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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 thank God Sinatra never took the time to "develop himself as an actor." He didn't need to. Studying the craft would have stultified his magic--he wouldn't have been who he was in all of his various roles. When it came to acting, Sinatra was a natural. Like Dean Martin, he was a one-take wonder who preferred to tackle the magic head-on. But he wasn't averse to rehearsal, especially when working with directors such as Otto Preminger, who directed Sinatra in The Man with the Golden Arm. The film shows Frank the serious actor as he portrays the heroin-addled jazz drummer "Frankie." This same Frank pops up in other great films such as The ManchurianCandidate, Some Came Running and From Here to Eternity, which earned Sinatra a well-deserved Academy Award for his portrayal of the downtrodden Maggio. All of those performances were excellent, but other talented actors could have performed them as well. Eli Wallach was set to play Maggio, but because of either the oft-told Mafia myth (see The Godfather) or his own talent, Sinatra landed the part. Sinatra was in the running for Marlon Brando's part in Elia Kazan's masterpiece On the Waterfront. And regardless of Sinatra's talent, it is doubtful that he could ever have matched Brando. But at other times, Brando couldn't touch Sinatra--particularly in their shared screen musical Guys and Dolls. Brando, miscast as gangster Sky Masterson, sings "Luck Be a Lady Tonight," a song that was tailor-made for Sinatra. Brando mumbles through it fine, but when Sinatra later recorded it, he not only sang the song, 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 Sinatra's best role was one that didn't involve him getting the shit kicked out of him (Robert Mitchum said: "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") and one that didn't require a realistic treatment of drug dementia. Sinatra's best role was as the gigolo lounge singer Joey Evans in the underrated film 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 charms. When he gets a job at a San Francisco nightclub, he beds nearly all of the girls on the chorus line (he calls them "mice"), except for Kim Novak, or as he puts it "the mouse with the build." Feminists may not revel in Joey's tomcat antics, but they might at least appreciate his stereotypically female role: Joey uses his voice and body to milk the older (and still drop-dead beautiful) Rita Hayworth into giving him a club, "Chez Joey." And who couldn't feel at least one tingle in a toe during Joey's rendition of "The Lady Is a Tramp"? This is Sinatra's masterpiece moment and one of the best screen musical sequences ever filmed. Singing to Hayworth in a closed nightclub, Joey sits at the piano and casually begins his song. He snubs out his cigarette and kicks the piano back (all in wonderful punctuation to the song) and gives her full-on Frank. Skulking across the stage, he builds the tune so brilliantly, and with such amazing timing, that by the end of the song he ends the regularly sung lyric "she broke, but it's oke," with "she's broke..." and then with just a shrug of his shoulders. She certainly is "oke" by then. No one anywhere in the world and 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 "tramp like a lady, and a lady like a tramp"--which still works today. As his mentor Bing Crosby said, "A talent like that comes along once in a lifetime." Call him irreplaceable. |
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