14/02/2025
Frank Sinatra was close friends with Janet Leigh and her then husband Tony Curtis since the early 1950s and they often hung out with The Clan or “Rat Pack” during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1962, Janet Leigh acted in The Manchurian Candidate with Sinatra.
Larry King: “What was it like to work with him?”
Janet Leigh: “Well, I found him to be one of the most giving. Obviously we knew of his talent, but he was a giving actor. He responded to you and gave it back. And so it was a complete joyful and enriching experience to actually work with him. We had been friends for years before, but to actually have the professional relationship was…was one the most…something I prize highly.”
Janet Leigh: “No surprise that he was such a great actor, because he acted his songs. People believed him. They believed what he said, they believed his persona, they believed the characters he played. When I said he was a giving actor, he had passion, and you believed his passion, you believed everything he was saying and trying to get across to you he did, so you took this in and he became a part of you. He became a part of me when I was a teenager and all through.”
Janet Leigh: “I first met him when we went on a trip to London of the National Playing Fields of Great Britain. And we from Hollywood went over for the Queen and it was the Prince Philip's favorite charity and that is when I first met him. Of course I met him on the screen and in records from the very go and…may I tell you very quick story? There's a thing about Sinatra that a lot of people don't know. He has done many great things that people hear about, but I remember things that no one knows about. It was near Thanksgiving, we were to meet him at his house for dinner, I had been reading in the paper about a family in northern… either Oregon or Washington who weren't gonna get any kind of holidays, no food, no presents, anything like that, and when they came in for dinner I said, 'I wish there was something we could do. Maybe if we could all get together…' Frank said, 'It's done, honey.' He had already sent a plane of food and toys and stuff… No one knew about it, no one heard about it, it was not in the papers, but that… I just want the people to know a little of the Frank that we all knew.”
