Frank Sinatra: Jazz Actor

Most of the literature about Frank Sinatra is about his musical career and barroom brawls. Those books and articles generally portray the singer as a man who expressed the contradictions of his inner life-his tenderness and romanticism, as well as his aggressive and menacing macho side--through his music. In regard to Sinatra's film acting career, every note he sings, every line he recites, and every gesture he makes demonstrate Stanislavsky's central credo that an actor must live the part every moment he's playing it. Although Sinatra never formally studied acting at the Actors Studio, he did rehearse every night with Montgomery Clift while shooting From Here to Eternity. Those "Methodist" lessons built his Oscar-winning performance around "affective memories," or "sense memories," storehouses of unconscious emotions from his personal live, in order to construct the fictional character Maggio. And, if nothing else, Sinatra expressed his inner struggles in both his singing and his film roles.