Frank Sinatra -- A Man and His Music

This one-hour TV special was first broadcast by NBC on November 24, 1965, to mark the occasion of Frank Sinatra's 50th birthday (actually December 12). The simple, minimal format--Sinatra in a television studio singing many of his greatest hits in front of a live audience with no guest stars--proved to be tremendously successful, boosted by the fact that the show was in color at a time when the major networks had just converted to color programming full time. The production received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Musical Program and another to Lon Stucky and NBC for its lighting. As producer, Dwight Hemion received the program award; he was also nominated for his direction. It was the first of his 15 wins for either producing or directing shows, among many nominations. Hemion (1926-2008) was responsible for many of the outstanding musical programs in the heyday of television variety, including specials for Burt Bachrach, Bette Midler, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and others. He directed almost all of Barbra Streisand's specials, beginning with My Name Is Barbra (1965), up through his last Emmy win for Barbra: The Concert (1995). Also nominated (for orchestra conducting) were Sinatra's longtime arrangers Nelson Riddle and Gordon Jenkins. Both served the same capacity on the follow-up special spawned by the great popularity of this first show, Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music Part II (1966), featuring the singer's daughter Nancy, then also a popular recording star. Riddle was the musical director for a third entry, Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music + Ella + Jobim (1967), in which the singer shared the spotlight with jazz great Ella Fitzgerald and bossa nova king Antonio Carlos Jobim ("The Girl from Ipanema"). Hemion directed the first "sequel" but not the second. In the first solo show, Sinatra performs more than a dozen of the songs closely associated with his long career, including "I've Got You Under My Skin," "Nancy with the Laughing Face," "My Kind of Town" (from his recent movie Robin and the Seven Hoods, 1964), "The Lady Is a Tramp," and "Witchcraft." In conjunction with the program, he released a double LP by the same title, which reached the Top Ten, went gold, and won a Grammy for Album of the Year. The show was taped in NBC's Studio 1 in Burbank over the course of two nights, during which Sinatra coughed and cleared his throat a few times because of a cold. Esquire magazine assigned author Gay Talese to do a profile of the notoriously guarded celebrity at this time. Sinatra was unwilling to be interviewed, so Talese hung around Los Angeles, talking to the star's friends and associates and waiting for him to change his mind about an interview. The resulting article, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," appeared in the magazine in April 1966. The piece is still recognized today as a landmark example of what came to be called New Journalism, a style combining factual reporting with literary techniques. Director: Dwight Hemion Producers: Dwight Hemion, Carolyn Raskin Writers: John Aylesworth, Sheldon Keller, Frank Peppiatt, Glenn Wheaton Art Direction: James Trittipo Musical Directors/Conductors: Nelson Riddle, Gordon Jenkins C-50m. By Rob Nixon