Frank & The Reds.

In this week's film lab, we screened The Manchurian Candidate (1962). The film dovetails last week's discussion of Sinatra's Democratic leanings and alleged Communist involvement with this week's focus on Sinatra's relationship to presidential politics. 


The Manchurian Candidate seems to be more focused on providing a commentary on the Red Scare and the paranoia surrounding Communist activity in the 1950s and 1960s than on Sinatra's personal leftist leanings. The Communists in the film brainwash Lawrence Harvey's Raymond Shaw as an assassin, shrewdly hypnotizing him so that he has no memory of his actions. This new state leaves Shaw free from "those uniquely American symptoms--guilt and fear." The Communist characters in the film give audiences insightful glimpses into two things: first, what American producers and directors guessed Communist leaders were thinking about Americans, and second, what the American producers and directors really thought about themselves. The scenes where the Communists speak about Shaw as a new kind of weapon are particularly telling--Americans were worried about the threat within.


As Major Bennett Marco, Sinatra portrays a radically different type of character than in his previous films. The difference between Marco and Sinatra's musical characters is perhaps most easily noticed, but the Marco character is also a departure from Sinatra's dramatic soldier roles. For one, Marco is an intellectual. His apartment is filled with stacks of books (my kind of guy), and he enjoys reading about everything from "principles of modern bankruptcy and diseases of horses" to "ethnic choices of the Arabs and history of piracy". In war films, Sinatra's drunken buffoonery often serves as comic relief from the stresses of combat (see Maggio in From Here to Eternity and Francis in None But The Brave). 


In his musical films, Sinatra plays the naive young military man, totally inept in the ways of romance (see Anchors Aweigh and It Happened in Brooklyn). He also tends to play the second-fiddle love interest to greats like Peter Lawford, Gene Kelly, and Marlon Brando (It Happened in Brooklyn, On The Town, and Guys and Dolls, respectively). In The Manchurian Candidate, we finally see a Sinatra who is comfortable with himself and his relationships. He doesn't go through the shenanigans of pursuing the "wrong" girl until the last minute, when he realizes that the "right" girl has been under his nose the whole time. Instead, Sinatra meets Janet Leigh's Eugenie Rose Chaney early in the film. A strong female character, Leigh asserts herself and gives Sinatra her address and number when they meet on a train. She goes home, breaks off her engagement to another man, and rushes to the police station to bail out Sinatra after he is picked up for getting in a fight. 


An interesting note--at one point during the film, a movie theater in the background of a scene displays an advertisement for Walt Disney's "Pinocchio" on the marquee. The film is set after the end of the Korean War (so sometime after 1953). "Pinocchio" was released in 1940.
Additionally, I found it odd that the actor who plays Chunjin, an "Oriental" interpreter who comes to ask Shaw for employment, is actually a Brooklyn-born Italian. 

None But The Brave.

Maybe my mind is just stuck on Sinatra's politics because that's what we've been focusing on in class lately, but while screening "None But The Brave," I kept thinking about "Kings Go Forth" and "The House I Live In," two Sinatra films which deal racial and religious prejudice. It seemed to me that Sinatra directed "None But The Brave" (1968) not only as a war film but also as a social critique of racism. As the film opens, the credits are segregated. The names of the American actors appear on the left side of the screen, and the names of the Japanese actors appear on the right. This automatically sets up a dichotomy and establishes the Japanese as distinctly "not American." The first few minutes of the film depict the day to day activities of a platoon of Japanese castaways, and to maintain a level of realism, Sinatra chooses to have the soldiers speak in Japanese (except for an initial voiceover). The conspicuous absence of subtitles is a curious but effective device for the exposition of the film.

Sinatra's character Francis is a hard-drinking but racially-tolerant Navy medic. He stands in contrast to 2nd Lieutenant Blair (played by Tommy Sands), an upstart officer determined to race in to battle against what he presumes to be a menacing Japanese enemy. Clint Walker portrays Captain Dennis Bourke, Sinatra's friend and the leader of the marooned soldiers. Sinatra plays off these two to create for his character the image of the racially-tolerant, accepting playboy. When Sands speaks disdainfully about the "dirty Japs," Sinatra replies, "Dirty Jap, huh? They invented the bathtub." Small, seemingly offhand comments like this bolster Sinatra's character's image as non-judgmental and open. His character also gets to look like a fun guy because in addition to his perpetual drinking, he used to be "shacked up with some L.A. dame" who followed him to the Pacific Theater.

Later in the film, it is Sinatra's character who acts as the bargaining chip between the Japanese and American soldiers. The Japanese commanding officer requests Sinatra's medical services for a wounded soldier, and in return, offers the Americans access to food and clean water. Walker instructs Sinatra to act as a spy to determine the materials, camp setup, and manpower of the Japanese soldiers. Sinatra amputates a young soldier's leg and returns to follow up on the procedure. Instead of gathering information which could possibly be used against the Japanese, Sinatra spends his time in the Japanese camp treating various maladies and painting smiley faces on bandages.

After trading Sinatra's medical skills, the Americans and the Japanese come to an uneasy peace and agree to a truce until either side rejoins their country's war efforts. During this time of neutrality, the Japanese and Americans work together to sandbag the reservoir. A Japanese soldier saves Sands when he falls in the water during a storm, and Sands' opinion of the "dirty Japs" changes. At the end of the film, Sands tells Lieutenant Kuroki, the Japanese commander, "Lt. Kuroki, you can take this for whatever it's worth. Maybe it's not much, but you're a hell of a guy."

Lt. Kuroki and Walker share stories about their lives before the war. Upon hearing that Lt. Kuroki "was a staff writer for various periodicals," Walker exclaims, "Well I'll be damned! I had you pegged as a bonafide samurai." This is another instance when the audience sees a shift in a character's perspective and the melting away of preconceived notions and stereotypes.

Despite all of these changes of heart, the Japanese soldiers all end up getting killed at the end of the film. Sinatra makes the movie's anti-war message clear by displaying the message "NOBODY EVER WINS" on the final scene. I think this message is actually secondary to the film's less obviously stated message of racial tolerance. Sinatra's characters serves as the catalyst for the Japanese/American interactions which lead the soldiers to overcome their stereotyped thinking. Sands and Walker, the two commanding American officers, see stereotypes that they had held disintegrate when they get to know the Japanese soldiers. Similarly, Kuroki learns that he has much in common with Walker, despite their different nationalities. Like the (somewhat uncomfortable) tagline says, "The brave are never different--only different looking!"

Vanity Fair.

Anybody looking for a topical-yet-fun midterm week diversion should be sure to check out a great article called "The Night Sinatra Happened" in this month's Vanity Fair. 

The story is a perfect example not only of Vanity Fair's mastery of long-form journalism but also of some great fact-finding. The piece is a collection of excerpts from James Kaplan's new book "Frank: The Voice," which is to be published in November.

The article has great quotes and details about Sinatra's time with Tommy Dorsey. Kaplan pulls some quotes from Pete Hamill (we've read his book "Why Sinatra Matters" in class), but much of his material comes from other figures who interacted with Sinatra during the early period of his career.

 Kaplan has found some incredible archived photographs of Sinatra from the early 1940s when he was first breaking on to the pop music scene. Kaplan unearthed a picture of Sinatra singing at his first gig at the Rustic Cabin nightclub in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey; of course, Sinatra's mother Dolly supposedly pulled some mob strings to get her baby boy his first job singing. Additionally, Kaplan uses photographs of Sinatra and Bing Crosby together and of Sinatra wearing a sailor hat and smoking a pipe while recording to draw parallels between the singers and to emphasize Crosby's dominance at the time Frank was becoming popular.

Many of the photographs in the print version of the article are not available online, but the text of the article can be found here.

Kings Go Forth.

Some observations about “Kings Go Forth” (1958):

--In “Kings Go Forth,” Frank Sinatra plays Lieutenant Sam Loggins. Sam narrates the film and volunteers his perspective as the events unfold. In keeping with many of the other Sinatra films we’ve seen, Sam comes from a working class family on the west side of Manhattan. I was intrigued by the fact that Sinatra continues to play characters from such similar backgrounds—often, backgrounds strikingly similar to his own. Does he select these roles because he feels as though he can identify with the character based on origins alone? Or does playing the tough New York guy become a fallback for Sinatra? I suppose his role in “High Society” was a departure from the “raised on the mean streets of New York” role that he so often falls in to. I found myself wondering if the New York background gave his characters some kind of intangible credibility in the military films, but Sinatra played characters from New York in other films too, like Nathan Detroit in “Guys and Dolls.”

--The racial twist in “Kings Go Forth” surprised me. I was not expecting the lovely French-born American Monique Blair (Natalie Wood) to announce that she had a Negro father. It just goes to show you that looks can be deceiving…especially in films.

Throughout his career, Sinatra was a vocal advocate for civil rights. In his 1945 short film “The House I Live In”, Sinatra addresses religious tolerance. The film doesn’t allow him to discuss race outright, but by bringing a conversation about religious differences to the table, Sinatra helps to open the door for conversations about racial inequality.

In the ten-minute short, there is a brief discussion about blood and the mixing of blood. Sinatra’s argument is that people are people and blood is blood, regardless of where that blood’s body goes to church. The unspoken argument here about race is as close as “The House I Live In” gets to touching upon the tense subject. In “Kings Go Forth,” Monique’s blood, according to the prevailing quasi-scientific measures of the time, is half black. Despite her lily-white skin, Monique would have been considered black and subjected to much (if not more) of the segregation and discrimination faced by African Americans in the US.

I found Sam’s response to Monique’s surprising news to be very believable, considering the time period—he stepped back and took some time to figure out what to do about the situation and to decide whether or not he was going to continue to pursue a relationship with Monique and her mother. This was definitely Sam’s reaction to the announcement, not Sinatra’s. Frank likely would have brushed off the news about Monique’s father and continued to see Monique, but Sam needed time to sort out his thoughts.

Frank & Bing & Grace & Louis.

For my Fine Arts requirement, I took a class called "Introduction to Jazz" in Spring 2009. It was a really fun primer to a uniquely American art form--it certainly diversified my iTunes library. We had one session on Frank Sinatra as a jazz artist towards the end of the semester. The first day of class, however, we watched a YouTube video of Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong singing a song called "Now You Has Jazz." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC3VTBG0tRc)

The clip was from High Society (1956). The film stars Bing Crosby as C.J. Dexter-Haven (aka Dexter), a jazz cat trying to win over his ex-wife and neighbor Tracy Lord, the lovely Grace Kelly. Our pal Frank Sinatra also stars in the film as Mike Connor, an undercover tabloid journalist who becomes attracted to Tracy while covering her wedding to businessman George Kittredge, played by John Lund. The plot erupts into a sort of love-square, or a triangle with Kelly at the center.

A few observations:

--The film's portrayal of Crosby as a jazz musician is odd, considering the presence of Louis Armstrong and his band. Crosby doesn't do anything particularly jazzy, other than sing in his normal crooner style. The "Now You Has Jazz" number is really quite vanilla--a comfortable introduction to the dangerous, outsider world of jazz music for the stuffy gala crowd. Considering the prevailing trends in jazz music at the time of the film's release, the number in High Society is a bland swing composition. In the mid-1950s, jazz had transitioned from the familiar, approachable Benny Goodman-type big band dance arrangements to the esoteric, challenging styles of bebop, cool jazz, and hard bop. In 1956, anyone familiar with the jazz scene would have already heard the work of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk. "Now You Has Jazz" is friendly--it is, appropriately, Bing Crosby-style jazz. 

--Sinatra and Crosby aren't set at odds as crooners in High Society. They have one number together, a delightfully silly drunken duet. Crosby establishes himself vocally early in the film--he has the first musical number. It makes sense for his character to be singing. After all, Dexter is a jazz musician. The backstory is that Dexter wrote a song called "Samantha" as an ode to his young wife Tracy. When Sinatra sings, it's a little more incongruous. Tabloid journalists aren't supposed to have pipes like that! 

--Sinatra seems like the third-tier musician in the film. Crosby wins, I think because his character is a musician and he can sing. But for me, Louis Armstrong beat Sinatra for the second spot. Armstrong plays himself in a very odd narrator role. He opens the film in a bus with his band, singing the "High Society Calypso," a prologue for the film. Throughout, Armstrong pops in and comments on the action and progress of the narrative. Armstrong validated Crosby as the primary musical character by providing accompaniment for Crosby's first song. Crosby sings to Caroline Lord in the garden, and a few bars into the song, the camera pans the yard as Crosby strolls around. When Crosby walks past an open door, we see Armstrong inside, playing the accompaniment for the song with his band. This little detail makes Crosby's performance much more believable and realistic. When Sinatra sings, he doesn't have any visible accompaniment, so it feels much more like a movie or a Broadway show. 

Frank & Marlon.

I have a sizeable crush on Marlon Brando. Not creepy, threatening Don Corleone Marlon Brando, but strapping, young, On the Waterfront Marlon Brando. 

Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra starred in Guys and Dolls in 1955. Brando played suave high roller Sky Masterson, and Sinatra played "old reliable" Nathan Detroit. While watching the film, I put aside my Brando infatuation to try to determine the models of masculinity that the men portray.

As Nathan Detroit, Sinatra plays a guy with a huge social network. Detroit is the purveyor of the "oldest established permanent floating crap game in New York", so he always knows where the action is and who the players are. In addition to a pack of gambling buddies, Detroit also has Miss Adelaide, his long-suffering nightclub singer fiance of 14 years. Nathan doesn't even have to try to get Adelaide to fall in love with him--this lack of romantic conquest is a distinct change of pace from the earlier Sinatra films we've watched. Detroit is reluctant to tie the knot with Adelaide because he doesn't want to be tied down, even though they've been engaged for such a long time. The Nathan Detroit character is surprisingly similar to the Rat Pack persona that Sinatra puts forth in the mid/late 1950s. Sinatra poses himself as this hat-wearing, swinging playboy type, and it becomes his most enduring incarnation. 

Like Sinatra's Detroit, Brando's Masterson is suave and confident, but he expresses that confidence in different ways. Masterson takes on Detroit's challenge to take Mission "doll" Sarah Brown to Havana. He is extremely certain of his ability to make Sarah fall for him. This brazen assertiveness comes with a slight lack of self-awareness--Masterson doesn't realize that he could (and does) fall for Sarah too! 

At the end of the film, Sky and Sarah share a joint wedding with Nathan and Adelaide. Brando doesn't seem the type to fall for a whirlwind romance, but is more plausible that Sinatra would keep a girl waiting on him for 14 years. 

Frank & Don.

Frank Sinatra released "In the Wee Small Hours" in 1955. The LP marked Sinatra's foray into the concept album, and it is characterized by a "mood of late-night isolation and aching lost love".

Sinatra's 1955 album inspired the title of a Season Three episode of AMC's hit drama Mad Men. "Wee Small Hours" is set in September of 1963 and the episode first ran in 2009--8 and 54 years after the release of the album, respectively. Despite the passage of time, Sinatra's album remains relevant to set the tone of the television episode.

Mad Men chronicles the work and womanizing of Don Draper, creative director at New York firm Sterling Cooper. "Wee Small Hours" begins just then with an early morning phone call for Don from client Conrad Hilton. Don leaves his wife Betty and their new baby, presumably to go to work, but on his way to the office, Don sees his daughter's primary school teacher jogging. He picks her up in his car and tries to pick her up for "coffee", but she resists his advances. Don never plays the jilted lover--he always gets the girl (and eventually succeeds with the teacher), but so far, Sinatra's "In the Wee Small Hours" fits the mood of this episode.

Other characters have their own "Wee Small Hours" moments as well. Betty begins her relationship with politician Henry Francis; (spoiler!) they marry after Betty divorces Don at the end of the season. At Sterling Cooper, a client comes on to Sal, the closeted art director. Jilted and embarrassed, the client calls the agency and demands that Sal be fired for being "uncooperative".

By the end of the episode, Sal has called his wife to tell her he loves her, Betty and Henry have shared their first kiss, and Don has slept with the teacher. The episode ends at night, just as it began. Much of the action that transpires in "Wee Small Hours" follows the "late-night longing" theme of Sinatra's album.

In characteristic Mad Men style, the only musical soundtrack to the show is the song that plays just after the last scene and through the credits. Despite the title of the episode, Sinatra does not make a musical appearance in this final song. The writers of Mad Men create a very particular and subtle mood for the episode by naming it after Sinatra's album but not invoking Sinatra's music.

(This link will take you to a John Mayer cover of  "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning."  It's also relevant, considering that Don Draper and John Mayer share a talent for making women swoon and for treating ladies with complete disrespect.)