Erin O'Riordan writes smart, whimsical erotica. Her erotic romance novel trilogy, Pagan Spirits, is now available. With her husband, she also writes crime novels. Visit her home page at ko-fi.com.
June 15, 1785: The first recorded deaths in aviation history occur when hot air balloonists Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and Pierre-Ange Romain crash into the French coast while attempting to balloon across the English Channel.
June 15, 1996: Legendary jazz and popular vocalist Ella Fitzgerald dies of complications of diabetes.
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April 25, 1995: Actress, dancer, and singer Ginger Rogers dies at age 83 of natural causes in Rancho Mirage in the Coachella Valley in California.
April 25, 2002: Rapper Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes is driving an SUV in La Cieba, Honduras, where she’s filming a documentary while on a spiritual retreat with her two siblings. She swerves to avoid an oncoming vehicle, only to swerve into the path of another vehicle, causing her to swerve sharply to the left. She strikes two trees, throwing her and three passengers from the SUV. Lopes, who is only 30 years old, dies instantly of severe head trauma. Her passengers are injured, but survive.
May 14, 1998: Frank Sinatra dies of a heart attack. He's 82 years old.
Sinatra was born on December 12, 1915, in Hoboken, New Jersey, to parents who were both immigrants from Italy. He got a ukulele for his 15th birthday and taught himself to play it. He made his first record as a singer in 1939. In November of that year, he became the lead singer of the Tommy Dorsey Band. He recorded his first hit song, "Polka Dots and Stardust," in 1940.
On March 25, 1954, Sinatra won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing Maggio in From Here to Eternity.
His 1954 album Songs for Young Lovers includes Cole Porter's "I Get a Kick Out of You" and the George Gershwin song "They Can't Take That Away From Me."
He recorded Porter's "I've Got You Under My Skin," reportedly in 22 takes, for the 1956 album Songs for Swingin' Lovers.
On July 2, 1966, the #1 song in the U.S. is Sinatra's "Strangers In the Night." The melody was composed by Bert Kaempfert, who's got the mad hits. That same year, 50-year-old Sinatra marries 21-year-old Mia Farrow.
On April 15, 1967, the #1 song in the U.S. is "Something Stupid" by Sinatra and his 26-year-old daughter Nancy. Where did I first hear this song? Performed by Kelsey Grammer and Julie Kavner as Sideshow Bob and Selma Bouvier on Simpsons episode 8F20, “Black Widower,” which originally aired April 9, 1992.
Nancy Sinatra is like Mary Wollstonecraft in that mother and daughter have the same name. Frank Sinatra's first wife and eldest child are both called Nancy Sinatra.
On November 13, 1967, NBC gives him a TV special with guest star Ella Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald, Sinatra, Count Basie, and Pat Henry's Orchestra performed a revue together on June 6th through June 18th at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Although allegedly "retired," he recorded two best-selling Duets albums, the first in 1993 and Duets II in 1994. These include the "I've Got You Under My Skin" duet with Bono.
I don't have a source for this, but I remember watching Bono talking on TV about a night of drinking that the two had together. Bono fell asleep with a glass of whiskey in his hand and spilled it on himself in his sleep. He woke up and got terribly embarrassed that the great Frank Sinatra would think he, Bono, had gotten so drunk he pissed himself.
Frank Sinatra had a good, long, musical life. He died in 1998, and his second child Frank Sinatra Jr. died in 2016. Nancy and Tina Sinatra are still with us, as is Ronan Farrow, Mia Farrow's son of whom Sinatra may be the biological father. On paper, the alleged sexual predator Woody Allen is Ronan's father, but Ronan looks a lot more like Sinatra than Allen.
Ten things you might not know about Montgomery Clift, the devastatingly handsome and intense actor who starred in classics like From Here to Eternity and A Place in the Sun:
1. His two favorite words were "fuck" and "shit."
2. It drove his mother crazy when he wore t-shirts or khakis. She wanted him dressed like a gentleman at all times.
3. Born in Omaha but raised largely in Europe, he spoke French and German fluently, and spoke with an English accent as a young man.
4. He wanted to play Hamlet and could recite most of Shakespeare's play from memory - but he never actually starred in a production of it.
5. To prepare for Lonelyhearts, he read every novel Nathanael West had written.
8. The playwright he most admired was Anton Chekhov.
9. He slept naked and had a tendency to sleepwalk, leading to some awkward nights in hotels.
10. Even though he thought James Dean was "weird" and consciously imitating Monty himself, he was terribly upset when told that Dean had died.
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Patricia Bosworth's book is an intense and, at times, disturbing biography. It's quite appropriate that Clift played Freud, since his life was a psychoanalyst's dream come true. He was unusually close with his twin sister Ethel and brother Brooks. He had wild mood swings, exacerbated by alcohol and drug abuse and by health problems, including a thyroid disorder. He could be sweet, tender and childlike one minute and then vicious (especially with words) the next. He was as insecure as he was gorgeous.
In real life, I probably wouldn't have liked him very much. But I'll never have to worry about that, because he died when my parents were 13 and 14. In my imagination, I'd like to do things with him that were almost certainly illegal in the 1950s.
That's the wonderful thing about movies - they capture beautiful people when they are young, beautiful and intensely talented. There will never be a time when people will say "Montgomery Clift was not a good actor." In fact, he was one of the best ever.
Stopping by from the Shameless Summer Giveaway Hop? Please visit Friday's post HERE for a chance to win free books!
My historical American composer crush is George Gershwin. Still, I'm a native of the U.S. Midwest, so I have a certain Midwestern girl's affection for the composer Cole Porter. It's Porter's birthday; he was born June 9, 1891, in the small city of Peru, Indiana. This post was inspired by Cathy Day's post "For Cole Porter's Birthday, My Personal Playlist." Day is a novelist, an essayist, a professor at Indiana's Ball State University, and a Peru native.
These are my personal favorite Cole Porter songs. I would not be much of a '90s girl if I didn't harbor a certain affection for the Bono/Frank Sinatra duet of "I've Got You Under My Skin." If I look hard enough, I'm sure I could still find the CD maxi single I bought when the duet came out.
(As a matter of fact, I was such a big U2 fan, that song may have inspired a brief fascination with Frank Sinatra, which may have led me to want to read From Here to Eternity. Sinatra played Maggio, the buddy of Robert E. Lee "Prew" Prewitt.)
Nor would I be much of a '90s girl if I couldn't remember the version of "I Get a Kick Out of You" that Mel Torme recorded for a Mountain Dew commercial.
I'm not a fan of Mountain Dew, but then again, I'm not a fan of cocaine, either, which is what the real lyrics suggest might give a person a kick. Frank Sinatra sang "I Get a Kick Out of You" in the 1954 version of Anything Goes, which also starred Ethel Merman. It remains the one Cole Porter musical I've ever seen performed live on stage.
If you've ever seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (probably the only major Hollywood film with several scenes devoted to the worship of Kali), you may remember Kate Capshaw's version of the title song in the Mandarin language.
When I was a high school student, my local library had this book, featuring Ward Schumaker's artwork based on "Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love)." According to Goodreads, it was published in November 1993 (and the song is from 1928). I probably checked it out five times; I adored it.
A good pop version of "Let's Do It" is by Alanis Morissette. This is from the soundtrack of De-Lovely, with Kevin Kline and my most feminist girlcrush Ashley Judd.
Another item I repeatedly checked out of my local library before I finally broke down and bought a copy (after another library patron lost the library's copy) was an album called Jazz Divas - Studio. It has two of the loveliest Cole Porter songs: Ella Fitzgerald's version of "Night and Day," and Shirley Horn's "Love For Sale."
This arrangement is upbeat, but as I listen to this song, I can't help but think about Porter trying to express some of the angst of being gay in an era of strict sexual repression.
"Love For Sale," on the other hand, can never be anything by melancholy, in a world-weary sort of way. Very Cole Porter.
Those are the essential Cole Porter tunes for me. What are your favorites?
