From Warner Home Entertainment:
The new DVD collections and their titles are Frank Sinatra: The Golden Years with Sinatra's Oscar® -nominated performance in The Man with the Golden Arm, along with None but the Brave, Some Came Running, The Tender Trap and Marriage on the Rocks. Frank Sinatra: The Early Years features Double Dynamite, Higher and Higher, Step Lively, It Happened in Brooklyn and The Kissing Bandit.
Frank and his boys get the high-end treatment with The Rat Pack Ultimate Collector's Edition containing Robin and the Seven Hoods, Ocean's Eleven, 4 For Texas and the first ever home video release of MGM's Sergeants 3. The UCE will feature exclusive behind-the-scenes photo cards; rare correspondence from the Warner Bros. Archives; cool Rat Pack playing cards available only in the collection; a 24-page reproduction of the original 1960's Ocean's Eleven press book. The UCE includes a free movie poster offer for all four films.
Also debuting is a two-disc DVD of Sinatra, the CBS-TV mini-series which was critically acclaimed as a ratings hit and won the 1993 Golden Globe for "Best Made-for-TV Movie."Executive produced by Tina Sinatra and starring Phill ip Casnoff (in a Golden Globe ® nominated performance) with Frank's original tracks, the two-disc edition covers 20-years of Sinatra's life beginning with his Hoboken, New Jersey boyhood through his 1974 return from retirement.
The celebration continues with the newly-designed box set The Frank Sinatra & Gene Kelly Collection which features 'the Crooner' and 'the Hoofer' in such hit films as On the Town, Take Me Out To The Ballgame and Anchors Aweigh . Special features include interviews with William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, outtakes and When the Lion Roars documentary.
About Frank:
A beloved entertainer for six decades, Sinatra's achievements earned him three Oscars, three Golden Globes (including the Cecile B. DeMille Award), 10 personal Grammys (and a total of 21 including those for his albums), four Emmy nominations, a Peabody and recognition at the Kennedy Center Honors in 1983. A generous charitable contributor, one of his most prestigious awards was the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1971.
Francis Albert Sinatra was born on December 12, 1915 in Hoboken , New Jersey . (It is interesting to note that the city's post office was renamed in his honor in 2002). Dreaming of becoming the next Bing Crosby, he quit high school at age 15 to pursue a singing career. By the early '40s, Sinatra was enjoying a thriving solo career, thanks to his first hit, " All or Nothing at All, " and the adoration of hordes of screaming teenage "bobby soxers."
Appearing in a total of 58 films, Sinatra's first movie appearances were as a singer with the Tommy Dorsey band in Las Vegas Nights ( 1941) and Ship Ahoy (1943 ) . His acting debut, however, came in 1943 in Higher and Higher which was followed by Step Lively and Anchors Aweigh , the first of three movies in which he played Gene Kelly's sidekick. He went on to star with Kelly in On the Town in 1949. Sinatra first proved himself to be a major dramatic actor with his Academy Award-winning performance in From Here to Eternity and his Oscar-nominated turn in The Man With the Golden Arm.
Sinatra's musical career was revived after he signed with Capitol Records, and he later formed his own Reprise label. Having recorded more than 1,800 songs in his career, with a dozen of his albums achieving one of the top three spots on Billboard's charts, Sinatra was definitely "A - number 1, Top of the Heap."
In the early '60s, Sinatra made his Las Vegas debut at the Sands Hotel and continued for years as a main attraction at Caesars Palace , along with the infamous "Rat Pack."
Frank Sinatra was married four times -- to Nancy Barbato (with whom he had three children, Frank, Jr., Nancy and Tina); actresses Ava Gardner, Mia Farrow and Barbara Marx.
Sinatra died of a heart attack on May 14, 1998 at age 82. His tombstone reads, "The best is yet to come."
