Meet Jimmy Van Heusen, the composer more swingin' than Sinatra

For Sinatra fans, the upcoming PBS documentary Jimmy Van Heusen: Swingin’ with Frank and Bing premiering in August (check local listings) will sound like a must-see. It goes inside composer Jimmy Van Heusen’s professional collaboration with Ol’ Blue Eyes—Frank recorded more than 80 of Van Heusen’s songs, including the Oscar-winning “All the Way,” “High Hopes,” and “Call Me Irresponsible,” as well as the Emmy-winning “Love & Marriage”—as well as their friendship, which started in Tin Pan Alley and ended with Van Heusen being buried in the Sinatra family plot.

As our sneak peek below testifies, Sinatra modeled his swingin’ bachelor lifestyle after Van Heusen, a WWII test pilot who was known to take Sinatra on flights in his own planes (like to see Van Heusen’s home in Palm Springs, where Sinatra then built one, too). Watch it below for choice anecdotes from Shirley MacLaine and Angie Dickinson and a great appreciation of the Van Heusen hit “Come Fly With Me.”