Oscar Profile #267: Frank Sinatra

Born December 12, 1915 in Hoboken, New Jersey, Francis Albert (Frank) Sinatra would become the most popular singer of his time, if not all time. His voice has been heard on movie soundtracks from 1941 to the present day, fifteen years after his death, and is likely to continue to be heard as long as movies are made.

Sinatra’s renown as a singer is so overwhelming that it often obscures the fact that he was also a fine actor. His early reputation was that of a street punk who was saved by the love of his first wife, Nancy Barbato with whom he had three children. He quickly rose from saloon singer to band singer to teenage heartthrob in the early 1940s. He played himself in his first few films, appearing for the first time as another character in 1944’s Step Lively. His next film, 1945’s Anchors Aweigh was a box-office sensation and received five Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Actor (Gene Kelly), winning for Best Score. Sinatra himself took home an Oscar for his participation in the same year’s tolerance short subject, The House I Live In.

Sinatra’s biggest year of his early screen career was 1949 when he starred, again with Gene Kelly, in the highly successful Take Me Out to the Ballgame and On the Town, but both his singing and acting careers suffered when he left his wife Nancy for Ava Gardner, whom he married in 1951. With Gardner’s support, he campaigned for and won the part of Maggio in 1953’s From Here to Eternity for which he won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. He quickly followed with strong performances in 1954’s Suddenly! and Young at Heart and 1955’s Not As a Stranger, Guys and Dolls, The Tender Trap and The Man With the Golden Arm for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.

Sinatra, who was divorced from Gardner in 1957, continued to build on his singing career and his acting reputation with such films as 1956’s High Society, 1957’s The Joker Is Wild and Pal Joey, 1958’s Kings Go Forth and Some Came Running, 1959’s A Hole in the Head and 1960’s Can-Can. While his reputation as the world’s greatest singer continued to soar until his “retirement” in 1971, his reputation as an actor began to suffer as his films became uneven and his performances in such films as Ocean’s 11 and Robin and the 7 Hoods came to be considered mediocre at best. Occasionally, though, he could still turn in a performance that made critics, as well as fans, sit up and take notice. Those exceptions include 1962’s The Manchurian Candidate, 1963’s Come Blow Your Horn and 1968’s The Detective.

Sinatra’s “retirement” was as short lived as his marriage to Mia Farrow, which lasted from 1966 to 1968. He returned to performing in 1973 and continued give concerts for the remainder of his life even as his recording and acting careers slowed down. He would play his last starring role in 1980’s The First Deadly Sin, his last on-screen appearance in a cameo in 1984’s Cannonball Run II and his last TV acting appearance in a 1987 episode of Magnum P.I. .

Frank Sinatra married fourth wife Barbara Marx (the former wife of Zeppo Marx) in 1976. They would be married until his death in 1998 at the age of 82.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

From Here to Eternity (1953), directed by Fred Zinnemann

Sinatra’s popularity both as a singer and an actor was at an all-time low when he campaigned for and won the role of Maggio, the volatile G.I. friend of brooding Montgomery Clift in the film version of James Jones’ mammoth best-seller, From Here to Eternity. Nominated for a near-record 13 Academy Awards, the film won 8, tying the record set by Gone With the Wind. Stars Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift and Deborah Kerr would go down to defeat, but Sinatra and co-star Donna Reed would win the supporting awards, Sinatra’s win suddenly making it fashionable to win a supporting Oscar.

The Man With the Golden Arm (1955), directed by Otto Preminger

1955 was a banner year for Sinatra. Although he was disappointed that he had to play second fiddle to non-singers Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons in the musical Guys and Dolls, he made the most of his second banana role opposite Vivian Blaine and followed with his most critically acclaimed lead actor performance ever as a heroin addict in The Man With the Golden Arm opposite Eleanor Parker as his shrewish crippled wife and Kim Novak as the girl he spends a night with as he goes through withdrawal. It would earn him his only Best Actor Oscar nomination.

Kings Go Forth (1958), directed by Delmar Daves

Sinatra had a role as strong as those in From Here to Eternity and The Man With the Golden Arm as the world-weary middle-aged World War II Army lieutenant stationed in southern Frances in Kings Go Forth. He falls in love with young Natalie Wood but steps back when she falls in love with his young sergeant, played by Tony Curtis. Sinatra is quietly effective through most of the film, but is even more effective as he rises to his full fury in the film’s still shocking climactic scene. Leora Dana co-stars as Wood’s mother.

The Manchurian Candidate (1962), directed by John Frankenheimer

Next to From Here to Eternity, the best film of Sinatra’s career was The Manchurian Candidate from Richard Condon’s novel in which he plays a former Korean War POW who suspects fellow POW Laurence Harvey may still be under the influence of their North Korean captors and involved in political assassinations under hypnosis. Sinatra, who owned the film, held it from distribution for several decades after the assassination of JFK. The film’s most startling contribution is that of Angela Lansbury, who just three years older than Harvey, plays his reptilian mother without makeup in one of the screen’s greatest performances.

The Detective (1968), directed by Gordon Douglas

Sinatra plays a compassionate NYC police detective dealing with the brutal murder of a gay man. The film’s portrayal of homosexuality, homophobia, nymphomania, police brutality and other then taboo subjects was somehow not as controversial at the time as the rift the film caused between Sinatra and then wife Mia Farrow who he divorced for dropping out of the film due to overtime on Rosmeary’s Baby. She was replaced by Jacqueline Bisset in a Mia wig. Lee Remick plays Sinatra’s nympho wife, Tony Musante a falsely convicted would-be murderer and Ralph Meeker, Robert Duvall and Al Freeman, Jr., Sinatra’s fellow detectives.