He and his wife were divorcing, and his affair with Ava Gardner had become an open scandal. Columbia Records wanted him out. In 1950, he was released from his MGM film contract, and his own agent, MCA, dropped him. Sinatra seemed to have become a has-been at age 34. Sinatra and Gardner married in 1951, but separated a few years later and divorced in 1957. Things got worse when Sinatra lost his voice due to a vocal cord hemmorhage, and he was rumored to have attempted suicide. Fortunately his voice problems were temporary, and he helped pick himself back up by resuming his recording career, and making an important re-entry into films. Sinatra landed the role of Maggio in From Here to Eternity (1953), which earned him an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor. Considered a natural actor, Sinatra turned in top-notch performances in many more films, most notably The Man With the Golden Arm (1955), The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and The Detective (1968). Sinatra’s work brought him into the Hollywood community in the late 1940s, where he became a member of the “Rat Pack,” a group of up-and-coming entertainers that included Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford. The group performed together in Las Vegas in the 1950s and co-starred in several movies, including Ocean’s Eleven (1960), Sergeants Three (1962) and Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964). The Rat Pack also staged concerts to raise money for John F. Kennedy’s bid for the presidency in 1960. In 1966, Sinatra married the diminutive actress Mia Farrow, when he was 51 and she was 21. The couple divorced a little over a year later, in 1967. He married Barbara Marx, the former wife of Zeppo Marx, in 1976. Sinatra announced his retirement in 1971 but returned for various concert tours and recordings during the next two decades, although his famous voice had begun to waver. His 1980 recording of “New York, New York” made him the only singer in history to have hit records in five consecutive decades. In 1988-89, Sinatra teamed up with his old Rat Pack cohorts, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Dean Martin for a multi-city tour, and he last performed in concert in 1994 at age 78. Sinatra died of a heart attack at age 82 on May 14, 1998. .