Frank Sinatra

Kings Go Forth

/ Colin McGuigan / 36 Comments

There are simple, straightforward war movies, there are also films which see their stories played out against a backdrop of war, and then there are what I can only describe as genre hybrids. Kings Go Forth (1958) is one of those hybrids; it is not a full on war movie, meaning the plot is not driven solely, or even principally, by the battle scenes or the military strategy, yet these aspects are not relegated to the merely incidental either. In brief, it is a movie dealing with personal and social conflicts, all presented within the wider framework of the latter stages of the Second World War.

Not all wars are created equal, are they? While D-Day and the invasion of Northern France grabbed the headlines, and continues to garner attention, it is easy to forget that the drama and tragedy of WWII was also being played out in other theaters. Kings Go Forth unfolds in the south of the country where the US forces are in the process of trying to clear out the remaining pockets of Nazi resistance. Sam Loggins (Frank Sinatra) is a lieutenant in need of a new radio operator for his outfit. His voice-over narration in these early scenes make it clear that Britt Harris (Tony Curtis), the man who talks his way into the role, is a figure who will loom large in the subsequent events. He is brash and cocky, sure of himself yet essentially unknowable to others. Right from the beginning, Sam is aware that what is presented is largely a facade, an image offered up for public consumption with the goal of ensuring that what Britt wants, Britt gets. An apparently contradictory figure, he joined the army only as a last resort, having tried to bribe the draft board, but is not averse to indulging in showy heroics – dragging wounded men from a treacherous minefield, or braving machine gun fire to neutralize a pillbox. In short, as Sam himself noted at the outset, he is a man you notice. Well, it takes all kinds to make a world and the various peculiarities of character need not trouble anyone too much. Or that’s the way it seems for a time.

While these two central characters are shown  in sharp relief, the contrast only becomes an issue with the arrival on the scene of Monique (Natalie Wood). She was born an American, brought to Europe by her parents as a child, and is now practically a Frenchwoman. When Sam chances upon her during an impromptu leave he is smitten on the spot. He sees her again, and falls a little further, and all the while Monique remains half a step removed, charming and charmed yet cool. An evening in a cafe, where the wine and jazz form a potent cocktail has Britt meeting this pair, and so the final decisive point of the triangle is fixed in place. By the by, the reason for Monique’s reticence is revealed to be largely the product of her uncertainty of how Americans will react to her mixed race heritage. Sam is gradually accepting of this, having first forced himself to confront the prejudices he once entertained, but Monique finds herself dazzled by the glamor Britt seems to represent. In the end, the story boils down to a question of character and how it manifests itself. On an evening that promises death or glory deep in the enemy’s stronghold, truth emerges as the victor, but it is perhaps a bitter victory.

It has been some time since I last featured a movie from Delmer Daves. Over the years, I have developed a deep appreciation of this director and I count him among one of my favorites. His sympathetic handling of multifaceted and flawed characters caught up in situations which were correspondingly complex shows great maturity and I find his reluctance to sit in judgement enormously refreshing. Characters may be idealized by others within their world, but the viewer is presented with them as they are rather than as we might wish them to be. There is something soulful yet reassuring in the frank admission of imperfection and frailty; this is a filmmaker who not only understood but embraced humanity and sought to celebrate all its aspects. For me, such characteristics define the artist.

Kings Go Forth came in the middle of a particularly productive period in Frank Sinatra’s screen career. Some Came Running, The Joker is Wild and Pal Joey were all made in and around this time. It’s a fine performance, restrained, largely dialed down and frequently internalized. There is a good deal of pain in Sam Loggins, a hard-bitten personal diffidence riding side by side with a professional assurance, a tricky balance to achieve. I very much appreciate how the easy option of having the leading man simply do the right thing without thought was avoided, how he was made to look his own racial prejudices square in the face and acknowledge them for what they were. Perhaps we’re not talking redemption in the classical sense, but it is a matter of decency won after a hard battle, and the ending of the movie, in all its bittersweet melancholy and tantalizing optimism, is all the better for it. Nor is Natalie Wood asked to play any one-dimensional angel. Her hunger for acceptance draws her deep into a damaging and worthless relationship, blinding her to the artifice which is burrowing its way into her heart. It is an honest piece of work and, as with all forms of honesty, not always attractive. Tony Curtis is well cast too, coasting along on looks, style and polished patter, but never able to completely sell the lie to himself. As he sits in the clock tower with Sinatra, feeling the chill breath of fate creeping closer, his openness about his complete absence of character is very well realized – to watch him at this moment is to watch a man gazing deep within himself, and being appalled at the emptiness that he discovers. And finally, a word for Leora Dana, who is characteristically touching as Wood’s mother. If the only movies she had ever made were this one, 3:10 to Yuma and Some Came Running, then it would still constitute a fine career.

Kings Go Forth was an early release on DVD by MGM and looked good enough even though it was presented open-matte. There was a Blu-ray release by Twilight Time but I think that’s been out of print for some time now. However, there is a fine Blu-ray available in Germany, English-friendly, widescreen and generally very attractive. I freely admit that I am an unashamed fan of the work of Delmer Daves and I am well aware that this may color my view of his films. That said, I think Kings Go Forth is a terrific little movie and it comes highly recommended.

Some Came Running

/ Colin McGuigan / 66 Comments

Some Came Running (1958) is quite simply a great movie. It’s a study of fear and frustration in small town America in the post-war years. Every main character is scared or insecure in one way or another, scared and insecure within themselves, wary and mistrustful of their strengths and weaknesses, and frequently unaware of or unclear about the difference.  Essentially, everybody we encounter wants what he or she cannot have, all except one. That one person appears to be the greatest dreamer of the lot, and yet it’s the purity of that dream that means it stands more chance of being realized than all the other castles in the sky combined.

Homecomings ought to be happy affairs, a chance to strengthen bonds and reacquaint oneself with family and friends, but as Elmer Bernstein’s frantic and vaguely discordant score plays over the credits, there’s no suggestion of joy ahead. We’re riding a bus, and the view through the windows is of countryside dipping and rolling down towards the town of Parkman, Indiana. There’s a touch of symbolism in that shot, the physical descent mirrors the spiritual one the protagonist is on, the process of stepping down from his emotionally and intellectually detached position to confront and reconnect with his past (indeed with himself) before he earns the right to ascend once more. It’s a practically deserted bus too and you get the impression that Parkman isn’t the kind of town people are in a hurry to reach, quite the opposite in fact. Slumped by the window and sleeping off what must have been a heavy night is Dave Hirsh (Frank Sinatra), a demobbed soldier back in his home town for no better reason than the fact his friends told the driver to drop him there. The only other passenger is Ginny (Shirley MacLaine), a “hostess” from Chicago who has followed Dave. While others naturally impact on the development of the story, it is these two who form the dramatic axis at the heart of the tale. He’s what might be described as a lapsed writer, a man who has lost his spark somewhere along the line and has traded his talent for a sour mix of whiskey and cynicism. And yet he hasn’t completely resigned himself to idle contemplation of the shot glass, as evidenced by the fact he still carries around his last manuscript, one he appears to regard with fond dissatisfaction.

Dave Hirsh is the man through whose eyes we follow the majority of events, watching his struggle with his art, with his friends and relations, and of course with himself. While he acts as our point of reference, it’s through his interaction with Ginny above all that we gain the broader perspective that adds depth. The growth and development of the character of Dave is propelled mainly by the presence and actions of Ginny, even if she is not always aware of the pivotal position she occupies.

“I don’t understand you neither, but that don’t mean I don’t like you. I love you! But I don’t understand you. Now what’s the matter with that?”

When we first encounter him, he is quite literally in a dark place, deflated, directionless and drunk. By the end of the movie, while there’s grief and sorrow on show, he’s returned to the light by having rediscovered everything that matters – he has recaptured his spirit, and that is reflected both in his renewed awareness of his artistic worth and his  recovered self-esteem as a human being who now understands he is capable and deserving of love.

What then of Ginny? Well, if Dave’s moment of truth, the bittersweet dawning of realization, comes late in proceedings, much of the impetus has derived from the presence of Ginny. Dave has spent an inordinate amount of time kidding himself that his salvation lies with the bookish and frigid Gwen (Martha Hyer). However, this is an illusion fed by his desire to escape the carefully constructed edifice of hypocrisy as represented by his brother Frank (Arthur Kennedy) and the grand soulless house he inhabits with his disaffected wife (Leora Dana) on the one hand, and the creative wasteland he’s found himself wandering through for years on the other. Gwen is incapable of loving anyone or anything real, at least in a physical sense. She resides in a house steeped in learning, a place where culture is a staple to the point that books proliferate and are to be found even in the kitchen, offering sustenance to the mind. Yet Gwen worships a kind of chaste and empty conception of art, one where the artist is a detached and essentially impotent figure, rendering art itself barren in the process. Juxtaposed with the emotional vacuum presented by Gwen is the simple, inarticulate tenderness of Ginny, the type of honesty that defines humility, and therefore selfless love. There’s a pathetically beautiful scene played out in an empty classroom just before the movie’s climax, that lays bare the contrasting characters of the two women – Gwen buttoned into her suffocating propriety, with just a hint of spite peeking out, while Ginny is a gushing mess of devotion and rouge. It is hard to imagine anyone essaying the vulnerability, warmth and utter lack of pretension or guile more successfully than Shirley MacLaine.

This shopworn ingenue who displays more nobility and emotional candor than anyone else is portrayed as a semi-comic figure throughout, with her ever present fur piece struggling to achieve some uneasy sophistication alongside the hopelessly immature handbag. Then right at the end, the mask is reversed to become the embodiment of tragedy. It seems fitting that this plays out as a Technicolor (Metrocolor, for the sake of accuracy) symphony, showcasing the intense and hypnotic use of color by Minnelli. In fact this sequence is shot, as indeed are a number of key passages, like a cinematic ballet; figures drift from light into darkness according to the ebb and flow of emotion, alternately cloaked in shadow and bathed in rich, vibrant hues, dancing around the flame of Minnelli’s camera.

If aspects of the movie are visually (by the way, cinematographer  William H Daniels’ contribution should not be underestimated) and rhythmically reminiscent of a musical, this is perhaps to be expected given the involvement of Minnelli, Sinatra and Dean Martin. Sinatra was at the height of his powers at this stage; he had a series of strong performances in some fine movies behind him – his screen work beginning with another James Jones adaptation From Here to Eternity and continuing up to the underrated A Hole in the Head for Capra constitutes a remarkable run – and his recordings for Capitol during these years are just sublime.

There is a lifetime of full-blooded living coloring Sinatra’s performance as Dave Hirsh and it feels as though this inspired those around him to travel that extra mile too. Dean Martin could be a lazy actor, falling back on that easygoing charm and his drawling drunkard shtick all too readily. Sure there is some of that in his Bama Dillert, but he brings a shading to the role that elevates it. He’s every bit as much a victim of the insecurity which runs rampant among the characters as anyone else – after all, isn’t the gambler, with his affectedly casual love affair with lady luck, the very epitome of uncertainty? What stands out most of course are the stubbornness and loyalty (two traits which aren’t all that far removed when you think about it) which define him. His pig-headed refusal to consider any change to his behavior, even when faced with the loss of a friendship and the threat to his health and life, feels credible in his hands. And the hat business is treated almost as a running gag, right up to the last shot of the movie, where it suddenly transforms into something deeply touching.

Like MacLaine and Hyer, Arthur Kennedy was nominated for an Oscar for his work on the movie – none of them won but it has to be said there was pretty stiff competition that year. Recently, I looked at Impulse, a relatively obscure British thriller, from a few years earlier and which saw Kennedy falling prey to middle-aged dissatisfaction. The part of Frank Hirsh offered the opportunity for further exploration of that theme. It’s a strong piece of work in truth, the calculating suspicion he feels at the beginning is slathered over inexpertly with fake bonhomie and unctuousness, none of which stands much chance of deceiving anyone for long. That dust dry laugh and back-slapping hospitality is just as much of a front as the image of familial harmony he works so hard to project. Yet, when it all comes crashing down in the aftermath of an ill-advised evening with Nancy Gates, there’s a sense of wistfulness about the whole affair. It is to Minnelli’s and the film’s credit that neither Gates nor Kennedy are explicitly judged or condemned; that mature generosity of spirit is admirable.

Warner Brothers released Some Came Running years ago in a box set of Sinatra movies. The CinemaScope image looks fine, and there’s a 20 minute feature on the movie as a supplement. Still, I have to wonder why a film of this quality hasn’t yet made it to Blu-ray since Minnelli’s mise-en-scène and use of color and shadow would surely look spectacular in high definition. Hopefully, this omission will be addressed sooner or later. The movie itself remains a great favorite of mine, and has been ever since I first viewed it many years ago. So, let me just end as I began by stating that this is simply a great piece of cinema, and I recommend it without reservation.

Tony Rome

/ Colin McGuigan / 54 Comments

 This isn’t a family. It’s just a bunch of people living at the same address. 

Trends in cinema are constantly changing with genres rising and falling in popularity all the time. Despite that, the detective story has never really gone out of fashion, in the same way that the literary version stretching back to its earliest appearance in the works of Poe and Dickens remains consistently popular. Sure the style has altered over time, the snappy sophistication of the Van Dine and Queen influenced movies of the 30s giving way to the tougher hard-boiled dialect of the Hammett and Chandler adaptations of the 40s and so on. While the trappings and presentation may shift according to the mood of the times, the central figure of the detective is always with us. Whether these characters happen to be public servants or private investigators they are seekers after truth, and occasionally justice gets a look in too. By the 60s the gumshoe or shamus had passed through the period of post-war cynicism and, though some vestige of that weary attitude was still to be found, taken on an air of cool detachment. Under the circumstances, it’s hard to think of a better choice than Frank Sinatra to play the title character in Tony Rome (1967), a private eye yarn retaining most of the familiar motifs of the sub-genre and blending them into the more permissive atmosphere of the late 60s.

Tony Rome (Frank Sinatra) is a Miami based investigator, just about getting by, making enough to eat and pay off the gambling debts he’s fond of running up. A phone call from his ex-partner, Turpin (Robert J Wilke), lands him a job he’s not especially keen on but it doesn’t look like it’s going to require any great effort on his part either. A young woman (Sue Lyon) checked herself into the flea-pit hotel where Turpin is working as the house dick and promptly passed out under the influence of copious amounts of alcohol. Well so what? The thing is the hotel doesn’t need any further hassle from the law and the young lady just happens to be the daughter of Rudy Kosterman (Simon Oakland), an influential construction magnate. Rome stands to earn some easy money by simply delivering the tycoon’s daughter back home and ensuring no awkward questions are asked. Kosterman’s naturally happy to have the girl back but he’s also worried about her recent behavior – she’s been spending prolifically and it’s increasingly difficult for either her father or her incompetent milquetoast husband to control her. Firstly, Kosterman hires Rome to look into his daughter’s activities, then before he gets out of the door the millionaire’s wife (Gena Rowlands) wants to retain his services for an investigation of her own. When the motor launch that doubles as his home is ransacked by a couple of toughs convinced he must know the whereabouts of a jeweled pin the last thing he needs is another client. And yet that’s exactly what he gets the following morning as the Kosterman girl turns up and wants him to locate the jeweled pin (yes, that one) she mislaid in the course of her date with the whiskey bottle. Aside from the potential conflict of interests involved, an apparently straightforward assignment is beginning to turn into fairly complex mess. And that’s only the beginning; after Turpin turns up dead in Rome’s office the bodies start piling up with almost depressing regularity, threatening to sour his long-standing relationship with the police in the shape of Lieutenant Santini (Richard Conte), not to mention a potential relationship of another kind with divorcee Ann Archer (Jill St John). By the time the case is concluded Rome will lay bare the secrets the Kosterman family would prefer to keep under wraps – to reach that point he’ll have to pick his way through a maze peopled by a lesbian stripper, an effete drug pusher, a crooked jeweler and blackmailers.

This was the first of three crime movies director Gordon Douglas would make with Sinatra, the others being Lady in Cement (reprising the Tony Rome character) and The Detective. The latter is clearly the best and most layered of the trio, but Tony Rome is probably the most entertaining. The story derives from a Marvin H Albert novel – a writer whose work I’ve never read despite the fact I’ve seen a few movies now based on his books – and treads a fine line between glamor and seediness, intrigue and humor. Douglas, along with cameraman Joseph Biroc, makes the most of the Florida locations and there are some nicely composed setups (see above) which evoke the look and mood of the classic private eye movie. The plot does become pretty complicated but Douglas keeps the pace even and there’s enough incident to ensure interest never drifts. A good deal of the humor comes via the by-play between Sinatra and Jill St John; although there’s also a glorious, innuendo-laden interlude in Rome’s office, when a frumpy middle-aged woman tries to get him to look into the matter of her depressed pussy and see if he can make it smile again.

Sinatra was well cast as Rome, boozing, smoking and wisecracking his way around Miami and the Keys, mingling effortlessly with both high society and a range of lowlife characters. As a singer he was always capable of going from a buoyant cockiness to almost painful self-awareness, and he brings the same quality to his performance here. The smart, assured dialogue rolls of his tongue as he trades threats and jibes with equal ease, and yet there’s also the honest acceptance of his own weaknesses and failings as a human being. Recently, I’ve been chatting elsewhere about the nature of the detective in crime fiction/filmmaking, and I think Sinatra does well conveying the image of an imperfect but essentially honorable man surrounded by violence and deceit. Jill St John is fine too as the woman looking for a few laughs and finding herself regularly fobbed off as Rome’s investigation takes another interesting turn at just the wrong moment for her. The supporting cast is packed with familiar faces – Simon Oakland, Gena Rowlands, Robert J Wilke, an increasingly exasperated Richard Conte, Jeffrey Lynn, Lloyd Bochner, and cameos for boxer Rocky Graziano and restaurateur Mike Romanoff.

Tony Rome is a 20th Century Fox production and the DVD form that studio is very good – I have the UK box set containing the three Sinatra/Douglas crime films. The movie is presented in anamorphic scope and comes from a nice clean print, the colors are natural looking and I can’t say I’m aware of any significant damage. The movie itself is a good, solid detective story with a well-judged central performance by Sinatra. In fairness, it’s not the star’s best movie, not even his best with Douglas, but it is a good one, entertaining and engaging from beginning to end. It ought to be more than satisfactory for anyone into mysteries, detective stories or Sinatra.