Sir Roger Moore on why Frank Sinatra was, frankly, a terrific kid

Loyal, generous, talented . . . and great at cooking spicy meatballs. Sir Roger Moore recalls his good friend of 40 years Frank Sinatra to The Times.

I first met Frank Sinatra in the 1950s at a Hollywood nightclub called the Moulin Rouge. I was then under contract to Warner Bros and was invited, as a very minor celebrity, to a charity fund-raiser with the theme of cowboys and Indians. There I saw Frank having a rather public confrontation with the most famous cowboy of them all, John Wayne.

The unpleasantness stemmed from the fact that Jack Warner, the head of Warner Bros, bid $1,000 to have Gordon McRae sing at the event and John Wayne bid $2,000 for him not to. Frank felt the Duke had insulted his friend and made a point of it. Seeing the tall Duke face up to Frank – who was a lot shorter, thinner and, with his gaunt cheeks, certainly appeared less formidable – was something I’ll never forget.

But Frank stood up for his friends. That was just one of the qualities that endeared him to me. We only really exchanged pleasantries that night. Frank greeted me warmly and said, “Hi, I’m Frank Sinatra”, as if I didn’t know who he was. His humility was another impressive quality.

Sinatra, a season of whose films opens at the BFI Southbank next month, was born on December 12, 1915, and his entry into this world was not an easy one. Frank said that he would like to meet and kill the doctor who delivered him using forceps that badly damaged his ear and scarred his face. Alarmed that the just-born infant was not breathing, and with the doctor seemingly not knowing what to do, his grandmother grabbed him and placed his head under a cold water tap, startling Frank into taking his first gasp.

In later life Frank suffered from terrible hearing and ear problems. He maintained that it was because of the doctor’s negligence, fuelling his desire to “bump into him”. Another of Frank’s qualities was the capacity to bear a grudge.

I didn’t meet him again until the mid1960s, in a London restaurant. Mia Farrow, then his wife, was in town making a film called Guns at Batasi and Frank accompanied her. “We just love watching The Saint,” she said, catching me unawares.

“We watch it in bed, in our hotel room; it’s the best thing on TV,” Frank added. Not only did I admire him, I now realised what good taste he had too! “How about dinner tomorrow night?” he asked.

We dined at Annabel’s, and it was there that Frank started calling me “Kid” – a nickname that stuck. Frank asked me about The Saint and was curious to know if I was still interested in making movies. There was, then, a certain divide between TV and films and it was often difficult to cross back to movies once you had moved into TV.

“Sure I am. Why?” “Well, kid,” he said, “I get an awful lot of scripts coming over my desk. I’ll find one for you.”

What a compliment! I should add, though, that he never actually found me a job – not that it bothered me as I was quite happy in The Saint and stayed in the role until 1968.

I was a huge fan of Frank’s, both his music and his films, and revelled in the stories he told of the people he had worked with and hoped to work with; one of his great heroes was Ella Fitzgerald.

Frank had begun his musical career in the swing era with the big bands of Harry James and Tommy Dorsey – the latter called him “kid” as a term of endearment. Frank told me that he realised a large part of their performing success was down to their ability to “phrase”; that is to say play an instrument or sing without appearing to breathe and interrupt the rhythm. Frank took up underwater swimming to help increase his lung capacity and develop his breathing technique. From there he practised his phrasing; he developed a slight twitch in the corner of his mouth through which he breathed in, expelling through the rest of his mouth in song.

As well as captivating audiences with his singing, Frank had a great screen presence. His ability to glide across it with seeming ease was one I envied greatly; I could never dance, though I loved watching musicals. Frank’s acting came naturally to him. He was an all-round natural performer, but he only ever did one take. George Slaughter, who directed him in advertisements and TV shows, told me that Frank psyched himself up so much for Take One that if you didn’t get it on that first shot, then you never would. He walked onset word-perfect and ready to go. He never rehearsed dialogue scenes and loathed retakes. “Bang-bang-bang, went the scene,” said George, “and Frank would leave to await the next set-up.”

He didn’t suffer fools and expected everyone else to be as fully prepared as he was.

Frank had been a solo artist with great success in the early to mid1940s, but by the 1950s things had stalled somewhat. In 1954 that changed, though, when he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in From Here to Eternity and became a hot property all over again.

Balancing both a recording and acting career, Frank enjoyed success with both. He released several critically lauded albums for Capitol Records such as In the Wee Small Hours and Songs for Swingin' Lovers. And when he founded his own record label, Reprise, the hits kept on coming.

As well as touring internationally, Frank also famously worked with the Rat Pack and fraternised with President John F. Kennedy. Film success continued with a Best Actor Oscar nomination for The Man with the Golden Arm (1955). His critical success was as great as his commercial success in movies such as Guys and Dolls (1955), High Society (1956) and Pal Joey (1957).

I often read about Frank’s alleged links with Mafia figures such as Sam Giancana, Lucky Luciano and Rocco Fischetti, and asked him about it. “Kid,” he said, “most of the venues I play are in one way or another controlled by the Mob – they run Vegas for a start. I turn up at these places and am greeted by all these guys who want me to pose for a photo with them. I’ve no idea who they are, but they’re standing with their arm around me like long-lost friends. How many photos have you posed for with people you don’t know?”

Mind you, I don’t think Frank ever did anything to publicly dispel the rumours of his underworld connections. He rather liked it.

Frank had three children; Nancy, Frank Jr and Tina by his first wife, Nancy. He was married three more times, to the actresses Ava Gardner, Mia Farrow and Barbara Marx. Like any loving father, he supported his children in every way he could. I remember on his daughter Nancy’s 30th birthday his gift to her was $1 million, wrapped up. Frank was very generous like that.

Later Tina Sinatra made a dramatised biography of Frank for TV. It was unflattering to say the least. I broached the subject with his wife Barbara and asked what Frank had thought of it. She said that she had sat Frank down in the TV room with a large drink and ran the tape for him to watch, alone. When he emerged he said: “I don’t think they quite got me, did they?”

Nobody really knows just how generous Frank was, nor the full extent of his charity work. His acts of generosity were usually silent. For example, when Bela Lugosi, most famous for playing Dracula, died virtually penniless, Frank quietly paid for his funeral. Another actor, Lee J. Cobb, told me that he was very ill in hospital at one point and was becoming increasingly worried about how he was going to meet his medical bills. On checking out, he found his bill had been paid.

“By who?” Cobb asked. Frank Sinatra, he was told.

Cobb phoned up Frank and said: “Mr Sinatra, we’ve never met but I understand you have covered my hospital costs. Why?”

“Because I like your films.” That was typical of Frank. My then wife Luisa and I socialised a lot with Frank and Barbara, and spent virtually every Thanksgiving and Easter at their lovely home in Palm Springs, along with Gregory and Veronique Peck, Cary and Barbara Grant and sometimes the agent Swifty Lazar.

They were great days; we’d run movies, eat, drink and swim in the pool. It was a place for total relaxation. On Easter Sunday Frank would clear us out of the kitchen and cook his favourite dish of spicy meatballs and pasta. It was the one day no one else was allowed to cook and our only involvement was to help select the wines. Frank had one of the best cellars in the world.

One of our other favourite pastimes, aside from drinking copious amounts of Jack Daniel’s into the night, was gambling. We played the tables in Vegas on many occasions and, as Frank was very much a night person, he loved it when people stayed up with him. It wasn’t so much the gambling as the company he loved. I couldn’t always keep up with him, especially if I needed a clear head the next morning for work. Frank had a view on hangovers, as he did on most things: “I feel sorry for people who don’t drink. When they wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they’re going to feel all day.”

Frank continued acting regularly into the early 1970s and, occasionally, beyond. One of my personal favourites is Ocean’s Eleven (1960), which I feel is perhaps the definitive Rat Pack movie. However, despite increasing success, on June 12, 1971, at a concert in Hollywood to raise money for the Motion Picture and TV Relief Fund Frank Sinatra announced that he was retiring, at the age of 55. Perhaps he thought he was at the pinnacle of his career and that this was the right time to bow out.

His self-enforced retirement didn’t last long. Two years later Frank returned with a television special and album, both entitled Ol’ Blue Eyes is Back. He certainly was.

Frank remained humble, kind, generous and warm. He only ever had praise for me, his “kid”, when he saw one of my movies, and when I was cast as James Bond he called to say how delighted he was for me. He never criticised or offered advice on any of my performances, such as they were – he merely expressed his satisfaction. I have one regret. I made a film called The Cannonball Run in 1981. It was rather successful and a sequel was commissioned. But I turned down the opportunity to reprise my role of a wannabe actor who pretended to be Roger Moore, believing that the joke had gone as far as it could. In hindsight that was a pity, as they later cast Frank in the sequel. So I missed my opportunity to work with him.

Despite various health problems, Frank toured extensively and remained the biggest attraction on the worldwide concert circuit during the first half of the 1990s. Alas, at times his memory failed him, as did his hearing. I asked how he could still pick up his musical cues. He said he “felt” it through his feet, via the reverberations. Nothing was going to get in the way of Frank performing.

In one of our final conversations Frank said to me: “You gotta love livin’, kid, ’cause dyin’ is a pain in the ass.” But we never spoke about death or illness. We were too busy enjoying life.

Frank’s final public concerts were held in the Fukuoka Dome in Japan, December 1994. On February 25, 1995, at a private party for 1,200 guests on the closing night of the Frank Sinatra Desert Classic golf tournament, Frank sang before a live audience for the very last time. His closing song was The Best is Yet to Come.

That December, to mark his 80th birthday, the Empire State Building glowed blue.

Having fought bravely against cancer, Frank sadly suffered a heart attack and died at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles at 10:50pm on May 14, 1998, with his wife Barbara and daughter Nancy by his side. His final words were: “I’m losing.”

Frank’s legacy to the world is a vast one. His many films and TV performances, concerts and recordings will live on, as will my memories of the amazing man I was so fortunate to be able to call a friend.

The Frank Sinatra retrospective at BFI Southbank runs throughout May. Some Came Running opens at BFI Southbank and the Barbican (020-7928 3232; www.bfi.org.uk/sinatra) on May 16. A Strictly Sinatra season begins on TCM on May 3 2008

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