The Frank Sinatra Episode

Life Audio.

On today's episode of Timeless Wisdom.

I have got you deep in the heart.

Well, this is one of the songs that I will hear every day prior to the show, and I gotta tell you, it puts me in a good mood. It does. It has a wonderful effect on me, and I I just can't tell you how impressed I have been with listening to this guy sing.

Uh, yeah, um, I'm 16 years old and I was in Tower Records, I think, one time. And you know the little listening station things that they have in there? I, uh, I put on the headphones and there was a Frank Sinatra CD playing, and I just listened, and it kind of drew me in because it really sounded cool.

He smoked 2 unfiltered packs a day, uh, over long periods, although Depending who you talk to, he stopped the heavy drinking or the heaviest of the drinking and cut back on the cigarettes in the weeks before an important concert or before a recording, even more so.

That's coming up on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.

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Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Hear thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses, and classic radio programs. And to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to DennisPrager.com.

.com.

Hello everybody and welcome to the show. You're listening to The Dennis Prager Show, where I claim that we talk about everything in life, and this will be an example of it.

I have to—

before I introduce the authors of a new biography that has just been published by Knopf, I have to tell you why I came to non-classical music late in my life. I don't know, late in my life. Whatever age you are, it could be late in your life. Oddly enough, usually people find classical music in adulthood. I found popular music in adulthood, and one of the aspects of it that has most just taken me over is this— the great American singer Frank Sinatra. In fact, Sean, almost every day prior to the show, for about 10-12 minutes plays Frank Sinatra for me.

Thank you.

I've got you under my skin. I have got you deep in the heart.

Well, this is one of the songs that I will hear every day prior to the show, and I gotta tell you It puts me in a good mood. It does. It has a wonderful effect on me. And I just can't tell you how impressed I have been with listening to this guy sing. And I have just come across this new biography of Frank Sinatra filled with pictures as well as great, fascinating detail about his life. The two authors are Anthony Summers, who was a former BBC journalist, and Robin Swann, who's also a journalist, and they have written biographies of J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon. Anyway, this book is titled Sinatra: The Life. You can't get much briefer than that, much more concise. So Anthony and Robin, I welcome you to the program.

Hello there.

You're both now, I'm speaking to you, you're in Ireland?

Yes, that's our home base. Okay. We both— Robin, um, as you— what you— as you will gather in a moment, is, is American, Italian-American, born and bred. Um, I'm from Ireland, and, uh, this has been my base for years, but America in a way has been my patch as a journalist for many years.

Well, well, welcome to America via radio to both of you. I have so much to ask you. First, I guess the first is, do you believe— because I was talking about this just the other day I finally came across— didn't come across— I finally worked out my own definition of great art, music or any other art, and that is that it will endure over generations. There are two, and that it endures in repeated hearings for any given listener. Will Frank Sinatra endure?

I think we think so. Would you agree, Robin?

Absolutely.

I think, I think we think so, and a measure of it perhaps is that in sheer longevity and endurance, as a test, we worked on this book, Sinatra: The Life, for the past 4 years. And when I say worked, I mean sort of 8 days a week. And that meant that 8 days a week, and often far into the night, we both played Sinatra. We had to, because we were writing his life. And we still like it. Now, there aren't many people that you could listen to every day for 4 years and, and still not be sick of him. And we're not sick of him.

That's right. I mean, even Mozart would be put to the test.

Yes.

So now the— all right, so he passes the repeated listenings of the individual test. My other one was the next generation. Do you have any evidence that a 30-year-old today will, uh, will listen, will buy a Sinatra CD?

Oh, certainly. Uh, there are many young singers, in fact, who are trying to to mold themselves à la Sinatra. Look at the, the success that Robbie Williams had recently with a set of standards, an album of standards. Look at the success even of a Rod Stewart, okay? He's not a 30-year-old artist, but he appeals to that, that age group as well. Michael Bublé. There are lots of young people coming along who are emulating the Sinatra style, or at least trying to learn from it.

Well, no, it's good to hear, but that, that would, that would meet my criteria, uh, if the next generation and the next generation listen to him.

I—

it's—

well, and he's— unless all the people who make, uh, I mean, the lowest level of music is perhaps Muzak, uh, the music you hear in the elevator. But if— unless all the people who are involved with Muzak, um, uh, are over, over 30 or, or even older then it has to be said that there are still people, really fairly young people, who decide that he deserves to be there. And of course, as you know, there are still all over the United States, uh, disc jockeys who special— and radio programs that specialize in playing almost uniquely Frank Sinatra. And, and, um, they need listeners, and apparently they have masses of listeners.

Well, I'm going to invite any of my listeners— I rarely discriminate on the basis basis of age. But I'd like to know any listeners under, let's say, 33 that have taken to Frank Sinatra. 1-800-PRAGER-776 is the number.

Hey, forget about, um, forget about under 33. We have a son of 11, um, who, who calls him the Man Singer and knew who Frank Sinatra was long before we were doing this book.

Is that so? No kidding.

Yes.

Well, no, that's certainly a good sign. Anyway, the number is 1-800-PRAGER-776. Incidentally, I picked up on your sensitivity when you said elevator rather than lift. That you knew you were speaking to an American audience and already translated into American English. So I picked up on that. Now, what I— I have my own theories, but I'm more interested in yours on this. What constitutes his greatness in a nutshell? Why is he Why is he so great? What did he do? He said a song that others didn't.

Well, go ahead. He said about this—

go ahead, you were good.

Musicology, one could talk about it for hours. But you know, he said late in life, um, that when he was asked what he wanted to be remembered for— and this goes rather to what you were saying just now— um, I want— I'd like to be remembered for having made popular music an art form. Which may or may not be a meaningful remark, but he added, and to have reached people. And I think it's the reaching people that is the key thing, that he didn't just sing the songs, jingle jingle. He, he, he seemed to have, and in many cases had, experienced, uh, the emotions that he sang about. And that comes through always.

You know, that's That's exactly what I believe. When I hear him sing, I believe that he believes it.

Well, you know, the interesting thing, and one of the things we try to do in the book is explore the journey that Sinatra took himself musically as he grew as an artist, and the influence that many of the greats of the jazz tradition, say, or Billie Holiday, Mabel Mercer, those kind of people had on him. Sinatra credited Billie Holiday as one of his greatest significant musical influences, and he said of her that she lived inside the song. And he learned to do that. He taught himself to live inside those lyrics and inhabit them in a way that really gets to us all. He shares and emotes in a way—

That's a great line. That's right. He inhabits the song. I'll tell you one other thing that may seem trite to some listeners, but to me is of tremendous significance. I effortlessly understand every word he is singing. I cannot say that about most singers.

No, and this was part of his insistence on perfection. Um, early on, you mentioned classical music early on, and that you'd moved from, from classic, moved on from classical music. He never really moved away from classical music, and I think very few people know this, and that's why I'll introduce it. He, early on, he said he'd like to have been a great opera singer, but he didn't have that sort of voice, that sort of range. But early on, he discovered— went to Carnegie Hall and discovered classical music. He liked Debussy, Brahms, Ravel, Rachmaninoff, Wagner. And if people went to see him years on into his life, when he was a mature a famous man, he'd never played Sinatra at home, or very rarely. He'd rarely play pop music. He'd play the classics. And one of the things he liked about the classics was the discipline of the classics. He, of course, came out of New Jersey and spoke, when not performing a great deal of the time, spoke New Jersey and spoke like that. But he taught himself went to a former Met Opera singer as a teacher and taught himself in New York how to sing in an understandable way. His diction was crucial to him, and in the studio when he was recording, he insisted, even long after the famous arrangers like Nelson Riddle and so on, May, Alan May, would would say, okay, it's a take, he would say, no, no, um, it must be done again because of something that he thought he'd missed.

I love that. I love that.

And perfection.

All right, we'll be back in a moment. The book is a brand new biography, Sinatra: The Life, and the phone number is 1-800-PRAGER-776. The line's all lit up already. Apparently we have a lot. We'll be back in a moment.

This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.

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Now back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.

The summer wind came blowing in from across the sea. It lingered there to touch your hair. And what will—

Alrighty everybody, Dennis Prager here. Anthony Summers and Robin Swan in Ireland, authors of this new biography of Frank Sinatra, Sinatra: The Life, published by Knopf. One thing you can always say about Knopf, aside from that they often publish wonderful books, is that they are the finest paper, most beautiful layout. I'm— that I, as one who's been published a number of times, I really appreciate that. Uh, we're talking about Frank Sinatra, and I want to take a couple of calls. I really obviously want to devote the time to you, uh, the authors, but it is interesting to me how quickly the lines lit up when I said if you're under 33 and you love Sinatra. And I have to believe that the speed with which they lit up says something. Here's a 15-year-old in Diamond Bar, California, uh, 16-year-old Sven. Hello, Sven.

Hi, Dennis Prager.

Yes, go ahead.

Yeah, I'm 16 years old and I was in Tower Records, I think, one time, and you know, the little listening station things that they have in there. I put on the headphones and there was a Frank Sinatra CD playing and I just listened and it kind of drew me in because it really sounded cool and it was just something that I really enjoyed listening to and I like kind of the, you know, the jazzier songs.

Uh-huh.

You know, it was all just really good music.

Do you have friends— do you have friends your age who like Sinatra?

Um, yeah, actually I've got about 3 or 4 of my friends, and, uh, you know, I had them— I bought one of the CDs, um, and, you know, they were listening to it. I think we were in the car driving somewhere, and, uh, they all listened to it and they thought it was really cool too. So I think a couple of them bought CDs and stuff.

Well, that, that passes my test. I thank you. Let's go.

Can I come in just for a second?

Oh, of course, you're the author, you're allowed.

Playing the Summer Wind there, just before you came back to us, that reminded us that when he was an old guy and singing on an extraordinary musical marathon— he did 1,000, more than 1,000 concerts between 1976 and 1990— and sometimes he couldn't remember the words of his favorite songs, and the voice had really— was shot and gone, and yet he had something special, and he sang The Summer Wind in New Jersey at a concert. And people half a century his junior took to the aisles and danced to it in the aisles during the concert.

Yeah, no, he's unique. I mean, from my musical sense. Dallas, Texas, TJ. Hello, TJ.

Hey, Dennis.

Yes.

Hey, I really appreciate you taking my call. I'm a really big fan of the show.

Thank you very much.

Whenever I put Frank Sinatra on, it really gets on my wife's nerves. I'll start dancing around and usually it's a song like—

How old are you? How old are you?

I'm 24.

Okay.

So, but I'll put Frank Sinatra on and I'll play like Witchcraft and I'll start dancing around like Fred Astaire and she just rolls her eyes. She can't believe that I love that music so much.

Oh, it's just—

I've heard of Frank Sinatra being used to woo women, but I've never heard of him being used to intentionally offend them.

Well, he's married.

All right, that's—

well, at least we have TJ's testimony, if not his wife's. Uh, let's get a woman. Carrie in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Yeah.

Hi, Dennis.

Hi.

I am so excited to talk to you.

Thank you.

For years.

Oh, wonderful.

Thank you.

Um, I'm 31. I started listening to Sinatra though when I was probably around 11 or 12. And the reason being at the time was I grew up in western North Dakota and we only got about 2 radio stations at the time and one of them was hard rock, which I just didn't like. The other was prayer public station. So I just was so drawn to listening to him at that age. First it was Glenn Miller and then it became him. But I remember growing up in high school, I got made so much fun of at the time that I listened to old people's music is what they'd say. 'No, I know I'm right on this one. I know he's cool.' How interesting.

He's cool. All right, look, I can't take all the calls because that's all I would do the whole hour. Matt is 28, Tim 33, Robert 33, Rich 28, from around the country. In fact, uh, one of them— see, Tim says he recently got married and they played Sinatra at the reception. A lot of people commented how classy it was. Uh, let's go to his life. Is there a disconnect between his life and his public persona?

Well, you know, one of our charge from our publisher was to try to square the circle between Sinatra, the great romantic singer, the great artist, and the other Sinatra that we've read so much about over the years, the one who was renowned almost as much for his allegedly loutish behavior or his ties to the mob or his numerous involvements with women. And we were trying— we tried and we think we have given the reader the fullest possible information on those two— that dichotomy, that split. And there was sort of a split, but if he hadn't been such a complex character, perhaps he wouldn't have had the ability to singing those songs that way. So, so really, you don't necessarily get the best result from the artist who isn't a complex creature.

Well, I think, let's not beat about the bush, we've been assailed by some of the critics since the book came out for giving a great deal of coverage to the darker aspects of the man's life. But the darker aspects really were there, they're real. The mob, everyone, while we were writing the book, if we'd go out to dinner, with people, they'd say they wanted to know two things. They'd ask about the mafia. Tell us about the mafia, why the mafia, they wanted to know. And tell us about Sinatra's own love life. He sang about love, but tell us about his love life. That is why the book is called The Life. The music, you know, I find we've written about the music, maybe a quarter of the book is devoted to that, and I'm very glad that we've talked about it today. But music is above all for listening to. It becomes dry on the page, hard to write about it. This is very much about the man.

And you feel that had he led a less, what you call, complicated or complex life, it would have affected adversely his artistry, that the two are entwined?

Who knows, really? I mean, these are the unknowable.

That's true, that's true. It is unknowable.

I think so often his experiences of—

well, let's talk about that.

I mean, love, right? And I'm thinking about Ava Gardner, of course, here. You can't listen to "I'm a Fool to Want You," in which he had a hand in the writing himself, and which he first sang— maybe I'm wrong there, I'll have to check— but he certainly sang in the throes of his unhappy obsession um, with, with Ava Gardner. You just can't listen to I'm a Fool to Want You, um, without feeling his pain. And that's— we touched earlier on how he said he, he reached people. And love is not— very often, perhaps sadly more often than not— love is not all about happiness and romance and dancing off into the sunset.

It's about pain and loss, which he had a great deal of, despite the fact— or I guess related to the fact that he had so many women. We'll talk about the many women. The book is filled with photographs, every one of which I found so fascinating. And I will say, if you want to simply see a series of truly beautiful women, beautiful-to-look-at women, uh, he, uh, his taste was, was quite extraordinary. We will be back in a moment. The, uh, the book Sinatra: The Life. I have the author Author's on with me, and we—

this episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.

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Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.

—of love never appealed to me. If your heart, it never could yield to me, then I'd rather, rather have nothing at all.

See, this is— to me, this is spoken as well as sung. This is, uh, Frank Sinatra. I'm Dennis Prager. And I have the co-authors of this major new biography of Frank Sinatra. It's called Sinatra: The Life, Anthony Summers and Robin Swann. I— you have a quote in your book that I'll read to you from George Frazier, the legendary Boston Globe critic. He said to Frank Sinatra directly, quote, all your life you wanted to be a big man, but the wrong kind of big man. 'You're a sad case, Frankie. I think you're the best male vocalist that ever lived, but I also think you're a miserable failure as a human being.' Was that accurate or exaggerated?

It was certainly tough from the hip. Um, you can't— as a biographer, I mean, we really work at this, and we work to try and get as far as one can humanly into the person, the personality, and the suffering and the joys of the person that we're studying. And this was a guy who, whom we ended up liking in spite of, and that's a very big in spite of, in spite of his involvement with the mob. I think you must ask her, but I think my co-author Robin, as a woman, liked him as a person in spite of his pretty savage treatment of many of the women that he knew. And the, the women that we interviewed— and we were lucky enough to talk to, now that he's gone, he's been gone almost exactly 7 years— to talk to a number of the, the women that he knew for significant, significant periods of his life. And almost to a woman, they spoke of him, in spite of the way he'd sometimes treated them, he spoke of— they spoke of him with lasting affection. This is a guy who had something very, very positive and yet could be a really unpleasant person. I think we found that a large, a large reason for this, which people weren't really aware of, was his drinking. He was, of course, a sort of walking advertisement for Jack Daniel's, and that was treated throughout his life as a kind of a joke about him. In fact, it was much more serious than that. We established that he drank as much as a bottle of Jack Daniel's a day over a period of decades, and that along with smoking hugely, 2 packs of untipped Camels a day. And of course, the miracle is that he could still perform, and that voice— he's— wait, wait, this— I find— years and stayed with us.

One minute, excuse me. I find that fascinating. He smoked 2 unfiltered packs a day, uh, over long periods.

Although depending who you talk to, he stopped the heavy drinking, or the heaviest of the drinking, and cut back on the cigarettes in the weeks before an important concert, or before a recording even more so.

But he didn't— but he didn't stop the sex right before a concert.

Not that we know of. We're not authorities on that one.

Oh, I, I thought you in fact note that, uh, he— it was important to him prior to, uh, to a recording session or, or a concert to have had sex. No, that is not— Oh, all right.

I can tell you, because we last did a biography of Richard Nixon, that whereas Nixon worried and fussed and sat up in the middle of the night, as it were, biting his nails before the debates with JFK, what JFK did before the first debate was to arrange to have a woman brought into him to calm him down before he went on air. I don't have a recollection like that unless you can put me right.

Oh no, no, no, I am so sorry. I had heard that and I didn't recall if you had written it or not. So that is not— all right, so it's more legend than anything else. How many women did he marry?

Well, he married 4 women.

Um, can you tell us who they were in order?

Sure. He married Nancy Barbato, the hometown girl, beautiful woman. Whom he brought to California with him when he became a star. And unfortunately, beautiful though she was, she was the hometown girl. And as the wonderful pianist Joey Bushkin described it to me, she was neighborhood serious, and Frank had left the neighborhood. He got to Hollywood.

That's a great line.

It was a great line. Yeah, go on. And, you know, he quickly fell foul of the Lana Turners the wonderful, beautiful women of Hollywood, of the most important of whom was Ava Gardner, who became his second wife, and of course his absolute obsession for life, his obsession, um, even after their divorce.

And all right, we'll take numbers 3 and 4 in a moment. Sure. Just want to remind everybody that we are speaking to the authors of Sinatra: The Life, just published by Knopf, and we'll continue with his wives and the whole issue with his wife. We have a 13-year-old from Nebraska who says she has been listening to Sinatra for a while. Wow. We'll be back in a moment. I'm Dennis Prager.

That's life, that's what all the people say.

This is the one that gets me high in April.

Shot down in May, but I know I'm gonna change that tune. Folks, I want this played as I leave. When I'm back on top, back on top in June.

Oh, I am go crazy.

I said that's life, that's life, and as funny as it may seem, do you know My dear authors, stop it!

I told you my background is classical music. I periodically conduct orchestras in Southern California, in fact, and I gotta tell you, the chill factor in that song and some of his others for me is similar to the chill factor in, in a great Beethoven symphony. And so on a purely emotional gut level, it, it touches me as much as a piece by Beethoven, which I, I find incredible given my background where I had a you know, a belief that the best music is by far classical.

And as I said, it was the same for him. Yeah, that fascinates me.

And his belief that it taught him discipline and perfection, which is what comes through. It is what comes through when you hear him sing. And I love hearing that because everybody should be inspired to know You can't get the great results easily, and he makes it sound effortless. That's critical as well, isn't it?

Absolutely. But that phrasing was very much learned, learned from Tommy Dorsey, learned from watching Jaffa Heifetz on the violin. Wow, wow. Thinking to himself that what Heifetz could do with the bow, he could do with his voice.

Oh, I love that. I love that. I, I, okay, I I so identify with what a great musician can do for you. Let's go back to the wives. So we can read music. Oh, me and as what's-his-name couldn't— the great American jazz writer— oh God, who composed God Bless America? What's— I feel— Gershwin? Was it Gershwin? Not Gershwin. I'll get it in a minute. Anyway, he is not the only— I did not know that he could not read music. No. So he was only— did he memorize the lyrics or was he reading them?

Well, during his early and middle years, yes. At the end, he couldn't remember the lyrics, but he worked on the lyrics. He said— actually, he varied, he contradicted himself. On occasion, he said, first, it's the story in the song that matters, the lyric that matters, that's what matters first. On other occasions, he'd say that it was the the melody, that the music that mattered. Obviously both matter enormously and they have to fit each other, but the lyric was enormously important to him. By the way, every song should be a story, which he does.

Incidentally, it was Irving Berlin. Irving Berlin could not— you're right— he could not read music either. So now we have two greats, Irving Berlin and Frank Sinatra. Let's go back to the wives. So the, the, uh, the, the New Jersey neighborhood girlfriend whom he married, that's number one. Ava Gardner is number two.

The— you said— A very young Mia Farrow.

Hold on one minute. Let's stick to Ava Gardner for— how long was that marriage?

Oh, well, the marriage was only a very short time. They married in 1951 after about a 2-year affair. They were separated by early in 1954, and their divorce came through in 1957. So they were actually only married for about 2.5 to 3 years. Now, we were lucky enough to get some tapes of Ava Gardner talking about their relationship. Which was very much fueled by alcohol on both of their parts, by serial infidelity, which probably began with her and affairs she had during their early marriage, which he then quickly escalated into tit-for-tat and violent exchanges—not physical violence so much as emotional and, you know, loud, loud arguing, alcohol-fueled rows. But, you know, his obsession with her went on well past their divorce.

Before the marriages to Mia Farrow, which Robin was about to mention, and then his last marriage to Barbara Marx— she'd previously been married to the youngest of the Marx Brothers— he went back to Ava Gardner, as he had many other times, and saying, "Couldn't we get together again?" to her credit, I think, once they had parted in the, in the early '50s, said, look, you know, it will never work. We can see each other, but it's never going to work. There will always be an explosion again and the whole thing will collapse. But he doggedly went on pursuing her, seeing her, helping her in later years when she was sick. And when she finally died, she predeceased him. She died in 1990, he died in 1998. He agreed to appear because he promised to at a large concert in Albany, New York, but he had a bottle of Jack Daniel's with him on stage, and somebody who was there told us that he was clearly grieving on stage, openly, publicly, for the loss of the one woman that had really preoccupied him for all the, the long gut years of his life.

Did he love, uh, his final wife, Barbara Marx?

I always think that, you know, the greatest arrogance, uh, for a biographer is to say that he knows very good who and what went on in the bedroom. We have to try to do it because that's the job, right? But did he love her? Um, he stayed with her for more than 20— they were together for more than 20 years. She clearly was However, up and down that relationship, and it was at times up and down, clearly she was the woman who worked for him, I mean, with whom it worked in those last years leading on to his old age. There are those, and not least his two daughters, who loathe Barbara Sinatra and say that she was, as it were, the wicked stepmother. Who forced their father to— or persuaded their father unreasonably to go back to work. And there are others very close to the family who say that she was the best thing that there possibly could have been for him in those last years. Who are we to judge? We've, we've printed what the various parties have said and leave it to the reader to, to think about.

Uh, two things. One, uh, the, the statement that I had made of the about his wanting to have sex prior to every recording session. That comes from George Jacobs, his valet. So I, I guess you don't describe much.

I knew George Jacobs many years ago, um, long before I worked on this book. And he wrote, you know, a sensational, um, book about— that's right— Mr. S, as he called his former boss, just a year or so ago. And of course the book was, was ghosted. George Jacobs is a good man, a decent man, a man who still talks of the man he worked for for many years with great respect. And generally speaking, I think the book is, is honest, truthful. It's, it's, um, down to the basics with George Jacobs. All right, man, because we'll take—

we've got to take a break. Crucial years. All right, we'll be back in a moment.

This episode of Timeless Dennis Prager's Wisdom will continue right after this.

If you're eating less, staying disciplined, and the weight still isn't coming off, the problem may not be your effort. It may be your metabolism. After years of stress, dieting, and lack of sleep, the body adapts. It slows down and holds on to fat. That's why PhD Weight Loss focuses on your metabolism first so your body stops working against you. Mention Prager today and receive 2 free weeks plus free food, a $1,500 value. Call 864-644-1900. That's 864-644-1900.

Now back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.

If I don't see her each day, I miss her. Gee, what a thrill each time I kiss her.

Welcome back, everybody.

Dennis Prager here.

The authors, the co-authors of the new Sinatra biography, Sinatra: The Life, Anthony Summers and Robin Swann. There is so much, I tell you, it's painful for me to have to say goodbye in a couple of minutes because I've just been riveted by all of this, by this man. I wanted to ask Robin a question. In seeing him, did you ever see him live? No, I'm afraid I do not. Okay, in watching films of him, in listening and in reading about him, did you understand the, I almost have to say, animal magnetism he held for women?

You know, I did. In part it was talking to the incredibly intelligent women who we talked to for the book, who I really could relate to, who described him so well. The magnetism of those blue eyes and the way they held you. But also watching things like the wonderful interview he did with Walter Cronkite back when he was 50 years old, and listening to him talk about singing and talk about his life. He really did have an incredible magnetic quality. But also, for instance, watching him perform, say, in High Society, watching him do that amazing duet with Bing Crosby. Did You Ever, which is one of the best duets I've ever seen, with two men singing a most amazing sort of robust, amusing song. But you got— you were infected with this, their joie de vivre, with their enormous personalities, and in particular with Frank's sort of sex appeal. And he did have it.

You know, another friend said of him— and this was a friend, a musician actually— but said of him that he could he could turn, turn in seconds though. There would be this man with this great magnetism, this lovely man to be with, and suddenly he could be the meanest SOB. But it was almost always associated with, with drink, which we touched on earlier. But I wanted to make the point that we submitted what we gathered for the manuscript on his drinking over his lifetime to a couple of people who are experts on alcoholism, and although they're very cautious about judging when the patient isn't there and is gone, they said that he, he showed all the symptoms of being an alcoholic. So there's a really sad side to the man which goes far to explain the dark things that we had to explore when writing about his life, as you did so well.

And I just wish we had more time Paul, Mary, Joanna, the 13-year-old who listens to him in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, and Elizabeth and Tom and others. I'm so sorry I didn't get your calls. The book is Sinatra: The Life, Anthony Summers and Robin Swann. What's your next biography?

It's you, Dennis. Be very afraid. That's very good.

It's not quite as sexy. All right, thank you so much and good luck with whatever you write. Thank you very much. It's been a real joy. Don't go away, everybody.

This is Dennis Prager. Tomorrow on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.

I got a letter here from a listener in Louisville, Eden Gassior. Dennis, I love your show. Listen and download as often as I can. I don't know if you've done this before, but I thought that a good topic for me would be how to be your own best friend or something like that. Ways that you could treat yourself nicely on a daily basis to keep your happiness level up, because we can't be happy with others if we have perfectionist tendencies with ourselves. Well, Eden, I won't talk about the perfectionist part as much today. I will leave that for another time. But I will, I will talk about how to be your own best friend, or something like that, as you put it. Ways to treat yourself nicely on a daily basis. See, everything in life, everything is a middle road, everything. And it is very hard. The human being by nature is not a middle of the roader, is not a moderate. By nature, we are extremists. Whatever we do, we tend to go toward the extreme so that many people are just preoccupied with themselves. That's narcissism, and I've done a number of programs on that, where you're just preoccupied with you, and you can't be happy if you are. It is not possible. But if you are not sufficiently preoccupied with you, you also can't be happy. How do you like that?

Join us tomorrow to hear more on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Visit DennisPrager.com for thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses, and classic radio programs and to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles. We want to take just a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the podcast. Go to lifeaudio.com to find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network, including shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.

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