Frank Sinatra’s February 1963 Playboy interview

boing
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Sure, but then again we’ve got people like Justin Beiber and Miley Cyrus.

And then also we’ve got people who meet the above criteria quite nicely, but who never attain fame and fortune of any sort.

Celebrity and wealth is a funny thing. There’s no “equation” for it, because a decent chunk of it is chance and the whims of the masses and society at a given point in time. It’s easy enough to find people who have deserved celebrity but never attained it, and plenty more who have attained it, but hardly deserved it. Clearly there are other, more nebulous factors at play beyond the qualities of the person in question.

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Equation incomplete. Brains low.

You’ve also got to want the fame and fortune, and fight for it tooth and nail. These people like Sinatra, they really are tough.

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I didn’t tell my daughter whom to marry, but I’d have broken her back if she had had big eyes for a bigot.

Is it just me or does the italicized phrase really dent this sentence’s progressive thrust?

24

A really interesting read. Given the magazine, the time, the interviewee and the tone, I’d speculate that it was ghosted - obviously with Playboy’s consent - from pre-agreed questions (maybe just gussying up Sinatra’s own responses), with final approval from The Chairman. Maybe Sinatra was taped, but a lot can happen between tape and transcript. That’s showbiz.

Re the intelligence of successful performers… I’ve worked in a minor but lively branch of the entertainment industry for nearly thirty years, and spent time with any number of performers. a few of them very successful. Hard to generalise, but I’d guess that performers whose success depends to a great degree on their looks (the Biebers, the Cyruses) don’t have to have that much intelligence; the ones who have made a long and successful career on their personality, whether it’s expressed through singing, comedy, acting or whatever, are very commonly very smart indeed. Maybe three of the most intelligent people I ever talked with are stand-up comedians; one of them certainly didn’t make it on his looks.

There are plenty of stories about Sinatra behaving appallingly (not to mention the links to organised crime), and thanks to @drawboy for the Esquire piece; again, there are plenty of positive stories about him as well. But for me he’s yet another of those artists whose work one just has to divorce from the life: I love his singing, and don’t really think, or want to think, about the man behind it.

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Playboy: Are you saying that . . .

Sinatra: No, wait, let me finish.

It’s obviously a written interview—no one speaks this way off the cuff–and ghost written. Considering the time and the subject, that didn’t bother me too much. But THIS little bit of attempted fakery was what annoyed the hell out of me for some reason. So corny, and so bullshit.

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Here’s the thing though; why did Frank lose his shit with Sinead O’Connor all those years later after she ripped up a picture of the Pope on SNL?

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This is really a vey Interesting Interview

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You know, if you’re over 20 you’re not required to hate pop stars. It’s really only mandatory for teens who need to prove they’re cooler than middle schoolers.

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I was hoping this was going to be a clip from Cannonball Run II.

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Politically, Frank got more conservative over the years. Perhaps his views on religion changed too.

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There was no tape. The answers and questions were apparently formulated by Mike Shore, Sinatra’s PR guy at the time.

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You’re missing my point. There ARE people who are just personally amazing, AND who bust their backs trying to attain “success” in the form of celebrity, and they still never go anywhere.

We love to pretend the American Dream is real, that all it takes is hard work and willpower to “succeed” into immense wealth and fame, but this simply is not true. There is only so much “room” in the celebrity world - there are only so many individuals that society and the economy is willing or able to float high above the rest of the masses.

We can’t all be famous millionaires. Not even most of us can be famous millionaires. Not even a reasonable minority of us can. Not even the top 1% of society can. There are perhaps a couple hundred “slots” open, and we’ve got a society of over three hundred million. The odds are literally worse than one in a million.

And when you tell me you gotta “fight for it tooth and nail” for it, all I need do is point at the completely undeserving who are famous because of luck, or sheer marketability and profitability, not because they have any terribly redeeming qualities or because they somehow worked harder than other people.

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I’ll go with you on Bieber - but most of that bunch are one hit wonders. One wrinkle on the face and poom they’re gone.

I’m not arguing that if you have those qualities you get the fame and fortune. But if you have it and an understanding of how the market works and the tenacity, you can get it.

viz the number of children of former / current stars who make it - not necessarily as actors, but directors etc. They get in-house tutoring.

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I’d rather be a completely unknown millionaire, to be honest.

Really can’t see why anyone would want to be famous.

I don’t especially want to be rich, but being famous would stop you from enjoying most of the benefits of wealth, IMHO.

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As David Lee Roth pointed out, money can’t buy you happiness, but it does allow you to park your yacht right next door to it.

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this was my assumption when I was reading, but @Mr_Smooth’s seems more likely? anyway, something’s going on. I think it would be awesome and hilarious if his public persona was dumbed-down and this was a peek into his “real” mind, but even as a fan, I just don’t buy it.

sorry, Chairman, but you never spoke the word “opprobrium” in your life.

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If you get lucky, sure. You can also win the lottery, or find buried treasure beneath your house. But no one would ever seriously lay out a silly equation like “$100 + Lottery Tickets + Ability To Guess Numbers = Millionaire”.

“Brains + street smarts + ability to be a people person = fame and money” is demonstrably not true, in that there are countless people who have the inputs, but never receive the output. I could maybe see inserting a “+ Astronomical Good Luck” somewhere in front of that equals sign, but that goes against the “Recipe For Success” intent of such a construct.

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Who said anything about hating them? I merely used them as a demonstration of undeserved fame and wealth that I assumed most people outside their fanbase would tend to agree with.

But I forgot - in this day and age, uttering a word of criticizism about something means you secretly are jealous and envious of it, right? Anyone who criticizes some aspect of America hates Freedom, that sort of thing. :wink:

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Cyrus has the major advantage of having a famous father. In most of the parallel universes, she’s barely making rent off of monetizing Youtube views. How Achy Breaky Daddy achieved consciousness is anyone’s guess; Bieber’s popularity can be explained by the never-to-be-overestimated tastes of tween girls. You could shit on a piece of toast and they’d eat it up, provided it was dusted with glitter.

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OK. It’s not a cert, that’s for sure.

To take the conversation further, have you met anyone famous for success built on their own ability? I’ve met a few, and the things my granny told me about how to make it in life are sitting there in plain reality.

Be confident, be assured, don’t portray any weakness, but be humble, adaptable, and make other people feel good about themselves.

All of that takes some figuring, and in tough times, some enormous effort to keep under control - so you have to want the return on your investment more badly than regular people can possible imagine.

There’s no point whingeing “but I sing as well as XYZ” because the voice is a fraction of the package. There’s no point moaning that you “code as well as Zuckerberg ever did” because the code is a portion of the deal.

They stitch everything together in a masterful display of apparent wizardry, but following a kind of showbiz formula: Do it, be seen to do, make sure everyone knows only you can do it, and be in charge of it all.

Every single public personality is manufactured. Everything. Every aspect of their lives is sieved and handled by PR people. None of it is natural.

From the Skype guy to Gene Wilder, the same “right stuff” is in the mix. It can be learned - which was my point about Hollywood kids.

But if one thinks one will ascend to these amazing heights, one has omitted to understand the simple thing one’s granny says: money isn’t everything, or indeed, anything.