IN THE WEE SMALL HOURS 


"It Was A Very Good Year" - Vers. in D Minor
(1965 / E. Drake) vocal by Frank Sinatra





     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. 


                                                                     


  SHIP AHOY (1942)

    
     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 ballads “The Last Call For Love” and “Poor You".  And over the years many would come to consider these interludes the highlights of the film.


     


     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. 

  THE HOUSE I LIVE IN (1945)

DEDICATED TO YOU

"Ever Homeward" - from
THE MIRACLE OF THE BELLS
(1948 / K. Lubomirski - Styne & Cahn) vocal by Frank Sinatra
  



     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.


                                                                      

       (1946)
     

     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.


     
 

       
                                      


  THE MIRACLE OF THE BELLS (1948)      
  
 
                              
     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. 

     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.


                                    

                                
     (1948)
   



                                     


     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.    

  
  ON THE TOWN (1949)

 

    
     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. 

CHAPTER CONTENTS

Part 1 (1941 - 1960) pg. 1, 2, 3

PART 3 - SINATRA: ALL THE WAY: Memorabilia from the Steve Vertlieb Archives