FRIDAYS ARE FOR FRANK: “I’m a Fool to Want You”

In the history of foolish relationships, few are arguably more infamous than that between Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner.

As author James Kaplan recounts in Frank: The Voice, the night they met was a booze-soaked affair, and it pretty much stayed that way until the notoriously bitter end.

It was a trainwreck crashing into a dumpster fire. It was toxic, to the point of suicidal—and yet it endured, because it was passionate—however foolishly so.

Sinatra eventually came to grips with his Ava habit, but the withdrawal was palpable for years and years.

“You know Ava, she knocked him on his ass, with a lot of help from him himself. But he got up,” said writer Pete Hamill, in a recent interview with hMAG, “and I’m pretty sure that this had something to do with Hoboken, and the Hoboken nature. Because it was certainly true in Brooklyn where I grew up—if you were knocked on your ass, you had to get up. These were people who got up.”

Frank probably wasn’t the first fool to call Hoboken home, nor the last. Of course here in Jersey, smarts ain’t everything, because “only the strong survive.”

Enjoy your April Fool’s Day—just don’t fall for anything… or anyone!