When Frank Sinatra Died There Was Drama, Lots Of Drama. Would We Have Expected Anything Less?

Oct 23, 2022

8 min read

Updated: Oct 6

Man in blue sweater with cross necklace speaks into mic; elderly couple beside him. Text: "Sinatra's Final Days And The Drama That Followed."

A few days before he died, Frank Sinatra asked his daughter Tina how many more months it was until the new millennium. She told him about eighteen. His answer, as she remembered it: "Oh, I can do that. Nothin' to it."

He didn't make it. On the night of 14 May 1998, while around 76 million Americans were glued to the last ever episode of Seinfeld, the most famous singer of the 20th century had a heart attack and died at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles. What followed was a row over who was at his bedside, a will built to stop his family fighting (which didn't work), a casket full of his favourite vices and, more than 20 years later, a grave that someone attacked with a hammer.

Quick Answers

How did Frank Sinatra die? A heart attack, on 14 May 1998, aged 82. He was pronounced dead at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles at 10.50pm.
What were his last words? "I'm losing." He said them to his wife Barbara and his friend Tony Oppedisano as doctors worked on him.
Were his children there? No. Nancy and Tina both said they weren't told in time and arrived after he'd died.
What was he buried with? Jack Daniel's, Camel cigarettes, a Zippo lighter, Tootsie Rolls, cherry Life Savers and ten dimes, among other things.
Where is he buried? Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, near Palm Springs, California.

A Long, Slow Decline

Sinatra's last few years weren't kind to him. He'd been living with heart and breathing problems, high blood pressure, pneumonia, bladder cancer and dementia. His last full concert was on 25 February 1995 at the JW Marriott Desert Springs in Palm Desert. He was 79, got through six songs and closed with The Best Is Yet to Come. Remember that title, because it comes back later. His last public appearance was at the Sinatra: 80 Years My Way birthday show that November, and after a heart attack in January 1997 he was more or less never seen in public again.

Barbara and Frank Sinatra in evening dress, Frank wearing a tuxedo and bow tie — Barbara and Frank Sinatra

The honours kept coming anyway. In April 1997, just a few months after that heart attack, Congress passed a bill awarding him its Gold Medal for his entertainment career and his charity work. By then he was far too frail to be the showman people remembered.

The people around him tried to keep up appearances. Only a month before he died, Barbara told the Las Vegas Sun that the rumours about his health were nonsense and he was fit and doing well. Tony Oppedisano, his road manager and closest friend in those years, later painted a more honest picture of a man who knew he was fading. The singer who'd filled stadiums a decade earlier now mostly stayed at home in Beverly Hills, with nurses on hand.

Barbara was his fourth wife and, by a long way, his longest-lasting one. A former model and Las Vegas showgirl, she'd previously been married to Zeppo Marx of the Marx Brothers. She married Frank in 1976 and they were together for 22 years. In 1986 the pair founded the Barbara Sinatra Children's Center in Rancho Mirage, which helps abused and neglected children. His children, who'd grown up with their mother Nancy and watched their father marry Ava Gardner and Mia Farrow along the way, never really warmed to her.

Behind the scenes, the family was already falling apart. When CBS News covered the fallout a few days after his death, one insider described the relationship between Barbara and his children bluntly: "They are at each others throats". The row was mostly about who controlled his money and business interests as his health went.

The Night of 14 May 1998

That Thursday evening, Sinatra had another heart attack at home. Some accounts say Barbara was out at dinner when it happened. Either way, an ambulance got him to Cedars-Sinai in record time, and the story goes that the roads were empty because so many people were indoors watching Seinfeld.

Oppedisano got to the hospital while two doctors and a group of technicians were working on him. He sat with Sinatra and held his hand. Barbara arrived and urged him to fight. Struggling to breathe, Sinatra managed two words: "I'm losing."

Oppedisano later told the Mirror that there was no panic in it at all. "He wasn't panicked," he said, adding that Sinatra seemed resigned to the fact that he'd given it everything and wasn't going to pull through. Doctors kept trying for about an hour and a half. He was pronounced dead at 10.50pm, with Barbara by his side.

The Phone Call That Came Too Late

Here's where the drama really starts. Sinatra's three children weren't there. Tina wrote in her memoir My Father's Daughter that she got the call at 11.10pm from his doctor, Rex Kennamer, twenty minutes after he'd already gone.

Early newspaper reports said the family had gathered at his bedside. They hadn't, and his daughters made sure everyone knew it. Nancy had been at home a few minutes away, watching the same Seinfeld finale as everyone else. She later said she'd been "five minutes down the road watching TV while my dad was dying".

The children blamed Barbara for not calling them sooner. Whether that's fair is still argued about (it all happened very fast, and she was dealing with a dying husband), but it poured petrol on a feud that was already burning. Tina's 2000 memoir made her feelings about her stepmother very clear, and relations between the two sides never really recovered.

Chairman of the Board, Signing Off

The tributes were huge. The night after he died, the Empire State Building glowed blue for Ol' Blue Eyes and the lights on the Las Vegas Strip went dark while the casinos stopped for a minute. The Las Vegas Sun reported that the tourism authority asked the hotels to dim their lights for one minute at 8.30pm, and the Riviera dedicated suite 2902 to him with an engraved plaque. In Hollywood, fans piled flowers on his Walk of Fame star and his records started flying off the shelves again.

It's a nice bit of symmetry for a kid from Hoboken who started out singing for tips. The Empire State Building gesture was reportedly the first time it had been lit like that for a private individual rather than a national occasion.

The Funeral

Sinatra's funeral took place on 20 May 1998 at the Roman Catholic Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills. Around 400 people were invited inside, while thousands lined the streets. Kirk Douglas and Gregory Peck gave eulogies, and Tony Bennett and Sidney Poitier were part of the honour guard. Jack Nicholson and Sophia Loren were among the mourners.

The music included In the Wee Small Hours, Moonlight in Vermont and Ave Maria, and the service ended with his recording of Put Your Dreams Away. Pepe Ruiz, the bartender from Chasen's, summed it up: "a little laughs, a lot of love". He said he wouldn't really call it a funeral.

What Frank Sinatra Was Buried With

His family made sure he went out with the things he loved. Friends and family placed in his casket a bottle of Jack Daniel's, a pack of Camel cigarettes, a Zippo lighter, Tootsie Rolls, cherry-flavoured Life Savers, some stuffed toys and a dog biscuit.

The most personal item came from Tina. She slipped ten dimes into his pocket. That goes back to December 1963, when his son Frank Jr was kidnapped and Sinatra had to deal with the kidnappers from payphones, and ran out of change mid-call. From then on he always carried a roll of dimes. Tina also left him a note, which she quoted at the end of her memoir: "Sleep warm, Poppa, look for me".

The Will That Was Meant to Stop the Fighting

Sinatra saw the trouble coming. His will, written in 1991, left Barbara a guaranteed $3.5 million in cash, the homes in Beverly Hills, Malibu and around Palm Springs, the cars, the rights to his name and likeness, and the masters for his 1980 album Trilogy. Each of his three children got $200,000 in cash, their existing trust funds and rights to much of his music catalogue. Frank Jr got his sheet music, and his first wife Nancy got $250,000.

The kicker was a no-contest clause. Anyone who challenged their share would lose it completely. It's sometimes called the "Sinatra clause". A lot of the money also sat in a private trust that mainly benefited his children and grandchildren. None of it stopped the bad feeling, though.

Desert Memorial Park and the Vandalised Headstone

Sinatra was buried at Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, close to his old home in Palm Springs. His flat granite marker carried the words "The Best Is Yet To Come" and "Beloved Husband & Father", the same song he'd closed his last concert with.

Francis Albert Sinatra's gravestone, 'THE BEST IS YET TO COME', 1915-1998. — Sinatra's original gravestone before it was vandalised

The family carried on shrinking. Frank Jr, who'd spent years touring his dad's songbook with his old band, died of cardiac arrest in March 2016 while on tour in Daytona Beach. He was 72. Barbara died at home in Rancho Mirage in July 2017, aged 90, and was buried right beside Frank under "Beloved Wife & Mother".

Then things got weird. Around Thanksgiving 2020, someone climbed into the cemetery and attacked the headstone, seemingly with a hammer and chisel, and chipped out the word "Husband". By January 2021 the whole stone had been replaced. The new one drops the old lines completely. It just says Francis Albert Sinatra, 1915 to 1998, with "Sleep Warm, Poppa" in the middle, the same words Tina put in the note in his pocket.

Frank Sinatra's gravestone: FRANCIS ALBERT SINATRA, Sleep Warm, Poppa, 1915-1998. — Sinatra's grave as it looks today.

Nobody's been named for the damage, the cemetery wouldn't say who ordered the new stone, and the daughters declined to comment. Given who wrote those words and who was buried next to him, it's hard not to see it as the last round of a feud that outlived both Frank and Barbara. But that's speculation, and nobody's ever confirmed it.

How He's Remembered Now

Fans still turn up at the grave with dimes or a bottle of Jack Daniel's to leave behind. And on the 25th anniversary of his death in May 2023, Los Angeles City Hall was lit up blue. Tina was there, and called the city her father's "lady".

Sinatra's death wasn't a mystery like John Belushi's last night or a tragedy out of nowhere like Otis Redding's plane crash. He was 82 and had been ill for years. But the way it played out, with a family at war, a phone call that came too late and a headstone swapped in the night, was about as Sinatra as it gets.