Frank Sinatra - The Capitol Collector's Series (1989)

“You only live once, but if you do it the way I do, that’s enough,” said Frank Sinatra, one of the most influential singers of the twentieth century. He drank and flirted a lot, often behaved obnoxiously, and had constant outbursts of anger, yet he conquered the greatest beauties of the American entertainment industry, from Ava Gardner to Lauren Bacall to Judy Garland. However, Marilyn Monroe ultimately did not give in.

Frank Sinatra was not an easy case: he was famously obnoxious and liked to confront anyone, be it colleagues, hotel or restaurant staff. “You always felt in danger around Frank,” said his fourth and last wife, Barbara Marx.

In a 1963 interview with Playboy, the singer openly admitted to his manic depression, which famous artists such as Sinéad O'Connor, who is famous for her recent scandals, Robin Williams, Amy Winehouse, Ernest Hemingway, Kurt Cobain or Marilyn Monroe, who he even proposed to a year before her death, but the blonde actress turned him down. However, Sinatra wanted to save the declining sex bomb with marriage. He failed.

The party-loving Sinatra was otherwise a restless figure, a perfectionist in his work, and an insomniac who rarely went to bed before dawn. During his life, he had four wives and, thanks to his affairs, consumed many more women besides them - not to mention industrial quantities of whiskey.

The FBI monitored him for nearly five decades, starting in the 1940s, during which time almost 2,500 pages of records were made about him. This was primarily due to his connection with the Italian mafia, as Sinatra had good relations with several mobsters. He was also a friend of the infamous Pablo Escobar. The cocaine baron's son, Sebastian Marroquín, recently claimed that the singer was more of a dealer than a musician, and that drugs were flowing into Miami nightclubs through him. Although the boy has no evidence, he gave his word of honor that the information was authentic. Incidentally, the singer himself once admitted that if he had not started making music, he would certainly have embarked on a path of crime.

Perhaps it was thanks to his affinity for the Italian mafia that he became famous for his impeccable sense of style, which was evident not only on stage but also in his private life. He believed that appearing in nice clothes meant respect for the audience.

The centenary of Sinatra’s birth also has a domestic dimension: on the occasion of the centenary, the Hungarian Post Office launched a commemorative stamp (200 forints face value) paying tribute to the singer, but it was offered on envelopes that did not show the musician, but rather his contemporary Fred Astaire, despite the fact that Sinatra’s name and the years of his birth and death were visible underneath. After the bug was discovered, the unsold copies (about five hundred were sold from May to October) were withdrawn from circulation.

The singer, known as Hang, suffered a heart attack in May 1998 by the pool next to their Beverly Hills home, where he was sitting in a wheelchair, and then died in the hospital next to his wife at the age of 82. His last words were: “I lost.” The day after his death, the Empire State Building's lights turned blue, the Las Vegas Strip went dark, and local casinos fell silent for a few minutes.

The beloved star was buried with a can of Camel, a bottle of Jack Daniel's, a Zippo lighter, and some candy. "I'm going to live until I die," he had previously said.