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cover design by Saul Bass

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Today, December 12, is the birthday of singer, crooner, Frank Sinatra, who was born in 1915, in an upstairs tenement at 415 Monroe Street in Hoboken, New Jersey. I have dozens of albums by him but to me this is the perfect tribute to him as he experienced, as a youth, the world of Francis Majcinek, known as "Frankie Machine", a card dealer and amateur drummer, the character he portrayed in the 1955 film, The Man With The Golden Arm. Also, it demonstrated that he was much more than a great singer, he was a great actor. He doesn't sing a single note in the film and he was stunning!

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cover design by Saul Bass

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The Man With The Golden Arm is based on the 1949 novel by Nelson Algren. The novel was controversial at the time, and it did receive some bad reviews. In a 1956 article for The New Yorker entitled The Man with the Golden Beef, Norman Podhoretz was critical of what he saw as the glorification of the underclass at the expense of "respectable society".

When the book was made into a film, Algren was initially brought to Hollywood to work on the screenplay, but was replaced by Walter Newman. Algren felt negatively about his experiences in Hollywood, the lack of compensation he received, and the liberties taken by the filmmakers (which included an entirely different ending from the novel). When photographer and friend Art Shay asked Algren to pose below the film's marquee, he is reported to have said "What does that movie have to do with me?"

The book won the National Book Award in 1950. Algren wrote A Walk on the Wild Side in 1956 which was also made into a film in 1965.

vinyl LP front cover detail

cover design by Saul Bass

detail photo of album cover by Styrous®

The Man With The Golden Arm, shot in the tradition of thirties & forties film noir, deals with the nightmare of drug addition; the first time Hollywood acknowledged its existence. The black and white adds to the gritty feeling of the milieu in which the characters are immersed. Also contributing to this gritty feeling is a fitting and flawless score by Elmer Bernstein performed by a stellar jazz personnel (links below). The film was directed by Otto Preminger.

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cover design by Saul Bass

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The casting for the film was brilliant. Eleanor Parker, as Sophie (nicknamed "Zosh"), Frankie Machine's wife, who is crippled after a car crash caused by Frankie driving while drunk; but she is secretly fully recovered and pretends to be crippled to make Frankie feel guilty so he will stay with her.

Frank Sinatra & Eleanor Parker

A wonderful job of acting was done by Kim Novak, at the height of her beauty, as "Molly-O" Novotny who works in a local strip joint as a hostess and lives in the apartment below them; unlike Zosh, Molly encourages his dream of becoming a drummer.

Frank Sinatra & Kim Novak

Arnold Stang, usually a comic, was perfect as weaselly "Sparrow" Saltskin, who runs a con selling homeless dogs.

Arnold Stang & Frank Sinatra
film still

Darren McGavin superbly portrayed "Nifty Louie" Fomorowski, the slimy pusher who sells heroin to Machine (links to cast and plot below).

Frank Sinatra (Frankie Machine) & Darren McGavin

vinyl LP back cover detail

cover design by Saul Bass

detail photo of album back cover by Styrous®

vinyl LP back cover detail

cover design by Saul Bass

detail photo of album back cover by Styrous®

The score by Elmer Bernstein is jazzy, jittery, frenetic, dissonant, at times suspenseful and pensive, even when it's orchestral, befitting the mood of the film. The one exception is Moly. It is slow, romantic and beautiful with full orchestra and a soft piano played by Ray Turner. However, it does have its stress points towards the end of the piece.

There have been many covers of the Main Theme from The Man With The Golden Arm; not all of them have been jazz versions (link below).

One of my favorite hard rock groups, Sweet, a British glam rock band that rose to worldwide fame in the 1970s, did a fantastic cover of the Main Theme from the film on their album, Desolation Boulevard, added the line, "Watch that man with the golden arm!", tympani and chimes. They performed it for a concert in Germany in 1974; there is a video of the rehearsal for the concert on YouTube (link below). Mick Tucker performs amazing drum solos on both.

Leonard Cohen used imagery from The Man With The Golden Arm in The Stranger Song, from his first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967): "O you've seen that man before / his golden arm dispatching cards / but now it's rusted from the elbows to the finger" (link below).

vinyl LP back cover detail

cover design by Saul Bass

detail photo of album back cover by Styrous®

Although the addictive drug is never identified in the film, according to the American Film Institute "most contemporary and modern sources assume that it is heroin", in contrast to Algren's book which named the drug as morphine. The film's initial release was controversial for its treatment of the then-taboo subject of drug addiction.

Frank Sinatra

The "quitting, cold turkey" scene in the film is graphic and frightening; it is only matched by the similar theme in the 1945 film, Lost Weekend, which starred Ray Milland as an alcoholic (links below).

vinyl LP back cover detail

cover design by Saul Bass

detail photo of album back cover by Styrous®

The Man With The Golden Arm was nominated for three Academy Awards: Sinatra for Best Actor in a Leading Role, Joseph C. Wright and Darrell Silvera for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White and Elmer Bernstein for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture. Sinatra was also nominated for best actor awards by the BAFTAs and The New York Film Critics^. The film is in the public domain.

vinyl LP back cover details

detail photos of album back cover by Styrous®

Frank Sinatra is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 150 million records worldwide.

Born to Italian immigrants in Hoboken, New Jersey, Sinatra was greatly influenced by the intimate easy listening vocal style of Bing Crosby and began his musical career in the swing era with bandleaders Harry James and Tommy Dorsey.

Harry James & Frank Sinatra - 1939
photographer unknown

Sinatra found success as a solo artist after he signed with Columbia Records in 1943; his debut album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra, was released in 1946. By the early 1950s his professional career had stalled and he turned to Las Vegas. In 1965, he recorded the retrospective album, September of My Years, to me the best album he ever made (link below).

Other dramatic films he starred in are From Here to Eternity in 1953, Suddenly in 1954, Not as a Stranger in 1955, The Pride and the Passion in 1957, Some Came Running and Kings Go Forth both in 1958, The Manchurian Candidate in 1962, and many others.

vinyl LP back cover details

detail photos of album back cover by Styrous®