He`s been a puppet, a poet, a pauper, a pirate, a pawn and a king.
Then again, he`s been a psycho, a P.I., a private, a presidential assassin, a priest and a Dingus Magee.
Frank Sinatra, the man with more sobriquets than you can shake a stick at (get your stick ready, here they come: Ol` Blue Eyes, the Chairman of the Board, Frankie Boy, Little Frankie, Big Frankie) also has made more movies than you can shake a stick at-more movies than most stars (with or without singing careers on the side) make in a lifetime.
Recently, one of Sinatra`s finest film endeavors-the dark, dangerous and kind of daffy 1962 thriller ”The Manchurian Candidate”-made its way from a recent art circuit revival to the shelves of your local video emporium. Which provides as good excuse as any (as if one was needed!) to take a look at the 59 films in the Sinatra canon-movies of Academy Award caliber (”From Here to Eternity,” ”The Man with the Golden Arm”), movies of uncalibrated mediocrity (the Rat Pack bummer ”Robin and the 7 Hoods,” the horse opera
”Johnny Concho”), and a ver itable trove of stuff in between.
Gangly, geeky and all of 24, the bow-tied, giraffe-eared Sinatra made his screen debut in 1941`s ”Las Vegas Nights,” appearing as an unnamed vocalist fronting the Tommy Dorsey Band. Sinatra crooned ”I`ll Never Smile Again.”
On the third day of shooting, the singer-whose wife, Nancy, remained back east in Jersey City-met the first of a succession of Hollywood starlets (her name was Alora Gooding) with whom he would dally between takes. The movie bug had bit.
A couple of more musicals and Sinatra was making his starring debut, in the breezy hoof-and-holler ”Higher and Higher.” More song-and-dance pics followed: ”Step Lively”; ”Anchors Away” (a nautical romp that teamed Frankie with Gene Kelly); ”Till the Clouds Roll By”; and the hokey ”It Happened in Brooklyn.”
In addition to its great dance routines (including a pre-”Roger Rabbit” interactive number between Kelly and Jerry the Mouse) and Sinatra`s crooning, ”Anchors Away” is noteworthy for its behind-the-scenes fireworks. As chronicled in Kitty Kelley`s unauthorized (and un-put-downable) biography,
”His Way,” Sinatra waxed nasty in front of a UPI reporter. The next day, his comments made the newspapers.
”Pictures stink and most of the people in them do, too,” said Frank, who gassed on with characteristic tact, saying he had had it with movies and all the ”jerks” in them. This was said, mind you, as he was winding up a contract with MGM and just beginning a seven-year stint with RKO.
In 1948, mired in another kind of controversy (Sinatra was reported to be consorting with mobster Lucky Luciano), the star signed up for the role of Father Paul, a Catholic clergyman in a Ben Hecht-scripted melodrama called
”The Miracle of the Bells.” The picture marked his first performance in a
(mostly) non-musical (he sings, the movie doesn`t). It got terrible reviews, including James Agee`s announcement that ”I hereby declare myself the founding father of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to God.”
The next year produced the hit ”Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” reuniting Sinatra and Gene Kelly under the aegis of Hollywood maestro Busby Berkley. Then came the Stanley Donen-Gene Kelly co-directed classic, ”On the Town,”
another sailors-on-leave sing-along.
What followed, however, signaled the nadir of Sinatra`s film career-and the nadir of his showbiz career in general. Sinatra`s knack for hobnobbing with reputed criminals, for bashing up photographers and reporters (the guy must`ve been Sean Penn`s role model), for womanizing and for putting his foot in his mouth, led to a string of sorry pictures: ”The Kissing Bandit,” which Sinatra himself subsequently derided; ”Double Dynamite,” which co-starred Jane Russell, and ”Meet Danny Wilson,” which is of note solely for its plotline: an overbearing crooner gains stardom with the aid of his gangster pals.
Speaking of which, the suspicion lingers (though it has never been proved) that Sinatra`s mob connections facilitated his landing the part of Angelo Maggio, the scrappy Italian-American GI befriended by Montgomery Clift in Fred Zinneman`s ”From Here to Eternity.”
Pressure of another sort was definitely applied to Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn: Sinatra, having read the James Jones novel and its screen adaptation, desperately wanted this part and begged, pleaded and groveled (he offered to pay Cohn) for a chance at it. Ava Gardner-Mrs. Frank Sinatra at the time-approached the studio chief`s wife, trying to get her to influence her husband in the casting effort.
Finally (and reluctantly), Cohn gave Sinatra a screen test. And then he gave him the role-for a lowly $8,000 (half the budgeted salary for the part). Released in August, 1953, the film was an instant hit, and a great film to boot: Set in Pearl Harbor in the days before the Japanese attack, it starred Burt Lancaster as a hardened sergeant, Clift as a troubled soldier and Sinatra as Maggio, a puny private who gets pummeled to death by Ernest Borgnine. ”From Here to Eternity” won eight Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor for Sinatra.
It was comeback time (Sinatra loathed the term-he figured he never went away). In 1954 and 1955, Sinatra made six films, a string of hit singles
(”Young at Heart,” ”Love and Marriage,” ”Learnin` the Blues”) and a couple of chart-topping albums.
Of the films, ”Suddenly” is notable for its controversial theme and Sinatra`s singularly creepy, convincing performance. The theme is presidential assassination (a subject repeated twice again-in ”The Manchurian Candidate” and 1967`s ”The Naked Runner”), with Sinatra as a heartless gunman who takes a family and its house hostage as he attempts to kill the president. Sinatra, rail-thin and edgy as killer John Baron, offers up his philosophy of life
(”Show me a guy with feelings and I`ll show you a sucker”). He also offers to slice up a boy`s throat. Lee Harvey Oswald reportedly watched
”Suddenly” on TV a few days before shooting President Kennedy.
”Guys and Dolls,” also released that year, is an extravagant, long-winded musical that`s worth watching (have a book or magazine handy for the dull patches), not so much for Sinatra`s Nathan Detroit but for the spectacle of Marlon Brando, as gambler Sky Masterson, singing and dancing. The method actor warbles his way into Jean Simmons` heart (she`s in the Salvation Army, trying to win over the bloodhounds of Broadway) and walks off with the movie. Watching Sinatra and Brando together assumes an added dimension with the knowledge that the two despised each other. Sinatra coveted the part of Terry Malloy in ”On the Waterfront” (he claimed producer Sam Spiegel had promised it to him); Brando, of course, went on to win an Oscar in the role. Sinatra, who worked fast, resented Brando`s meticulous attention to his ”craft.”
Sinatra called him ”Mumbles,” and ”the most overrated actor in the world.” For his part, Brando said of his co-star: ”He`s the kind of guy that, when he dies, he`s going up to heaven and give God a bad time for making him bald.”
Another 1955 entry, ”The Man with The Golden Arm,” directed by Otto Preminger, gained Sinatra his second Oscar nomination (this one for Best Actor), and rightly so. As a hopped-up junkie trying to go straight, Sinatra cuts just the right-desperate, pathetic, doomed-figure. The film, too, is a quintessential `50s flick: a wonky Elmer Bernstein jazz score, a wild opening credit sequence, a certified sex symbol in Kim Novak, and a screwy Eleanor Parker in the bizarre role of Sinatra`s wheelchair-bound wife.
If anyone still harbored doubts about Sinatra`s acting ability, ”The Man with the Golden Arm” laid them to rest. And the films that followed over the next 20 years-out-and-out turkeys notwithstanding-confirm ed Sinatra`s stature as a serious filmmaker.
He made war pics (the solid ”Von Ryan`s Express”), cowboy pics (”Dirty Dingus Magee”), Rat Pack pics (”Ocean`s Eleven” is the best; it`s available from Warners on a ”Night at the Movies” tape that includes a cartoon short and a 1960 newsreel), and a slew of detective pics (Sinatra was a gumshoe in five of his last eight films; he also was offered ”Dirty Harry” and optioned ”Harper,” losing the former because of ill health and the latter because of Paul Newman). And he tried his hand at directing: the taut World War II desert-island-drama, ”None But the Brave.”
And political pics-”The Manchurian Candidate,” an unsettling tale of brainwashing and betrayal set in the incendiary Cold War era of the early
`60s, stands among the half-dozen classics of Sinatra`s screen work. With Laurence Harvey and Angela Lansbury, and a peculiar mix of portentous drama and wild satire, the film details a Communist plot to assasinate the president and replace him with one of their own.
It is unsettling, too, to note that Sinatra`s friend, John F. Kennedy, had to personally intervene to get this politically explosive picture made. United Artists president Arthur Krim was also finance chairman of the Democratic Party, and he didn`t like the film`s message. Sinatra expressed his dismay to Kennedy, who, in turn, called Krim.
A few days after Kennedy`s assassination in 1963, ”The Manchurian Candidate” was taken out of circulation. It was re-released for the first time earlier this year.
