Not many people can say they’ve spent a night sipping whiskey and smoking cigarettes with the late Frank Sinatra — but Tony Danza can.
In a new interview with The New York Times, the “Who’s The Boss” alum — who’s currently promoting his new cabaret show, “Tony Danza: Sinatra & Stories” — shared intimate details from his early morning conversation with the legendary singer after a night of partying.
“He was drinking Jack Daniel’s neat and smoking Camels one after another, so I said to him, ‘Frank,’ and let me say that it was weird to say Frank, but it was 2 in the morning, and we were drinking, so, I said, ‘Frank. The smoking and the drinking. Does it ever mess with your voice?’” the actor recalled.
“He takes a sip of his drink, takes a drag and blows out the smoke, and goes, ‘I’ve never met a singer worth his s— who didn’t smoke two packs a day,'” Danza added.
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Ever since he could remember, Danza has idolized Sinatra.
“My mom turned me onto Sinatra and exposed me to the finer points of his music,” he told the outlet. “She would say, ‘Listen to how he sings this part.'”
During his run on “Who’s The Boss,” the 73-year-old actor was eager to get Sinatra to make an appearance on the show.
According to Danza, he was able to make it happen after he approached Sinatra’s daughter, Tina, at a well-known restaurant in Los Angeles.
“The next day, I got a call saying Sinatra would do it,” Danza said. “I don’t know why he decided to do it, but I made everybody crazy on set when he came because I told them, ‘He only does one take. I will kill anybody who messes up the take.’”
“So, everybody is stiff, and we do the take, and it was good, and then Frank goes, ‘Do you want another take?’ Everybody looked at me like, what a dope you are,” Danza recalled.
Danza’s cabaret show will kick off on Sept. 10 at Café Carlyle in New York City.
“I’m not trying to approximate him at all,” Danza said of the show. “We have new arrangements of the songs. I’m not going to sing like him or anything like that; I will take charge like he did when he took the stage,” said Mr. Danza. “The, ‘I’m here, and I belong here, approach.’”
