Local members of the Sloatsburg Senior Center enjoyed the patter of an old-fashioned dinner theater show last Wednesday when the trio that makes up A Touch of Sinatra entertained the center.

A popular trio making the rounds of area senior centers, the group weaves a biographical narrative of  Frank Sinatra’s life and times with a number of his songs, including big hits but also obscure, early recordings that helped complete the biographical narrative trio-member Joey Gilligan spun during the show. The program featured the voice of Donny Farraro, with Mike Dellutri working the sound system.

Farraro, a stage four cancer survivor, said he never really sang before his cancer but then took it up because it was something he always wanted to do. And he does it very well.

“He was the best,” said Farraro about Sinatra, who in the 1940s became one of the first cultural superstars in American entertainment. “The story of his life, the amount of songs that he did, the anonymous things he did for kids, all of the things he did,” Farraro said gives the show a boost because of the rich material.

Joey Gilligan took on the narrative persona of Sinatra and recounted various tales of a young Sinatra that would lead into a Farraro song. There was the tale from Sinatra’s Hoboken youth that centered on those hot summer days hanging out with the guys, where the Irish kids would chase them down to the Hudson and they’d willingly jump into cool waters, which, Gilligan mentioned, was not so clean even then. And then, of course, Farraro broke into Summer Wind.

The Sloatsburg Senior Center was full for the show, which was booked by former president Rose Nattani, who recently stepped down after leading the group for several year. The center’s current president is Veronica Schwartz.

The show was filled with interesting Sinatra trivia, such as how the singer got his start toward the big time, which has its roots along the Rockland and Bergen County lines. Gilligan told the story of the Rustic Cabin, a roadhouse perched atop the Palisades on 9W at Englewood Cliffs in Bergen County that had a brief shining moment in the American pop culture firmament. In 1938, Sinatra worked at the Rustic Cabin for $15 per week as a singing waiter and master of ceremonies. The big draw for Sintra was a radio show broadcast from the restaurant on WNEW called Dance Parade that reached a New York City audience and eventually the ears of Harry James.

The Rustic Cabin also plays a part in the notorious Bergen County Sheriff’s Office shot of an intense young Sinatra, piercing blue eyes shining through even in the black and white photo. Still dressed in his Rustic Cabin tuxedo attire, the 23-year old Sinatra was picked up by Bergen police following a performance at the Rustic Cabin and booked for a dalliance in the roadhouse parking lot. The charges of seduction under the false promise of marriage were dismissed as the woman involved was married. But the photo lives on.

Joey G. told an abbreviated edition of the famous story but his focus was on Harry James offering Sinatra $75 dollars a week to sing with his group — if Sinatra could lose the accent. Sinatra accepted, then quickly abandoned James for Tommy Dorsey, and by 1941 became the country’s number one singer, earning a million dollars and a place in history.

When Joey G. mentioned Ava Gardner’s name, there were what sounded like audible hisses from the audience. Acknowledged as perhaps the love of his life, Sinatra left his first wife Nancy Barbato — mother of his three children — for Gardner. Farraro used the story to segue into I’ll Never Smile Again, the popular melancholy song recorded in 1940 with Tommy Dorsey that spent the summer and fall at number one on the Billboard charts.

And in a sweetly romantic moment, Tom Dodrill took his wife Marie by the hand, led her to the dance floor, and the two shared a dance slowly across the parquet floor as the crowded room faded away.

The Sloatsburg Senior Center is open most Wednesday afternoons at 1 p.m. at 8 Liberty Rock Road for residents throughout Sloatsburg 55 and over. Membership costs $10 per year. For information, call 753-6646.