VEGAS MYTHS BUSTED: Frank Sinatra’s Porn Video

Posted on: August 25, 2025, 07:21h. 

Last updated on: August 25, 2025, 10:41h.

Corey Levitan Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Vegas Myths Busted.
  • A longstanding rumor suggests that a struggling, 19-year-old Frank Sinatra starred in a porn film before hitting it big
  • The claim was made in the book “Frank Sinatra, the Boudoir Singer” by Darwin Porter
  • Porter says he heard the story from ex-Rat Pack member Peter Lawford, who held a grudge against Sinatra
  • No copies of the film have ever been identified

He was an Oscar-winning actor, one of the best-selling recording artists of all time and the leader of the Rat Pack. But was Las Vegas legend Frank Sinatra ever a porn star?

A.I. rendered this photo of a movie poster for Frank Sinatra’s alleged porn flick. (Image: GROK)

This salacious allegation comes from one — and only one — source: the 2011 book “Frank Sinatra, The Boudoir Singer” by Darwin Porter (with Danforth Prince).

Start Spreading the Nudes

According to Porter, Sinatra’s screen debut wasn’t made in the 1941 musical “Las Vegas Nights” but in 1934’s “The Masked Bandit.” That film was what was known as a “porn loop,” a short stag reel designed to be played over and over at peep-show arcades or on home projectors.

Broke and unknown at 19 years old, the desperate crooner supposedly accepted $100 to don a mask and get naked and biblical with one (or more) female co-stars.

Back when he was an entertainment reporter for the Miami Herald, Porter claims, former Rat Pack member Peter Lawford told him he saw “The Masked Bandit” at a party hosted by Sammy Davis Jr. in 1972, where Davis had it spliced into the middle of “Deep Throat” as a prank.

Sinatra was furious, according to Porter. He demanded the film be destroyed in front of him and nearly ended his friendship with Davis over it.

Frank Assessment

Frank Sinatra, 19, lounges on Long Branch Beach in New Jersey in 1934, the same year that the undiscovered singer supposedly shot “The Masked Bandit” to support himself. (Image: City of Long Branch)

Beyond Porter’s word, zero evidence suggests that this story is true.

No copy of “The Masked Bandit” has ever surfaced — not from anyone’s attic or estate sale — though many celebrity collectors have made it their life’s mission to secure one. (If it existed, it would fetch millions at auction.)

The absence of corroborating sources from Sinatra’s early career, from anyone in the adult film industry at the time, and from anyone attending that Sammy Davis Jr. party render this claim highly suspect at best. But the reasons not to believe don’t stop there …

Discredited by academic historians as unreliable and ethically questionable, Porter’s biographies are infamous for their unverified scandalmongering.

Designed to titillate and provoke more than to reliably inform, they contain unsourced claims that actor Steve McQueen, too, worked as a “porno performer”  before hitting it big and that actor James Dean was a male prostitute who had sex with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

So ask yourself this …

How likely was a writer like this to have sat on the biggest showbiz story in history until 27 years after his source for it died?

Against the Lawford

Sinatra performs on stage at the Copa Room at the Sands with Peter Lawford in 1960. (Image: Sydney George/Sands Photo Collection/UNLV Special Collections)

Even if Lawford did tell Porter the story — and that’s a big if — there would still be a big problem with it …

Lawford held a grudge against Sinatra since he was blackballed from the Rat Pack in the early ’60s.

As Patricia Kennedy’s husband, Lawford was also JFK’s brother-in-law, and someone Sinatra valued more for his access to power than his necessity on stage.

Not musically gifted like the act’s three frontmen, or funny like Joey Bishop, he merely played a straight man and butt of some of the jokes. (The others called him “Brother-in-Lawford.”)

That ended in 1962, after Lawford agreed to arrange a visit for the young president to Sinatra’s Palm Springs estate. Sinatra was so excited, he had a guesthouse and helipad built just for Kennedy to use.

At the last minute, however, JFK’s brother (attorney general Robert F. Kennedy) advised him to stay with Bing Crosby instead — due to Sinatra’s mob ties. Sinatra blamed Lawford for the snub, believing he didn’t stick up for his friend.

Sinatra smashed the helipad with a sledgehammer and exiled Lawford from the Rat Pack. To make sure the reason was clear, he recast Bing Crosby in what was going to be Lawford’s role in the 1964 film “Robin and the 7 Hoods.”

Of course, the true believers in Frank Sinatra’s porn video aren’t daunted by the many problems with this story. They “know” that Sinatra used his mob ties to destroy every last copy of “The Masked Bandit” in existence.

Final Take

To believe that Frank Sinatra once starred in a porn video, it’s necessary to believe one or more of the following:

  • That every copy of “The Masked Bandit” harbored in every grandfather’s porn stash was somehow located and destroyed
  • That none of the hundreds of people likely to have seen, made, or heard of this film ever mentioned it to anyone
  • That the one exception happened to be a Rat Pack exile who should be trusted despite harboring a grudge against Sinatra
  • That a biographer known for stretching the truth kept the biggest secret in showbiz history to himself until more than 27 years after it was told to him

When you add it all up, it’s not merely unlikely, it’s the impossible dream.

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