SCHOLARS WARNED: NO BLACK EYES FOR 'OLD BLUE EYES'
Published November 14, 1998 in the Washington Post
They beamed when told that Frank Sinatra, like Julius Caesar, changed the course of history. They cheered at the comparison to the polished longevity of Cal Ripken Jr. But when told Frank Sinatra had two sides, hero and heel, they would have none of it.
"I am a Jungian, and Frank Sinatra did not have two selves!" Patricia Vinci shouted, as she leaped from her seat. "He had one, with a defense mechanism because everyone wanted a piece of him. He was not a womanizer, he was womanized. Those who womanized him, he treated like dirt. But not the ones he cared about. Ask Ava, ask Mia, ask his ex-wife."
She sat. Hands clapped. Voices harrumphed triumphantly.
Thus was learned the first lesson of survival for the academics who were among the 1,500 who flocked to Hofstra University, 25 miles east of New York City, for the first postmortem scholarly conference on Sinatra: Tread carefully when treading on Frank.
Just six months after his death, it was too soon to unravel the Oedipal ties between Frank and his mother Dolly, to explain how the repressed sexual desires of 1940s bobby-soxers triggered riots outside the Paramount Theatre, to speculate on Sinatra's seminal role in the emergence of drag queen chic. When academics tried to tease out such subtleties, people simply walked out.
For this crowd, the theorizing leaned toward that of crooner Vic Damone, who said: "Frank Sinatra was a god to me."
Since his death in May, thousands of Mass cards, noting that a Mass has been said for the repose of his soul, have found their way to his widow, Barbara Sinatra. Condolence cards from those mourning have not stopped. Many attending the conference had sent both.
The average age of the participants looked to be 55. Some came from England, at least one came from Hawaii, but the heart was a bridge and tunnel crowd, those who pass New York's gateways from less cherished origins like New Jersey and Long Island and Brooklyn.
They arrived sprayed and coiffed from East Meadow and Elmont and Garden City, connecting all the dots of the Long Island Railroad. Red-faced men with thick white hair. Men who wore caps and held doors. Beside them, women in neat skirts and pant suits, women who go to the beauty parlor, not the salon, once a week.
They came for the scholarship; to hear it and, as Sinatra devotees, to rebut it.
Speakers who dared lend time to other musicians, even the likes of Tony Bennett, Harry James or Dick Haymes, were speedily dismissed. Theories on the healing power of the Sinatra songbook were embraced. Damone, who Frank himself deemed as having "the best pipes in the business," held them rapt during a brief midday concert.
Bedecked in black, sunglasses on, Tina Sinatra drew the crowd to its feet as she tearily remembered her father. Not a few men gave each other the nudge: "She's looking pretty good these days."
Students in Polartec and puff jackets sneaked glances as the generations merged between class and seminar.
"God, these Frank Sinatra people are everywhere," one girl sniffed. "I don't get it."
They were everywhere and summed up by Carla Faggio, an original Paramount bobby-soxer: "We are frozen in another time." They reminisced with the smorgasbord of star power from Sinatra's New York: Skitch Henderson, Bucky Pizzarelli, Alan King, Sid Mark. Between looks into Sinatra's psyche and poems like "Frank Sinatra Is High in Cholesterol," the audience heard stories. Frank buzzing the Capitol with Skitch Henderson piloting the plane. Chinese rice ball fights with Jilly Rizzo. The gift he sent upon the birth of Quincy Jones's son: a check for his college education.
At day's end, a maintenance worker was heard singing "New York, New York." The participants headed for home, sated and buzzing about the two remaining days. Sessions on Sinatra's philanthropy were still to come, as well as nuggets on the idealization of American malehood.
Vinci, who first sprang to Frank's defense during the psychological analysis, was also preparing to give a talk. She eagerly divulged the heart of her thesis, her own original theory. It crossed a century and an ocean. It linked two monumental men: Frank Sinatra and Charles Dickens.
"Two days after Frank died, a man near Washington, D.C., had a heart attack and died. Do you know what his name was? Charles Dickens! And let me tell you, this is just the beginning."
"I am a Jungian, and Frank Sinatra did not have two selves!" Patricia Vinci shouted, as she leaped from her seat. "He had one, with a defense mechanism because everyone wanted a piece of him. He was not a womanizer, he was womanized. Those who womanized him, he treated like dirt. But not the ones he cared about. Ask Ava, ask Mia, ask his ex-wife."
She sat. Hands clapped. Voices harrumphed triumphantly.
Thus was learned the first lesson of survival for the academics who were among the 1,500 who flocked to Hofstra University, 25 miles east of New York City, for the first postmortem scholarly conference on Sinatra: Tread carefully when treading on Frank.
Just six months after his death, it was too soon to unravel the Oedipal ties between Frank and his mother Dolly, to explain how the repressed sexual desires of 1940s bobby-soxers triggered riots outside the Paramount Theatre, to speculate on Sinatra's seminal role in the emergence of drag queen chic. When academics tried to tease out such subtleties, people simply walked out.
For this crowd, the theorizing leaned toward that of crooner Vic Damone, who said: "Frank Sinatra was a god to me."
Since his death in May, thousands of Mass cards, noting that a Mass has been said for the repose of his soul, have found their way to his widow, Barbara Sinatra. Condolence cards from those mourning have not stopped. Many attending the conference had sent both.
The average age of the participants looked to be 55. Some came from England, at least one came from Hawaii, but the heart was a bridge and tunnel crowd, those who pass New York's gateways from less cherished origins like New Jersey and Long Island and Brooklyn.
They arrived sprayed and coiffed from East Meadow and Elmont and Garden City, connecting all the dots of the Long Island Railroad. Red-faced men with thick white hair. Men who wore caps and held doors. Beside them, women in neat skirts and pant suits, women who go to the beauty parlor, not the salon, once a week.
They came for the scholarship; to hear it and, as Sinatra devotees, to rebut it.
Speakers who dared lend time to other musicians, even the likes of Tony Bennett, Harry James or Dick Haymes, were speedily dismissed. Theories on the healing power of the Sinatra songbook were embraced. Damone, who Frank himself deemed as having "the best pipes in the business," held them rapt during a brief midday concert.
Bedecked in black, sunglasses on, Tina Sinatra drew the crowd to its feet as she tearily remembered her father. Not a few men gave each other the nudge: "She's looking pretty good these days."
Students in Polartec and puff jackets sneaked glances as the generations merged between class and seminar.
"God, these Frank Sinatra people are everywhere," one girl sniffed. "I don't get it."
They were everywhere and summed up by Carla Faggio, an original Paramount bobby-soxer: "We are frozen in another time." They reminisced with the smorgasbord of star power from Sinatra's New York: Skitch Henderson, Bucky Pizzarelli, Alan King, Sid Mark. Between looks into Sinatra's psyche and poems like "Frank Sinatra Is High in Cholesterol," the audience heard stories. Frank buzzing the Capitol with Skitch Henderson piloting the plane. Chinese rice ball fights with Jilly Rizzo. The gift he sent upon the birth of Quincy Jones's son: a check for his college education.
At day's end, a maintenance worker was heard singing "New York, New York." The participants headed for home, sated and buzzing about the two remaining days. Sessions on Sinatra's philanthropy were still to come, as well as nuggets on the idealization of American malehood.
Vinci, who first sprang to Frank's defense during the psychological analysis, was also preparing to give a talk. She eagerly divulged the heart of her thesis, her own original theory. It crossed a century and an ocean. It linked two monumental men: Frank Sinatra and Charles Dickens.
"Two days after Frank died, a man near Washington, D.C., had a heart attack and died. Do you know what his name was? Charles Dickens! And let me tell you, this is just the beginning."