Nancy Sinatra

• 1. Introduction

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  In 1965, Nancy Sinatra had no hit in the United States, and her record label was on the verge of dropping her. The label belonged to her father. She was an American singer, actress, film producer, and author, yet at home she had nothing to show for it. Then, in early 1966, she had a transatlantic number-one hit with "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'." This documentary asks what changed. Who rebuilt her sound, and what did he tell her to do differently? What happened when she recorded a duet with her famous father? How did a pop song find its way into a war? And what advice from her father shaped who controls her recordings today?

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• 2. A Sinatra Childhood

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  Nancy Sandra Sinatra was born on the 8th of June 1940 in Jersey City, New Jersey. She was the eldest of three children born to Frank Sinatra and his first wife, Nancy Barbato. Both parents were of Italian ancestry. When she was a toddler, the family moved to Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey. They later settled in Toluca Lake, California, to suit her father's Hollywood career. There she spent many years taking piano, dance, and dramatic performance lessons, along with months of voice training.

  Jill St. John shared an elementary-school classroom with Nancy and later dated her father. Nancy graduated from University High School in Los Angeles in June 1958. In the late 1950s she also studied music, dancing, and voice at UCLA, but she dropped out after a single year.

  In November 1957, Nancy made her professional debut on her father's ABC variety series, The Frank Sinatra Show. In 1960 she appeared on his television special The Frank Sinatra Timex Show: Welcome Home Elvis. The program celebrated Elvis Presley's return from Europe after his discharge from military service. Nancy was sent to the airport on her father's behalf to greet Presley when his plane landed. On the special, she and her father danced and sang a duet, "You Make Me Feel So Young/Old."

  In 1961, she signed to her father's label, Reprise Records. Her first single, "Cuff Links and a Tie Clip," went largely unnoticed. Her later singles did chart, but only in Europe and Japan. Her marriage to Tommy Sands, which began in 1960, ran until 1965 and ended in divorce.

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• 3. Sing for the Truckers

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  "You can't sing like Nancy Nice Lady anymore. You have to sing for the truckers." Songwriter Lee Hazlewood is said to have given her that instruction while they recorded "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'." Hazlewood had been making records for 10 years, notably with Duane Eddy. He came into her career because Frank Sinatra asked him to help boost his daughter's prospects. She later described him as "part Henry Higgins and part Sigmund Freud."

  Hazlewood had her sing in a lower key and crafted songs to suit her. Her look changed as well. The overhaul brought bleached-blond hair, frosted lips, heavy eye makeup, and Carnaby Street fashions. Together, the new voice and new image made her mark on both the American and British music scenes.

  The title "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" was inspired by a line from Robert Aldrich's 1963 Western comedy 4 for Texas. That film starred Dean Martin and her father. Hazlewood wrote the song, as he did many of her hits. Billy Strange served as arranger and conductor on all of her 1960s hits, including this one.

  The record earned three nominations at the 9th Annual Grammy Awards. Two were for Sinatra and one was for Strange. It sold more than one million copies and was awarded a gold disc. A promotional television clip showed her in high boots beside colorfully dressed go-go dancers. That clip is now treated as a defining picture of the Swinging Sixties.

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• 4. The Hit Parade Years

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  Between early 1966 and early 1968, Nancy Sinatra placed 14 titles on Billboard's Hot 100. Ten of them reached the Top 40. Two songs from 1966 broke into the Top Ten. "How Does That Grab You, Darlin'?" reached number seven. "Sugar Town" reached number five and became her second million-seller.

  "Friday's Child" climbed to number 36 in 1966. In 1967, "Love Eyes" reached number 15 and "Lightning's Girl" reached number 24. She closed out that year with "Tony Rome," the title track from a detective film starring her father. It peaked at number 83. Her first solo single of 1968, the wistful "100 Years," reached number 69.

  That same year, she recorded "Highway Song" for European markets. Kenny Young wrote it and Mickie Most produced it. The song reached the Top 20 in the United Kingdom and in other European countries.

  In April 1967, "Somethin' Stupid" went to number one in both the US and the UK. It was a ballad sung with her father, and it spent nine weeks at the top of Billboard's easy listening chart. Disc jockeys nicknamed it "the incest song," because the two sang it as if they were lovers. The record earned a Grammy nomination for Record of the Year at the 10th Annual Grammy Awards. It became her third million-selling record. No other father-daughter duet has reached number one in the United States.

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• 5. Nancy and Lee

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  "Summer Wine" began life as the B-side of "Sugar Town." It was the first of many duets Sinatra cut with Hazlewood, whose husky voice and country-and-western leanings played against hers. Their biggest hit was a cover of the 1963 country song "Jackson." It peaked at number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1967. Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash had scored a country hit with their own version just a few months earlier.

  In December 1967, the pair released "Some Velvet Morning," which reached number 26 in the US. A promotional clip accompanied it. The record is regarded as one of pop's more unusual singles. Critic Cathi Unsworth wrote, "The puzzle of its lyrics and otherworldly beauty of its sound offer seemingly endless interpretations." The British broadsheet The Daily Telegraph placed it at the top of its 2003 list of the 50 best duets ever. "Somethin' Stupid" ranked 27th on the same list.

  The song appeared on their 1968 album Nancy & Lee. In 2017, National Public Radio called its sly, sultry movements "a gem of traditional '60s pop" and an inversion of traditional conceptions of romance.

  Her 1966 cover of the Cher hit "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" was never released as a single. It found a second life in 2005, when the Audio Bullys sampled it for "Shot You Down," a UK number three. In 1971, she and Hazlewood had their first collaborative success on the UK singles chart. "Did You Ever?" reached number two.

  In 1972, a Swedish documentary called Nancy and Lee in Las Vegas filmed their concerts at the Riviera Hotel and Casino. It mixed solo numbers, duets, and behind-the-scenes footage. It also included scenes of Sinatra's mother and her husband, Hugh Lambert. The film did not appear until 1975.

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• 6. A Bond Theme and a War

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  "Scared to death" is how Sinatra described her feelings about recording the theme to the James Bond film You Only Live Twice in 1967. She said so in the liner notes to the CD reissue of her 1966 album Nancy In London. She even asked the songwriters, Leslie Bricusse and John Barry, "Are you sure you don't want Shirley Bassey?"

  There are two versions of the theme. One is lushly orchestrated and plays over the film's opening and closing credits. The other is more guitar-heavy and appeared on a double A-sided single with "Jackson." On the American chart, the Bond theme stalled at number 44. In the UK, "Jackson" and "You Only Live Twice" did better, reaching number 11 during a 19-week run in the Top 50. The record ranked 70th on the year-end chart.

  In 1966 and 1967, Sinatra traveled to Vietnam to perform for American troops. Many soldiers adopted "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" as their anthem. Pierre Schoendoerffer's 1967 documentary The Anderson Platoon shows this. Stanley Kubrick later reprised the idea in a scene in Full Metal Jacket in 1987.

  She also recorded several antiwar songs. "My Buddy" appeared on her album Sugar. "Home" was co-written by Mac Davis. "It's Such a Lonely Time of Year" appeared on the 1968 LP The Sinatra Family Wish You a Merry Christmas. A 1988 episode of the television show China Beach recreated her Vietnam concerts. She still performs for charitable causes that support Vietnam veterans, including Rolling Thunder.

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• 7. Screens Big and Small

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  In 1963, Sinatra played a secretary in the Burke's Law episode "Who Killed Wade Walker?" The following year she starred in two beach party films, For Those Who Think Young and Get Yourself a College Girl. In 1966 she made a third, The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, and performed songs in it.

  She also secured a role in Beach Blanket Bingo, a part that eventually went to Linda Evans. She withdrew because her character is kidnapped. Her brother, Frank Sinatra Jr., had been kidnapped in December 1963, and the parallel felt too close.

  In 1965, she appeared with Woody Allen on the game show Password. That same year, she and her father played a fictional father and daughter in the comedy Marriage on the Rocks. In 1966, she played herself in The Oscar. She also starred in The Last of the Secret Agents?, singing its title song. That year she co-starred with Peter Fonda in Roger Corman's biker-gang movie The Wild Angels. Her final film was the 1968 Elvis Presley musical comedy Speedway.

  On television, she appeared on The Virginian, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. She was on The Kraft Music Hall, hosted by Sandler & Young. She also joined her father's 1966 special A Man and His Music - Part II. In 1967, she took part in a Christmas-themed episode of The Dean Martin Show featuring the Sinatra and Martin families.

  NBC aired her own special, Movin' with Nancy, in 1967. Lee Hazlewood appeared, along with her father, Rat Pack friends Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr., and her brother. West Side Story dancer David Winters choreographed it. Jack Haley Jr. directed and produced, and he won an Emmy for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Music or Variety at the 20th Primetime Emmy Awards. Winters was nominated for his choreography but lost to the co-winners The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and The Jackie Gleason Show.

  During the special, Sinatra kissed Davis. She has said, "The kiss was one of the first interracial kisses seen on television and it caused some controversy then, and now. But contrary to some inaccurate online reports, the kiss was unplanned and spontaneous." The special was sponsored by RC Cola.

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• 8. Owning the Masters

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  In 1971, after leaving Reprise the year before, Sinatra signed with RCA Records. The deal produced three albums, including Nancy & Lee Again and Woman. In 1973 she released the non-album single "Sugar Me," backed with "Ain't No Sunshine." Lynsey De Paul and Barry Blue wrote "Sugar Me." It later resurfaced on her 1998 album How Does It Feel?, alongside other covers of early-1970s songwriters.

  By 1975, she was releasing singles on Private Stock Records. They included "Kinky Love," "Annabell of Mobile," "It's for My Dad," and "Indian Summer" with Hazlewood. Some radio stations banned "Kinky Love" for its suggestive lyrics. Pale Saints covered it in 1991. By the mid-1970s she had slowed her musical activity and stopped acting to concentrate on her family.

  Her second marriage, to Hugh Lambert, ran from 1970 until his death in 1985. They had two daughters, Angela Jennifer "AJ" Lambert Paparozzi and Amanda Catherine Lambert Erlinger. Frank Sinatra's will left each granddaughter US$1 million, in a trust fund started in 1983. Between marriages, Nancy was engaged to producer Jack Haley Jr., who later married Liza Minnelli. She also dated Michael Caine and Phil Spector. She lived with architect David Clinton, who designed and built both of her Beverly Hills homes.

  In 1981, she returned to the studio to record the country album Mel & Nancy with Mel Tillis. "Texas Cowboy Night" reached number 23 on the Billboard country chart, and "Play Me or Trade Me" reached number 43. In 1985, she wrote the book Frank Sinatra, My Father.

  In May 1995, at 54, she posed for Playboy and promoted her album One More Time on television. The photos caused some controversy. On The Tonight Show, she told Jay Leno that her daughters approved, while her mother said she should ask her father first. When she told her father what Playboy would pay, he said, "Double it." The same year she wrote Frank Sinatra, An American Legend, and she updated it in 1998 after his death.

  She also took her father's advice to own her masters. She now owns or holds an interest in most of her material, including videos. In August 2002, she played a sold-out, one-off concert at the Edinburgh International Festival. The BBC filmed it, and it later aired on BBC Four.

  In 2004, she recorded a version of "Let Me Kiss You" with her former Los Angeles neighbor Morrissey. It reached number 46 in the UK, her first hit in more than 30 years. The album Nancy Sinatra featured songs written for her by artists who have cited her as an influence. They included U2, Sonic Youth, Calexico, Pete Yorn, Jon Spencer, Jarvis Cocker of Pulp, and Steven Van Zandt.

  A Golden Palm Star in Palm Springs was dedicated to her in 2002. On the 11th of May 2006, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She appeared as herself in the HBO mob drama The Sopranos, in the episode "Chasing It." Her brother had appeared in the 2000 episode "The Happy Wanderer."

  She holds progressive positions on political issues, including women's rights, healthcare, and reversing climate change. In 2012, when SAG and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists merged into SAG-AFTRA, she joined a group of actors who sued to overturn the merger. They claimed the election was improper. The plaintiffs dropped the lawsuit several months later.

  Her digital-only album Cherry Smiles: The Rare Singles arrived in 2009. In 2013 she released Shifting Gears, with 15 previously unreleased tracks. Its orchestral parts were recorded in the 1970s while she toured with a 40-piece orchestra. Her vocals were added within 10 years of the album's release. In 2017, H&M used her duet "Summer Wine" in its Summer Shop advertising campaign.

  In October 2020, she and Light in the Attic Records announced the Nancy Sinatra Archival Series. Its first release was a vinyl single pairing the Hazlewood duets "Some Velvet Morning" and "Tired of Waiting for You." A 23-track compilation, Start Walkin' 1965-1976, followed in February 2021. Her debut album, Boots, was reissued on the 17th of September 2021. A 25-song set, Keep Walkin': Singles, Demos & Rarities 1965-1978, came out digitally on the 29th of September 2023. On the 2nd of November 2023, she took part in her first YouTube live chat.

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