Fact-Checking Frank Sinatra's Birth Date: Centenary Milestones and Common Myths

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The forceps left permanent structural damage on the future star. Throughout his childhood, neighborhood kids in Hoboken taunted him with the nickname "Scarface." The scars on his left cheek and neck ran deep, prompting Sinatra to develop an acute self-consciousness about his appearance. During his early performance years, he habitually applied heavy makeup to conceal the gouges and insisted on being photographed and filmed from his right profile.

Worse than the cosmetic injury was the hidden internal trauma: a perforated eardrum. The pressure of the forceps had ruptured his left tympanic membrane. Decades later, during World War II, that specific injury sparked one of the fiercest public relations storms of his career. When Sinatra reported to the draft induction center in Newark in 1943, military medical examiners classified him as 4-F (medically unfit for military service) due to the punctured eardrum and emotional instability ratings.

Critics accused him of faking his injuries or buying off the draft board using his mother’s extensive local political connections. Accusations were hurled in print by columnists like Westbrook Pegler. The military record, however, confirmed the reality. The physical damage documented on induction forms matched the exact trauma inflicted during his 1915 delivery. The very injury that nearly took his life at birth spared him from the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific, allowing him to dominate the domestic airwaves while other stars were deployed overseas.