When I was very young, I made a mental list of adventures I wanted to experience in my life—a kind-of bucket list before the phrase was coined. One of those experiences was to hear Frank Sinatra sing in concert, preferably in Vegas or some Hollywood night club that existed only in my imagination. While friends dreamed of seeing the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, various Motown groups, or even the Monkees, I wanted to see the Voice. Unfortunately, I never got to hear Sinatra sing live.
This month, TCM celebrates Sinatra’s 100th birthday by devoting Wednesday evenings to his music and movies. In addition to 35 films, the line-up includes five television specials. While I never got to hear Sinatra in person, I have seen most of his movies and all of his TV specials, including one not shown as part of the TCM celebration—The Frank Sinatra Timex Special in which the Rat Pack welcomed Elvis Presley home from the army.
SINATRA AS SOULFUL LONER. THE ALBUM ‘NO ONE CARES’ (TOP) WAS RELEASED IN 1959; ‘WHERE ARE YOU’ IN 1957.
Not every singer makes a good actor, but I think every singer with an expressive or dramatic persona makes a good movie star (Crosby, Garland, Sinatra, Presley, Streisand). By the mid-1950s, Sinatra had cultivated the persona of the soulful outcast, the cool loner who preferred the shadows of the night life. His only companions were those like him—a “rat pack” of entertainers who knew too much about the world but revealed nothing. Album covers of the era depicted the singer leaning against a lamp post, nursing the drink in front of him, or holding a cigarette between his fingers. As much as any movie, these album covers evoked a mood, created a character.
It was a persona far removed from the one Hollywood originally saddled him with during the 1940s. A singing idol to screaming bobby-soxers, he appeared in a series of musical comedies that exploited his thin physique and boyish charm. Don’t get me wrong. I love these charming musicals in which he played naïve boy-men who don’t quite understand the ways of women. My favorite is On the Town in which cab-driver Betty Garrett chases him around her taxi beseeching him in song to “Come Up to My Place.” But, like Dick Powell before him, Sinatra could not play the juvenile archetype forever and worked hard to rebuild his star image. If you like Sinatra’s MGM musicals from this era, check them out on TCM on December 16.
BETTY GARRETT PLEADS “COME UP TO MY PLACE” IN ‘ON THE TOWN.’
In 1953, Sinatra famously revived his flagging career and buried his old star image with his comeback role as Angelo Maggio in From Here to Eternity, which airs this Wednesday, December 9, at 9:15pm, EST. However, twitchy Maggio does not reflect the star image that defined Sinatra during the 1950s. Instead, his character in Young at Heart embodies the cool, collected outsider who lives in a world of his own. In this melodramatic remake of Four Daughters, Sinatra costars as Barney Sloane, a struggling, disillusioned composer-arranger with a chip on his shoulder because he’s never caught a break. This film does not get the attention it deserves, and I am disappointed that TCM is not including it as part their Sinatra celebration. Perhaps the melodrama format prevents a serious look at the film, or maybe it’s the casting of Doris Day, whose eternally optimistic character leads Barney to his happy ending. However, Young at Heart is an important role in Sinatra’s film career, because it features him as a saloon singer, the image he cultivated on his album covers. It was also the image he would harken back to while touring during his twilight years. In Young at Heart, Sinatra sings the quintessential saloon ballad “One for My Baby,” a signature song in his career and a signifier of his 1950s image.
SINGING “ONE FOR MY BABY” IN ‘YOUNG AT HEART’
Other films from the 1950s perfected, tweaked, or expanded his star image, including Some Came Running, The Man with the Golden Arm, and The Joker Is Wild (all airing December 30). Interestingly, in each of these films, his character surrounds himself with a kind-of rat pack, or group of friends and associates marginal to the uptight mainstream world of families, day jobs, and ranch houses. In Minnelli’s masterful melodrama Some Came Running, two of his friends are played by real-life pals Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine; in Golden Arm, his character’s crowd consists of the musicians, gamblers, and outsiders who frequented the bars and joints along Chicago’s old Division Street. In The Joker Is Wild, Sinatra plays real-life night-club comic Joe E. Lewis, another denizen of the night life inhabited by entertainers, gangsters, and party girls.
In some films from the era, Sinatra’s character falls for a wholesome girl who represents a chance for a normal family life. This type of storyline downplays the outsider connotations of his image to emphasize another aspect—the commitment-phobic skirt-chaser who never wants to settle down. Check out Pal Joey, Come Blow Your Horn, or The Tender Trap (the latter showing December 23, 3:15 EST) for examples of this very dated side to the Sinatra image. Interestingly, A Hole in the Head, directed by Frank Capra, criticizes the inherent irresponsibility and immaturity of this persona by giving the Sinatra character a young son. The child’s need for a stable home life conflicts with Sinatra’s predilection for girls and gambling. A Hole in the Head is generally dismissed by film critics, scholars, and Sinatra biographers: Obviously, the family values of Capra-corn and the night life of the Rat Pack are not a good fit.
THE REAL RAT PACK (MARTIN, SINATRA, DAVIS) RELAX ON THE SET OF ‘SOME CAME RUNNING.’
Sinatra’s later acting career vexes biographers, historians, and critics. It is certainly uneven in terms of the success or impact of the films. Some dismiss his career after The Manchurian Candidate, because there are no timeless classics on his filmography after that point. But, I always find it interesting when movie stars from the Golden Age manage to keep their acting careers afloat during the 1960s and 1970s—when the studio system had given way to a new generation of directors who treated film as an art form. Some, like John Wayne, continued to play characters based on their established star images; others, like Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda, and even Marilyn Monroe, appeared in films that updated or modernized their personas. Some, like Lana Turner, Jane Wyman, Joan Collins, and Constance Towers, found work in television, lending a much-needed glamour to daytime and night time soap operas.
IN ‘THE DETECTIVE,’ SINATRA’S HONEST COP IS NO MATCH FOR A DETERIORATING SOCIETY.
During the 1960s, Sinatra starred in films that played into his star image as well as others that did not. In 1967, he created a hard-boiled detective figure, Tony Rome, which reflected the calm, collected coolness of the Sinatra persona. But age and personal hardships had tarnished the image, giving it a world-weariness that suited the material. Tony Rome was successful enough to generate a sequel, The Lady in Cement.
Sinatra starred as a veteran police detective in two films showing on TCM this Wednesday, December 9, which were produced during the twilight of his career. They make an interesting pairing, but set your DVR’s because they play at the ungodly times of 1:45am and 4:00am, EST. In The Detective, Sinatra’s character is an honest homicide detective investigating the brutal murder of a wealthy gay man. The film was released during the two year period after Jack Valenti dismissed the Production Code but before the letter- ratings system was in place. The film takes advantage of the newfound freedom to depict forbidden content by offering graphic descriptions of the murders, a nymphomaniac wife, and a lurid depiction of gay life. At the time, the material was considered challenging, a supposed reflection of the reality of urban life. The script by Abby Mann exposes political and police corruption on a grand scale, suggesting that Sinatra’s honest detective can do little in the face of our modern era’s dishonesty and depravity. Though Sinatra plays a tolerant cop who is unbiased toward the gay characters, the film is guilty of depicting homosexuality as deviant and destructive, so the perspective is outdated. The Detective is a flawed film, but it offers a glimpse into America’s socio-political history of the late 1960s. Plus, Sinatra’s willingness to play outside his star image and his comfort zone makes for an interesting viewing experience.
IN ‘THE FIRST DEADLY SIN,’ AN OLDER GENERATION SOLVES THE INCREASINGLY MANIC CRIMES OF A NEW WORLD.
In 1980, Sinatra starred in The First Deadly Sin as an aging police detective near retirement who tracks down a serial killer. Though it was not his last appearance on film, it was his final starring role and acting challenge. If he seemed to be the last honest cop on the force in The Detective, then by The First Deadly Sin, the impact of that burden is felt through the weary demeanor of the character and in the melancholy mood of the film. Instead of organized crime, embezzlers, and muggers, crime is now defined by psychopathic, sadistic serial killers. The world has out-paced good men like Sinatra’s dedicated detective, who will get no relief after retirement because his wife is succumbing to a serious illness. Though his character feels his age, it is not a deterrent to solving the case. Indeed, it is his character and an aging curator of antiques, played by George Coe, who figures out the murder weapon and, thus, the clue that solves the case. The First Deadly Sin, another forgotten or overlooked film, is a worthy epitaph to a notable acting career.
[It is too difficult to say everything about Frank Sinatra in one blog post; next week, I will talk about Sinatra and his film directors.]