SAG-AFTRA

Special Edition 2018

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SAGAFTRA.org | Special Issue 2018 | SAG-AFTRA 96 O l' Blue Eyes. The Chairman of the Board. The Voice. They all meant Frank Sinatra. From the late 1930s, when his career began, until his death in 1998 at age 82, Sinatra achieved it all as singer and actor — worldwide fame, fortune, awards. But there was a caring side to this tough, complex and sometimes controversial man of which few fans were aware: his humanitarian activities and life-long fight against prejudice and discrimination — in and out of the entertainment industry. Never passive about anything, including his dislike of racial prejudice, in 1945 Sinatra addressed students at New York City's Benjamin Franklin High, where a race riot had broken out between Italian-American and African- American students. He followed with a trip to a Gary, Indiana, high school where white students were striking to keep black students segregated. The Pittsburgh Courier, an African-American newspaper, praised Sinatra's actions in a Nov. 10, 1945, editorial: "We do not usually associate people of the theatrical profession and night club world with the struggle for human rights for full equality and for human dignity, but Frank Sinatra, the singer, makes us change our minds … Although the public sentiment in Gary seemed to be with the striking students who were egged on by vicious adults, Frank Sinatra did not hesitate to hurry to the Indiana city to do what he could to better race relations … there should be an annual award, similar to the Springarn Medal, for such fine … people who go out of their way to fight the vicious forces which bring discredit upon our land." Twenty-seven years later, he received a different annual award: the SAG Life Achievement Award, then named the Annual Screen Actors Guild Award, "for Outstanding Achievement in Fostering the Finest Ideals of the Acting Profession." An ear infection kept Sinatra from accepting the award at the Guild's annual meeting, on Nov. 19, 1972, at the Hollywood Palladium, but SAG President John Gavin read praise of the still-secret recipient from the recent Congressional Record. The Record declared, in part: "The man is a master of the performing arts, a man of deep feeling, a man who in a thousand silent acts has worked to better the lives of those around him … he has been, in a sense, legendary in his good deeds. He has been particularly generous to persons whom he has never even met … the widow of a policeman who was killed in Latin America will have financial security for the rest of her life as a result of what he did for her. He had never known her but was moved by reading about her plight in the newspaper." Gavin apologized that the recipient could not attend, then revealed "The award, this year, goes to Frank Sinatra" as the members rose with loud applause. Even in absentia, Sinatra got a standing ovation. 1. The Frank Sinatra Show debuted on CBS Oct. 7, 1950, and ran until 1952; 2. Oct. 2, 1946: Sinatra was among more than 3,000 SAG members, including Marlene Dietrich and Red Skelton, attending a special SAG meeting at the Hollywood Legion Stadium. Members voted to cross Conference of Studio Unions picket lines, 2,748 "yes" to 509 "no," in what had been declared a jurisdictional strike with the IATSE by the Los Angeles Central Labor Council; 3. Sept. 13, 1946: Sinatra at MGM Studios, where he was filming It Happened in Brooklyn, with set visitor Chung Liao Feng. Feng served as Chinese language interpreter during World War II for the Screen Actors Guild's general counsel Laurence W. Beilenson, who brought him to the set.

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