Frank Sinatra’s items under hammer
Ol’ Blue Eyes is going on the auction block. Personal items belonging to singer Frank Sinatra and his wife Barbara went on display in New York, before an auction of Barbara Sinatra’s estate set for next month at Sotheby’s. The collection — expected to fetch at least $3.5m — includes the engagement ring Sinatra gave his wife, trinkets from US Presidents he palled around with, and a Norman Rockwell painting of Sinatra that he commissioned directly from the artist.
Barbara Sinatra was his fourth wife, and they were married for 22 years until his death. She died last year, and the items up for sale come from the couple’s three homes in Palm Springs, Los Angeles and Malibu.
“You see many facets of Sinatra you wouldn’t normally see as a fan,” said Mari-Claudia Jimenez, a senior vice-president at Sotheby’s. “People think of him as a singer or an actor, but here you learn that he was a painter. You learn that he was a friend to every US President from Truman to Clinton. You see that he’s an avid art collector. You see that he’s a romantic husband who likes to gift beautiful things to his wife.”
The priciest piece is the 20-carat diamond engagement ring Frank used to propose to Barbara, a former showgirl, slipping it into her champagne glass when they were out to dinner. Sinatra lavished his wife with expensive jewellery, with many pieces included in the sale. “He would put $100,000 necklaces in her pockets to find,” Jimenez said.
Bevy of stars honour Nelson Mandela
Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey, Naomi Campbell, Pharrell Williams, Usher and other international stars gathered in Johannesburg for a charity concert honouring Nelson Mandela a century after he was born. Thousands poured into the South African city’s FNB stadium for Global Citizen Festival: Mandela 100. Singer Bob Geldof, who organised the Live Aid concerts for Africa, was also there. Global Citizen, an advocacy group, campaigns for an end to extreme poverty, and other causes. It says many people won tickets to Sunday’s concert through charity work and petition-signing.
World leaders previously gathered at the stadium in 2013 for a memorial after the death of Mandela, the anti-apartheid leader who was also South Africa’s first black president. The festival gave a platform to Government leaders, CEOs and others who pledged more funding for healthcare and other social programmes. In a recorded video message, Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, promised more money in the national budget. Canada PM Justin Trudeau tweeted a $50m pledge for education for girls and women around the world.
“This is amazing!” the festival host, Trevor Noah, said as Trudeau’s tweet was shown on a big stadium screen. Noah had earlier highlighted a comment by Mandela that poverty could be overcome through determined action. South Africa is struggling with one of the world’s highest rates of income inequality.
Wizard of Oz is most influential film
When a tornado carried Dorothy off to a land of witches and talking scarecrows it was not only Oz that she and her companions ended up taking by storm: new research suggests the world of movies was never the same again either. Researchers in Italy have declared the Wizard of Oz the most influential film ever made, outstripping others in how much it has inspired and been referenced in the film industry. The research team came to their conclusion after analysing more than 47,000 films across 26 genres, using references noted in the online movie database IMDb. The authors note that the database is biased towards films from the west, with the majority produced in the US. The team did not consider short films, adult films and those with no link or reference to other movies. They used a combination of four different mathematical approaches to explore the connections between movies, taking into account factors including the number of references a film received and whether the films that referred back to it were themselves influential.
