Richard Shelton as Frank Sinatra. Photo Courtesy Richard Shelton
By Steve Simmons – published 11:31 p.m., Jan. 13, 2021
Richard Shelton is bringing Frank Sinatra back to Beverly Hills.
The award-winning British actor and singer will present a cabaret version of his hit show, Sinatra: RAW, at 8 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 16 as part of “The Sorting Room Sessions,” the Wallis Annenberg Center for Performing Arts’ nightclub series. (For details see below.)
Written and starring Shelton, the show imagines the iconic singer at his last intimate, pre-retirement show in Palm Springs before his first retirement in 1971, with a piano, his reminiscences and a bottle of Jack Daniels. “It has beautiful candid moments,” reports Shelton. “He’s saying goodbye to close friends.”
Creating A Hit
Shelton has a long association with the seminal singer. He first played Sinatra in Rat Pack Confidential in 2003 in London’s West End. He won acclaim and was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his portrayal in the Manchester Evening News Theatre Awards. Their “connection” grew, and he created one-man-shows-with-music, A Very Good Year in 2015 and Sinatra and Me in 2016.
“After those previous shows, I met with my UK manager about revisiting Sinatra in a darker place,” says Shelton, “that would let us see inside his mind. That give me the loose idea.”
In 2018, when he was performing at The Purple Room, tucked inside Palm Springs’ Club Trinidad Hotel, he learned from manager Michael Holmes, that Frank Sinatra had stood on the tiny supper club’s stage and sung In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning. Sinatra had split from Ava Gardner and was “not in a good place.
“People think the Rat Pack began in Vegas,” Shelton said, “but I learned that it was in this room.” Sinatra was singing songs from his watershed 1955 concept album, named after the David Mann and Bob Hilliard standard, with songs about loneliness, introspection, lost love, failed relationships, depression and night life. Arranger Nelson Riddle credited Sinatra’s loss of Gardner with his ability to personify the songs on the album, like When Your Lover Has Gone. Dean Martin was in the audience and he shouted for the singer to “cheer up and lighten the mood.” The two began a back-and-forth banter and that was the beginning of the act.
Finding The Story
“I came back to L.A.,” says Shelton, “and envisioned a play about a disillusioned Frank Sinatra. Through dialogue and song, It goes behind the blood-shot blue eyes to a man in his 50s, unmarried, and facing the ‘70s and changing musical tastes that were leaving him behind with the Rolling Stones and David Bowie dominating the charts, and facing mid-life redundancy and asking ‘where do I fit in.’” And while drinking and reminiscing he answers allegations about his womanizing, Mafia connections, electioneering and his white-hot love affair with Ava Gardner and how it broke him.
“We see a vulnerable, weakened, human side of him from a human perspective,” says Shelton. “by the time we get to My Way, you understand the man.
“And it’s beguiling to meet the man who is a lion and a champion and is in perfect vocal shape who’s proved so much and moved so many people,” says Shelton. In Shelton’s play with music, Sinatra remembers his upbringing in Hoboken, N.J., his parents, how he got started and “was someone who hated to be slighted. He recalls some bad memories and that feeds into a discussion of the Hollywood era and his relationship with the press that was not always favorable, especially with columnists like Dorothy Kilgallen and Hedda Hopper. “He may have been treated unfairly,” says Shelton “and gone through times of booze and depression, but at the end he shrugs it all off and says ‘That’s Life’ –‘You’re riding high in April, shot down in May.’ But in the end, he’s the common man, singing of a life well lived saying he did it, ‘My Way.
“People think celebrities have better lives with fewer problems, but we all have issues and face mortality and that makes this story interesting,” says Shelton. “He stood up for what he believed in and in painting an honest picture, he’s exposed. It’s respectful, but doesn’t shy away from the pain.”
The information-nugget hour-long show is the result of years of research, from published material, but Shelton is more interested in feelings and relationships. “I’ve tried to be meticulous, but I’m not a walking Frank Sinatra encyclopedia. I’m more interested in how he felt fighting for the role of Angelo Maggio in From Here to Eternity, having studios and record labels turn their backs on him and how working with Nelson Riddle was like a rebirth. I want to know how he reacted to events, rather than dry details.” One of the most common reactions he gets after the show is “I didn’t know that about him.”
The dialogue drives the music, Shelton says, and the show includes hits like One For My Baby, I’ve Got You Under My Skin and an acapella version of My Foolish Heart which Shelton says he sang to Gardner in her bungalow from his hotel balcony. And of course, In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning, that Sinatra allegedly recorded singing to a life-size photo of Gardner. She taught him how to sing a torch song, Riddle reportedly said.
I’m A Fool To Want You explains his love affair with Gardner, “that was thwarted like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton-and his vulnerability,” says Shelton. “It’s like a punch to the stomach and you can hear the audience gasp when he talks about something treacherous she did when she was pregnant with his child.”
Bringing It Home
The show debuted at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2018 where it was a sellout and he premiered it locally in 2019 for Treepeople at its Mark Taper Foundation Amphitheatre in Coldwater Canyon.
This specific performance was filmed especially for the Wallis in its Bram Goldsmith Theater in November. “There were eight cameras, and they were able to get up close and personal,” says Shelton. “The essence is intimacy, and the point is to be able to see the booze-fueled anger, behind the hurt. The ‘raw’ emotion and vulnerability that produces the beauty. We’re able to bring that to the forefront and that has been part of the journey.”
On the way to The Wallis in Beverly Hills to film, Sheldon drove down Foothill Road, past Sinatra’s last home. “I was one of the last people inside the home, through a fluke. I happened to drive past as they had just started to demolish it and I got to look around.”
Sinatra shows have taken Shelton all over the world. RAW drew sell-out crowds throughout the UK, London and Australia, where he won “Best Solo Performance” at the Adelaide Festival. “It’s been one help of a ride with Sinatra,” says Shelton. “We’ve gone global and it’s just wonderful.
An Actor’s Approach
For Shelton, the key to portraying the famed singer is “to know I can’t imitate him, but I can evoke him. “I completely let go of me and open myself up to the possibility of him. I channel him. I never allow myself to get in the way.”
Taking an actor’s approach when he first played Sinatra in Rat Pack Confidential, Shelton studied the singer’s facial expressions, how he moved, gestured, smoked and the inflection, resonance and clipped cadences of his voice.
This latest play is “a heavy drama and emotional journey,” Shelton says, “It’s very important for me to tell the truth, to help viewers and listeners understand what makes him tick; where was the joy and where was the pain.”
Another appeal of playing Sinatra, says Shelton, is that he was also an actor, someone who always believed that the lyrics come first. “When he interpreted lyrics like Come Fly With Me, you’re up there with him,” says Shelton, “it’s just so joyous. He lived the lyrics and that’s what makes songs like That’s Life, so moving. Singing it is intense and hard work, and you can’t show off.”
The reward of the show, Shelton says, “is leaving audiences exhausted, but euphoric. I think it ultimately makes them happy. It’s a great honor to have special connection with Frank Sinatra, and I’m respective of it.”
Connections
Over the years, Shelton has experienced unique experiences that reaffirm his connection to Sinatra.
After recording an album at Capitol Studios in L.A., he was invited to an industry event. He happened to meet a TV producer who was working on a reality TV show who told him about an antique store on Beachwood Drive that had come across one of Sinatra’s tuxedos. “I’d always dreamed of touching something that belonged to Sinatra, cuff links, a lighter, a wallet, anything.”
While doing Rat Pack Confidential, he learned he was the same height and weight as Sinatra, so trying on the suit, it “fit like a glove.”:
Shelton wore the tuxedo all over the world and when he encountered Roger Moore on a British talk show, Moore confirmed it was Sinatra’s garment. Moore told him that Sinatra had admired his clothes and asked who made them. Moore told him it was Saville Row tailor Cyril Castle, and they found the label in the jacket.
He has performed with musicians who worked with Sinatra including drummer Gregg Field, double bassist Chuck Berghofer and pianist Mike Lang, “It was intimidating and incredible. They told funny, heartwarming stories,” says Shelton. “They said he could be scary and you didn’t get in the way. But he had such respect for musicians.”
Then there are the coincidences. When he first visited Hollywood and visited the forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theater, his hand and footprints fit Sinatra’s exactly and the date the cement block was signed, was his birthday. When he was writing this show, instead of listening to BBC Radio 4 as usual, he happened to turn to Radio 2, which was devoting a two-hour block to Sinatra. “I took that as a sign.”
For now
After recording at Capitol again, he’s been perfecting and hoping to release his next album, “Lost And Found,” with some original material.
He’s been entertaining his Laurel Canyon neighbors with “Balcony Concerts” (available on YouTube) and featured on the BBC. And hoping to turn Sinatra:RAW into a screenplay.
Single Sorting Room Session on demand shows are $25 per household, for viewing on Smart TV, computer, smartphone or tablet. On demand purchase includes a 24-hour window of access from 8 p.m. the evening of the performance until 7:59 p.m. the following day. Tickets cannot be transferred or shared. Tickets may be purchased by visiting TheWallis.org/SR, by email at Tickets@TheWallis.org or by calling 310-746-4000 (weekdays, 9:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.).
