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Sinatra's music star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
including figures such as Carlo Gambino, Sam Giancana, Lucky Luciano, and Joseph Fischetti. The Federal Bureau of Investigation kept records amounting to 2,403 pages on Sinatra. With his alleged Mafia ties, his ardent New Deal politics and his friendship with John F. Kennedy, he was a natural target for J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. The FBI kept Sinatra under surveillance for almost five decades beginning in the 1940s. The documents include accounts of Sinatra as the target of death threats and extortion schemes. They also portray rampant paranoia and strange obsessions at the FBI and reveal nearly every celebrated Sinatra foible and peccadillo. For a year Hoover investigated Sinatra's alleged and Communist affiliations, but came up empty-handed. The files include his rendezvous with prostitutes, and his extramarital affair with Ava Gardner, which preceded their marriage. Celebrities mentioned in the files are Dean Martin, Marilyn Monroe, Peter Lawford, and Giancana's girlfriend, singer Phyllis McGuire. The FBI's secret dossier on Sinatra was released in 1998 in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. Sinatra held differing political views throughout his life. Sinatra's parents had immigrated to the United States in 1895 and 1897 respectively. His mother, Dolly Sinatra (1896–1977), was a Democratic Party ward boss.
Political views
Sinatra remained a supporter of the Democratic Party until the late 1960s when he switched his allegiance to the Republican Party. In 1944 after sending a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Sinatra was invited to meet Roosevelt at the White House, where he agreed to become part of the Democratic party's voter registration drives. He donated $5,000 to the Democrats for the 1944 presidential election, and by the end of the campaign was appearing at two or three political events every day. After World War II, Sinatra's politics grew steadily more left wing, and he
Political activities 1944-1968