SINATRA: Twentieth Century Romantic

Well Ring-a-Ding-Ding here is The Throat recorded from Mama to Mia and the whole thing could have bounced off a Billboard as a pacan to the Man. Odesville! Whether portraying Frankie as ""The Vulnerable Tough."" ""The Battler,"" ""The Bleeder,"" ""The Talented Bastard,"" ""The Swinger,"" ""It Padrone,"" or ""The Chairman of the Board."" It's a report not an analysis and Mr. Shaw has certainly done his homework. Here is Frankie the meticulous, Frankie the Big Spender. Frankie the suicidal lover, Frankie the sweet and low, Frankie of the terrible temper. Frankie the generous, Frankie the father, Frankie the Clan leader, and above all Frankie the Showman. And somehow you've heard it all before--the bad times with the bad throat, the round-the-world affair with ""Hurricane Ava,"" the underworld friends--all the headlines from the kidnapping of Frankie Junior to ""SINATRA & MIA SAILING TO ALTAR?"" Certainly enough headlines to more than fill a book which Mr. Shaw has done and which certainly will be read because Sinatra is ""Bigville."" If you try hard you can almost get a glimpse of the man behind the images. But oh for the kind of Esquire close-up Gay Talese managed so beautifully.