Frank Sinatra in in On the Town, with Gene Kelly and Jules Munshin.
Frank Sinatra films on TCM: Classic musicals On the Town, High Society
Frank Sinatra will have his “Summer Under the Stars” day on Friday, Aug. 28.
Turner Classic Movies will show twelve of the actor-singer films, the best of which is On the Town, a zesty musical about three sailors and their three girls (four, if you include Alice Pearce) spending a day together in New York City.
The three guys – Sinatra, Gene Kelly, and Jules Munshin – are all likable and fine, but it’s the female quartet that does it for me: in addition to Pearce, there’s Vera-Ellen, Betty Garrett, and Ann Miller. These women are the ones who should have been the superstars of Hollywood musicals of the 1940s and 1950s.
Anyhow, Kelly and Stanley Donen co-directed On the Town, while the Alfred Green-Betty Comden duo penned the screenplay, which in turn was based on their Broadway musical.
Two other Kelly-Sinatra vehicles, the Academy Award-nominated Anchors Aweigh and Take Me Out to the Ball Game, are pleasant musicals that were well-received at the time. On the other hand, The Kissing Bandit, which pairs Sinatra with Kathryn Grayson (the leading woman in Anchors Aweigh) was a major flop. This so-so musical is enlivened by scene-stealer Mildred Natwick in a supporting role, and by a lively dance number performed by Ricardo Montalban, Cyd Charisse, and Ann Miller.
Now, it’s interesting how the Frank Sinatra of the 1940s seemed like a low-key, easy-going chap, whereas the Sinatra of the 1950s – following his Oscar win for From Here to Eternity – almost always came across as smug, self-important, and more than a little slimy. There were a couple of exceptions, of course (The Man with the Golden Arm, for which he received a well-deserved Academy Award nomination; his last film, the flop The First Deadly Sin), but generally speaking I find the post-1953 Sinatra hard to stomach.
The World War II melodrama Never So Few, which stars Sinatra and Gina Lollobrigida, may well be director John Sturges’ worst film (perhaps alongside his Gunga Din remake Sergeants Three, also listed below); the musicalized comedy-drama The Tender Trap has less of interest to say about male-female relationships than Cecil B. DeMille’s silent melodramas of the 1910s; while Vincente Minnelli is incapable of keeping the phoniness at bay in Some Came Running, an overripe melodrama based on James Jones’ semi-autobiographical novel; the film is made tolerable by Martha Hyer’s class and by Shirley MacLaine’s kind-hearted (and, as usual, thoroughly desexualized) floozie (above).
A musicalized The Philadelphia Story remake, Charles Walters’ High Society was MGM’s biggest hit of 1956. Unfortunately, it’s a romantic comedy boasting all the naturalness of a plastic toy.
Higher and Higher stars Michèle Morgan. That’s enough to make it worth a look.
Note: Most of MGM’s musical stars of the 1940s and early 1950s were either gone from the studio or on their way out in the mid-to-late 1950s.
Despite song-filled flops like Give a Girl a Break and Hit the Deck, Debbie Reynolds was a notable exception, managing to keep her stardom afloat in straight comedies and dramas – and the occasional musical – at MGM and elsewhere for another decade.
But Frank Sinatra was a particularly notable case. Following a career resurgence at Columbia by way of Fred Zinnemann’s blockbuster From Here to Eternity and a Best Supporting Actor Oscar win, Sinatra was on his way to becoming a superstar – one who, like Reynolds, would return to the old musical genre every now and then.
Frank Sinatra films: TCM schedule (PDT)
3:00 AM Higher and Higher (1944)
Director: Tim Whelan.
Cast: Michèle Morgan, Jack Haley, Frank Sinatra, Leon Errol, Marcy McGuire, Victor Borge, Mary Wickes, Elisabeth Risdon, Barbara Hale, Mel Tormé, Paul Hartman, Grace Hartman, Dooley Wilson, Ivy Scott.
90m5:00 AM Step Lively (1944)
Director: Tim Whelan.
Cast: Frank Sinatra, George Murphy, Gloria DeHaven.
88m6:30 AM The Kissing Bandit (1948)
Director: Laslo Benedek.
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson, J. Carrol Naish, Mildred Natwick, Mikhail Rasumny, Billy Gilbert, Sono Osato, Clinton Sundberg, Carleton G. Young, Sally Forrest.
Cameos: Ann Miller, Ricardo Montalban, Cyd Charisse.
100m8:30 AM Anchors Aweigh (1945)
Director: George Sidney.
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson, Gene Kelly, Pamela Britton, José Iturbi, Dean Stockwell, Rags Ragland, Billy Gilbert, Henry O’Neill, Carlos Ramírez, Grady Sutton, Leon Ames.
139m11:00 AM On the Town (1949)
Director: Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen.
Cast: Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Betty Garrett, Ann Miller, Vera-Ellen, Jules Munshin, Florence Bates, Alice Pearce, Hans Conried.
98m1:00 PM Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949)
Director: Busby Berkeley.
Cast: Gene Kelly, Esther Williams, Frank Sinatra, Betty Garrett, Jules Munshin, Edward Arnold, Richard Lane, Tom Dugan.
93m2:45 PM Never So Few (1959)
Director: John Sturges.
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Gina Lollobrigida, Peter Lawford, Steve McQueen, Paul Henreid, Richard Johnson, Brian Donlevy, Dean Jones, Charles Bronson, Robert Bray, Philip Ahn, George Takei.
125m5:00 PM Some Came Running (1958)
Director: Vincente Minnelli.
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine, Martha Hyer, Arthur Kennedy, Nancy Gates, Leora Dana, Betty Lou Keim, Larry Gates, Steven Peck, Connie Gilchrist, Ned Wever.
136m7:30 PM High Society (1956)
Director: Charles Walters.
Cast: Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Celeste Holm, John Lund, Louis Calhern, Sidney Blackmer, Louis Armstrong, Margalo Gillmore, Lydia Reed, Gordon Richards.
107m9:30 PM The Tender Trap (1955)
Director: Charles Walters.
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Debbie Reynolds, David Wayne, Celeste Holm, Lola Albright, Carolyn Jones, Howard St. John, Tom Helmore, James Drury.
111m11:30 PM Sergeants 3 (1962)
Director: John Sturges.
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr.
113m1:30 AM Suddenly (1954)
Director: Lewis Allen.
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Sterling Hayden, James Gleason, Nancy Gates, Kim Charney, Willis Bouchey, Paul Frees, Christopher Dark, James O’Hara (as James Lilburn).
76m