ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO - Frank Sinatra With Princess Grace Kelly, In Monte Carlo 1958

original vintage photo, in good condition, handling marks, see photos for details, artist's stamp on reverse.

Size:

24cm x 18

When The Chairman Took The Throne In Monte Carlo
Performing at Princess Grace’s request, Frank Sinatra teamed up with Quincy Jones for the first time.

When 1958 arrived, 42-year-old Frank Sinatra was on top of the world. As well as enjoying universal fame as a singer with a raft of top-selling records to his name – his most recent being the Come Fly With Me album, which topped the US album charts for five weeks that year – he was also one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood, with a string of recent hit movies.
These included From Here To Eternity (1953), The Man With The Golden Arm (1955) – in which Sinatra played a heroin addict, earning himself an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor – plus the musicals High Society (1956) and Pal Joey (1957), the latter winning him a Golden Globe award. As noted arranger/producer Quincy Jones put it: “If you didn’t know who Frank Sinatra was in 1958, you needed to trade in your ears…
The man was bigger than life.” And he was about to add another coup to his list: performing before royalty in Monte Carlo.

Setting up the concert
In June 1958, Sinatra was scheduled to head for Europe for the first time since 1953, at the request of his friend, ex-movie star Grace Kelly – who was now Princess Grace Of Monaco – to perform at a charity event to raise money for the United Nations Refugee Fund. The concert was also timed to coincide with the European premiere of Sinatra’s latest movie, a war film called Kings Go Forth.

Quincy Jones remembered the beginning of the show as nerve-wracking because he didn’t know from which side of the stage the singer was making his entrance; he needed to see Sinatra in order to synchronize the orchestral introduction with his arrival. It was critical that the timing was perfect. Ultimately, Jones had to wing it and go with his instincts. “When I heard the words ‘Frank Sinatra!’, and heard the audience applauding, I cued the orchestra in with The Man With The Golden Arm theme and conducted while keeping an eye on both sides of the stage so that I could lead them into ‘Come Fly With Me’ as soon as Frank hit the stage.”

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