sinatra. is my life

From: www.sinatra.com

"The Sinatra thing killed me, I have to say. You pull into the Thomases' driveway and you're greeted by a sign that says, FRANK SINATRA FAN PARKING ONLY. ALL OTHERS WILL BE LEARNIN' THE BLUES! You're greeted by a timorous black cocker spaniel named Frankie. And you're greeted by Charlotte herself, dressed in maroon sweats, smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee from a Christmas-themed mug. You follow her into the house, and the first room you enter is a shrine to Ol' Blue Eyes in his American Century glory, a room wallpapered with vintage album covers and a big poster of Frank and Dean and Sammy standing in front of the Sands in Vegas. In the middle of all the paraphernalia, there's a small framed black-and-white photograph of Sinatra singing at the Sands, smoky and moody, very dark except for the glimpse of a woman's bare crossed leg, catching the spotlight up front and stage left. 'You can't really see, but that's me,' she says, pointing to the spotlit leg. 'I was on my way out to California to marry Fred, and I stopped in Vegas to see Frank.'
     And there it is — the conflation of two men whom Charlotte Thomas has loved most of her life. She was seventeen when she met Fred. Fred was nineteen, freshly enlisted in the Navy. 'The first thing that attracted me to him was his confidence,' she says. He was a little guy with a straight spine and a banty strut, a commanding runt who was never shy about saying what he wanted and how he was going to get it. She met him at a movie theater in Waukegan, Illinois, and she might as well have met Sinatra himself — 'I knew the minute I met him that he was the one for me. We've been married for fifty-one years, and he is my life.'"
— Tom Junod, Esquire
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"I may be only fifteen years old, but I've managed to be a huge Frank Sinatra fan. There was a time when the only lullaby I knew was the tender lilt in the voice of ol' blue eyes, as he crooned in the background of Tommy Dorsey's glistening trombone. Then I grew a little older, a little wiser, and of course, started to like boys. The funny thing is, I've never had any pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio, or any of those teeny-bopper heart throbs. I lined my walls with pictures of a young, lady-killin' Louis Prima, baby-faced Bobby Darrin, a spunky Cab Calloway, and of course, my own wickedly angelic black and white photo of Frankie. [...]"
— Mariana Mattiazzi, museum.media
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