Sinatra in Hollywood

Santopietro, who spent two decades as the manager of two dozen Broadway shows, has previously delivered well-received biographical career assessments of Doris Day and Barbra Streisand. Although Sinatra is covered in countless books, including several focusing on his films, Santopietro's approach attempts to seamlessly blend Sinatra's life, movies and public persona. Sinatra's tough-guy behavior masked a “wounding tenderness,” observed ex-wife Mia Farrow, and an underlying thesis of this book is that a similar quality permeated his onscreen characters, “confident and brash, yet very often vulnerable.” Striving for honest critiques and a witty, encyclopedic coverage, Santopietro begins with Sinatra's 1935 short subjects; dances through the grandiose 1940s MGM musicals; documents Sinatra's “professional and personal despair” and decline in such “giant turkey” disasters as The Kissing Bandit (1948); and analyzes his Oscar-winning comeback in From Here to Eternity (1953). The book verges on the speculative (“Sinatra sensed...”) as it bounces from heavy hype (“one of the immortals”) to pseudo-hip—in a writing style that sometimes works and sometimes simply annoys. Despite such lapses, this mammoth movie compendium, filled with forgotten facts, 53 b&w photos and a detailed filmography, is certain to satisfy Sinatra's legions of fans. (Nov. 11)