Can-Can (Walter Lang, 1960)

Frank Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine in Can-Can

Cast: Shirley MacLaine, Frank Sinatra, Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan, Juliet Prowse, Marcel Dalio, Leon Belasco, Nestor Paiva, John A. Neris, Jean Del Val, Ann Codee. Screenplay: Dorothy Kingsley, Charles Lederer, based on a musical comedy book by Abe Burrows. Cinematography: William H. Daniels. Art direction: Jack Martin Smith, Lyle R. Wheeler. Film editing: Robert L. Simpson. Music: Nelson Riddle; songs: Cole Porter. 

On the Town (Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen, 1949)

Frank Sinatra, Jules Munshin, and Gene Kelly in On the Town

Cast: Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Betty Garrett, Ann Miller, Jules Munshin, Vera-Ellen, Florence Bates, Alice Pearce, George Meader. Screenplay: Adolph Green, Betty Comden, based on their book for a musical play. Cinematography: Harold Rosson. Art direction: Jack Martin Smith, Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Ralph E. Winters. Music: orchestrations by Conrad Salinger, songs by Leonard Bernstein, Roger Edens, Adolph Green, Betty Comden.

A funny thing happened after I watched On the Town: I found myself humming "Lucky to Be Me" and "Some Other Time," songs by Leonard Bernstein with lyrics by Adolph Green and Betty Comden that aren't in the movie. They were in the original Broadway production, but were cut by producer Roger Edens, along with several others, and replaced by his own songs, almost all of which are forgettable. Bernstein was pissed off, as he should have been: "Lucky to Be Me" was perfect for one of Gene Kelly's numbers, and "Some Other Time" almost begged to be sung by Frank Sinatra and the rest of the company. Those excisions, and the Breen Office's insistence that the song "New York, New York" had to describe the city as "a wonderful town," instead of the original "helluva town," weigh down this much-loved but overrated MGM musical, which at least managed to do some location filming in the city after Kelly and co-director Stanley Donen rebelled against shooting the entire musical in the New York sets of the studio's back lot. The location shots give some life to the movie, but it still looks cheap and stagy in comparison with later, more lavish productions like An American in Paris (1951). Kelly and Donen, along with Comden, Green, and cinematographer Harold Rosson, would redeem themselves with Singin' in the Rain (1952), which has the wit and buoyancy On the Town sadly lacks.

Anchors Aweigh (George Sidney, 1945)

Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra in Anchors Aweigh

Cast: Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson, José Iturbi, Dean Stockwell, Pamela Britton, Rags Ragland, Billy Gilbert, Henry O'Neill, Carlos Ramirez, Edgar Kennedy, Grady Sutton, Leon Ames, Sharon McManus. Screenplay: Isobel Lennart, Natalie Marcin. Cinematography: Charles P. Boyle, Robert H. Planck. Art direction: Randall Duell, Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Adrienne Fazan. Music: George Stoll.

Anchors Aweigh is not in the top tier of MGM musicals. It doesn't have the smooth integration of story with music found in Vincente Minnelli's Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and An American in Paris (1951) or Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly's Singin' in the Rain (1952). What it does have is Kelly in his breakthrough film, blazing with his uniquely muscular dancing style in some great set pieces, not only the famously beloved sequence in which he dances with Jerry the Mouse, but also in the charming "Mexican Hat Dance" with little Sharon McManus and the spectacular "La Cumparsita" that has him doing stunt leaps and swinging from a curtain to a balcony occupied by Kathryn Grayson. Kelly did the choreography for these numbers, and they depend heavily on long takes that show the dancing to best advantage. But the film also has Frank Sinatra, still in his skinny idol-of-the-bobby-soxers phase, which earned him top billing -- Grayson is billed second and Kelly third. He's in fine voice, and the phrasing that would make him one of the best singers who ever lived is already in evidence; he was also coached by Kelly into being a more-than-passable dancing partner. Unfortunately, the film also has Grayson, the least charming and talented of the run of Hollywood sopranos that began with Jeanette MacDonald and encompassed singers like Grace Moore, Lily Pons, and Deanna Durbin before fizzling out with Jane Powell. Plus there's José Iturbi, the pianist and conductor whose movie stardom remains a mystery (at least to me); he hashes up the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in a number shot at the Hollywood Bowl where he's accompanied by a stage full of young pianists. The plot, such as it is, hangs on Kelly and Sinatra getting Grayson, with whom both have fallen in love, an audition with Iturbi at MGM and then figuring out which of them will get Grayson. The whole thing unaccountably earned an Oscar nomination for best picture, but it also landed Kelly his only nomination as best actor. It was also nominated for cinematography and for Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn's song "I Fall in Love Too Easily," which Sinatra introduced, and it won for George Stoll's scoring.

Some Came Running (Vincente Minnelli, 1958)

Some Came Running (Vincente Minnelli, 1958)

Cast: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine, Martha Hyer, Arthur Kennedy, Nancy Gates, Leora Dana, Betty Lou Keim, Larry Gates. Screenplay: John Patrick, Arthur Sheekman, based on a novel by James Jones. Cinematography: William H. Daniels. Art direction: William A. Horning, Urie McCleary. Film editing: Adrienne Fazan. Music: Elmer Bernstein.

Like Douglas Sirk, Vincente Minnelli had a special touch with the movie melodrama, taking its often objectively silly elements seriously enough that you can actually believe in them. The James Jones novel on which the screenplay for Some Came Running was based is one of those semi-autobiographical books that writers seem to need to get out of their systems, but adapting it meant challenging the Production Code strictures, particularly on sex, at almost every turn. So the characters in the film are only as believable as the actors can make them. There's a lot of shorthand in the film about the relationships between Dave Hirsh (Frank Sinatra) and the two women in his life, the "schoolteacher" Gwen French (Martha Hyer) and the "floozie" Ginnie Moorehead (Shirley MacLaine). It's not immediately clear why Dave falls in love so swiftly with Gwen, who seems to want to mentor him as a writer more than she does to sleep with him, or why he stays connected with the illiterate and rattle-brained Ginnie, to the extent of marrying her on the rebound from Gwen. Fortunately, all three actors are adept at pulling characters out of the script, where they don't seem to have been fully written. Dean Martin was just beginning to show that he could act -- Howard Hawks would complete the process the following year with Rio Bravo -- and Minnelli helped give his career a boost by casting him as the alcoholic gambler Bama Dillert. And Arthur Kennedy completes the ensemble as Dave's go-getter older brother, Frank. Minnelli makes the most of these colorful performers, to the extent that MacLaine, Kennedy, and Hyer all received Oscar nominations. But he's also adept, as he would show in 1960 with Home From the Hill, at taking a real small town location and bringing it to full life, especially in the climactic scene that takes place in the carnival celebrating the town's centennial. The location gives the film a substance and reality that the script never quite supplies.

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

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

Cast: Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker, Kim Novak, Arnold Stang, Darren McGavin, John Conte, Doro Merande, George E. Stone, George Matthews, Leonid Kinskey, Emile Meyer. Screenplay: Walter Newman, Lewis Meltzer, based on a novel by Nelson Algren. Cinematography: Sam Leavitt. Production design: Joseph C. Wright. Film editing: Louis R. Loeffler. Music: Elmer Bernstein.

Under the Production Code, alcohol flowed freely, and drunks were likely to be glamorous like the martini-swigging Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man (W.S. Van Dyke, 1934) or lovable like James Stewart's Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey (Henry Koster, 1950). But drug use was strictly taboo, even when it was depicted as a road to degradation, until Otto Preminger thumbed his nose at the Code with The Man With the Golden Arm. Preminger's film is very much about the degradation, but he deftly avoided making it into a "problem picture" with a "just say no" moral tacked on, mainly by focusing on the character of Frankie Machine, played superbly by Frank Sinatra. When we first meet Frankie he's just gotten out of prison rehab and is determined to go straight and get a job as a drummer with a band. But he's saddled with a clinging wife called Zosh, played (and sometimes overplayed) by Eleanor Parker. She wants him to resume his old underground life as a card dealer rather than risk it as a musician, and couldn't care less if that life involves resuming the drugs provided by Louie (Darren McGavin). Zosh is, or so it seems, confined to a wheelchair after an auto accident in which Frankie was the driver, and after which he married her out of pity. In fact, she's just milking the supposed disability for all it's worth, and when no one's around she gets out of the chair and walks. The marriage to Zosh also put an end to Frankie's involvement with Molly, a b-girl in a strip club. She's played by Kim Novak, an actress whose beautiful blankness always allows us to project whatever the script wants us to see in her. This doesn't make Novak a bad actress, I think, but simply a limited one who works best in films like Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958), in which her role is all about the male gaze and its effects. She's perfectly fine here, though her preternatural beauty seems out of place in the drab urban setting of the film, like an orchid in a junkyard. Anyway, as you can guess, Frankie gets hooked again and has to go cold turkey with Molly's help. The Man With the Golden Arm sometimes feels dated: Sam Leavitt's camerawork is often too bright and flatly lighted, showing up the artificiality of the soundstage sets, and Parker and Novak are too glamorous for their roles. But the film works anyway, thanks to the solid dramatic effect produced by Sinatra's performance and the fine support from McGavin and character actor Arnold Stang, who gives a touching performance as Sparrow, a hanger-on devoted to Frankie. Elmer Bernstein's score is a classic, too, as is the  opening title sequence designed by Saul Bass.

The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962)

Although Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964) is by far the more celebrated film, I think as satire The Manchurian Candidate is a more subtle and sophisticated response to the Cold War. It may have fallen out of favor too soon because its subject, political assassination, became so sensitive just a month after its release, when John F. Kennedy was shot. For reasons that remain unclear, including Frank Sinatra's purchase of the distribution rights, it fell out of release for a long time, and only resurfaced occasionally on television until 1987, when, after a screening at the New York Film Festival, it became available on video. It's a loopy, scary, often hilarious, sometimes puzzling, and -- especially in any election year -- absolutely essential American film. Frankenheimer, who was one of the pioneers of American television drama in the age of shows like Playhouse 90, never developed a distinctive style in his movie work, but he knew how to tell a story, even when the story is as convoluted as this one. With George Axelrod, he adapted the 1959 thriller by Richard Condon, sometimes lifting dialogue direct from the novel. The results are occasionally enigmatic, as in the meeting of Marco (Sinatra) with Eugenie Rose Chaney (Janet Leigh) on the train, where the dialogue shifts into the surreal and seems to be laden with code. In terms of plot, the encounter -- probably the oddest meeting on a train since Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint's characters met in North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959) -- goes nowhere: Leigh's character serves no further discernible role in the narrative. But it serves nicely to keep the viewer off guard as things grow increasingly bizarre. The weakest performance in the film is probably that of Laurence Harvey as Raymond Shaw. Harvey can't seem to be bothered to keep up an American accent, but somehow even that fits the ambiguity of his character. Angela Lansbury, as Raymond's mother (this is the point where it's usual to mention that she was only three years older than Harvey), is absolutely terrifying as one of the movies' greatest female villains. It earned her an Oscar nomination, but she lost to Patty Duke in The Miracle Worker (Arthur Penn). James Gregory, as her Joe McCarthy-like husband, would not be out of place in the current presidential campaign.