From the Archives: Sinatra Brings Mia to Abbott Boulevard

Fort Lee has a storied history in show business circles going back to the Vaudeville acts and later the Rock and Roll stars who appeared at Palisades Amusement Park (1898-1971), to of course the era of Fort Lee’s role as the first American film town with our many studios and stars, to the famous acts who played The Riviera Nightclub from 1931 through its closure on New Year’s Eve 1953. Among the many celebrities and talents that performed in Fort Lee’s Riviera Nightclub, by far the most remembered is that lad from nearby Hoboken,  Francis Albert Sinatra.

Frank Sinatra’s career it could be said was born from Hoboken to Englewood Cliffs and back to Fort Lee, a mere few miles in geography but the roads that led through these three communities bore a talent who would travel the world in song. 

Following Sinatra’s success with the Hoboken Four on Major Bowes Amateur Hour on national radio broadcasts, his next career move was to sing at The Rustic Cabin in Englewood Cliffs right up Lemoine Avenue on 9W – 754 Sylvan Avenue, the current location of an Exxon Gas Station. The importance of this location is that it is at The Rustic Cabin were bandleader Harry James discovered and hired Frank Sinatra in 1939.  Sinatra became a nationally known singer with Harry James and a short time later he joined the even more popular Tommy Dorsey Big Band.  However, Sinatra’s career began to suffer in the late 40's and early 50’s and his voice was almost silenced due to two throat hemorrhages.  MGM, his home studio, cut him loose and he was fired from his radio show.  Add on top of this his rocky relationship and marriage to the love of his life, sultry movie goddess Ava Gardner, and you can see all things looked bleak. 

Then luck broke Frank’s way as  against all odds he won the role he sought, that of Maggio in the classic 1953 film From Here to Eternity. His performance was spectacular and won him an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor that year. The comeback trail was complete when Sinatra rode down Fort Lee’s Hudson Terrace, just north of the George Washington Bridge, and pulled up to Bill Miller’s Riviera which sat majestically atop the Palisades.  Sinatra’s Riviera engagement ran from September 1-15, 1953. The performances included the Donn Arden Girls, Bud and CeCe Robinson, and the Pupi Campo and Walter Nye Orchestras.  Here’s the Variety review of Sinatra’s Riviera performance - and enjoy the show biz lingo of the era:

If carrying a torch, as most firstnighters suspected, is the key to the resounding click such as Frank Sinatra achieved on his opening last Tuesday night at Bill Miller's Riviera than every chirper, either sex, should see a man about a Diogenes... Sinatra culled the pashiest set of ballads out of Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart and the ASCAP catalog and hit the jackpot with a personal whammo such as few straight singers achieve.

The torcheroo, of course, stems from published reports about a lovers' spat between Mr. and Mrs. Sinatra, keyed to the just-returned-from-Europe-news "shots" of the "beautiful bride", Ava Gardner. Whether or not a staged romantic setting, as was the late George Evans' nifty builderupper for Frankie-boy as the swoonerata kid in the 1940s: It certainly registered with the Riviera rounders, who are more Serutan than bobbysox in the actuarial batting average.

By actual count, the swooner crooned 20 ballads and each pyramided to a boffola. In every respect: Sinatra was great, making a great comeback. He proved

[1] that he has long since proved himself not flash in the box

office,

[2] achieved a sonalog stature in repose, poise and personal

performance that comes to few singers,

[3] reincarnated the straight romantic singing style which, somehow, has left us, the just crooned at 'em: no gags or ad-libs, and

[4] gave new magic to the Hollywood hypo. As in the rarified celluloid days in picture still can do the trick.

"From Here To Eternity" is the answer. And it may even prove the bellwether for Sinatra's diskery comeback for the long absent from the jocks and jukes league. With the same authoritative nonchalence which has distinguished Sinatra over the years, this time he comes out, backed by a hand-picked special accomp group of eight including a femme violinist, with Bill Miller [no relation to the Riviera's boniface] at the ivories, and thrushes a cavalcade of past and present familiars. He has them against the damasks in no time. In the barn-like reaches of this cliffside roadhouse you could hear an orchestration drop. He sang with ease and charm, never reaching, only punctuating his stuff with musical cues to his special backstoppers, and only once utilizing a prop cup&saucer for "Coffee In Brazil."

He was a tour-de-force to delight the Brill Bldg. and Lindy set: his style of lyrical interpretation gave new values to the wordsmiths. Show Biz observers can't help be impressed that Gilbert & Sullivan have beaucoup Yank counterparts in effective wordage. Sinatra gave libretto values to the pops; the obvious absolute salute to a virtuoso of song.

Casual reprise of some of the titles reads like a Fire Dept road company of every torch and romantic ballad in the book, and Sinatra gave them new meanings as he uncorked "My Funny Valentine," "All Depends On You," "[I Bought You] Violets For Your Furs," "You Go To My Head," " You Can't Take That Away From Me," "My One And Only Love," "Spring Is Here," "Got A Crush On You," " Don't Worry 'Bout Me," "Autumn In New York," "One For The Road," "Someone To Watch Over Me," "World On A String," "All of Me," " Foggy Day In London Town," "Little Girl Blue," "You're The Top" among others.

It was a tour-de-force of unparalleled degree. He held the floor a solid 60 minutes and while he might and should cut 10 minutes there was no gainsaying the consistency of his socko. He's in for $10,000 a week, for two weeks, and both he and Bill Miller owe a lot to Harry Cohn for what the Columbia picture did for all concerned. Oh yes, he also sang "From Here To Eternity" and wisely sh-sh'd some exuberant bobbysoxers who squealed an occasional, "Oh Frankie."

Oh, and not to be forgotten, according to my friend the late, great Lou Gallo, one of the head waiters at The Riviera that night in 1951, the one thousand seat dining room was full of celebrities, so much so the house was at capacity and they had to turn away the biggest act in America, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.

So there’s the story, but not quite all of it as regards Fort Lee.  By the 1960’s Sinatra had bought a house on Fort Lee’s Abbott Boulevard for his mother Dolly and his father Marty.  He moved his parents a bit north of Hoboken into Fort Lee and truth be told visited them quite a lot. There is a story in fact by Fort Lee resident Tommy Bennett that when he worked for the Fort Lee Post Office with my dad they both happened to be in the long gone Frank’s Cozy Bar, across the street from the long gone Dairy Queen on Palisade Avenue. Here one afternoon while sitting at the bar with Marty Sinatra the door of the joint opened and sunlight sliced through the darkness of the saloon as a figure came in not wearing a halo but a fedora. Marty’s son, Frank, came by to see his dad and bought the house several rounds.

Probably Frank’s most documented visit to Fort Lee occurred in 1966 when he brought his new bride, actress Mia Farrow, to meet his parents at their Abbott Boulevard home. A friend of mine, the late Joe Licata, captured a photo of Frank and Mia in a car outside the house 47 years ago. So as we prepare for the summer wind to blow into Fort Lee let’s hope it carries with it the strains of a ballad by Sinatra, for along the riverfront communities of Hoboken, Fort Lee and Englewood Cliffs Sinatra’s career went from here to eternity.