FRANK SINATRA: ALL THE WAY (PT.1)

by Steve Vertlieb This is a love story as affectionate as any. In the current vernacular it might be referred to as a “bromance,” the non-romantic affection for one man by another. For, in all the life of this writer at least, never has there been the adoration for another human soul… beyond brother, parents, and beloved girlfriend (dear Shelly), than that felt more than half a century for a man called "Sinatra". Music and films have, I imagine, played an integral role in the life of yours truly from the earliest of memories, perhaps as early as 1950. When I was four our family got it's first television set and, from the moment that magical square box came to life, that young child would be permanently and adoringly enchanted and entranced by the sights and sounds which came lovingly from its intimate screen and speakers. During my early youth, mom and dad would take my brother and I to the movies, either at our premiere local movie house, The Benner Theater or, during more sophisticated journeys beyond the realm of the Oxford Circle in Northeast Philadelphia, to Philadelphia’s first-run downtown theaters such as The Mastbaum, The Stanley, The Boyd, The Fox, Randolph, Stanton, or The Arcadia. Dad would always take me to adventure movies such as IVANHOE with Robert Taylor, THE SEARCHERS with John Wayne, or MOGAMBO with Clark Gable. While Mom on the other hand escorted me to the big musicals such as ANNIE GET YOUR GUN With Betty Hutton and Howard Keel, Fred Astaire in THE BANDWAGON, and that little musical opus from the pen of Cole Porter called HIGH SOCIETY. And it was during a screening of the latter that I first encountered Frank Sinatra on the big screen. This was 1956. Now, to be candid, my singular man crush of the period was with Bing Crosby. I'd discovered at the tender age of ten or younger that I’d developed a reasonably good romantic singing voice; and as such I'd aspired to follow in the theatrical footsteps of Harry Lillis Crosby (“Bing” to you) when I grew into manhood. I only had eyes for Bing at the time, and had little interest in an upstart named Sinatra. My cousin Marsha had developed something of a teen crush on Frank, but the purity of my ten year old “vision” would only allow for the more traditional warbling of “the old groaner.”

I had first encountered the enigma called Sinatra a year earlier during a “live” television broadcast of Thornton Wilder’s classic OUR TOWN. The highly publicized and significant tv production was to be aired in “Living Color” on NBC. The famous story was given a new wrinkle for television. It was to be an entirely new and original musical production with words and music written expressly for the show by the popular composing team of Sammy Cahn and James (Jimmy) Van Heusen. Cahn and Van Heusen had become Sinatra’s composers of choice, and their tunes for the program went on to achieve their own “star” status on America’s HIT PARADE. Van Heusen, whose real name was Chester Babcock and who took his stage name from his favorite shirt, was often spoofed by friend Bob Hope when the comedian used the song writer’s real name as his character name in some of the Crosby and Hope “Road” pictures for Paramount. OUR TOWN premiered as a part of the “Producer’s Showcase” series on September 19th, 1955, and featured Paul Newman as George, Eva Marie Saint as Emily, and Frank Sinatra as “The Stage Manager.” The program contains the only known visual record of Paul Newman singing. Network news commentators and personality hosts all stood gleefully in line to extract interviews from the cast and, in particular, from Frank Sinatra whose recently revitalized career offered him the rare opportunity to introduce four new songs for the production. These included the title song from the production, “Our Town,” as well as newly realized Sinatra standards such as “Look To Your Heart,” “The Impatient Years,” and the program’s mega hit tune, “Love and Marriage.” The color elements of the original program seem to have been lost over the ensuing years, but a fine black and white “kinescope” survives, and attests to the still poignant drama of this unique interlude in early television history and development.

IN THE WEE SMALL HOURS

Now, I’d seen the coming attractions at The Benner Theater for a new film biography “Coming Soon,” and decided in 1957 to go see THE JOKER IS WILD - starring Frank Sinatra as comedian Joe E. Lewis. It was a wonderful experience which further intoxicated my growing dreams of pursuing a show business career as a singer, further reinforced by Sinatra’s screen performance of a new Cahn and Van Heusen song called “All The Way.” The film had originally been produced as “ALL THE WAY,” which must have exasperated Cahn and Van Heusen when their carefully fashioned title tune was sung for a film now titled THE JOKER IS WILD. Nevertheless, that song would come to play an important role in the transition of my own humble musical tastes.

Wedged somewhere between that growth from childhood to maturity comes the transitional period often referred to as one’s teenage years. It was during this often troubling period that I came to fall in love with the voice of a young folk/rock singer named Jimmie Rodgers. I had left Crosby behind, and was purchasing every recording I could find by Rodgers. “Honeycomb,” “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine,” and “Oh-Oh, I’m Fallin’ In Love Again” became my favorite songs of this era, and I played them quite literally until the grooves on the recordings had been worn to dust. I was the singer’s biggest fan from 1957 until somewhere midway through 1960 when a curious thing happened. At fourteen years old. I'd become aware of politics for the first time, adored Jack Kennedy and Camelot, and wistfully longed for adulthood to consume me.

One of the first full fledged albums ever purchased, after “Johnny’s Greatest Hits” by Johnny Mathis, and “Music From One Step Beyond” by Harry Lubin, was “This Is Sinatra,” followed quickly by “This Is Sinatra: Volume Two". Borrowing a little portable record player each weekend from my neighbor, Art Soren, I'd play these Sinatra recordings over and over again throughout these now interminable weekends for my parents. That was it. I was in love. I wanted to BE Frank Sinatra. Sinatra’s friendship with Jack Kennedy only served to solidify my connection with the artist. And as for the singer’s validity and credentials as an actor in the motion picture community, these early years in which my cinematic and musical tastes were rapidly developing became integral to my later adult years as a writer. I was growing ever more serious, both in adoration of Sinatra and the career path that would subsequently guide the direction and meaning of my life. This, then, was no simple “idol” chatter.

Of Sinatra’s progression from the bobby sox idol of his day to a motion picture star, his evolution was alternately maddening and unforgettable. It seemed inevitable that the crooning recording artist, first for Harry James and then for Tommy Dorsey, would eventually wind up appearing on movie screens across America. How to cast the youthful singer, however, became problematic, as his squeaky clean image with drooling teenage girls allowed for little more than fluff appearances in those early war related years. His first appearance came in 1941 with a minor effort produced by Paramount entitled LAS VEGAS NIGHTS. This decidedly less than stellar endeavor remains notable only for its inclusion of an appearance by the Tommy Dorsey band, and its fledgling male vocalist singing Ruth Lowe’s classic lament for a woman who had lost her husband to war, “I’ll Never Smile Again.” MGM’s SHIP AHOY followed a year later in 1942 as a thoroughly innocuous musical for dancer Eleanor Powell, and comedian Red Skelton. Tommy Dorsey and his band appeared once again, accompanied by an ambitious crooner named Sinatra who would sing “The Last Call For Love,” and “Poor You.” Moving over to Columbia Pictures in 1943, Sinatra would perform a single tune, but what a tune. Sans the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, he sings Cole Porter’s “Night And Day” for an otherwise forgotten Ann Miller vehicle titled REVEILLE WITH BEVERLY. Later the same year, Sinatra would co-star with Michele Morgan and Jack Haley in his first somewhat “starring” screen role in HIGHER AND HIGHER (which he would later refer to as “Lower And Lower”), an ineffectual musical “comedy” produced for RKO. He plays a boy next door type who, not surprisingly, is actually Frank Sinatra. He loses the girl to “the tin man,” but virtually steals the show when crooning “I Couldn’t Sleep A Wink Last Night,” and “This Is A Lovely Way To Spend An Evening.”

In one memorable sequence, he sings standing by a piano played by Rick Blaine’s CASABLANCA accompanist, Dooley Wilson. RKO managed to step lively when preparing their star’s next screen fling, STEP LIVELY, co-starring Gloria De Haven and future United States Senator George Murphy. As innocuous as its predecessor, the more white than black comedy featured Sinatra as a young country bumpkin aspiring to conquer Broadway as a budding playwright. The music, however, overwhelmingly

steals the show as Sinatra’s stunning interpretation of “As Long As There’s Music” dominates the proceedings.

It was only natural, and clearly inevitable, that Sinatra would soon move over to the reigning bastion of musical comedies, Metro Goldwyn Mayer and, in 1945, the studio released its blockbuster extravaganza, ANCHORS AWEIGH starring Sinatra, along with his new partners, Kathryn Grayson and Gene Kelly. While no more sophisticated in his characterizations than in his previous roles, Sinatra had dramatically grown in importance to Tinseltown, earning a coveted starring role in a huge MGM musical featuring outstanding production values, and memorable songs. Adding his usual class to the presentation was the incomparable classical conductor Jose Iturbi who was, in his own right, becoming a highly dignified staple of the MGM musicals. It is Gene Kelly, however, who steals the show in his immortal dance duet with Jerry The Mouse from the TOM AND JERRY cartoons. Sinatra’s defining moment in the cherished musical comes with his tender performance of “I Fall In Love Too Easily” by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn. The film was helmed by George Sidney who would direct a decidedly different, far more artistically developed Sinatra a mere twelve years later in PAL JOEY for Columbia.

DEDICATED TO YOU

RKO would produce, perhaps, the most influential and important Sinatra film of the decade later in 1945. THE HOUSE I LIVE IN, written by blacklisted writer Albert Maltz (one of the celebrated “Hollywood Ten” accused by Senator Joseph McCarthy), and directed by Mervyn LeRoy, was a powerful ten minute short focusing on racial intolerance in America in which Sinatra, playing himself, records in a studio, blithely

unaware of the street kids in the adjoining alley terrorizing another boy from a different ethnic background. Sinatra’s heartfelt plea to the youngsters for tolerance won the singer and the film a special Academy Award. Sinatra, known even then for his liberal politics, had been visiting area high schools, preaching racial acceptance and harmony. And it was these caring, selfless acts on the part of the singer which prompted the studio to produce the now celebrated Oscar winning short in the first place. Performing with arranger / conductor Axel Stordahl, Sinatra sings “If You Are But A Dream,” and the stunning title anthem by Earl Robinson and Lewis Allan.

In 1946, MGM produced one of their most lavish and respected musicals. TILL THE CLOUDS ROLL BY, inspired by the life and music of composer Jerome Kern, featured a vast ensemble of the studio’s musical contract players in separate set pieces and production numbers, including Judy Garland, Lena Horne, Kathryn Grayson, Van Johnson, June Allyson, and Dinah Shore. The film’s climactic masterpiece, however, remains the brilliant performance by Frank Sinatra, dressed in a stunning white tuxedo, echoing the pain of millions, in a spectacular rendition of Kern’s superb “Old Man River” from SHOW BOAT.

Sinatra’ next starring vehicle for MGM would be the delightful IT HAPPENED IN BROOKLYN (1947), pairing him once more with Kathryn Grayson, along with Jimmy Durante and later Rat Pack pal, Peter Lawford. Two army buddies, stationed in England, return to the U.S. at the conclusion of WWII, and vie for the attentions of the proverbial girl next door. Naïve, but utterly charming, Sinatra's vocals include “Time After Time,” “I Believe,” “It’s The Same Old Dream” and, in a memorable duet with Durante (in which Sinatra wonderfully emulates the elder statesman of comedy), “The Song’s Gotta Come From The Heart.”

Sensing the need to expand his artistic horizons, Sinatra took a gamble with his next picture, playing his first somewhat dramatic part in RKO’s tale of faith and spiritual miracles. Premiering in 1948, THE MIRACLE OF THE BELLS was a deeply moving story of a young actress whose untimely death precedes the opening of her first starring role in a film about Joan Of Arc. Fred MacMurray stars as a hungry studio publicist trying to

keep the producers from shelving the picture after the death of its star.

Alida Valli (THE THIRD MAN) essays the role of Olga Treskovna - the film-within-a-film's ill fated star. And Lee J. Cobb co-stars as Marcus Harris, the conflicted studio head trying to save his company. Sinatra appears in a brief, but pivotal and moving, performance as Father Paul, the young parish priest whose small

Coaltown, Pennsylvania church has been chosen as the location of Olga’s final farewell. Sinatra sings the deeply emotional “Ever Homeward,” written by Kasimierz Lubomirski, with Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn.

MGM’s THE KISSING BANDIT, released in 1948, found the crooner adrift once more in a likeable, if sappy variation of THE PIRATE in which Gene Kelly was mistaken as a notorious buccaneer. Sinatra, a milquetoast business school graduate from Boston, finds himself in old California where he impersonates a kissing bandido in a gang once run by his late father. The film, while colorful and entertaining, has been acknowledged by Sinatra as the least favorite of his various screen roles (together with his performance as Miguel in THE PRIDE AND THE PASSION). The exquisite Kathryn Grayson co-starred once again as his romantic lead.

TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME from MGM in 1949 was the second and, perhaps, the weakest of Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly musical collaborations, featuring the pair of unlikely sports figures, playing both baseball and vaudeville while simultaneously wooing Esther Williams and Betty Garrett. To Sinatra’s credit, the singer underwent punishing dance steps and routines under the supervision of Kelly in both this film, as well as their earlier collaboration, ANCHORS AWEIGH, and emerged a highly professional dance partner for the more remarkably skilled hoofer. Their next collaboration, however, would become the most memorable of their three dance films together.

ON THE TOWN, produced by MGM in 1949, directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, with music by Leonard Bernstein, and lyrics (as well as screenplay) by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, became the first musical film ever to shoot on actual locations, rather than indoor stages and sets, in the streets of New York. The city's streets, subways, skyscrapers and bustling landscape were as much the stars and personality of the beloved musical as were its human protagonists. The Big Apple, with its exuberance, excitement, and pulsating electricity, provided the vibrant backdrop and story of three sailors on leave in who discover romance, music, and adventure along Rockefeller Center and The Great White Way. The incomparable vitality of Kelly and Donen’s direction and choreography, together with spirited on location performances by Kelly, Sinatra, Jules Munshin, Ann Miller, Betty Garrett, the radiant Vera Ellen as the ever elusive “Miss Turnstiles”, along with the music of Leonard Bernstein, and the shattering steel and chrome exhilaration of the world’s greatest city, joyfully combined to create a truly one of a kind motion picture musical experience.

RKO’s embarrassing DOUBLE DYNAMITE co-starring Jane Russell and Groucho Marx followed in 1951, nearly ending the long careers of each of its players. But Sinatra’s next performance, though largely forgotten today, would powerfully shape the dramatic career path and stature of its star for the remainder of his life.

Before this, however, Frank Sinatra would go through the worst period of his life. He had grown beyond the adoration of his one time bobby soxer fans. And MGM had tired of his seemingly one dimensional screen persona, ... although they had helped to fashion and perpetuate it. While trying desperately to resuscitate his singing career, Sinatra would hemorrhage his vocal chords, leaving him to wonder if he’d ever sing again. Various cronies, sensing the end of his career, deserted him and wouldn’t pick up the phone to take his calls. With professional medical care and prescribed rest, his voice would eventually return. But for a time Sinatra would remain a professional hot potato in Hollywood.

WHERE ARE YOU?

MEET DANNY WILSON, released in 1951 by Universal International Pictures, should have changed the singer’s fortunes but, astonishingly, it didn’t. As Danny Wilson, Sinatra plays a brash, hip performer with ties to the mob. This was not the Sinatra of old but, rather, a self assured, dramatic powerhouse whose explosive acting and mature vocals set the stage for virtually everything that would establish his familiar persona in years to come. The baby fat, both physically and vocally, had disappeared, replaced by a lean and confident cocoon preparing to give birth to the most remarkable singer of the twentieth century. Sadly, neither the film’s budget or cast prompted anything more than unremarkable “B” film reviews. Directed by Joseph Pevney, with an original screen play by Don McGuire, MEET DANNY WILSON introduced a brand new, revitalized Sinatra to an audience that simply didn’t care. Had audiences gone to see this little film with overpowering aspirations, it might not have taken another two years for Sinatra to return to the top.

While traveling with then wife Ava Gardner for location shooting in Africa, Sinatra seemed out of place and uncomfortable. He was simply along for the ride. Gardner was starring with Clark Gable and Grace

Kelly in John Ford’s remake of an earlier Clark Gable vehicle, RED DUST. For MOGAMBO, Gardner was playing the role earlier essayed by Jean Harlow in the MGM 1932 original. A novel by writer James Jones was being prepped for filming back in the states, and its casting was the hottest ticket in Hollywood. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY had taken the country by storm, and director Fred Zinnman was busily searching for the actors who would grace the most highly anticipated film in years.

The best selling novel concerned the tumultuous lives of army personnel in Hawaii prior to the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor. Among the characters populating James Jones’ novel was a hot headed, arrogant little Italian private named Angelo Maggio. Sinatra read the novel, and identified so strongly with the character of Maggio that winning that role in the film had obsessed him. He believed that he WAS Maggio, and that no one else could play the part. Zinnman wanted no part of him, but Sinatra persuaded Gardner to talk to Harry Cohn, the Columbia Pictures studio head who had wisely purchased the rights to film the novel. To virtually everyone’s astonishment, Sinatra’s screen test won him the role and what followed became the stuff of cinema legend. Sinatra became Private Maggio. He ate, slept, and breathed the characterization. In the film’s pivotal scene, Sinatra is brutalized by Ernest Borgnine in the company brig. He escapes imprisonment in the back of an army truck, only to fall out of the vehicle and bounce cruelly along the darkened road. He crawls in agony to his friends (Montgomery Clift and Burt Lancaster) where he dies in Clift’s arms. That performance and, in particular, that sequence won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor of the year. Suddenly, everyone in town was looking at him with new eyes. Those who had written him off and forgotten him were now knocking at his door, begging for his attention. He was back. Sinatra had returned, and he would become bigger than ever.

Hungry for meatier roles, along with a desire to effectively immolate his former screen persona, Sinatra next enacted one of his most frightening performances and, indeed, one of the most chilling performances in cinema history…that of the psychotic assassin John Baron in SUDDENLY.

Released in 1954 through United Artists, and directed by Lewis Allen (THE UNINVITED), Sinatra plays a vicious killer for hire who, with his lethal associates, arrives in the innocuous California community of Suddenly, where he toys sadistically with conservative, old world ideals and balances while meticulously plotting to kill the President of the United States whose train is scheduled to stop in the quiet suburban community. America, in the middle 1950’s, still reeling from the subversive shock of war in which its traditional values and morality were challenged and nearly decimated by Hitler and his conquering armies, has returned to the complacency and isolationism inherent in world weary societies, tired of war and seared by pain. Its citizens ache for the simplicity of an idealistic culture painfully absent from the imposing international landscape.

Into this hedonistic plateau arrives a cold blooded assassin whose narcissism explodes in ranging contempt for the human Ostrich community refusing to lift up its collective head from the sand. Baron, too, has been irrevocably scarred by the brutal reality that no man or country is an island unto himself, but his insecurity and fear have been manifested in aggression, suspicion and the seething hatred of an animal cornered in ever diminishing space.

His ugly contempt for humanity shocks his hostages into seizing once more their emasculated strength, embracing their beliefs, and standing firm in the face of fear. Their unity defeats Baron, exposing his naked cowardice and callous contempt for peace. Sinatra delivers a fiercely frightening performance as a wounded psychotic, a coward with a gun, finally crumbling in both humiliating and numbingly terrified defeat. Standing against him in accumulated courage and resolve are Sterling Hayden, James Gleason, Paul Frees (WAR OF THE WORLDS and THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD) and Nancy Gates who would appear once again with Sinatra four years later as Arthur Kennedy’s mistress in SOME CAME RUNNING.

YOUNG AT HEART, released by Warner Bros in 1955, was based upon Fanny Hurst’s “Sister Act,” which had been filmed previously by the studio as FOUR DAUGHTERS. Sinatra plays “stumble bum Barney Sloan,” a talented song writer plagued by torturous doubt and self defeating insecurities whose insertion into a traditional middle America family wreaks havoc upon their naïve confidence and values. His edgy, conflicted performance as a ”victim” of bad breaks and circumstances beyond his comprehension, echoes perfectly the cynical interpretation of a talented “loser” earlier enacted by John Garfield in the original production.

Doris Day is the uncomplicated “girl next door” he falls in love with and who, ultimately, saves him from his personal demons. Sinatra escapes the fate rendered Garfield at the sad conclusion of the original version, although his performance is every bit as edgy and emotionally vulnerable. The film gives both stars an opportunity to shine musically, and Sinatra delivers definitive, unforgettable performances of “One For My Baby, “Just One Of Those Things,” “Someone To Watch Over Me,” the haunting “You My Love” (in his single screen duet with Day), and the hit title theme, “Young At Heart.”

Sinatra next essayed the role of an amusingly cynical young doctor in the Stanley Kramer directed ensemble drama NOT AS A STRANGER (United Artists, 1955), based upon the best selling novel by Morton Thompson, and with a screenplay by Edward and Edna Anhalt. A young, idealistic doctor (Robert Mitchum) nobly climbs the medical ladder of success, sacrificing all human interaction to the aspirations of his clinical beliefs, realizing nearly too late that the frailty of human emotion is as essential a component as medical knowledge in healing the sick. With an all star cast, including Mitchum, Olivia DeHavilland, Charles Bickford, Sinatra, Lee Marvin, Broderick Crawford, and Lon Chaney, Jr as Mitchum’s alcoholic father, the film is interesting but, ultimately, flawed as Mitchum’s lead character is written and portrayed as an entirely unsympathetic son of a bitch, failing virtually everyone whose love and support he callously abandons and betrays in the name of blind ambition.

MGM’s THE TENDER TRAP, released in 1955, is an innocuous bit of sexist fluff based upon a Broadway play by Max Shulman, the celebrated creator of THE MANY LOVES OF DOBIE GILLIS. Sinatra stars this time as theatrical agent Charlie Reader, a womanizing bachelor romancing multiple secretaries and starlets until he meets Julie Gillis (no relation to Dobie), charmingly portrayed by Debbie Reynolds. David Wayne appears as his best friend, frustrated by the perceived restrictions of a perfect marriage, and longing to emulate his swinging pal. The wonderfully sophisticated Celeste Holm plays Sinatra’s wise, if ultimately jilted girl friend of convenience.

Predictably scripted, THE TENDER TRAP offers comparatively little in the way of originality. Its surviving strength is in its remarkably memorable opening and closing sequences, particularly the former, in which Sinatra emerges from the distance on an empty, barely camouflaged soundstage, adorned in his signature sports jacket and designer hat, swaying persuasively in rhythmic, self assured confidence as he flirts mesmerizingly with the camera while singing “Love Is The Tender Trap". The musically evocative, sexually intoxicating introduction to an otherwise unimaginative bedroom farce, remains both the film’s and its star’s character defining moment of the decade.

Samuel Goldwyn’s lavish Technicolor production of the Broadway smash GUYS AND DOLLS, released the same year, is an ambitious, if slavishly stage bound version of the Abe Burrows hit (based upon “The Idyll Of Miss Sarah Brown” by Damon Runyon) musical with memorable songs by Frank Loesser. Unimaginatively directed by the usually gifted Joseph L. Mankiewicz, this colorful screen translation seemed mis-guided and miscast by period star value, rather than genuine musical talent. Starring the superb Marlon Brando in one of his oddly ineffectual early performances, the otherwise astonishing actor plays the lead role of Sky Masterson in a musically impotent interpretation that begs credibility. Playing the second banana role of ultimate “stooge,” Nathan Detroit, is Sinatra who, at this stage of his re-emerging career, should have played the lead. Sinatra is said to have referred to Brando during the production of the film as “mumbles,” while the method actor delivers a nearly catastrophic performance of the show’s most memorable tune, “Luck Be A Lady.” GUYS AND DOLLS is remembered more as a curiosity, sadly, than as a successful screen visualization of a classic Broadway show.

POINT OF NO RETURN

Sinatra would fare significantly better in his next film, Otto Preminger’s explosive production of Nelson Algren’s novel, THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM. Released in 1955 by United Artists, Sinatra’s title role in this unflinching look at the world of drug addiction was one of the first American films to explore the raw underbelly of substance abuse. Still shocking today, the film was revelatory and unimaginably horrifying upon its controversial release in the mid nineteen fifties. With a pounding, electrifying jazz score by composer Elmer Bernstein, Sinatra’s stunning performance as a “dealer” of cards in backroom games and marathon betting sessions won him another Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Sinatra visited a variety of drug rehabs and sanitariums while researching the part, witnessing first hand the horrors of drug addiction.

It was an experience that would haunt him in years to come, nearly severing his long friendship with Sammy Davis, Jr., when the later gifted performer briefly succumbed to the drug culture of the sixties. Sinatra’s performance in a key sequence in which Frankie Machine is locked in a room, forced to go “cold Turkey” in order to kick his addiction alone, writhing and screaming in physical torment on the floor, is nearly unwatchable even by modern standards in its violent ferocity and realism. Kim Novak co-stars with Sinatra as an understanding neighbor secretly in love with dealer, while deservedly acclaimed actress Eleanor Parker is a revelation as his sick, manipulative wife. The role would become the defining dramatic performance of Sinatra’s screen rebirth.

His next starring role would find Sinatra in a courageous performance as a young coward in one of the first Freudian westerns, the failed yet ambitious story of JOHNNY CONCHO. Released by United Artists in 1956, the complex tale concerned a bully riding on the reputation of his gunslinger brother, until his infamous sibling is killed in an armed confrontation, and Johnny is left exposed and vulnerable. Naked and ridiculed by the community he once lorded over, the young sibling must prove to the town and his girl that, in the face of avenging brutality by gunslingers and bandits overriding the quiet community, he is a man. The score by Nelson Riddle is subtle, yet effective, producing the single “Wait For Me,” a brooding, evocative hit for the singer.

His next film, a starring role in one of the most delightful musical comedies of the fifties, would prove a lyrically defining moment for the actor and singer. MGM’s big budget, glossy remake of the Broadway hit and Oscar winning comedy THE PHILADELPHIA STORY (Katherine Hepburn’s “comeback” vehicle) provided the basis for the immortal Cole Porter’s final score. HIGH SOCIETY, produced and released by MGM in 1956, was among the most delightful, sophisticated, effusively joyous musicals of the decade. Pairing Sinatra with his lifelong idol, Bing Crosby, for the first time on screen was a major coup for the studio, for there were no more important musical stars in Hollywood at the time of this inspired collaboration. Joining forces with Sinatra and Crosby were the reigning dramatic queen of the film industry, Grace Kelly, and jazz musical legend Louis Armstrong. With Crosby in the lead as C.K. Dexter- Haven (in the role originally enacted by Cary Grant), Grace Kelly as the rich, untouchable Tracy Samantha Lord (the role first played by Hepburn in her career saving performance), and Sinatra (co-starring once again with the wonderful Celeste Holm) as Macauley “Mike” Connor (originally played by Jimmy Stewart), the film is a musical gem.

Heralded as Grace Kelly’s final screen performance before assuming the real life royalty persona and duties as Princess of the kingdom of Monaco, HIGH SOCIETY is a joyous marriage of music, wit, and sophistication. Both Crosby and Kelly won a gold record for their million selling recording of “True Love,” while Sinatra and Crosby literally steal the show with their incomparable rendition and performance of Cole Porter’s alcohol induced set piece, “Well, Did You Evah?”… a classic screen duet that never fails to invite warm smiles and magical, delectable, happiness and delight.

COME FLY WITH ME

Among the strangest and, perhaps, most ill advised films in the Sinatra canon was Stanley Kramer’s ambitious take on the Peninsular Wars and the Napoleonic campaign in Spain, during which Spanish peasants and freedom fighters courageously fought the French with passionate resistance. An abandoned cannon, left by Spanish soldiers under attack by advancing French forces, is a valued prize coveted by both the peasants and a British captain eager to secure its weaponry. Cary Grant co-starred with Sinatra and Sophia Loren in THE PRIDE AND THE PASSION, released by United Artists in 1957.

The finished film was a colorful extravaganza, but Sinatra seemed uncomfortable in his performance as Miguel, a Spanish rebel, and his accent appeared both forced and at times awkward. While the actor’s efforts were noble and sincere, the actor himself regarded his performance as embarrassing and among his least favorite roles. Kramer may have over extended himself with this massive, yet somehow lethargic production, which seemed over burdened at times by the weight of its location shooting and self important dialogue. Consequently, the film is often more ponderous than impactful and is remembered more as a curiosity than an epic.

Despite an awkward start to the year, Sinatra’s next two films would join the most iconic, beloved productions of his motion picture career. THE JOKER IS WILD provided the actor with one of his most ingratiating performances. Based upon the popular book by Art Cohn, the film recounts the turbulent life story of standup comedian Joe E. Lewis. Lewis is beginning a promising concert and recording career as a

singer when his throat is slashed by rival nightclub owners, retaliating for his defection to another club. His vocal chords cut and permanently damaged, he can no longer sing. Sophie Tucker finds the savaged performer hiding beneath the greasy camouflage of a clown’s makeup on a burlesque stage, and helps him

to find an unsuspected calling. His cynical wit and comic swipes at his own misfortune lead him on a secondary path as a celebrated, yet volatile, comic whose temper often strains the patience of those who love him. His tantrums and alcoholic binging ultimately decimate the tenuous bonds of both love and friendship, leading to a final self realization that will either destroy him or lead to his personal salvation. Sinatra is wonderful as the conflicted comedian whose real life friendship with the singer played an integral part in his seeking the role. Upon the film’s release by Paramount in 1957, Lewis remarked that “Frank had more fun playing my life than I had in living it.”

The film had originally been titled ALL THE WAY, and Sinatra collaborators Sammy Cahn and James Van Heusen had been asked to pen the title song. However, after the song had been written and submitted, Paramount decided to revert to the original title of Art Cohn’s biography. The song remained in the picture although it could no longer be considered a “title” tune. Winning an Oscar it became one of Sinatra’s most closely identified signature songs for the rest of his life.

Directed by Charles Vidor, with a sterling cast including Eddie Albert as his beleaguered long time pianist Austin Mack, along with Mitzi Gaynor and Jeanne Crain as his battle scarred romantic leads, and the fabulous Beverly Garland as Albert’s caustic wife, the picture remains among the brightest lights in the singer’s dramatic film career. Interestingly, it was during the production of a key sequence in the film involving Sinatra and Mitzi Gaynor that Gaynor was asked to come in and audition for Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein who were casting the leads in their upcoming film translation of SOUTH PACIFIC. When Sinatra heard that Gaynor could not make the audition due to scheduling demands and conflicts imposed by the film’s director, Charles Walters, he instructed Walters to “just shoot around her.” According to Gaynor herself, it was thanks to Sinatra’s personal intervention that she made the audition and won the coveted role of Nellie Forbush in the 1958 Joshua Logan production. Following on the heels of his enormous success as Joe E. Lewis, Sinatra next essayed, perhaps, the most iconic role of his career…that of Joey Evans, novelist John O’Hara’s despicable womanizer and cad, while everyone’s PAL JOEY. Produced on Broadway in 1940 by Richard Rodgers and then partner Lorenz Hart, the modestly successful New York musical made a star of Gene Kelly in the lead performance.

While Rodgers and Hart, along with O’Hara, envisioned Evans as a dancer for the original theatrical production, the suave heart throb became a singer when Columbia Pictures and director George Sidney offered the coveted role to Sinatra. The character of the “character” was softened somewhat for the screen version but Joey, although overwhelmingly charming, particularly to women, remained a narcissistic “louse.”

The part was tailored perfectly to fit Sinatra’s post comeback swagger and macho persona. Women adored him, and men wanted to BE him. As a wisecracking, romantic “user,” Sinatra fit Joey Evans like a well worn glove, twisting and manipulating everyone in his selfishly evolving web of deceit and personal aggrandizement.

Aided and abetted by two of Columbia’s biggest female stars, Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak, Sinatra was at the peak of his heavily publicized, lecherously sophisticated charm and sensual appeal. Adorned in a white dinner jacket while seated on a revolving piano stool, his cocky, finger snapping, self assured rendition of “The Lady Is A Tramp” is as classic a male “temptress” in its imagery as John Travolta’s acrobatically sexual movements in SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. Waving his fingers in the air, gently clutching a lit cigarette while singing and fondling the piano keys in rapturous romanticism, THIS was Sinatra at the pinnacle of his allure and success. If the film is deficient in any manner, it would be in the abandonment of a more elaborate musical finale than what ultimately appeared on the screen. Hayworth, a veteran “hoofer” and dance partner to both Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, had rehearsed a complicated musical routine with Kim Novak for the climactic “What Do I care For A Dame” sequence with Sinatra.

While Sinatra had himself performed many stylish, energetic dance steps with Gene Kelly over the years at MGM, he appeared unwilling to participate in an elaborate new choreographed sequence. Whether due to time constraints or growing insecurity about his earlier film career path, Sinatra chose a more simplistic, stylized treatment over the more ambitious choreography rehearsed by Hayworth and Novak.

Sinatra needn’t have worried about his prowess as a dancer, however. Years later, after his abrupt retirement from the stage, he returned to television with a musical special entitled “Old Blue Eyes Is Back” in which both he and Gene Kelly sang a remembrance of their musical pairings called “We Can’t Do That Anymore,” all the while reprising their original dance steps and proving that they actually still could.

KINGS GO FORTH, released the next year by United Artists, and directed by Delmer Daves was a comparatively small film shot in black and white with Sinatra playing an essentially subordinate role opposite Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood in a World War Two drama concerning the dangerous love affair between an innocent Italian girl and a shallow soldier played by Curtis. Sinatra is torn between his love for Monique (Wood), and his friendship with Curtis. In the end, the film is a curiosity at best with a romantically unsatisfactory conclusion, and ineffectual hints of racial prejudice. It did, however, generate another modest hit recording for the singer in its title tune, “Monique” written by Elmer Bernstein with Sammy Cahn. Sinatra’s next role as a disillusioned soldier returning to his small Indiana home town after the war would yield one of his most remarkable, deeply sensitive performances, as well as an extraordinarily powerful motion picture.

Vincente Minnelli was known primarily as a director of musicals, and was MGM’s premier song and dance interpreter. He would, however, wander off into new areas from time to time and work on some notable dramas. His non-musical films for the studio were among MGM’s dramatically finest, and included such remarkable films as THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, MADAME BOVARY, and LUST FOR LIFE (the latter two films featuring brilliant scores by three time Oscar winning symphonic composer Miklos Rozsa.) In 1958 Minnelli directed one of the most compelling dramas of his distinguished career. SOME CAME RUNNING, based upon the novel by James Jones, would be Sinatra’s second involvement with the author of his Oscar winning characterization in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY. Once again, Sinatra is an enlisted soldier in the second world war. This time, however, he is a disillusioned veteran returning home to a small town in Indiana. He is accompanied on his Greyhound bus trip by a floozy he drunkenly picked up in a bar along the way. As interpreted by Sinatra, Dave Hirsh is a world weary soldier torn between several worlds, searching for his roots as well as a starting point from which to begin again. He is a writer whose single published novel caused a minor stir upon its publication, but whose creative well has seemingly run dry. Punctuated by composer Elmer Bernstein’s lush, passionate score, SOME CAME RUNNING is a tale of loneliness, seething anger, frustration, and sexual repression longing for release.

In his first of many later “Rat Pack” pairings with Sinatra, Dean Martin scores as an alcoholic professional gambler named Bama Dillert who hooks up with, and befriends Hirsh. Shirley MacLaine is wonderful as Ginny Moorehead, the sweet “hooker” who wants only to “love and be loved” by Dave, while Martha Hyer quietly ignites her surroundings as a sexually inhibited school teacher encouraging Sinatra to begin writing again. Rounding out the outstanding ensemble cast is the always reliable Arthur Kennedy as Sinatra’s older brother, a traditional small town moralist who wishes that Dave had stayed on the bus.

SOME CAME RUNNNG offers Sinatra an opportunity to play a scarred artist reaching out for beauty and meaning in his life following the war, while MacLaine’s bittersweet, Oscar nominated performance is heartbreaking in its fragile, often simple humanity. The stunning conclusion of SOME CAME RUNNING brings each of its deeply flawed characters to their inevitable ends, and beginnings with, perhaps, a wiser appreciation for what lies ahead. This is a superb, often underappreciated, motion picture with unforgettable characters, performances, and the eloquent writing of author James Jones.

The years between 1957 and 1962 were, perhaps, the most creatively fertile for Frank Sinatra as an actor, and his next film would further demonstrate his ever unfolding artistic talent and expressive range. A HOLE IN THE HEAD (United Artists, 1959) features the actor as Tony Manetta, a down on his luck dreamer, and is among Sinatra’s most charming and endearing characterizations. Manetta owns a small, quirky hotel filled with equally quirky guests in a low rent district of Miami Beach, Florida. He is a wistful widower living with and raising his young son, Ally (played by Eddie Hodges) on the grounds of a decidedly “down scale” rental facility. Tony longs to escape the sordid confines of his surroundings, and “hit it big” one day.

As reality closes in and foreclosure threatens, Tony reaches out to his older brother, Mario, and his wife (wonderfully played by the delightful Edward G. Robinson and Thelma Ritter) for money. Into this mix comes a beautiful widow played by the enchantingly versatile Eleanor Parker, whose frightening performance as Sinatra’s conniving wife in Otto Preminger’s THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM would ordinarily have led him to run very far from her character, Mrs. Rogers.

Sinatra is both entirely sympathetic and ingratiating in his love for his little boy, and his seemingly unlikely ambitions. His desperation and ultimate despair at the races as he gambles and ultimately loses the money that might have renewed his hotel lease is painted poignantly upon his face and emotional vulnerability.

As so eloquently written by Sammy Cahn and James Van Heusen, he has “High Hopes” for “All My Tomorrows.” As directed by one of the screen’s greatest, most revered and influential directors, Frank Capra’s “American Dream” is lovingly exhibited here in one of his last motion pictures, proving that just when you think that all is lost…IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE after all. Capra was scheduled to direct Sinatra once again in a proposed screen biography on the life of comedian Jimmy Durante, with Dean Martin as the legendary comic and Sinatra as his partner but, sadly, the project was never realized.

A private disagreement with cherished friend Sammy Davis, Jr. led to a creative opportunity for another young actor in Sinatra’s next film, NEVER SO FEW, released by MGM in 1959. Davis had been signed to play the role of Sinatra’s brash subordinate but, when their long friendship abruptly (albeit briefly) derailed over some derogatory statements uttered in public by Davis, the plum role went to up and coming young actor Steve McQueen. It was a breakout performance by McQueen, effectively leading to starring roles in shortly subsequent progression. Directed by ultimately frequent McQueen collaborator John Sturges, NEVER SO FEW is an exciting adventure placed in the Burmese jungles as Captain Tom C. Reynolds (Sinatra) and his guerilla fighters engage in combat with the Japanese during World War Two.

With lush orchestral foliage by composer Hugo Friedhofer, and a most decorative cast including Gina Lollobrigida, Peter Lawford (soon to join Sinatra’s jubilant pals in “The Rat Pack”), McQueen, Paul Henreid, Richard Johnson, Brian Donlevy, and a young actor named George Takei - seven years away from his iconic performance as Mr. Sulu on NBC’s STAR TREK, NEVER SO FEW is a profoundly under rated though exciting war epic.

The Cold War between the United States and Russia grew momentarily warmer in 1960 when Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev and his wife visited the set of CAN CAN at 20thCentury Fox during a diplomatic trip to the U.S. The pair were invited to meet the cast of the film, as well as witness the filming of the infamous “Can Can” sequence with Shirley MacLaine and Juliet Prowse. The Russian premier, it was reported, openly enjoyed the dancing until his wife grimaced in disapproval. After that, it was business as usual between the two countries with the cold war growing ever more frigid.

CAN CAN, directed by Walter Lang, was a big budget musical based upon the legendary stage production with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The film is a colorful delight with wonderful comedic performances by Sinatra as a rogue Parisian attorney, Shirley MacLaine as the owner of a popular club specializing in performances of the outlawed dance, Maurice Chevalier as a lecherous judge, and Louis Jourdan as the prudish addition to the court insisting

upon the letter of the law. The obvious chemistry between Sinatra and real life “pal” MacLaine is joyous, while Chevalier and Jourdan both sing and mug deliciously for the cameras. Sinatra is at the peak of his career, clearly in command of his vocal artistry, and relishing his performances of “C’est Magnifique,” “Let’s Do it” (with MacLaine) and, particularly, the exquisitely performed “It’s All Right With Me,” a nearly heart wrenching lament set characteristically in a Parisian “saloon.” It is a definitive homage to popular music’s ultimate “saloon singer.”

END OF PART 1