The moment the legendary American singer Frank Sinatra spent time visiting patients on the wards of a Bristol hospital has been immortalised – with a new road on the spot where the visit happened.
Of course the road is called Sinatra Way – what else could it have been? – and it’s on the site of the Frenchay Park development in the north of Bristol, which has seen almost 500 new homes built by developers Redrow.
The housing development has been built on what was once the site of one of Bristol’s largest hospitals – Frenchay Hospital – and back in 1953, patients and staff were stunned when Ol’ Blue Eyes dropped in virtually unannounced and began saying hello to the patients.
Sinatra was performing at the Bristol Hippodrome with a run of shows each night, and one day he spent pretty much the entire day at Frenchay Hospital.
Sinatra was a global star through his wartime singing, but his career had dipped a little by 1953, before it had a resurgence in the late 1950s and into the 1960s with hit movies like Guys and Dolls.
In June 1953, the patients at Frenchay heard Sinatra might be popping in. In an interview with the Bristol Evening Post in 2008, Fred Hooper told how he was in hospital when he heard Sinatra was coming.
Fred was 28 at the time and a firefighter in the city who had damaged his lungs tackling a blaze at Avonmouth earlier that year, and had to undergo an operation. He was in recovery at hospital, and almost at the point where he was well enough to be discharged when he heard Sinatra was coming. The ironic thing was – he wasn’t much of a fan. “Just after the war I’d been in the army in India, working as a dispatch rider,” he recalled.
“I came off my bike and damaged my knee, so was stuck in a hospital near Poona for three months. One of the other men in the military hospital had a gramophone, and he played Frank Sinatra records round the clock,” he said, adding that he’d got a bit sick of Sinatra’s silky voice.
But the prospect of another long stint in hospital having Sinatra foisted upon him – but this time in person – wasn’t that bad for Fred. “By the time I was in Frenchay, I’d forgiven him for that,” he laughs. “I was just glad of the distraction from life on the ward. I was well enough to get bored of being stuck there, so I was glad of the diversion,” he said.
“The first we knew about it was when one of the nurses came into the ward in the evening and said ‘Frank Sinatra’s coming tomorrow’. I can remember the sense of excitement going around the hospital in the morning, though he never got to our ward.
“I think he was invited to have lunch with the doctors, and afterwards we were all called down to the hospital’s assembly hall to hear him sing. It was only a small hall, but hundreds of us crammed in there. Those who couldn’t walk were pushed down in wheelchairs. One man was even on a stretcher.
“But not everyone went. Sinatra was surprisingly unpopular at the time. After the war – and the problems the British Army had in Italy with the Mafia – the gangster underworld was very unpopular. They certainly didn’t have the sense of glamour that they would later have because of The Godfather films and the Rat Pack themselves.”
“But he gave a nice little concert for half-an-hour or so, accompanied by his pianist. I can remember him singing Nancy With The Laughing Face and High Hopes,” he added. “The hospital matron was there to see him. She was carrying her little lap dog – she carried him everywhere, strangely enough.
“The matron wasn’t somebody you would generally cross – she terrified all of us. But Sinatra wasn’t happy when the dog let out the inevitable bark. Sinatra demonstrated just how short a fuse he had then. I remember him shouting angrily, ‘get that dog out of here!’
“The matron, who certainly wasn’t used to taking orders, didn’t seem too happy but she left. I think Sinatra and the matron must have made up their differences, though, because after the concert Frank went and had afternoon tea with her in her office,” he added.
The Sinatra visit to Frenchay Hospital in June 1953 is one of the more unusual features of the Frenchay Museum, and when the hospital was redeveloped by Redrow, they were keen to incorporate it. Local council chiefs gave the developer a list of names that might be appropriate for their new development and Sinatra Way was on it.
Housebuilding for the new Frenchay Park got underway back in 2017, and now all the new homes have been built and this week, the very last one has now been sold, including all the ones on Sinatra Way, which is actually a little cul-de-sac off the main road into the development.
“We’re absolutely delighted to announce that all the homes at Frenchay Park are now sold,” Redrow South West’s sales director Sian Smith said.
“This has been an incredibly successful development, and we’ve seen fantastic interest from homebuyers throughout the entire process. The combination of location, design and community appeal has made Frenchay Park a truly special place to live, and we’re thrilled to see so many buyers excited to make it their home,” she added.