I didn't like Sinatra as a kid of the sixties, he was my parents' star. I never appreciated his style of acting, it seemed too damn smug. I never understood the folks my age who would listen to Sinatra for hours. I always thought The Chairman was vaguely scary. All that said, this is just about the best damn documentary I have ever seen. Framed by songs from Frank's first "retirement" in 1971, it combines voice-overs by friends and family with fantastic film clips and pictures from the 60'a and 70's and beyond. For somebody who lived through this era, even if you never liked the guy this is a great walk down memory lane. And love, like or hate him, Frank led one driven, distinctive and fascinating life from beginning to end. Very highly recommended.

The big question about this tele-biography was whether it would be a balanced overview of Frank Sinatra and his career, or just a fawning snow job.

Now in me, you have a person who has, I think, a somewhat balanced view of Sinatra. I neither love nor hate him. I have all of his Reprise studio recordings and many of his Capitol albums…the good, the bad, and the ugly. And make no mistake, for a while in the early Reprise years many of Sinatra's recordings are probably the best versions of those songs – both in terms of his vocals and the arrangements – ever recorded. His concept albums for Capitol were groundbreaking. On the other hand, during the Reprise years you have recordings such as "Everybody's Twistin'" and "Life's A Trippy Thing". And, since Frank was totally in control during the Reprise years, there was no one else to blame. I look at his performance in "The Joker's Wild" and can't think of many actors who have ever turned in a better performance. And then there were some of the later films when he just didn't seem to care much. He was a flop on early television, but his 1960s specials were "cherce". So, I can admire much of what Frank Sinatra accomplished. He made a difference in popular music. But when it comes to the kind of man he was, well...my 100th birthday gift is to not finish that sentence.

Some of what is said in the program doesn't seem to match with accounts which have been presented in the past. For example, in talking about the Capitol years they indicate Sinatra was in total control. Really? Then why quit Capitol to form Reprise, which at the time he said gave him artistic freedom? Where is the story of "dropping" Peter Lawford for the Kennedy incident? Dropping Joey Bishop? Having a long-term falling out with Dean Martin? Oh, conveniently omitted. The whole mob issue is brought up, but sort of dismissed as the mob did it and the Kennedy's did it, but Sinatra and his friends did everything out of the goodness of their hearts. And, in my view, far too much credit is given to Sinatra and friends for the election of John Kennedy.

I didn't have high hopes for this television broadcast when I learned that it was produced by Frank Sinatra Enterprises. Much of the story here is told by Frank himself (in old interviews) and Nancy Sinatra and Frank Jr. After all, Frank thought he was wonderful, Nancy always fawned over her father, and, while Frank Jr. is a bit more balanced, it's almost always pretty positive. Even when the criticism during the war years is brought up (for example),it's within the context of how unfair some people were being to Sinatra. So, make no mistake, this is no penetrating, balanced biography. It should have been entitled "A Love Letter To Frank Sinatra".

That's not to say it doesn't have something worthwhile of your time. You'll see film here you will probably never see again. It's comprehensive, if not objective. It's almost as if Sinatra was the only singer, the only actor, the only nightclub performer. He was big, but he was not alone. There was Cole, Crosby, Como, and many more. Frankly, the program couldn't have been more positive toward Sinatra if Sinatra had written it himself.

Well, happy birthday, Mr. Sinatra. Your bio reminded me of all the reasons I admired so much of your work...and some of the reasons I didn't really like you as a person. I guess that's a very special way of appreciating you -- it's not easy to dislike someone personally, but buy almost all of their albums, watch all of their television specials, and go see most of their movies. Yup, you were very a very talented man.

Sinatra was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, at a time when Hoboken was the punch line of a joke, full of working men's saloons with sawdust floors, ethnically diverse -- blacks, Italians, Irish, and Jews. (Now it's a gentrified Yuppie paradise.) He worked his way up to lead singer with some big bands of the period -- Tommy Dorsey and Harry James -- before striking out on his own. He was picked up by MGM and made a few musicals for them. During the war years, he was a phenomenon of vernacular culture. We haven't seen anything like it recently, not since the Beatles and, before them, Elvis Presley. The skinny Sinatra and his bow ties were parodied in cartoons of the time, but it drove the adolescent girls wild.

After the war his career slumped, as careers will, and he took to boozing it up. His movies were flops. Until "From Here to Eternity" which brought him back to the top, chairman of the board, and he turned into the epitome of swinghood. Pals with Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, Dean Martin, and others, his lingo entered the lexicon: "Ain't that a kick in the head?", "What a gas!", "Ring-a-ding-ding." And he more or less stayed there for the rest of his life.

The documentary is pretty comprehensive. We hear from his friends, his arrangers, and his ex wives. On the audio clips, his voice sounds more Hoboken than it does in his movies or public appearances. He speaks at a quicker pace and curses freely. There are extensive clips from a TV interview with Walter Cronkite. Taken together, they present an image of a down-to-earth singer with a humanitarian streak. He was anti-racist and anti-anti-Semitic. He did more than accept Jews. He ADMIRED them a great deal.

At 240 minutes, one is tempted to say there is nothing left to learn about the man. Except that there is. He was everything the film tells us he was, but he was also a man of immense ego. The film tells us that, yes, he palled around with Sam Giancanna but it doesn't tell us who Sam Giancanna was besides a good golfing buddy. The guy was a big-time mobster and murderer at a time when the Mafia had clout enough to sort of lean an election in John F. Kennedy's favor.

The word "bodyguard" appears nowhere, yet after becoming a powerful figure Sinatra was ordinarily accompanied by a couple of men the size of small mountains,. There are numerous anecdotes of people who fell afoul of Sinatra for virtually no reason. In his book, "Games People Play," Eric Berne describes an incident in which he found himself at some kind of girly show next to Sinatra's table. He leaned over and jokingly remarked, "I see you're as much a lecher as I am." Moments later, one of the mountain men approached Berne and asked if he would like to have to face rearranged. Peter Lawford received an angry night-time phone call accusing him of dating one of Sinatra's girls, which wasn't true, but it was no use for Crawford to deny it. He was out of the Rat Pack forever.

There is no clip of him being called before a congressional investigating committee and snarling back at them, "I am not a second-class citizen!" I was surprised that there wasn't more material on Sinatra's early years with the big bands. He evidently got along fine with Harry James but Dorsey treated him like a tool. And Sinatra's extra-marital love life isn't brought up -- Juliet Prowse and the rest. It must have been like a merry-go-round with a giant calliope pumping away in the background.

Personally, I always admired his voice, at least until he began to croak with age and was unable to hit the right note. I don't blame him for the condition, but he seemed not to recognize that he could no longer sing. I was never in his thrall but I learned something from listening to the orchestral arrangements behind his voice. It takes more talent to write and play music than it does to sing pop songs.

On the whole, I think the film does for Sinatra's personality what Sinatra's mob connections did for JFK. But, one thing -- it's never dull.