Frank Sinatra & functioning attractive smokers

"Drink, drink, drink. Smoke, smoke, smoke. Shmuck, shmuck, shmuck!" —Frank Sinatra, chastising himself for the excesses that made his voice raspy during the taping of a '60s TV special. Pictured: In 1964, Frank savors those vices backstage at the Sands Hotel and Casino, where he swung with the Count Basie Band. Out of that landmark collaboration came the legendary live album Sinatra at the Sands.

Anthony Summers, author of "Frank Sinatra: My life" (2006): "One of the strange anomalies is that a man, who not only drank so much but smoked so much - those untipped Camel cigarettes - for years and years and years, was still able to put out such a wonderful voice over such a long period. We learned that he went off the booze and off the cigarettes for a period before he made an album".

Frank Sinatra lights a cigarette for Natalie Wood

Summers claims the ravages of heavy drinking and smoking took their toll on Frank Sinatra's famous voice - and this can clearly be heard on some recordings. The biographer adds, "The booze and the cigarettes and the sorrows in his life affected his voice. You hear him do 'One For My Baby' in the late 50s, and then you hear the recording he did of the same song just before the 50s and they're as different as day is from night. The voice, by then, has been tempered, weathered by the booze, the cigarettes, the sadnesses and he's clearly living the song more the second time around."

Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra photographed in a recording studio by LIFE's Allan Grant, take a cigarette break during the recording of Sleep Warm in 1958. The album was re-released in 1963 with a much more direct title: Dean Martin Sings/Sinatra Conducts.

Frank Sinatra smoking a cigarette in the studio during a rehearsal in 1965.

"He wears the mask of an armchair philanderer with bottles and broads on his mind and seven kids in his swimming pool — a character with obvious appeal for both sexes. Highball glass in hand, he always looks faintly surprised to find the camera upon him, and his first bleary, self-deprecating crack establishes that neither he nor his audience can be quite sure what he will do next." —From LIFE's review of The Dean Martin Show, 5/26/1967. Photographed by LIFE's Allan Grant, Dean Martin is smoking and adjusting his cufflinks backstage before a performance in Vegas, 1958.

More attractive functioning smokers:
Lindsay Lohan
Ava Gardner
Diane Lane
Paul Newman
Shia Labeouf
Monica Bellucci
Ida Lupino
Ryan Gosling
James MacAvoy
Humphrey Bogart
Kevin Spacey
Robert Pattinson

Breaking Dawn Comic Con cards with Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson

Breaking Dawn Comic Con cards with Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson

Nikki Reed swings by another group of great fans to pose for photos and sign autographs at Comic Con in San Diego

Happy 73rd Anniversary, Natalie Wood!

Natalie Wood (Born: Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko July 20, 1938 in San Francisco, California, USA - Died: November 29, 1981 in Santa Catalina Island, California, USA)

Natalie Wood & Warren Beatty as Wilma Dean 'Deanie' Loomis and Bud Stamper in "Splendor In The Grass" directed by Elia Kazan in 1961


The scene where Deanie (Natalie Wood) becomes overwhelmed over Bud's (Warren Beatty) split with her.

Gwyneth Paltrow photoshoot for COACH Fall 2011

Jake Gyllenhaal with Gwyneth Paltrow and John Madden attending the Toronto International Film Festival Premiere of "Proof" (2005) on 12nd September 2005

First look: Gwyneth Paltrow for COACH Fall 2011 photographed by Peter Lindbergh

Gwyneth Paltrow in Detour magazine, photoshoot (1997)

"Gwyneth's latest star turn, back to playing the all-American good-girl as the star of the new adverts for Coach, the American It-handbag brand which has serious designs on the UK and Europe. Coach is sort of a bit like an American version of Mulberry, but in the Somerset rather than Alexa Chung era. All blonde and uptown and well-bred in this campaign, Gwyneth is going back to her roots. Maybe it's time for the Gwyneth-haters to forgive and forget. But probably not until she gives up the Goop". Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Jake Gyllenhaal at 'Source Code' Press Conference in Beverly Hills

Jake Gyllenhaal poses at 'Source Code' Press Conference on 18th March 2011 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles

Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan attending The Cinema Society & Coach Host A Screening Of "Source Code" on 31st March 2011

"The three lead performances from Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan and Vera Farmiga are all excellent in their own right. Gyllenhaal turns in a pitch-perfect turn as Captain Colter Stevens, letting the character have a few light moments by acknowledging the convolution of the premise, but switching back to a convincing state of stubborn determination and disorientation on a dime (factoid: attained in part by Jones cycling random bits of obscure music through an earpiece he gave Gyllenhaal with reckless abandon!).Michelle Monaghan’s Christina Warren is adorable and her incredulous responses to Colter’s loony behavior are understandable and often hilarious. Despite how bored the writer seemed with making the budding attraction between the pair work-Colter’s initial proclamation of love is “You’re very decent”, oh how that would woo the ladies-Gyllenhaal and Monaghan are able to brew what little chemistry is needed here for an emotional investment. Vera Farmiga’s role takes place almost entirely in a swivel chair via webcam chat, but she too manages to soar above the limited nature of her character, playing Colleen Goodwin as a stern professional struggling with an internal, moral tug-of-war regarding her participation in the Source Code program". Source: collider.com

Frank Sinatra, an 18-karat manic-depressive superstar with self-help philosophy

Jimmy Van Heusen with Frank Sinatra

"Accordingly, while Frank Sinatra got dressed in the hospital room, shooting his cuffs to cover the bandages (the doctor had just walked out, shaking his head, after warning Sinatra that he was leaving against Medical Advice), Jimmy Van Heusen looked his friend in the eye and told him he had to have a word with him. The two men looked at each other in the mirror as Frank looped his tie. And Jimmy, his voice serious, told Frank that he had to see a headshrinker when he got back to Los Angeles". -"Frank: The Voice" by James Kaplan

''Being an 18-karat manic-depressive, and having lived a life of violent emotional contradictions, I have an overacute capacity for sadness as well as elation''. ''Whatever else has been said about me personally is unimportant. When I sing, I believe, I'm honest'' -Frank Sinatra.

Kim Novak and Frank Sinatra in "The man with the golden arm" directed by Otto Preminger in 1955.

"He’s a once in a lifetime star. That’s exactly what he is—a superstar. Brighter than anyone. Bigger than he thinks he is—and it scares him; Champagne explodes when you bottle it in beer bottles” -Frank Capra on Frank Sinatra

"The melancholy in Sinatra’s singing is not a sometime thing. I think it’s a constant in his art. It’s a lot of the reason why he’s so appreciated by black musicians and indeed a lot of black people in general. In a certain way, it’s an almost operatic version of the blues. He was a tortured man. He was an incredibly complicated man, impatient, obsessive compulsive, diagnostically, volcanic temper, like his mother. Even as so much seemed to come easy to him, nothing felt easy to him. I think you hear that in the music” -James Kaplan on Frank Sinatra

Hoboken, New Jersey, 1950s, photo by Robert Frank

"Frank Sinatra was born in Hoboken, a town that he rarely visited after achieving his success and which he regarded as having held him in insufficient esteem. In public declarations he offered the traditional gospel of self-help as his philosophy of making good. Sinatra believed in concepts of dignity and compassion, but he did so on his own terms. His moral code was paleolithic". -Chris Rojek in "Frank Sinatra" (2004)

The Barbara Sinatra Children's Center was founded in 1986 by Barbara and Frank Sinatra in Southern California's Coachella Valley to meet the community's need for a permanent facility that would help to children victims of sexual abuse.