Happy 94th, Ol' Blue Eyes

Saturday, December 12, 2009
The Record

He may have sung "New York, New York," but Frank Sinatra, a Hoboken guy, was known around North Jersey, and before fame arrived, he had had at least one local brush with the law.

Francis Albert Sinatra was born on Dec. 12, 1915, to first-generation Italian-American parents in a cold-water flat at 415 Monroe St. in Hoboken, demolished after a fire in 1967.

He attended Hoboken's A.J. Demarest High School (now a public middle school), but was expelled during his senior year, "he says, on grounds of general rowdiness," according to an interview with Time magazine published in August 1955.

Sinatra became a crooner at 16 after seeing Bing Crosby perform at Loews Theater in Jersey City. He later won an amateur singing contest in the city's now demolished State Theater.

Bergen County sheriff's officers arrested Sinatra on Nov. 26, 1938, and charged him with "seduction." According to the arrest report obtained by The New York Times, "on the second and ninth days of November 1938 at the borough of Lodi," and "under the promise of marriage," Sinatra "did then and there have sexual intercourse with the said complainant who was then and there a single female of good repute." He was held in the Bergen County Jail in Hackensack and later released on $1,500 bond. Police substituted the seduction charge with adultery after they discovered the Lodi woman was married. The charge was later dismissed.

The original police reports were misplaced years ago. And a captain lent the original mug shot to an author who was writing a book on Sinatra.

Sinatra was paid $15 a week to sing and wait tables at the Rustic Lodge in Englewood Cliffs. It was there in 1939 that band leader Harry James discovered Sinatra and made him the "featured vocalist" in his band. By 1942, Sinatra had become so popular with teenage "bobby soxers" his Hasbrouck Heights home was almost constantly surrounded by fans. He died in 1998.

Sources: The Hoboken Historical Museum, Time, The New York Times, www.sinatra.com and the Library of Congress

? Jennifer H. Cunningham