Treasure Trove: Frank Sinatra, Ol’ Blue (and White) Eyes

Frank Sinatra (1915-1998) was a world famous singer and actor who won 11 Grammy awards, four Golden Globe awards and one Academy Award.  He has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (for motion pictures, broadcasting and television), was named the Greatest Voice of the 20th Century by the BBC and each year on his birthday the Empire State Building in New York, New York lights up with blue lights in reference to his nickname, “Ol’ Blue Eyes”.

Less well known about Sinatra is that he was a huge friend of Israel and the Jewish people.

Sinatra’s grandparents immigrated from Italy and he grew up in an Italian environment in Hoboken, New Jersey.  Growing up he came to understand prejudices against Italians and others including Jews.  One of his caretakers, Mrs. Golden, spoke to him only in Yiddish (Sinatra joked that he knew more Yiddish than Italian) and gave him a star of David necklace that he wore for decades.

In 1945 Sinatra performed in a short film, The House I Live In, which was made to oppose antisemitism at the end of World War II.   The film won an Honorary Academy Award and a special Golden Globe.  You can watch the movie here: 

In 1948 Sinatra was a regular performer at the Copacabana night club in New York which was located beside the building which housed the Haganah’s secret headquarters.  At the time, FBI agents were following the Haganah agents to thwart their attempts to purchase weapons for the new state.  Sinatra offered to help and delivered a bag containing $1 million in cash to a ship captain at the port which enabled the ammunition ship to head to Israel.  “It was the beginning of the young nation, I wanted to help,” Sinatra said.

Sinatra’s first visit to Israel was in 1962 where he gave seven performances (the proceeds of which were earmarked for the Frank Sinatra International Youth Center in Nazareth, which was envisioned as a centre for Arab and Jewish youth), performed for troops at the Tel Nof Airbase and sat with David Ben Gurion and Moshe Dayan during the Israel Defence Force’s Independence Day parade.  His visit is captured in a 22 minute film produced by the National Committee for Labor Israel which ends with Sinatra asking that people support Israel in its campaign for establishing opportunities for youth.   You can see the film here: 

Sinatra returned to Israel a number of times including in 1964 when he dedicated the centre in Nazareth, 1965 to perform with Kirk Douglas in the movie Cast a Giant Shadow about American Mickey Marcus who helped organize Israel’s army (Sinatra dedicated his $50,000 fee to the Nazareth Center) and in 1995 to celebrate his 80th birthday.  He helped to raise $1 million for the Frank Sinatra International Student Center at the Hebrew  University which was dedicated in 1978.  In 2002, nine people were killed and 100 injured in a Hamas terror attack on the Center.  The bomber was one of the terrorists released in exchange for hostages in 2025.

Sinatra was so loved in Israel that he appeared on this wrapper for bubble game manufactured by the Gamma company based in Tel Aviv in the early 1960s.  It is part of a series that depicts artists and athletes.  Beneath Sinatra’s picture is his name in Hebrew and his appearance in the movie A Hole in the Head which was released by United Artists in 1959  The movie introduced the song High Hopes that won an Academy Award that year and was used regularly in John F. Kennedy, Jr.’s 1960 Presidential Campaign.  

High Hopes is something we share for our community and for the State of Israel (whose national anthem is literally The Hope-Hatikvah).  Sinatra used his talents to help some of those High Hopes be realized.  Take a listen to the song and maybe it will inspire us all to do the same, despite the odds.  Sinatra did it in his way.  We can each do it in ours.

You can listen to High Hopes here:

To everyone in Israel, I know this is a difficult and stressful time.  If you have read this far in the article, I hope it has given you a few minutes of distraction and thoughts of something pleasant.  As Sinatra once said:  “The best revenge is massive success.”  Here’s hoping.  Our hearts are with all of you.  Be safe.

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For more treasures from the Herzl and Zionism Collection of David Matlow, which has appeared weekly in the Treasure Trove column in the Canadian Jewish News (www.thecjn.ca) since February 2021, see https://herzlcollection.com/treasure-trove

Treasure Trove is a program of The Herzl Project.