Mini Mata Hari

There are compensations for being the daughter of a famous father: one is that people write songs about you. Teddy Roosevelt's little girl, for example, inspired the 1919 ditty In My Sweet Little Alice Blue Gown. Frank Sinatra's elder daughter prompted the 1944 lullaby, Nancy with the Laughing Face.

Unfortunately, there was not always a lot for Nancy Sinatra to laugh about; during the first 25 years of her life, Laughing Face was as close as she ever came to fame. Now, however, with four hit records and two starring movie roles to her credit, she can claim to have made it on her own. Nancy, in fact, is lately being given the kind of celebrity treatment usually accorded her father. In Viet Nam, where she recently toured, 37 outfits generously named her their No. 1 pinup girl. She is currently negotiating a contract with the Pontiac people, who think that her trim chassis is just the right image for their new line of low-slung chariots. Even Daddy is getting into the act: his duet with Nancy on a single called Somethin' Stupid was No. 1 on the bestseller charts last week.

Garbage Somewhere. It does not seem to matter that Nancy can just barely carry a tune. The slick arrangements, the electronic doctoring and the charisma of the Sinatra name carry her along very well, just as they do her singer brother, Frank Jr., 23. Junior, however, does not have Sis's smoky sex appeal. With her lemur eyes, her pouty lips and luxuriant swirls of streaked blonde hair, she comes on like Mata Hari in a miniskirt.

This new look has made all the difference. In 1961, when Nancy joined Reprise Records (then owned by her father) after a disillusioning one-semester fling at college, she was strictly Carol Coed. Over the next five years, she cut 15 forgettable singles in a sweet-little-girl voice. Then, in late 1965, shortly after her four-year marriage to Singer Tommy Sands ended in divorce, she turned her career over to Songwriter Lee Hazlewood. He lectured her in the classic show-biz manner: "You're not a sweet young thing. You're not the virgin next door. You've been married and divorced. You're a grown woman. I know there's garbage in there somewhere."

Becoming Herself. By "garbage," Hazlewood meant pain, heartbreak, worldliness. He carted it out of her, distilled it into a recording of his mildly rocking These Boots Are Made for Walking, which Nancy sang with all the cynical bite she could muster. Boots sold nearly 4,000,000 copies, and Nancy, outfitting herself with 250 pairs of boots, went stomping around the world on a promotional junket.

Today, befitting her new-found maturity, she stays close to her $70,000 Beverly Hills home, "enjoying my aloneness." Now 26 -- or 41 years older than her stepmother, Mia Farrow--she often accompanies her sister Tina, 18, to the family haunts, most notably Hollywood's Villa Capri and Martoni restaurants, each of which has a "Sinatra family table." Two months ago, she formed her own independent film company, Boots Enterprises, and this fall plans to co-star in The Flower Children with Co-Producer Sal Mineo. She is also writing a book about her father. Title: A Very Gentle Man. Says Nancy: "All my life I've been Frank's daughter, or Tommy's wife, or Frank Jr.'s sister--never myself. I feel I'm finally becoming myself."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.