by Shuja Haider

In 1953, Ava Gardner, the love of Frank Sinatra's life, had left him. One of Frank's best friends, the composer Jimmy Van Heusen, was planning to take him out and get him laid, get his mind off of Ava, as if it had ever worked before. But when Jimmy went to pick him up, he found Frank in a bathtub, wrists slit, bleeding out. Jimmy rushed him to the hospital. The incident was never reported. Everyone agreed it was best for Frank to go back to work.

Frank had just filmed a supporting role in From Here to Eternity, an Oscar-winning performance that would triumphantly return him to the public eye, after years of seeming like a has-been. But the movie hadn't been released yet when he cut his first studio sessions for Capitol Records. Maybe because he was in a rut, or maybe because he was a genius, he chose old songs that had fallen out of favor with everyone except jazz musicians, many of which he had already recorded in his youth as a singer in big bands. 

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Source: https://medium.com/