To Be Perfectly Frank

"He's the only man in town I'd be afraid to fight for real. I might knock him down, but he'd keep getting up until one of us was dead."

--Robert Mitchum on Frank Sinatra

Thank you Frank Sinatra. After spending two solid days listening to Gram Parsons and Kris Kristofferson I realized I was slipping into an alt-country music coma from which I would never recover. Not that I don’t love these guys but after blaring “Love Hurts” and “The Silver Tongued Devil” like a brown turtleneck, jean-jacketed sad sack -- I needed a change. In went a movie, up came the croon "If they asked meeeee, I could write a book..." and I was no longer in the rust tinted musical state akin to sitting in the back of my mother’s station wagon after she signed the divorce papers, I was now swathed in furs and jewels and crying in my Eggplant Parmigiana, preferably from Patsy's, one of Sinatra's favorite joints.

Coveting Frank Sinatra is nothing new. We all witnessed the early ‘90s retro embracing of Ol’ Blue Eyes by younger fans, mostly genuine but for some with a Tiki Torch irony that grew as tiresome as Bettie Page bangs and China Doll wigs. But one can’t allow hordes of obnoxious cigar bar patrons laboring over the malt of scotch ruin the party. Nothing can cease my warm memories of Sinatra. There's my stoic dad singing “My kind of town, Chicago is my kind of town” while rolling in his powder blue Caprice Classic. There's the time I stayed home "sick" from school and caught A Hole in the Head on channel 12 (oh, the excitement of happening upon an old movie as a kid). And then there was the day I actually saw Sinatra (at the Puyallup Fair -- it was the only way I could see him), with a fantastically ribald and still gorgeously leggy Shirley MacLaine (the "mascot" as the Rat Pack called her) opening for him -- a show I'll never forget. And then there's right now with Pal Joey -- a movie that just saved me from sewing a rainbow patch on my Levi’s or thinking Jim Croce needs closer consideration.

Humphrey Bogart once said of Frank Sinatra: "Frank's a hell of a guy. If he could only stay away from the broads and devote some time to develop himself as an actor, he'd be one of the best in the business." Bogart's opinion of his friend's screen talent was on target, but I can only think, thank God Sinatra never took the time to "develop himself as an actor." He didn't need to. Studying the craft would have stultified the magic he displayed in some of his most memorable performances.

When it came to acting, Sinatra was a natural. Like Dean Martin, Sinatra was one of those fabled one-take wonders who preferred his freshest read, to tackle his magic head-on. But he wasn't necessarily against rehearsal or research, especially for meatier roles. For Otto Preminger's The Man With the Golden Arm, Frank actually studied the frenzied state of drug withdrawal to play his heroin-addled jazz drummer Frankie, (one has to assume he knew a few junkies as well) and a more complicated Frank graced other impressive films including John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate, Vincent Minelli's Some Came Running and Fred Zinnemann's From Here to Eternity, which earned Sinatra an Academy Award for his downtrodden little guy Maggio.

All of those performances were excellent, but there were other actors, gifted actors, who could have performed a few of them (though Sinatra did bring something special and un-matched). Eli Wallach was set to play Maggio (and he’d probably have done an equal or superior job), but because of either the oft-told Mafia legend or his own talent, Sinatra landed the plum part. And Sinatra was in the running for Marlon Brando's Terry Malloy in Elia Kazan's masterpiece On the Waterfront which might have been interesting but certainly not as brilliant -- regardless of Sinatra's chops, he couldn't have matched the raw, soulful intensity of Brando. But then, in another instance, Brando couldn't entirely do Sinatra -- as witnessed in their shared screen musical Guys and Dolls. Brando, gorgeously cast as gangster Sky Masterson, mysterious, sexy and quirky, sings "Luck Be a Lady Tonight" with an intriguing, bizarre-o Brando edge (I actually love his version), but truly, the song was tailor-made for Sinatra.

Proof positive was when Sinatra later recorded the song -- he not only sang the tune, he grabbed it by the hair, and (as he probably wanted to with Brando's face) he attacked it. With his witty, punctuated singing style, Sinatra still sends shivers by singing the lyric, "A lady doesn't wander all over the room and blow on some other guy's dice." You can practically feel the cocked eyebrow through the vinyl of the recording.

But perhaps Sinatra's greatest role was one that didn't involve a beat down a la Maggio, or require the harrowing pain of drug dementia a la Frankie. No, I think Sinatra's best role was as the gigolo lounge singer Joey Evans in the underrated (though overly scrubbed) screen adaptation of John O'Hara's epistolary novel and subsequent Rodgers and Hart stage musical Pal Joey. For those who prefer Sinatra after his crooning bobby-soxers days, and before the awful Duets project, Pal Joey is quintessential Sinatra.

The definition of lovable cad, Sinatra's Joey Evans is all swagger and crass class. But he's talented, and the ladies cannot resist his goomba, plain speaking charms. When he's hired at a San Francisco nightclub, he beds nearly all of the girls on the chorus line (he calls them "mice") with the big (very big) exception of the luscious, mysteriously melancholic Kim Novak (even when she smiles, the lavender lady is sad), or as he puts it "the mouse with the built." Feminists may not revel in Joey's tomcat antics, but they might at least feel vindication for his stereotypically female role: Joey uses his voice and body to milk older gals for money. In this case, the still drop-dead beautiful Rita Hayworth whom he's hustling into giving him a club he'll christen "Chez Joey."

But since the movie version is something of a fantasy, Frank's cad is more than a mere smooth operator, he's a bona-fide musical genius, which goes a long way when when wooing a mouse like Rita Hayworth. And so, with his rendition of "The Lady Is a Tramp," he drops a musical masterpiece on the woman, giving viewers one of the sexiest on-screen musical sequences ever filmed. Singing to Hayworth in a closed nightclub, Sinatra sits at the piano and casually begins his song, tossing it out there as easily as he instructs Novak's dog to get out of his drawer (he says "Off! O-R-F"). He snubs out his cigarette and kicks the piano back (all in wonderful punctuation to the tune) and builds the song towards full tilt Frankness. Skulking across the stage, he crafts the tune so brilliantly, and with such amazing timing, that near the finale, he ends the regularly sung lyric "she broke, but its oke," with "she's broke..." -- no words, just a shrug of his shoulders. We don't need to hear if she's O.K. or not. She, he, anyone, would certainly be "oke" by then.

It's just so glorious -- slinky and earthy, nasty and sweet, stern and cool. And so goddamn Frank. No performer at any time could have played and sung this scene with the genius of Sinatra. In Pal Joey. Sinatra is rascal, cheater, charmer, lover...a man whose philosophy was to treat a "lady like a dame, and a dame like a lady" -- which still works today. I’m certain that the great Kris Kristofferson, even back when he was wooing Rita Coolidge, would have to concur.

Comments

[Jeremy]

It was the summer of 1997 I remember hearing Sinatra's voice for the first time. When I say "hearing" I mean really listening to him for the first time. I was in high school and I was kinda jaded with our whole music scene. Our high school had a radio station and I got to be one of the DJs. I would always have Sinatra's "My Way" as the signature song I'd play at the beginning of my programs. After reading your opinion of him I feel like going into my room and cranking my copy of "Songs for Swinging Lovers"

[Jonathan Lapper]

Kim-a-zona, take off your rainbow shades! Okay, that's not Kristofferson but "yesterday is dead and gone" just didn't work.

I have a personal stake with Sinatra having grown up with his music. "Only the Lonely" was my mom's favorite album and whenever I hear any newbie (like the "campy" ones you describe) talking about Frank I start quizzing them on his forties and fifties tunes just to see if they're for real.

I watched "Reveille with Beverly" on TCM a month or so ago just to see his number in it. He was better than all of 'em.

Favorite movie reference to him: In "All that Jazz" when Joe Gideon sexes up "Take Off With Us" and the songwriter hangs his head and says, "Now Sinatra will never do it."

Thanks for post. It should help me make it through the night.

Jonathan "Old Tartan Eyes" Lapper.

[Bill M]

the best scene out of Pope Of Greenwich Village:

Stickball game with Sinatras "Summer Wind" as the background music

[Steve-O]

Well, I grew up with my parents listening to Johnny Cash (my Dad) and Sinatra (my Mom). So I have old blue eyes pretty much burned into my memory, at least his music. His films for me are hit and miss. The Tony Rome films are horrible (just listen to the theme song sung by Nancy S. - it's enough to make you cry). But I've always love the Manchurian Candidate and the GREAT prison escape film Von Ryan's Express. VRE is one of those guy films that just gets better after every viewing. I first saw the film in a theater in the early 90s. I had no idea who was in the film or what it was about. Seeing Sinatra pop up on the big screen unexpected remains one of my fondest movie going experiences.

Time to listen to some Frank and a little Lucinda Williams this morning.

[serial catowner]

If I had been asked for, say, 45 million word-associations for Sunset Gun....Puyallup Fair would not have been on that list.

[pat]

The movie that turned me into a Sinatra fan was "Young at Heart", and the scene was when he sings One for My Baby, its fantastic. If you haven't seen the movie, try to catch it for the Sinatra songs. Up to that point I had figured he was just some old square crooner.

[Spence Munsinger]

My ex-girlfriend, the mother of my kids, bought me "Frank Sinatra Gold".

I spent my teenage and then college and beyond years working on construction sites - and listening to classic rock until I gagged mentally at the sound.

There is something so brilliant, simple direct, clean, and compelling in Frank's singing. I listened to that (tape) until it stopped playing.

Recently I heard "Summer Wind" playing as the music in a scene in a movie. I forgot the movie. I fell in love with the song, the throaty, raw rasping almost deadpan delivery, so affecting.

Thanks for the writing about Frank's acting - I had re-appraised him as a singer, but not as an actor and I think I'll have to do that as well.