# Frank Sinatra 4F Status **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [February 11, 2015, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frank-sinatra-4f-status/712352 "2015-02-11T00:36:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![spike100](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a3d4f5/32.png) [@spike100](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spike100)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frank-sinatra-4f-status/712352/1 "2015-02-11T00:36:59Z")
Sinatra was born at home by his grandmother, not by a doctor as is stated on your site. He almost died, he was born not breathing and she held him under running cold water till he finally cried. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frank-sinatra-4f-status/712352/2 "2015-02-11T01:06:48Z")
Sung to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frank-sinatra-4f-status/712352/3 "2015-02-11T01:17:10Z")
I’m pretty sure nobody was suggesting drafting him that day. They gave him time to recover. ---
**Author:** ![Kenm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bc79bd/32.png) [@Kenm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kenm)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frank-sinatra-4f-status/712352/4 "2015-02-11T01:51:36Z")
[**He was 4-H**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAEUWL76ww0). ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frank-sinatra-4f-status/712352/5 "2015-02-11T02:16:40Z")
Where “on your site” here does it say anything about Sinatra’s birth? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frank-sinatra-4f-status/712352/6 "2015-02-11T03:37:34Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Where “on your site” here does it say anything about Sinatra’s birth? [Why didn’t Frank Sinatra serve in the military during World War II?](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1707/why-didnt-frank-sinatra-serve-in-the-military-during-world-war-ii) ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frank-sinatra-4f-status/712352/7 "2015-02-11T03:55:44Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Where “on your site” here does it say anything about Sinatra’s birth? > [@](#): > > The truth is that Frank tried to sign up and was rejected from the military with a 4F listing - medical ineligibility. Turns out skinny little Frank was a big ol’ baby, weighing in at 13.5 pounds. The doctor had to pull him out with forceps, in the process puncturing his eardrum and almost tearing off the left half of his face. Oddly enough, [both the OP and the column are correct](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1324975/Frank-Sinatras-definitive-biography-tells-mother-ambition-drove-stardom.html). > [@](#): > > On A raw December afternoon in 1915, the kitchen of a flat in the Little Italy area of Hoboken, New Jersey, was full of women, all gathered around a table, all shouting at once. > > On the table lay a copper-haired girl, just 19, moaning. Dolly Sinatra’s labour had stalled. > > The midwife wiped the poor girl’s brow and sent urgently for the doctor. > When he arrived ten long minutes later, he clamped metallic forceps round the baby’s head. > > Then he pulled hard, hauling the child from its mother’s womb and, in the violent process, tearing the left side of its face, neck and ear. > > The doctor cut the cord and laid the boy - huge and blue, bleeding from his wounds, and apparently dead - by the kitchen sink, then quickly shifted his efforts to saving the nearly unconscious mother’s life. > > The women all leant in, shouting advice in Italian. At the back of the scrum, one of them looked at the seemingly lifeless baby, picked up it up and, just in case, ran ice cold water from the sink over it and slapped its back. It snuffled and began to howl. > > Mother and child both survived, but neither ever forgot the brutality of that birth. Frank Sinatra — the superstar with a voice that would bewitch the world - bore the scars, both physical and psychological, to the end of his years. > > Throughout his vastly documented life, he would avoid being photographed from his left. > > One scar, hard to disguise (though frequently airbrushed), ran diagonally from the corner of his mouth to his jaw line. > > His ear resembled an apricot run over by a steamroller. In childhood, a mastoid operation would leave another thick ridge of scar tissue on his neck, while in adolescence, severe acne left pockmarks on his skin. > > As an adult, he would apply Max Factor Pan-Cake to his face and neck every morning and again after each of the several showers that, as a compulsive and obsessive hand and body washer, he took every day. > > The world’s women might fall at his feet in adoration and long to be in his bed, but, in his own eyes, he was disfigured, a freak, the ‘Scarface’ that his schoolmates in Hoboken taunted him with when he was a kid. Just so people don’t have to click, the 4-H reference is a joke.