FRANK SINATRA: “Performers work harder at benefits than anywhere else. I don’t know why we do, but we do. Maybe we think the people who paid big money to support a charity expect more for their money.”
During his lifetime Sinatra, the man and performer, raised in excess of one billion dollars for charities across the world. His generosity touched the worlds of education, medicine, science, and children’s needs, his favorite cause. He also quietly provided personal financial aid to friends and individuals in need. Sometimes it was a late-night phone call that moved him; sometimes he just caught wind of a hard-luck story on the news or in the paper and did what he could to fix it.
Although Sinatra’s charitable activities were possibly the least publicized aspects of his career, such ventures occupied a tremendous portion of his free time throughout his life. Despite the recording sessions, the movies, the nightclub engagements, somehow Sinatra always managed to find time to lend his name and talents to humanitarian causes, performing benefit concerts around the world.
AL VIOLA: “I did a benefit with Frank when I was with the Page Cavanaugh Trio in the spring of 1947. Frank called our manager, Bullets Durgom, to have the trio perform with him in Galveston, Texas. It was a benefit for the victims of the Texas City petroleum explosion. I couldn’t begin to tell you how many benefits Frank did over the years and paid the costs for the band out of his own pocket. I think that in some years Frank did more benefits than paying gigs. He was a very generous man.”
Sinatra also used his influence to recruit other celebrities to help join him in benefits to raise funds. Over the years Ella Fitzgerald, Luciano Pavarotti, Elton John, Benny Goodman, Bob Hope, Sammy Davis, Count Basie, and many more graced the stage with Sinatra at benefits around the world.
In mid-April 1962 Sinatra embarked on an ambitious two-month World Tour for Children. At the time, he said that his main reason for going was that he was “an overprivileged adult who ought to help underprivileged children.” Sinatra performed with the Bill Miller Sextet in Japan, Hong Kong, Greece, Israel, Italy, France, and England, absorbing the entire cost of the tour himself. By the time he returned home in late June, ticket sales to Sinatra’s World Tour concerts had raised more than one million dollars, all of which benefited children’s charities worldwide.
FRANK SINATRA JR.: “In 1962, when my father went on a 12-nation tour around the world to raise money for underprivileged children in 12 different countries, he did this at his own expense, and he did it because he wanted to do it. He realized, to his great joy, that he was in a position that he could do it, and so he did it. And I guarantee you that he got more satisfaction out of that than practically anything he’d ever done. I saw a film of my father’s arrival in Japan on that tour, where the Imperial government took him in a helicopter to an area where there were hundreds and hundreds of orphaned Japanese children living in boxcars, and he raised several hundred million yen for them, and this is something that is a contribution, that is compassion.”
AL VIOLA: “Frank worked very hard on that trip. He went to the hospitals to see the children; he was getting up in the morning so he could go. We had a good time, but Frank worked to raise as much money as possible.”
Another of Sinatra’s favorite things to do was help Jerry Lewis with his annual telethon on behalf of the Muscular Dystrophy Association. On one special appearance, Sinatra combined his philanthropic good deed with a personal good deed: reuniting Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Lewis, who was touched deeply by the reunion, said later: “Frank arranged the reunion with Dean on the telethon in 1976. It was the best-kept secret in the history of the world. Dean and I had not spoken in 20 years.”
Indeed, Sinatra was as charitable with friends as he was with causes. “I can’t tell you how many times he helped out fellow entertainers who were down on their luck,” remembered Tony Bennett. “He never asked for anything in return.” So if it was a friendship that needed mending, it was mended; if it was a tab that needed paying, it was paid.
SONNY GOLDEN: “When I first started working for Frank Sinatra he would send me notes or call me requesting that I send someone a nickel or dime. I had no idea what he was talking about. He wanted me to send checks for $5,000 or $10,000 to people he read or saw were in need of it. I can’t calculate how many checks I sent out in the 30-plus years I worked for him—it had to total hundreds of thousands of dollars. There was no one who was more generous to charities or the needy than Frank Sinatra. Nobody!”
Never one to publicize his deeds, it was on very rare occasion that Sinatra would comment on his motivation for his humanitarian work. At one such moment, he described it: “I want to try to change things, to use whatever influence I have for welfare, peace, and the brotherhood of man.” Neither did Sinatra care much to have his friends talking about his generosity. But on one occasion, when a New York Daily News editorial called Sinatra “one of the least admirable figures in public life,” it was more than at least one of his friends could bear.
WILLIAM B. WILLIAMS: “I wish I could take the editorial writer who attacked Frank Sinatra by the hand and let him or her tell what they have written to patients at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Center. Patients, some of whom literally owe their lives to the fact that Frank Sinatra appeared in concerts for free over the year and raised millions of dollars so those patients could have further research done into the causes of cancer. . . . Tell it to the World Mercy Fund regarding Frank’s benefits in helping starving people around the world. . . . Tell it to the Atlantic City Medical Center, which has a wing that is there because Sinatra raised the money for it to be built there. Tell it to the people at Hebrew University. Tell it to the International Heart Association; tell them that Sinatra is one of the least admirable figures in public life. Tell it to fellow performers who were broke, who couldn’t get in the hospitals and Frank Sinatra saw that they got into those hospitals. . . . Tell it to all those people who unbeknownst to them were helped by Sinatra. I have sat with Frank Sinatra in his hotel room and watched the local news when a fireman’s widow was on, and I’ve seen Sinatra pick up the phone and tell someone to see that money was sent to that particular widow and that his name was never to be mentioned. So for that editorial writer at the Daily News, if you find Sinatra one of the least admirable people in public life, I would challenge you to match what he has done for others, for friends, for people he doesn’t even know, for sick people all around the world.”
In 1983 Variety Clubs International saluted Sinatra’s lifelong contributions to charitable causes with an “All-Star Party,” which was also taped as a television special. Cary Grant, Vic Damone, Carol Burnett, Julio Iglesias, and others attended to honor both Sinatra’s music and his humanitarian work. The highlight of the evening was a moving speech by Richard Burton.
RICHARD BURTON: “Other than himself, there is no one who knows of the magnitude of his generosity. He has chosen to be the sole, anonymous keeper of that knowledge. . . . Mr. Anonymous you have asked to be; Mr. Anonymous you shall be called.”
Even after his passing, the Sinatra generosity continues through The Frank Sinatra Foundation.
TINA SINATRA: “Frank Sinatra was a man of dreams, passion, strength, loyalty, and gentleness. His selflessness, love, and generosity were the only constants in an ever-changing world. My family and our friends have reactivated The Frank Sinatra Foundation to carry into the 21st century the works and visions of Frank Sinatra in education, medicine, the arts, and the individual in need.”
While Sinatra is often recognized as the most popular and influential singer of the 20th century, no doubt he would have been more proud of being labeled one of the most generous philanthropists of his time.
