Entertainment

Tony Bennett dies: ‘The best singer in the business’ – how words from his idol Frank Sinatra changed his career

Published

2 years ago

July 21, 2023

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“For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business.”

Coming from Frank Sinatra himself, in an interview in 1965, there could be no higher compliment.

Sinatra was a huge influence on Bennett, who has died aged 96.

The pair had become firm friends and went on to perform together several times over the years.

Bennett was the younger singer – Sinatra died in May 1998 at the age of 82.

But as they both matured, Sinatra always continued to call Bennett “kid” – even into old age.

Bennett said his idol’s words in that 1965 article changed his career.

Two years earlier, a then 36-year-old Bennett had picked up his first Grammy for his signature song I Left My Heart In San Francisco.

In 2022, almost 60 years later, the pop and jazz singer was awarded his 20th, sharing the honour with his superstar collaborator Lady Gaga – at the tender age of 95.

During a career in entertainment spanning eight decades, Bennett was one of the last of America’s great crooners – one who achieved the rare feat of only seeming to grow in popularity in later life.

With more than 70 albums to his name, he is perhaps the only artist ever to have had new albums charting in the US in the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, 2000s, 2010s and 2020s – and in 2014, he broke his own record as the oldest living artist to hit the top of the weekly Billboard 200 album chart.

Performing well into his 90s, even after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016, Bennett was an entertainer beloved by all generations; Gaga was just one of the modern-day artists he collaborated with in later years.

Paul McCartney, John Legend, Christina Aguilera and Michael Buble, as well as Sinatra, all feature on the long list of others, and his 2011 duet with Amy Winehouse, Body And Soul, was the last song she recorded before her death.

“To me, life is a gift, and it’s a blessing to just be alive,” the singer once said.

It was a quote he became known for, the title of one of his memoirs, and one he used again when he went public about his illness in 2021.

“Life is a gift – even with Alzheimer’s,” was the message shared on his social media accounts in February 2021.

Later that year, he performed his final farewell shows.

Grief, war and discovery

Born Anthony Dominick Benedetto on 3 August 1926, in Queens in New York City, to parents John and Anna, the young Tony and his older brother and sister, John and Mary, were raised by their mother following his father’s death when he was aged just 10.

As a child, he loved to sing and paint, and his passions were nurtured at the High School of Industrial Arts in Manhattan.

As he grew older, he developed a love of music listening to artists such as Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong and James ‘Jimmy’ Durante on the radio.

During his teenage years, Bennett sang while waiting tables, before enlisting in the army during the Second World War.

He served in the Battle of the Bulge – the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front, launched in 1944 through the forested Ardennes region between Belgium and Luxembourg – and participated in the liberation of a concentration camp, according to his official website’s biography.

During his time in Europe, he performed with military bands and, following his return to America, he went on to have vocal studies at the American Theatre Wing School in New York.

The singer’s first nightclub performance came in 1946, alongside trombonist Tyree Glenn at the Shangri-La in Queens’ Astoria neighbourhood.

Three years later came his big break, when comedian Bob Hope noticed him working with actress and singer Pearl Bailey in Greenwich Village.

At the time, he was performing under the stage name of Joe Bari.

‘We’ll call you Tony Bennett’

Hope liked Bennett’s singing so much that he met him in his dressing room afterwards to ask him to perform with him at the city’s famed Paramount Theatre.

There was just one condition.

“But first he told me he didn’t care for my stage name and asked me what my real name was,” Bennett recalled. “I told him, ‘My name is Anthony Dominick Benedetto’. And he said, ‘We’ll call you Tony Bennett’.

“And that’s how it happened. A new Americanised name – the start of a wonderful career and a glorious adventure.”

Bennett’s first singles came in the 1950s, including chart-toppers Because Of You, Rags To Riches, and a remake of Hank Williams’ Cold, Cold Heart.

Dozens more singles followed and his voice took him around the world, selling millions of records and performing to sold-out venues – as well as to numerous stars and presidents.

He went on to release dozens of albums throughout the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, but began to struggle with drug use as his style of music fell out of style.

Following a 10-year absence from the US album charts, he returned with The Art Of Excellence in 1986 and continued releasing music at pace in the 1990s, becoming an unlikely favourite of MTV.

Legendary duets add to his longevity

In 2001, well into his 70s, the singer was awarded a lifetime achievement award at the Grammys – but there was no sign of him slowing down.

He became known for his collaborations and his first modern-day duets album, Duets: An American Classic, was released in 2006, featuring performances with artists including McCartney, Elton John, Barbra Streisand and Bono.

After more than 50 years in the business, it was one of the bestselling records of his career.

Duets II came in 2011, featuring artists including Aretha Franklin and John Mayer, as well as Gaga and Winehouse.

Debuting at the top of the Billboard charts, it went on to win two Grammys, and his friendship with Gaga led to the release of their first collaborative album, Cheek To Cheek, in 2014.

Their second, Love For Sale, Bennett’s final album, came in 2021.

As well as his music, Bennett was also known for his painting, and had his work exhibited at galleries around the world.

He was even commissioned by the United Nations, painting one piece for the organisation’s 50th anniversary.

He was also the author of five books, including the New York Times bestseller Life Is A Gift: The Zen Of Bennett, published in 2012, and Just Getting Started, released in 2016.

Family and charitable legacy

A father of four, Bennett was married three times.

At his wedding to first wife Patricia Beech in 1952, some 2,000 female fans reportedly gathered outside the ceremony – dressed in black in mock mourning. The couple went on to have two sons, Danny and Dae, before they separated.

Bennett went on to marry actress Sandra Grant, with whom he had daughters Joanna and Antonia, and in 2007 married long-term partner Susan Crow, now Susan Benedetto.

In 1999, he founded Exploring the Arts with Susan, to help strengthen the role of the arts in public high school education in the US.

One of the organisation’s first projects was the establishment of the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, a public high school set up in 2001 in Bennett’s hometown of Astoria, Queens.

The singer’s other charitable endeavours included helping to raise millions of dollars for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, which established a research fund in his name, and lending his artwork to the American Cancer Society’s annual holiday greeting cards to raise funds.

Along with his many gongs for his music, Bennett was also honoured with the Martin Luther King Center’s “salute to greatness” award for his efforts in fighting racial discrimination, after joining the activist in the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march in 1965.

The singer’s retirement from performing was announced in 2021, with his son Danny, also his manager, saying it was down to doctor’s orders due to the strain of travelling.

Performing a medley tribute to the man she described as “an incredible mentor, and friend, and father figure” at the Grammys in 2022, Gaga appeared emotional as she finished on stage. “I love you, Tony. We miss you.”

Following the singer’s death, the music industry mourns one of the last great performers of his generation.

For Bennett, life was a gift – and for millions of fans over the decades, it was a gift he gave right back.

Entertainment

Emilia Perez was a BAFTAs and Oscars frontrunner – where did it all go wrong?

Published

12 hours ago

February 13, 2025

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Emilia Perez was a BAFTAs and Oscars frontrunner - where did it all go wrong?

At the start of awards season, Emilia Perez looked like it could come away as one of this year’s big success stories.

First there was a slew of gongs at the Golden Globes, including best comedy or musical film, and then came the Oscar nominations – it leads the race with 13 nods, and broke the record to become the most nominated non-English language film in the history of the awards.

At the BAFTAs this weekend, it is shortlisted for 11 prizes; just pipped by papal thriller Conclave, which has 12. And star Karla Sofia Gascon has made history as a trans woman nominated for best actress at both ceremonies.

Set in Mexico but mostly filmed in France, Emilia Perez is an operatic Spanish-language musical which tells the story of a Mexican drug lord who undergoes gender affirmation surgery. In May last year, it won the Cannes Film Festival jury prize, setting it on its trajectory to 2025 awards season success.

The film’s acknowledgement seemingly reflected the more progressive attitudes of voters in recent years – but as its profile rose, so did the scrutiny.

US LGBTQ+ advocacy and cultural change group GLAAD has described Emilia Perez as a “step backward for trans representation”, and highlighted reviews by transgender critics who “understand how inauthentic portrayals of trans people are offensive and even dangerous”.

The film has also come under fire for stereotypical depictions of Mexico and an apparent minimal inclusion of Mexican people among the main cast and crew. Of its main stars, Gascon is Spanish, US actress Zoe Saldana is of Dominican Republic and Puerto Rican descent, and Selena Gomez is American, though her father was of Mexican descent. Adriana Paz is Mexican.

In a post on X in January viewed more than 2.7m times, Mexican screenwriter Héctor Guillén shared a mock-up poster saying: “Mexico hates Emilia Pérez/ Racist Euro Centrist Mockery/ Almost 500K dead and France decides to do a musical/ No Mexicans in their cast or crew.”

While stories about “narco” crime in Latin America have long been depicted on screen, Emilia Perez has been particularly criticised for its handling of the subject. Since 2006, a bloody war between Mexican authorities and the drug cartels has raged, claiming the lives of more than 400,000 people, according to government data. More than 100,000 have gone missing.

Offensive? Or a ‘crazy marvel’?

General audiences appear to have made their thoughts clear. On film database site IMDB, Emilia Perez gets 5.5 out of 10, while its nine competitors in the running for best picture at the Oscars rate between 7.3, for The Substance, and 8.8 for I’m Still Here.

On review site Rotten Tomatoes, Emilia Perez gets a 72% from critics, but just 17% from audiences; again, the rest of its Oscars competitors range from Wicked’s 88% critics’ score to I’m Still Here’s 96%, or Nickel Boy’s 65% audience score to I’m Still Here’s 99%. The two takeways? The gap is clear whichever way you look at it; watch I’m Still Here.

That’s not to say Emilia Perez does not have its supporters. Speaking after a screening in October, Oscar-winning Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro said it was “so beautiful to see a movie that is cinema“, and hailed director Jacques Audiard as “one of the most amazing filmmakers alive”.

A review in US entertainment outlet Deadline in May during Cannes last year was headlined, “Jacques Audiard’s musical is crazy, but also a marvel”, with the writer saying the “sparkle never outshines the essential seriousness of the subject”. In Variety, another US entertainment publication, the headline praised Gascon’s electrifying performance.

Paz, who shared the Cannes best actress prize with her co-stars last year, has questioned the criticism about the film being “offensive” to Mexico, saying: “I really want to know why, because I didn’t feel that way.”

Carlos Aguilar, a film critic originally from Mexico City who writes for the Roger Ebert film website, was generally positive in his review, giving the film three out of four stars.

However, he highlights that Emilia Perez is “not a Mexican film” and notes “Mexican audiences have grown accustomed to American perspectives exploiting narco-related afflictions for narratives unconcerned with addressing its root causes”.

Questioning intentions behind these productions is valid, he says, “but to decry Audiard for partaking in the common filmmaking practice of telling stories away from what’s immediately familiar to him would seem an overly simplistic assessment”.

Karla Sofia Gascon’s resurfaced tweets

But the criticism from some trans people and some Mexicans is not a good look for a supposedly progressive film about a trans woman in Mexico. All publicity is good publicity does not apply here.

A lot of this criticism, though, had been made before the Oscar and BAFTA nominations. Emilia Perez was still riding high at that point.

The nail in the coffin came after those nominations were announced, when offensive tweets posted by Gascon were unearthed. They were old, but not that old; the first dated back to 2016, but some were more recent.

In the since-deleted posts, Gascon took aim at Muslims’ dress, language and culture in her native Spain and suggested Islam should be banned.

And less than a month after the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in 2020, which prompted a global reckoning about police brutality and racism, Gascon called Floyd a drug addict who “very few people ever cared” for.

Writer Sarah Hagi, who screenshotted the posts and shared them, wrote: “This is all from the star of a movie that is campaigning on its progressive values, you really gotta laugh.

Gascon, who was a regular in Mexican telenovelas before transitioning in 2018, issued an apology after the posts emerged, saying that “as someone in a marginalised community, I know this suffering all too well and I am deeply sorry to those I have caused pain”.

She added: “All my life I have fought for a better world. I believe light will always triumph over darkness.”

‘This is an opera, not a criticism of Mexico’

At the London Critics’ Circle Awards earlier this month, Gascon’s co-star Saldana called for people to be “abstract with your idea of redemption” and to keep “minds and your hearts open, always”.

But it looks like the damage has been done. While Saldana is still favourite to win best supporting actress at both the BAFTAs and the Oscars, and the film may win gongs for its music and maybe technical accolades, it seems the momentum for taking home any bigger prizes has gone.

As the backlash intensified, Audiard gave an interview to Deadline last week. He said he had not been in touch with Gascon and that he was “very sad” to see the issue “taking up all the space” around the film. What she said in her tweets was “inexcusable”, he added.

The filmmaker also addressed criticism about representation of cartels and drug crime, saying: “Opera has psychological limitations. It seems I’m being attacked in the court of realism.”

Audiard said he never claimed to have made a “realistic” work or a documentary. “For example, I read a review where it said that night markets in Mexico City don’t have photocopiers. Well, in night markets in Mexico City, one also doesn’t sing and dance. You have to accept that is part of the magic here. This is an opera, not a criticism of anything about Mexico.”

Finally, asked if he had any regrets or if there was anything he would do differently, he said the one regret was that the film was not made in Mexico. “And the simple reason for that is that the film funding, the public funding for film in Mexico was not as good for us as what was available to us in France”.

Emilia Perez now heads to the BAFTAs and Oscars embroiled in controversy. But it is not the first. Remember British star Angela Riseborough’s nomination in 2023? Some, like Green Book in 2019, weathered it out to win. And Will Smith won his Oscar just moments after slapgate in 2022.

We’ll see at the BAFTAs on Sunday and at the Oscars next month, how forgiving voters will be about Emilia Perez.

Entertainment

Mad About The Boy: Bridget Jones is back – but is she still relevant?

Published

18 hours ago

February 13, 2025

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Mad About The Boy: Bridget Jones is back - but is she still relevant?

A “verbally incontinent spinster, who smokes like a chimney, drinks like a fish and dresses like her mother” – not an auspicious introduction to Bridget Rose Jones, but accurate.

On paper, it doesn’t sound like the dream role, but Renée Zellweger disagrees, telling Sky News: “It’s the best job in the world to step into her shoes for a while”.

Three decades after the character came to life on the page, and following a trio of earlier films, Zellweger has returned to “this just endearing character” for a fourth movie, Mad About The Boy.

With returning characters including Hugh Grant, Colin Firth and Emma Thompson, new relationships are also introduced, with Leo Woodall and Chiwetel Ejiofor joining the cast.

Zellweger goes on: “I love her. I love her humour. I love her vulnerability. I love her imperfection. I love the opportunity to play out her miscalculating a plan and it maybe, surprising her in her execution. I love all of it.”

The first film earned Zellweger an Oscar nod for her portrayal of Bridget, and the character’s name has gone into the lexicon.

Mad About The Boy director Michael Morris – the first male director to step into the franchise – told Sky News: “When you see Bridget, you realize how many, how few characters there are in film that are just unapologetically human. It’s weird. There should be more…

“She looks the way she looks when she gets up. She’s late for school. She drops things when she shouldn’t drop them. She makes the wrong speech when she needs to give the right speech. And all of those things make you just fall in love with her.”

After years of soul-searching, her creator, Helen Fielding, has decided the key to Bridget’s appeal lies in her revealing “the gap between how you feel you are supposed to be and how you really are inside.”

Fielding’s anonymous columns for The Independent, first published in 1995, were a word-of-mouth hit. The four subsequent books were bestsellers.

Produced by Working Title – the production company behind British hits including Four Weddings And A Funeral, Love Actually and Notting Hill – the first film took more than $280m (£225m) worldwide.

Studio bosses will be hoping Mad About The Boy will work a similar magic, and with ticket pre-sales proving bigger than Barbie, it’s looking promising.

Digging down into Bridget’s enduring appeal, Angela McRobbie, Professor of Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths University of London, told Sky News the character’s timely merging of political and popular culture sent out a positive message to young women in the 90s and early 2000s.

“The figure of Bridget Jones, both in writing and then in film represented a new kind of young woman who had been to university, who knew her Jane Austen, and who knew a little bit about feminism.

“There was a sense in which the knowledge of feminism haunted the Bridget Jones phenomena, but in a way that she wanted to discard it and put it in the past.

“She wanted to be feminine. She wanted to be sexy. She wanted to [wear a] Playboy bunny outfit. And in her dream landscape, she imagined a white wedding with lots of kids in the Home Counties. There was a sense in which what the column and then the film did was offered a kind of release from the burden of being feminist”.

She says Bridget wearing a see-through shirt and miniskirt into the office was her way of saying: “We have to live with sexual inequality, it’s not such a bad thing. I want to be a real girl. I want to enjoy my sexuality if it gets me the attention I want from the boss”.

McRobbie goes on: “In some ways, you could say she was legitimising a kind of sexual inequality in the workplace, but in a fun, light-hearted way.”

Emotional intelligence coach and Bridget Jones fan Miriam Bross told Sky News she can see why Bridget has been described as “feminist Marmite”.

“I think one of the reasons why people react strongly to her is because she was turned into an icon. She was supposed to be the woman of the 90s…

“That’s when you get this polarisation where you feel like you have to either be in favour of Bridget or not. But actually, she’s such a complex character that there’s something for everybody.

“She was this single woman who had fun. Yes, she ends up with a man in the end. But that isn’t the main part. The main part is that she is successful. Even though she makes mistakes, she is a normal weight and is still chased by men.

“Why Bridget still lives on is because she gave people the main message – be yourself and you’re going to be okay.”

Bross also says that Bridget helped prove that a film focused on the female experience could be as successful as a male-led movie.

“In the 80s, rom coms were all about neurotic men finding love… The female leads in them had very little to say.”

A case in point is Julia Roberts’s actress heroine in Notting Hill – as Bross says – “her silence is so normalised that Ronan Keating wrote the song When You Say Nothing At All celebrating her silence”.

But then in comes Bridget: “She talks. She has voiceovers. We see her thoughts. It’s about her. It’s not just about her and love, it’s about her in her job, we see her working. We see her making mistakes. We see her.”

Bross goes on: “Who doesn’t like to see themselves represented on film? Representation matters very much. And here was this flawed woman who got the guy in the end.”

Both McRobbie and Bross say they will be watching Mad About The Boy.

But is it the same old Bridget we’ll see in the new film? With a very different tone to previous instalments, can fans look forward to the dollop of nostalgia they’re likely craving?

As McRobbie rightly notes, the experience of the Gen Z audience watching the movie today is very different to that of their predecessors.

“It’s a much tougher world than it was certainly in the early 2000s and even in the second film. Young women have to deal with toxic masculinity, and they have to navigate their way through sexuality and they’re much more aware of sexual violence.”

It begs the question, will Bridget have the same appeal in 2025 as she did in 2001?

Bross says she still has much to offer: “This character is like an old friend. So even if she’s not entirely up to date, you will still love her…

“When people are stressed, when they’re anxious, they turn to the familiar. People do need something soothing. They need narratives that help them calm down in stressful times.”

Meanwhile, Zellweger promises Bridget will still exhibit all the qualities that have made her beloved worldwide.

“I think it’s just a continuation of these authentic representations of a person’s experience and different life chapters.

“It feels like the essence of the person is the same and her very familiar optimism, her vulnerability and her sweetness and her humour, all that’s the same.”

Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy is in cinemas now.

Entertainment

Emilia Perez was a BAFTAs and Oscars frontrunner – where did it all go wrong?

Published

18 hours ago

February 13, 2025

admin

At the start of awards season, Emilia Perez looked like it could come away as one of this year’s big success stories.

The film’s acknowledgement seemingly reflected the more progressive attitudes of voters in recent years – but as its profile rose, so did the scrutiny.

Offensive? Or a ‘crazy marvel’?

Carlos Aguilar, a film critic originally from Mexico City who writes for the Roger Ebert film website, was generally positive in his review, giving the film three out of four stars.

Karla Sofia Gascon’s resurfaced tweets

But the criticism from some trans people and some Mexicans is not a good look for a supposedly progressive film about a trans woman in Mexico. All publicity is good publicity does not apply here.

A lot of this criticism, though, had been made before the Oscar and BAFTA nominations. Emilia Perez was still riding high at that point.

In the since-deleted posts, Gascon took aim at Muslims’ dress, language and culture in her native Spain and suggested Islam should be banned.

Writer Sarah Hagi, who screenshotted the posts and shared them, wrote: “This is all from the star of a movie that is campaigning on its progressive values, you really gotta laugh.

She added: “All my life I have fought for a better world. I believe light will always triumph over darkness.”

‘This is an opera, not a criticism of Mexico’

The filmmaker also addressed criticism about representation of cartels and drug crime, saying: “Opera has psychological limitations. It seems I’m being attacked in the court of realism.”

We’ll see at the BAFTAs on Sunday and at the Oscars next month, how forgiving voters will be about Emilia Perez.