Francis Albert Sinatra was born on December 12, 1915, in an upstairs tenement at 415 Monroe Street in Hoboken, New Jersey, the only child of Italian immigrants Natalina “Dolly” Garaventa and Antonino Martino “Marty” Sinatra, who boxed under the name Marty O’Brien. Sinatra weighed 13.5 pounds (6.1 kg) at birth and had to be delivered using forceps, which caused severe scarring to his left cheek, neck, and ear, as well as perforating his eardrum, which left him permanently damaged.
When he was unconscious, his grandmother resuscitated him by running cold water over him until he gasped his first breath. His baptism at Hoboken’s St. Francis Church wasn’t until April 2, 1916, as a result of birth injuries.
A childhood mastoid bone procedure left him with significant scarring on his neck, and teenage cystic acne left him with more scarring on his face and neck. Sinatra was brought up in a Catholic home.
Who is Frank Sinatra’s wife Ava Gardner?
Gardner, a farmer’s daughter who rose to stardom in Hollywood, eventually relocated to London following her divorce from Sinatra. She married three times in her life: first to Mickey Rooney from 1942 to 1943, then to bandleader Artie Shaw from 1945 to 1946, and finally to Sinatra.
Sinatra’s mother was energetic and driven, and biographers believe she was a major influence in her son’s personality traits and self-confidence development. Sinatra’s fourth wife Barbara would later claim that Dolly was abusive to him when he was a child, and “knocked him around a lot”.
Dolly rose to prominence in Hoboken and within the local Democratic Party. She worked as a midwife, earning $50 for each delivery, and according to Sinatra biographer Kitty Kelley, also ran an illegal abortion service that catered to Italian Catholic girls, for which she was nicknamed “Hatpin Dolly”. She was also fluent in several languages and worked as a local interpreter.
