Luca Ellis and the Paul Litteral Orchestra in "Hoboken to Hollywood"

It’s been quite the year for Luca Ellis. Last October, Hoboken to Hollywood—an original musical which Ellis starred in and co-wrote — opened at the Edgemar Center for the Arts. It ran for seven months to sell-out crowds, and received rave reviews from over 30 publications, including the Los Angeles Times.

Last month the show, which is centered around the live taping of a Frank Sinatra TV special in 1965, garnered three Ovation nominations. Ellis is in the running for Best Lead Actor in a Musical for his performance as “The Crooner.” With a demeanor that is calm, cool, and sophisticated—much like the Chairman of the Board himself—Ellis takes all the accolades in stride, poised and confident that the best is yet to come.

Resurrecting Ol’ Blue Eyes wasn’t originally part of the plan when Ellis came to Los Angeles. While he was growing up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Dean Martin and Harry Connick, Jr. were partial influences, but singing was never really his career path until he discovered Sinatra. “I started listening to Frank about six months before I moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting. I realized very quickly that our voices are similar. Before that I’d heard Frank in passing, but I had never made the connection.

Luca Ellis

“Within a week, I was listening to ‘Under My Skin’ and singing along in the car. I heard my voice hit volumes and notes that I’d never heard it do before. I didn’t know that I was a baritone until I started listening to Frank. When I was turning 31, I decided that I wanted to own a Frank Sinatra album. I went to Best Buy and I spoke to a guy who worked there who happened to be a ‘Frank-o-phile’ and he told me that if I was going to get one album, then this would be the one to get. That was Classic Sinatra. It was 20 of his most popular tracks from Capitol Records completely re-mastered. That was Sinatra in his prime, when he was about 36-40, right when he had found most of his phrasing and his arrangements were done by Billy May. That album completely changed my life. It was all I wanted to listen to.”

An aspiring actor, Ellis broke into show business through the usual ways that an actor makes ends meet — waiting tables. “When I moved to California, I still hadn’t planned on singing for a living. My intent was to act. I got a job as a food-runner at Mastro’s Steakhouse in Costa Mesa. Every night they had live music, and I would listen to these lounge lizards singing Frank’s music. A lot of times they’d be singing the wrong notes or they wouldn’t have the right phrasing and I thought to myself ‘Well, I can do that.’ It took a few months of nagging, begging, and pleading with them, but finally they offered me a chance to audition for their Sunday night spot. So I started singing on Sunday nights, and I was still running food five nights a week. Then my piano player got us a gig on Saturday nights at the Ritz Restaurant in Newport Beach, so within a month I was singing every weekend and about five months in, I was making enough money singing that I could quit everything else and go full time.”

Luca Ellis in "Hoboken to Hollywood"

It wasn’t long before Ellis earned a reputation for himself as a Sinatra singer, and he was cast to play the man himself in the holiday engagement of Louis & Keely, Live at the Sahara at El Portal Theatre. That was where Ellis was introduced to musical director Paul Litteral, and the idea for Hoboken to Hollywood was born. “Paul and I started talking about how maybe we should start a band together or something, and that was it. I invited Paul over to my house to start brainstorming, and we end up watching Frank Sinatra TV specials. I showed him the very first one that I’d seen, which was Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music in 1965.

“It was a very simple format — just Frank talking about the music, its authors, and composers. Monologuing and then singing a song. That’s when the idea came to me, ‘why don’t we do that?’ Why don’t we recreate that experience? Why not take a theater audience and make them a studio audience in 1965? Mad Men is really hot right, it’s very sexy, and the ’60s in general are a really hot time. People could be transported back to the ’60s and watch a live taping with the Chairman of the Board right in front of them.”

One of the most highly-praised aspects of the production was the incorporation of having the actors perform TV commercials during the “broadcast”. “Paul Litteral had the idea that we could have live commercials done in front of the audience, just to add a little color, which I thought was brilliant. So those were essentially the ideas that we had to start out with. Then we started forming the band. Paul had to call around and ask people for favors because we didn’t have the money to pay the musicians, so we had to find guys who were willing to rehearse for free.” That band ended up with 12 pieces.

It was around the time that Ellis and Litteral began working on the script that director and co-writer Jeremy Aldridge came into the mix, fleshing out the arc of the show. As for moments that captured the essence of Sinatra, however, Aldridge attributes that to the leading man. “Luca is responsible largely for the monologues that went on throughout the show. He just found that real presence of Sinatra, just from the research that he’d done and the work that he’d watched and listened to, without ever really copying it or plagiarizing it. He could just pull it through him and it comes out in his voice.”

Luca Ellis and the Paul Litteral Orchestra

Ellis also credits the flexible nature of the show itself, as a “live” taping, to the comfort and freedom of his performance. “The beauty of this show was that it was like theater with a safety net. Because it’s a studio environment, it didn’t matter how many times we messed up or if we had a technical issue. At any given point, the actor playing the director could call ‘Cut!’ and I could just do it again. That took a lot of the pressure off of me, knowing that if I mess this up, it’d just become part of that whole TV-making magic and the audience loved it! It opened up the floor for a lot of ad-libs and audience interaction. We were all just having such a great time.”

Aldridge too states that quite a bit of Hoboken’s magic and draw was due to the concept of the production. “I think that one of the things that was really neat about the show was that there was room designed into it for us to flex and move. The on-set director was called upon to move things along and keep things from happening or inspire things. So we had this live dynamic between everybody, and people would come back to see the show four, five, six times and it would be a different experience each time. I think it made it really special and kept everything fresh because we had that liberty within the show.”

The creative team has even bigger plans for Hoboken to Hollywood’s next incarnation. Expanding on this theme of immersing the audience in a live television production environment, the next step will be to mount the show in an actual Hollywood sound stage. Aldridge also plans on introducing another iconic character from the period. “We’ve decided for the next rendition to really capitalize and build on that story arc. We’re going to bring in a Dinah Shore character, and we’ve developed this incredible medley for her and Frank to do together.”

Luca Ellis and the Paul Litteral Orchestra

Ellis, in particular, is anxious to get back into good ole Frankie’s shoes. In the meantime, however, he’s just been enjoying the ride. “We haven’t been able to go up again only because we’re still waiting for investment money. I never thought that I was a playwright, or a writer for that matter. I’m just an actor-turned-singer. But now I’m an award-winning playwright. I love Los Angeles –  it has been so good to me. To be able to go full-time entertainer in a year, and have your own show, is really amazing.”

Those who hope for a Sinatra serenade at the Ovation Awards ceremony, should “The Crooner” win, will sadly have to wait. Ellis will not be in attendance. But rest assured, he has a great excuse. “The Ovation nomination is huge, because I’m going up against some real Broadway guys. It’s a huge honor. Ironically, I’m not going to be able to be there for the ceremony on November 14, because I agreed to do a fundraiser for Barbara Sinatra and her children’s center out in Palm Springs. She and Frank started this center about 25 years ago. This is the 25^th anniversary gala, and Frank performed at this fundraiser every year until he died, for about the last 10 years of his life. So I’m honored to be associated with them and to be able to do this for Frank’s family and also for the kids. It’s such a great cause. I figure it’s a win-win for me. If I lose at the Ovations, it’s okay because I’m not there anyway, and if I win, I’ll be too cool for school and I’ll have my director go up and say ‘Yeah, Luca really wanted to be here tonight, but he had to be at a fundraiser that Frank Sinatra did every year until he died.” He laughs.

When asked about his feelings on the unexpected turn his career as a performer has taken, Luca Ellis is adamant that there are no regrets. “Once I realized that I could make money as a singer, I decided to put the acting on the back burner. I knew that I’d have a much easier time standing out as a vocalist than as an actor, because I might have the right look for acting, but there are plenty of better looking guys than me in L.A., and they may even be better actors than me. I feel that I’m a strong character actor, and I really did embody the role of Sinatra. I don’t impersonate him. I really do my own thing, and I’m so lucky to be doing what I love and getting paid for it!”

In other words…he’s doing it his way.

***All Hoboken to Hollywood production photos by Michael Town