“Frank Sinatra, holding a glass of bourbon in one hand and a cigarette in the other, stood in a dark corner of the bar between two attractive but fading blondes who sat waiting for him to say something.”

Why is it great? Yes, we deliberately launched this cool new feature with the first sentence of one of the most famous magazine articles of all time. Go big or go home. Fifty years later, this lede is still a thing of wonder, capturing Sinatra’s essence with a scene so finely drawn you can see him testily exhaling the smoke from the side of his mouth and the beginnings of crow’s feet around the fading blondes’ eyes. And those last seven words! They perfectly telegraph tension, and the balance of power between not only Sinatra and the women, but no doubt just about everyone in his life.