tears in his eyes when I walked into the saloon on that May midnight in 1998. After a handshake and a hug, we drank mostly in silence, knowing long after his death that someone will discover for the first time his voice, one that had that mysterious quality that makes the listener more human, relieve the ache of loneliness and help transcend his ultimate triumph over the banality of death. Artists like Sinatra continue to matter long after they have gone, so will Frank Sinatra...
'And now the end is near and so I face the
final curtain...My friend I'll say it clear
I'll state my case of which I'm certain...
I've lived a life that's full I've travelled
each and every highway...
And more, much more than
this...I did it my way...'
It was on the 15th day of May in 1998.
The the man singing for the lonesome men and women at the bar had died the day before...
...His name was Frank Sinatra...
...The news made the front pages of newspapers all over the world. Many ran extra editions and followed with special supplements. There was little sense of shock; he had been a long time dying, and so the obituaries were full of his life and times. When he heard the news, President Clinton said: 'I think every American would have to smile and say he really did do it his way...' P.J. Clarke's had been one of his favorite hangouts when he was in the City of New York. The man I was going to meet was a friend who told me stories of how Sinatra would sit with his back against the wall in the muted light of the room with Danny Lavezzo, who ran Clarke's; William B. Williams who had christened him 'the Chairman of the Board'; and Jilly Rizzo who ran a bar across town; with young women whose faces were too perfect; and the sportswriter Jimmy Cannon. My friend's name was Earl Murrillo, who was a writer and had known Sinatra for a number of years. Earl had told me that whenever Sinatra was at P.J. Clarke's the table was always crowded with glasses, ashtrays, bowl of peanuts and pretzels and that Lavezzo made certain the other customers were kept at a distance by seating them as far from Sinatra's table as possible.
I had my own memories of Frank Sinatra. There was a radio on the window ledge in the kitchen of our Denver home. Through that window, past the vast Rocky Mountain Range, and out in the backyards, we could see the skyline of the city all tinged in light-blue with puffed white clouds. From the Philco radio, we heard about the invasion of North Africa and the assault on Sicily and the fighting at Anzio. The story of the war was all mixed up with the crooning of Bing Crosby and the score from Oklahoma! and the Andrews Sisters and Glenn Miller and, at some point, Frank Sinatra singing: 'All or nothing at all...' There was a thin, even trembling tone to his singing, unlike the confident baritone of Crosby, but there was a kind of defiance in them too. I was 5 when the war started in 1941 and I was too innocent to connect to the meaning of the words to a longing for women. They seemed to be about unconditional surrender, as declared by Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose picture was up on our kitchen wall. It was as if Sinatra were saying to Tojo or Mussolini or Hitler: 'We're coming to get you. And it's all or nothing at all.'
There were always the newspapers, The Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post and they began printing stories about Sinatra. The Voice. Swoonatra. Hysterical girls roaring at the Paramount Theater in New York. In June 1944 the Allies had invaded France, heading for Berlin, and the lights went on again in my city. For weeks after D-Day I would go out into my backyard alone and stare at the skyline, glittering and impossibly beautiful, like the towers of Oz. And from the open windows of the neighborhood I could hear the battle between Sinatra and Crosby. I was too young to choose sides. But my Dad was definitely a Crosby fan and my Mom loved Sinatra. She would sing along with him while washing dishes in a light soprano voice. He was all over the radio. He was sunny. He was optimistic. He was casual. He said we had to 'accentuate the positive, ee-liminate the negative, and not mess with mister in-between...'
...Meanwhile Crosby was playing a priest in Going My Way. A catholic priest, for God's sake, whose best friend from Ireland, and older priest played by Barry Fitzgerald, in which Crosby saved Father Fitzgerald's run-down parish. The whole neighborhood went to see it during the summer of 1944. My Father was delighted. My Mom said that Crosby couldn't act his way out of a paper bag. In the neighborhood I began to hear arguments among the kids just older than I was. Crosby versus Sinatra arguments. They had nothing to do with the words. They had more to do with whether you were of Italian or Irish heritage and whether or not you had gone off to fight the war. I was too young to choose sides. Crosby had not gone to the war because he was too old, but Sinatra was a separate case; he was the right age and he had two arms and two legs. Why couldn't he do what such stars as Clark Gable and Jimmy Stewart were doing, and insist on being taken by one of the armed forces: Why couldn't he do a USO tour like Crosby had done? He's a draft dodger, my Dad would say. He's not a draft dodger, my Mom would reply, he's got a punctured ear drum. He tried to join 3 times, and they turned him down. It was in the newspapers.
Walking into P.J. Clarke's, I could remember all that argument and my own youthful wonder about its passion. At 10, I was too young to understand what Sinatra was doing with his music. I did know it was different. Crosby made me feel comfortable, but there was a tension in Sinatra, an anxiety that I was too young to name but old enough to feel. During the final months of the European war, when men were dying by the thousands in the Battle of the Bulge, it was confusing to hear songs that contained so much anguish. Or loss. Or loneliness. I could see young women pushing strollers, their men off to war, see them looking at the front pages of the newspaper, see the way their faces clenched, and I wished that Bing Crosby could sing to them and make them feel better. It took me a long while to understand that it was Frank Sinatra who was giving words and the voice to the emotions of their hearts and souls.
My friend Earl Murrillo was a professor at Interboro Institute where I also taught and had first met Sinatra in 1953, after his return from eight exhilarating weeks of work on From Here to Eternity. Earl was interviewing Sinatra for an article in Photoplay Magazine and he said that Sinatra knew just how good he had been in the movie. The two of them had remained friends down through the years. He had not experienced Sinatra's fierce temper, his brutalities, his drunken cruelties. Earl stated that he was funny. He was vulnerable. I never saw the snarling bully of legend, Earl said. Music was the engine of his life. When I was with him, I knew that I was in the company of an intelligent man, reader of books, a lover of painting and classical music and sports, gallant with women, graceful with men. I liked him liked him enormously.
Which was why Earl greeted me with tears in his eyes when I walked into the saloon on that May midnight in 1998. After a handshake and a hug, we drank mostly in silence, knowing long after his death that someone will discover for the first time his voice, one that had that mysterious quality that makes the listener more human, relieve the ache of loneliness and help transcend his ultimate triumph over the banality of death. Artists like Sinatra continue to matter long after they have gone, so will Frank Sinatra...
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