How did Frank Sinatra get his scars?
Frank Sinatra may be the ultimate icon of boomer music, but you only have to scratch the surface to find some very real edge under that Matinée idol smile.
Even selected parts of his music are a lot more interesting than most give it credit for. Sure, most of it is fairly standard big band schmaltz, but his 1970 record Watertown is a devastating concept album. 1955’s In the Wee Small Hours is as desolate and bleak as any Scott Walker record from the following decade. Sinatra was as much a pop creation as any teeny bop act of the era, the records he had to keep pumping out would obscure these achievements. However, they’re there if you know where to look.
This goes beyond his music and to the thing that was just as responsible for making him a superstar as his golden voice, his face. Sinatra was always a looker, yet there was an aspect of his appearance that caused him great consternation for pretty much his entire life.
So much so that they’re difficult to see in any professional photo of him. Partly due to the fact that he often refused to be photographed on the side of his face they were on and parly because, when they were visible, they were caked in enough makeup to drown a cat.
Yes, Sinatra had large, pronounced scars on the left side of his face. The kind that went all the way up to his cauliflowered left ear. They were so pronounced that his childhood nickname on the streets of Hoboken, New Jersey, was ‘Scarface’. I bet many times he wished that nickname had come from his infamous (and very legitimate) connections to the mob, but now, the truth is a lot less cool, but in a strange way, just as dangerous.
The truth is that ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ was a huge baby. That’s not metaphorical or anything, when he was born, he was absolutely massive. Spare a thought for Dolly Sinatra because her only child came into her life weighing 13 pounds… That’s the same weight as an average bowling ball, which obviously meant that Sinatra’s birth was a complicated one that soon looked more like battlefield surgery than any birth we’d know today.
Sinatra was eventually delivered via the use of forceps, which cut open the newborn’s face and caused severe scarring to his left cheek, neck and ear. The damage went even further than that, perforating his eardrum and being the reason for Sinatra’s lifelong battle with hearing loss. These injuries were so bad that his baptism had to be delayed for months, and considering he was born into a devout Roman Catholic family, that’s something that wouldn’t have been done unless it was absolutely necessary.
This wouldn’t be the last time that he’d suffer noticeable scarring, either, as later on in his childhood, he needed surgery on his mastoid bone – this left even more scarring on his neck than his birth had left him with… Combine all that with a rough bout with acne as an adolescent, and there were periods of Sinatra’s life where he looked more like Freddie Krueger than the ultimate showman we know today. Yet despite all that, Sinatra became one of the most desired people of his generation.
He may be the icon of a bygone era, but there’s still so much that’s genuinely fascinating about Sinatra, no matter how many times you’ve heard ‘My Way’ belted out by your uncle while he’s three sheets to the wind.