“Groucho: A Life in Review” Starring Frank Ferrante

By Steve Vertlieb: Saw “Groucho: A Life in Review” at The Walnut Street Theater last weekend, and thought it was superb. Frank Ferrante as Groucho (Julius) Marx is brilliant as he portrays the legendary comedian from his early days in burlesque and vaudeville to success at Paramount Pictures, while later at MGM under the watchful, discretionary eyes of Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer.

The performance reverently follows Marx into his later years with new, wholly unexpected fame on television as the host of NBC’s classic quiz show, You Bet Your Life.

While Ferrante’s interpretation of Groucho as a young, anarchic, rising comic in the late twenties and early thirties is joyous, and hysterically funny, it is his later persona as a fragile, elderly, beloved comedic icon that is, ultimately, most endearing, poignant, and melancholy.

Worshipped by modern comedians and talk show hosts, such as Dick Cavett, Ferrante’s Groucho lapses into sadness over the loss of his beloved brothers, particularly Chico (Leonard) Marx whose tender love for his older sibling sustained each other through good times and bad.

The cheers of “Bravo,” with standing ovations and emotional cheers, at the conclusion of the performance were both heartfelt and endearing. Andy Marx, author Arthur Marx’s son, and Groucho’s grandson, pictured here with Ferrante and Groucho’s great granddaughter, appeared on stage before the curtains fell one last time to praise the star for his richly researched, inspired, and impassioned performance.

Arthur Marx, Groucho’s son, wrote the play upon which this performance was based, as well as the two funniest books that it has ever been my privilege to read … Life With Groucho, about his beloved father, and Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime, concerning the storied careers of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.

Should this wonderful show visit your town or backyard, I urge you to see it. It is superb. Frank Ferrante has brought Groucho back to vibrant, vital life and comedic genius. “Minnie’s Boys” would be proud. BRAVO!

Merian C. Cooper: A King And A God In The World He Knew

Merian Cooper as a director.

By Steve Vertlieb: On April 21, 1973, a hero by the name of Merian C. Cooper laid down the gauntlet of fame and passed quietly into memory. He’d grown ill from the rigors of age and experience, losing his grasp of earthly endeavors after a brief hospitalization. Like so many who had passed before him, his name and contributions would become a line or a paragraph in recorded history, meaning no more than most men do or have done…and yet, this proper Southern gentleman would not have passed quietly, nor would his legend be blinded by death…for his was a singular journey, and his memory would continue to inspire excitement and imagination among those searching for adventure and significance along life’s often empty corridor. He was a king and a god in the world he knew and, like the giant ape that he created, Merian C. Cooper lived in both the civilized and primordial jungles of mortal endeavor.

I first became acquainted with the Cooper name somewhere around 1956 when I was a mere lad of ten.  My mother had told me stories for years about a movie she had seen as a young woman concerning a fantastic tale of beauty and a fabled beast, a huge mythological, predatory ape alive in a lost, primordial jungle who follows the scent of a young American woman back to the “civilized” shores of New York City.  There, amidst the spiraling skyscrapers of a volatile human jungle, the beast falls to his death from atop the newly constructed, tallest steel mountain in the world, the Empire State Building.  Yet, the shattered titan laying crushed upon the streets of the young city would not be stilled.  Like the martyred prophet finding rest at last on a Roman cross two thousand years earlier, the fallen Kong would rise again in resurrection and mythology far beyond his mortal years. Its legend would hover uneasily within the vague cracks and crevasses of my mind for most of my life and consciousness.

I was haunted by nightmares about Kong for many years. In my dreams I fancied that this huge, primordial ape had come for me and was marauding the night streets of the city in search of human prey. I could hear the distant pounding of his colossal footsteps in the darkness. I could see the cataclysmic shadow of his gargantuan features peering angrily through my window, roaring in immortal defiance of my sheltered sleep. I’d struggle to open my eyes and regain consciousness, for I knew that if I succumbed to the reality of slumber’s horrifying phantoms that I’d be lost. Locked in deep repose, my eye lids fluttered open and I sat up in bed, sweating profusely and gasping for breath. I had managed to escape the demons of my own youthful imagination once more. Yet, I knew that somewhere beneath my own consciousness he was waiting and that I dared not return to sleep.

Merian Cooper dreams of King Kong.

When my local CBS television affiliate in Philadelphia announced in the mid-Fifties that they were going to air the local premiere of Cooper’s masterpiece King Kong, I was thrilled. After years of dreams and fanciful imaginings, I was at last going to see the actual film. My mother’s tales of this magical motion picture had conjured countless nights of mythical, nocturnal wanderings in which the horrific beast would trample surrounding buildings, coming ever nearer to where I lay asleep in my room. I’d first sense, and then actually hear the prehistoric pounding of his premeditated footsteps approaching as I slept, paralyzed with fear. As the visage of this terrible beast peering through my bedroom window, huge eyes gaping in bewildered rage, awakened me in a cold sweat, the utter immensity of this astonishing stranger in a strange land invoked an uncontrollable eruption of frightened screams in the night.

I’d waited anxiously for the day in which “Kong” would finally reveal himself on my tiny television screen. In my arrogance and expectation, I’d forgotten that I was still but a small boy, subject to the stringent rules and regulations of the house in which I lived.  I’d assumed that seeing the film was a right, rather than a privilege and so, in my self-righteous determination to watch the film on my parents’ television set, I callously disregarded the sometimes thin line separating entitlement from boorishness. I was therefore punished, and forbidden from watching the premiere telecast of “Kong” at home.  I still had time, however, before the movie would begin.  I ran to a neighbor’s house and asked if I might watch “Kong” there.  My friend’s mother was moderately compassionate, allowing me to sit in front of their television set to watch the film.  My heart was beating wildly as the strange beeping atop the RKO tower filled both the tiny screen and my ears.  The overture commenced, and I was transported to a far away land into which the mortal walls of civilization and confinement evaporated, as though time itself had melted into primordial remembrance.

The film began as Carl Denham searched New York for a frail, vulnerable woman to accompany his motion picture crew to Skull Island. Fog lit seas concealed the enormity of the cavernous island, while ominous drumming sounds pierced the mist.  Expectation gave way to wide eyed wonderment as Ann Darrow was carried away from her safe confines aboard “The Venture” by ferocious natives, tied to a sacrificial altar in the black jungle, illuminated by the fires of burning torches, breathlessly awaiting an unimaginable fate. Huge trees came crashing to their roots as the jungle erupted with violence. Something was coming for her. As Ann looked higher, still higher toward the jungle skyline, her eyes beheld the greatest sight she’d ever beheld. There, gaping down at her from the far horizon, was an enormous beast, a ferocious predator, with lust in its eyes.  Ann’s screams echoed my own as they pierced the terrible night skies.

It was at that moment that my friend’s mother entered the room, announcing sweetly that their dinner time had arrived, and that the time constraints of my kind invitation had expired.  In utter disbelief and frustration, I ran from the house screaming yet again.  In desperation I tried frantically to think of someone…anyone…who might permit me to continue watching the film.  I remembered my sainted Aunt Jesse who lived perhaps six blocks away.  I ran until I thought my heart might burst.  When I reached my aunt’s house I began pounding on her door. Thinking something was wrong, she opened the door with a worried look, wondering what on Earth must have happened. I quickly explained that my own mother has punished me, forbidding me from savoring the most deliciously awaited moment of my entire life. Graciously, my Aunt took pity on this pathetic, tortured little boy, and turned on Channel Ten. There, before my tender young eyes, the drama played itself out…the capture of Kong by civilized “soldiers,” his unseen voyage back to America, the poetic crucifixion on a New York stage, and the fabled finale in which the crippled denizen of a lost, primordial jungle is ravaged by airplane bullets, his torn limbs and carcass crashing violently to the streets of Manhattan. 

Frustrated, yet determined, I had gotten my first taste of the legendary motion picture. It was not to be my last. Mere days later, I went to the traditional Saturday Matinee for children at the local Benner Theater on Castor Avenue in Philadelphia. The short subjects, cartoons, and serials had ended and now, before the unspooling of the scheduled feature of the week, the trailers began for subsequent features. “Coming Next Week” announced the on screen banner. As light filled the darkened theater screen, a giant primordial gate began to open slowly, painfully, against the crushing weight of terrified natives trying vainly to hold it back. There, between rotting splinters within wooden gates of this ancient, collapsing structure, was KONG, the mythic, nocturnal face of my terrified dreams and imaginings. I gasped in excitation. God in his kindness had taken pity on me.  I was to be given a second chance to see King Kong as it was meant to be seen…on the giant theatrical screen that, alone, could mirror its image and stature. I had never beheld anything so amazing. I sat quietly in the noise filled theater as other children of my age ran up and down the aisles.  I was enraptured with awe and with wonder. It was an experience that would eternally haunt me, forever changing the course of my life.

In October 1965, Bantam Books published the novelization of the fabulous tale.  First printed in 1932 by Grosset and Dunlap, with authorship ascribed to Merian C. Cooper and Delos W. Lovelace, this slim new edition was heralded in banner lettering that excitedly proclaimed…”NEVER BEFORE IN PAPERBACK!  THE ALL-TIME KING OF THE MONSTERS…KING KONG.”  My sweat soaked fingers reached out longingly for the book, pulling it from the drug store rack, and holding it tenderly in my hands. I rushed home and read it from cover to cover. The inside teaser promised the greatest adventure of all time: “…King Kong, the giant killer ape whose savage heart was touched by the innocent beauty of a strange blonde girl…Who battled to save her from the ravenous jaws of man-eating dinosaurs…Who finally broke loose into the modern world and terrorized a whole city in search of his lost love. The one and only KING KONG.”  The back cover was equally lurid, and unashamedly enticing: “Taller than a five-story building, capable of crushing airplanes with his bare hands, ruler of a lost empire of prehistoric monsters.  The Bride Of Kong…blonde waif from the city streets who invaded Kong’s kingdom, with a group of motion picture adventurers, and became the prisoner of the beast’s strange passion. KING KONG…The world-famous story of beauty and the beast which has thrilled and amazed millions all over the world.”

Intoxicated by the thrill of owning a fragment of the fabled film, I decided to reach out to the publisher in an attempt to actually locate and contact the man who had created, written, and filmed this amazing motion picture. I sent a letter to Merian C. Cooper in care of Bantam Books in New York, hoping that they might forward my letter to him. I remember composing a rapturous letter of praise for both the film, and its makers in which I spoke lovingly of how deeply the film had impacted not only my dreams, but my life. I co-signed my little brother’s name to the letter in the hope that if it elicited a response, that he might be included in that recognition. To my utter astonishment, a letter arrived with a postmark dated November 27, 1965, from a post office box in Santa Monica, California. The return address read simply…Merian C. Cooper, Brigadier General, USAF, Ret.  The typewritten letter was signed by Merian C. Cooper, and began…”Dear Stephen and Erwin Vertlieb…Thank you for your fine letter of November 11.  It is a great pleasure for a man like me to receive such a fine letter from much younger people. Of course I have received many, many thousands of fan letters in my life, but yours is one of the finest. I feel entirely unworthy of such words of praise and therefore am honored that you should so write me.” Thus began an enduring, surprisingly intimate friendship between teacher and student that would last for the next eight years until his passing in 1973.

Cooper was a faithful and tireless correspondent.  No sooner would I mail off a letter to him than another one would arrive by return mail. Except for his first letter which was handsomely typewritten, all of his subsequent correspondence over the next eight years would be handwritten in what would quickly become his instantly recognizable style and signature. In the years that followed, our correspondence grew in singular intensity.  There were weeks in which five of the seven days of the calendar would bring letters or packages from this remarkable soul, and historical giant. General Cooper and I would grow very close over the next eight years and, although we were never destined to meet, our daily and weekly correspondence would grow in both frequency and deepening involvement. He was a war hero, an aviation pioneer, a Brigadier General in The United States Air Force, a motion picture studio head, a famed documentary film maker, producer, director, writer and New York Times journalist. Perhaps it was advancing age and changing times that led him to become so enamored of the adulation of a then nineteen-year-old film student but, whatever the underlying reasons, we became close friends through correspondence over the remaining eight years of his life.

Cooper in uniform.

I received one particularly fascinating letter from “Coop” while he was visiting Vienna, Austria in the Spring of 1969. In a letter dated April 26, 1969, he wrote “Have only been back in Vienna a short time. We spent the Winter about 30 miles up the Danube from here. On a Famous hilltop care-restaurant on the edge of the Vienna Woods, my wife (Dorothy Jordan) and I are writing a few brief notes.” He went on to answer a few historically related questions about the pre-production and shooting of King Kong.  He wrote “The great wall and gate in ‘King Kong’ was thus built: I was wandering one day on the 40 acre ‘back lot’ of RKO Pathe in Culver City, and saw the skeleton of a huge gate that Cecil B. DeMille had built in the mid 20’s for his silent version of ‘The King of Kings.’  I had it quickly remodeled with great doors etc. for Kong – Built the village in front of it, etc. and shot it there. Instead of Roman structures, I remodeled the King Kong structure out of it.  It worked well. Glad you liked ‘The Selznick Years’ and the battle scenes from ‘Four Feathers,’ and the sequence from ‘King Kong’.  David – a friend of mine – had nothing to do with either, except to back me up on ‘Kong’ when no one else believed in it. He had already left RKO and gone to MGM, and I had become production head of RKO in his place when Schoedsack and I directed the Empire State sequence of ‘King Kong.’ Nevertheless, unless Dave Selznick believed in me, ‘Kong’ could not have been made. He never saw the battle scenes in ‘Four Feathers’ until the picture was finished. Part of it Schoedsack and I produced and directed in Africa, and part about 20 miles from Palm Springs.  But Selznick had great talent and was my friend.”  

Meanwhile, back in Philadelphia, I was drafted into the U.S. Marine Corps in February, 1966, and spent some nine weeks on Paris Island, South Carolina.  While never a promising physical specimen by any stretch of the imagination, I tried to pass the grueling physical regimen of life in the Marines.  After a couple of months of frustrating efforts to succeed, I was eventually advised by a kindly drill inspector that, while he sincerely believed that I was trying to make it, that not everyone was physically cut out to be a Marine, and that he was going to recommend my discharge.  He reassured me that I would likely be re-assigned to the Army upon my discharge.  During that remarkable journey as a “Marine,” I received a letter from Coop.  In a note dated March 11, 1966, he wrote… “Dear Stephen Vertlieb:  Your brother has just written me you are a private in the Marines at Parris Island. This is just a line to wish you all the luck in the world and to say that I know you will make a great Marine. With every best wish, and God keep you…Cordially yours, Merian C. Cooper.” I suspected that my drill instructors were more than in awe, and a little shocked to hand this young private a letter from a Brigadier General in The United States Air Force. 

Our correspondence was lively and fascinating.  I was yearning to learn more about this fabulous individual, and the film he had created which had so pervasively invaded my dreams and fertile imagination. One of the more controversial aspects of Cooper’s masterpiece was the fabled spider crab sequence which no one had apparently ever seen. In the ensuing moments following the great gorilla’s encounter with the white invaders upon the giant log bridging the ravine, the terrified remnants of Carl Denham’s crew are hurled to their deaths in the cavernous pit below. In surviving prints of the legendary sequence, the men crash to the primordial ground beneath Kong’s jungle. Cooper originally filmed an extended sequence in which the hapless victims are then devoured and torn to shreds by carnivorous prehistoric spiders while their terrified screams fill the night. Forrest J Ackerman reported in early issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine that there were rumored, unedited prints circulating in the Philippine Islands, and that various fans had claimed to have seen these rare sequences in theatrical prints of the film over the years.  I asked Cooper point blank if this was at all possible, and he vehemently denied their existence. He wrote that the inclusion of this sequence in any known prints of the picture was patently impossible, as he had personally cut the scene out of the negative before the final version had even been scored by composer Max Steiner. The film would not have been released to the public in a rough cut version, and so these fables, while undeniably intoxicating, could never have occurred. Many years later, when Warner Bros. Pictures was preparing their definitive box set release of the restored epic on DVD, I was asked by the studio to provide evidence of the deletion for their lengthy documentary on the production of the picture. I photocopied Merian Cooper’s original letter to me and circled the paragraph in which he denied any possibility of the sequence surviving his cut.  I then forwarded the statement and mailed the letter to the studio. That portion of his letter to me, along with the incriminating circle in my own hand, appears in the completed documentary. Hence, my name was included in the special “Thank You” credits concluding the impressive new feature film, documenting the production of “Kong.”

 When King Kong was originally released in early 1933, it included what would later become notorious sequences in which natives were literally torn apart by Kong, ground into the mud by his giant foot, and eaten alive on the mean streets of New York City.  However, the most provocative and notorious of these sequences involved an unconscious Fay Wray awakening in the ape’s huge paw as Kong tears fragments of her clothing away from her quivering body, and brings her undergarments to his nose, sniffing her scent in mounting curiosity.  Forrest J Ackerman dubbed this interlude the “rape” scene from King Kong.  Filmed one year before the Hays Office imposed its infamous decades of censorship upon Hollywood films, the violence and implied sexuality in these scenes, deleted in 1938 upon the film’s first official re-release, had grown in both legend and intensity.  When the missing scenes were discovered by a Pennsylvania collector named Wes Shank in the early seventies, they were sold to Janus Films, and restored to all subsequent versions of the picture. In my eagerness to query Cooper about these scenes, and his psychological intent in filming them, I described the most provocative of these as the “rape” scene. His response was immediate and indignant. In no way, he insisted, was that sequence ever designed to suggest assault or rape. It simply reflected the innocent curiosity of a primordial denizen of the jungle who had never before encountered or sniffed the female scent.  Kong became increasingly enamored of Ann Darrow and protective of her well-being, he insisted. Such violence would never have occurred to him. I had forgotten in my delirium that Cooper was an old-world Southern gentleman whose gallantry would never have permitted so violently sexual a thought. He was deeply offended by the suggestion of sexual motivation on the part of the ape, and it took some profoundly apologetic words of innocence and explanation on my own part in order to earn back his eventual forgiveness and understanding of my impetuosity.

Another such misunderstanding occurred toward the end of our relationship when I wrote a series of articles for the then fledgling New York cinema tabloid, The Monster Times in 1972.  While I always both respected and cherished the cinematic milestone that Cooper had created in the infancy of sound back in 1933, and was in awe of the film’s wondrous stop motion photography created by Willis O’Brien, I always encountered difficulty with a particularly brief sequence toward the end of the film.  Early stop motion possessed a lovely archaic jerkiness which only served to further endear its primitive photography and personality to successive audiences. The ultimate crudity of early animation truly became a signature component of the character of these marvelous creations. That was why I took notice of the singular moment in the film when Kong climbs up the Empire State Building in a long shot taken from a distance away. The gorilla movement seems much too smooth in his climb, and the scene contains none of the signature jerkiness shown in all other shots of Kong. There even seems to be the suggestion of a sagging suit, however briefly, that would apparently betray a process filmed in another fashion entirely for the remaining moments of the sequence. In discussions with several fans, historians, and even a local special effects technician, I became convinced that there might have been an actor donning a gorilla costume, if only for several seconds of film, during that fateful climb. I published that opinion in my series of articles for The Monster Times. Cooper was understandably protective of his creation, and grew offended once more by my unfortunate insinuation. He swore repeatedly that only Willis O’Brien’s revolutionary visual effects were represented in the finished film, and that no human actor had ever donned a gorilla suit. Once again, I apologized profusely to Cooper, explaining that I was simply attempting to analyze and explain a somewhat controversial sequence in an otherwise flawless cinematic masterpiece. In a letter from Coop dated March 20, 1972, he wrote a note of clarification.  “That scene of King Kong climbing The Empire State Building was a very simple ‘special effect’ shot.  Anyone reasonably acquainted with ‘special effect’ works can tell you how it was done. Why don’t you ask Ray Harryhausen? I’m almost sure Willis O’Brien and I told him when I hired him for his first real animation job of consequence – ‘Mighty Joe Young.’  Consequently, I did ask Ray Harryhausen how he felt the controversial sequence might have been filmed, and sent me a detailed sketch by return mail explaining, in his own hand, how he felt the scene might have been photographed.

Merian Cooper, Willis O’Brien, Fay Wray, and Ernest B. Schoedsack.

Additionally, when a subsequent installment of my series was altered, and its language dumbed down by the publisher to more easily appeal to young fans reading the issue, Cooper had difficulty understanding why I didn’t have more creative control over my own work.  When he was a reporter for the New York Times, he explained, the editor respected his “copy,” and never exerted unwelcome creative control over its contents.  I politely explained to Cooper that The Monster Times was not in the same league as the New York Times, and that I was not Merian C Cooper.

On March 30, 1972, I was surprised to find that Merian Cooper had sent me an urgent telegram. It read “Forgive my hasty, ill tempered letters.  You wrote about me most splendidly in your articles, for which I thank you. Seems to me petty detail if original New York showings was 100 minutes or not. Whole point is when cuts were made. When I go to Los Angeles will make check as, of course, I have full access to official records there of ‘King Kong’.  Best regards to Erwin and you – Merian C. Cooper.”

At about the time that my series of articles appeared in The Monster Times, I received a telephone call from two college professors who had read my work on “Kong,” and wanted to talk to me about incorporating my series into a new book that they were editing for Avon publishers in New York. Harry Geduld and Ron Gottesman, professors of film at Indiana University and Princeton University respectively, drove to my home in Philadelphia and took me out to lunch to pitch the assignment. I adapted my work from the original series of tabloid articles, and the completed essay became the lead chapter in The Girl In The Hairy Paw published in 1976 by Avon Books. The handsome edition, edited by Ron and Harry, became the very first volume ever devoted entirely to King Kong.

In a letter from Cooper dated March 27, 1972, he attempted to explain conflicting “cuts” of King Kong for separate preview audiences. He wrote that “The preview in San Bernadino in February, 1933, and the Hollywood premiere at Grauman’s Chinese March 24, 1933, had in the motion picture itself the long titles which I have sent under separate cover to you and Erwin. I cut these titles drastically for the March 2nd New York opening. Max Steiner scored separate opening title music for the long title opening and the short title opening. I planned it that way and personally edited both versions.” He went on to discuss the subsequently edited release versions of the film thusly. “The reasons for the cuts were voluntary by RKO, but not approved by me. If the original press book says 100 minutes – then the press book, as press books so often are, was wrong. The original New York opening was a little over 104 minutes. I have copies of my directions to the New York, and to the Hollywood openings – which I have looked up – giving exact running times each place. I think you write exceedingly well, Steve.  How can I expect you to know all of the immense detail of my picture ‘King Kong’?  I was wrong to let myself be disturbed over trivialities. I treasure the letters from you and Erwin – so no hard feelings from me.”

I received an additional letter from “Coop” written a day earlier in which he related some anecdotes about Fay Wray’s legendary screams in the finished picture. “She was down to see my wife and me last week, and we joked and laughed about the full day I had her work in the recording room – screaming!!!  Of course, I am sure you realize I had her do a number of variants for ‘King Kong.’  But when those screams were used in other pictures – often quite inartistically – I, for sure, didn’t like it. I had her scream up and down all the way along the scales – and I think I used them correctly. I liked them; Obie liked them; “Maxie” Steiner liked them – Monty Schoedsack didn’t. But I was the Boss – so I used them as planned by me from the outset. You no doubt got the cost of ‘King Kong’ from me…about $650,000.00. I have the detailed budget now before me. The total direct charges were $513,242.02, but I picked up a big portion of that ‘overhead’ which Dave Selznick had left behind him and charged $163,337.18 to ‘King Kong’ (though its actual overhead was only roughly $40,000.00.) Those were busy days. Simultaneous with ‘King Kong,’ I produced the first Astaire-Rogers picture, ‘Flying Down to Rio’; ‘Little Women’ with Katherine Hepburn; was her first Academy Award picture with ‘Morning Glory’ (part of which I directed myself) and a lot of others too.  And, I might add, took RKO – in my administration – from an $18,000,000 loss to a $5,000,000 profit – all in the midst of The Great Depression. Indeed, if I tell the unvarnished truth, I am the only man in all of RKO’s history who ever made the company profitable. All this is confidential to you as I am using it in my own book.” (Sadly, his own accounts of these transactions were never finalized or published.)

A week or so earlier in a letter dated March 22, 1972, Coop addressed the somewhat “sticky” issue of authorship of King Kong, so often ascribed to novelist Edgar Wallace.  He wrote “Just found my copy of Edgar Wallace’s ‘My Hollywood Diary.’ He arrived in Hollywood December 2, 1931, and the last day of his diary is on Sunday 7th February, 1932. He died a day or two later, as I recall it. On Wednesday, 6th January, 1932 he wrote in his diary on Page 170 as follows: ‘The next month or two are very important for me.  If this film gets over that Cooper is doing it’s going to make a big difference to me, for although I am not responsible for the success of the picture, and really can’t be, since the ideas were mainly Cooper’s, I shall get all the credit for authorship and invention which rightly belongs to him.’  This is the fact, not a publicity man’s dream!!! Always question advertising and publicity!!! Check your sources, so Winston Churchill once wrote. How right he was.”  In his letter of April 7, 1972, Coop admitted that “Kong” was not his favorite picture. “I’ve always considered ‘Chang’ my best picture,” he wrote, “though ‘Grass’ – my very first picture – is historically the best known of all my 4 pictures as either writer, director, or producer.  On ‘Grass,’ and ‘Chang’ I was all three – also some other pictures.”

 On January 18,1972 Coop wrote me of his relationship with composer Max Steiner. He writes “Did you know that I flew up to Los Angeles for Max Steiner’s funeral to give the final eulogy at Mrs. Steiner’s request? Did you know that ‘Maxie’ always gave me credit for first getting him to write ‘dramatic screen music’?  Of course, I didn’t write a note of it, but the concept was mine. Until ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ where my ideas were tried out a little, until I worked out with Maxie a full idea for his great dramatic screen score for ‘King Kong,’ nobody – but nobody – had conceived the idea.  At least Maxie said so.  He sent me magnificently framed original 1st sheets of 5 of the great scores he did for me in remembrance of our work together to ‘free the screen’ from the old fashioned techniques of the stage. I treasure it. It hangs on the wall of my den. He was a true creative genius, and one of my oldest and best friends. I admired and loved him. God rest his great soul.”

Cooper had always promised that if I ever ventured West, that he would be happy to introduce me to Fay Wray who he had enticed into starring for him in King Kong by promising that her co-star would be “the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood.” I accepted his gracious invitation and hoped that upon some future trip to Los Angeles I might meet my beloved correspondent, as well.

I hadn’t heard from Cooper in several weeks, and began to wonder if he’d grown ill. To my utter disbelief and sadness, I learned that he had been admitted to the hospital and that he was gravely ill. I felt that I had somehow hurt him by believing that even a single frame of “Kong” had been filmed with a man in a gorilla suit, rather than by stop motion animation. Indeed, a Chicago newspaper had run an absurd story about some elderly gentleman claiming to have “played King Kong” in the original movie, relating his wholly fabricated story of how it felt to stand perched atop the model of The Empire State Building battling toy airplanes. I wrote an angry letter to the reporter who had filed the story, accusing his subject of being either a lunatic or a baldfaced liar. The reporter wrote me back an indignant letter, insulted by my insinuations, standing by his “sources,” and never printing a retraction.

Deeply concerned for Cooper’s health, I wrote an apology along with a get well card and sent it to him in the hospital. I soon learned that what I most feared had finally happened. This wonderful pioneering soul and visionary film maker had passed away. I was heart broken, and worried that he had slipped away without ever having seen my note of apology. I spoke with his widow, actress Dorothy Jordan, afterward and learned from her that he had indeed received my card prior to his passing, and that he had smiled when he read it. In a case of poetic irony that could only have occurred in Hollywood, both Cooper and his on screen persona, Carl Denham, passed away within hours of one another. Actor Robert Armstrong, who will forever be identified as “the man who captured the monster,” died on April 20, 1973, while his real life counterpart passed away on April 21, 1973.  Both Carl Denham and Merian C. Cooper returned home together, walking hand in hand, immersed in primordial mist beyond the legendary wall, on Skull Island.

When I finally made the trip to Los Angeles for the first time during the Summer of 1974 I had an opportunity to visit Fay Wray. I had secured her home address from Ron Gottesman and wrote her in advance of my trip. I told her who I was, and that I had known Merian C. Cooper somewhat intimately through eight years of intense and passionate correspondence, and that he had advised me that if I ever came West that he would introduce us. She wrote back a series of letters, and kindly asked me to telephone her when I arrived in town. I picked up the phone and telephoned her as soon as I got into town. She was, of course, retired and living in Century City, the wife of a prominent physician. I recognized her voice as soon as she answered the phone. I was actually speaking with Ann Darrow, the Girl In The Hairy Paw.  She invited my brother Erwin and I to come over to her high rise, and spend the afternoon with her. We arrived at the appointed time, and waited patiently for her in the lobby. The desk attendant said that we were expected, but that she had stepped out and hadn’t returned as yet. At last I saw her come through the door. She took my breath away. Even at age seventy, she was still a vision of loveliness, a wonderful remnant of classic, original Hollywood. She apologized for her late arrival, stating that he she had just come from the funeral of one of her dearest friends. I felt badly for her, and suggested that we might try and come back another time.  With amazing grace and dignity, I felt, she waved her hand into the air and said “No, life must go on.”

We spent two hours or more with Fay in her apartment talking about old Hollywood, and the making of both King Kong, and The Most Dangerous Game, its sister production.  She spoke lovingly of her friendships with Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schodesack, and Robert Armstrong whose character of Carl Denham, she remembered, was based solidly upon Cooper himself.  She said that she had remained in touch with each of them over the years and regarded them as close friends. When I asked her about her relationship with co-star Bruce Cabot, however, she grew silent and then said that she’d prefer not to talk about him. Cabot had won a reputation over his years in the film community as both a womanizer and something of a scoundrel. Apparently, these stories were silently verified by her reluctance to discuss him. She asked if I would mind going into her kitchen and pouring some cokes for each of us. I found the Coca Cola cans stocked in her refrigerator but, as I opened the first soft drink, it exploded in my hands and spilled over her sink counter.  I felt terribly about the accident, but she laughed graciously and excused my “accident.” She guarded her privacy at this point in her life, and wanted her fans and admirers to remember her as she was on the silver screen. Consequently, she politely turned down my request for photographs, but was kind enough to autograph many of the still photographs that I’d brought along with me for her to sign. We remained in touch for a time, but after she moved to New York I lost track of her. Her daughter, Victoria Riskin, went on to play her mother’s creation, Ann Darrow, in the briefly televised Volkswagen commercial in which a fully animated King Kong climbs to the top of The Empire State Building, then descends and makes his escape in a gigantic Volkswagen car. The very clever ad campaign was soon scrapped, as the executives at Volkswagen thought that the image of a gargantuan automobile betrayed their brand identification as a dependable small car.

Thanks to the generous intercession and kindness of “Coop,” I was able to begin a friendship through correspondence with Ray Harryhausen in February of 1966. The supreme animation genius had been a lifelong hero, and I was thrilled to commence a relationship that lasted from that day until his passing on May 7, 2013. However, because of his frenetic filmmaking schedule in Europe and in Spain, as well as his living now in England, our friendship had grown only through correspondence, as it had with “Coop.”  In 1981, as Ray was preparing to tour the United States while promoting what would be his last film, Clash Of The Titans, I learned that he would be making a personal appearance at Temple University in my hometown of Philadelphia. Needless to say, I was more than mildly excited by the prospect of finally meeting this brilliant motion picture technician whose career, along with Cooper’s, had so profoundly impacted my life. I drove to the University campus and walked into the lobby surrounding the auditorium where he would be making his presentation. Predictably, there were numerous fans and admirers gathered there in anticipation of meeting the great Ray Harryhausen. Not wanting to become lost in the proverbial shuffle and crowd, however, I resolved to locate the “green room” where guests of the University might be sequestered while awaiting their appearance. Happily, I found a door leading to a dressing area where a guest might be hidden away from his audience. Unhappily for me, the door was being guarded quite anxiously by an armed Temple University police guard who was obviously not in the mood for any funny business. As I approached the door I noticed that the officer was becoming increasingly agitated. He was perspiring profusely and, as I approached his appointed post, he instinctively placed his right hand upon his holstered weapon. I calmly explained that I wished to speak to Ray Harryhausen before the program began. He defiantly explained to me that I could just as easily wait with the other fans in the lobby adjoining the auditorium until Ray finally emerged.

Steve Vertlieb and Ray Harryhausen.

 After several somewhat tense moments in which I attempted to explain to Wyatt Earp that I was, indeed, a “friend” of Ray’s, and not merely a fan trying to connive my way into the room, the guard cautiously opened the door, allowing me to enter.  I tried to reason with him, explaining that if, indeed, I was lying and that Ray wouldn’t know who I was, that the guard had my explicit permission to kick my rump out into the crowded street.  As I entered the large room, I spied Ray and his lovely wife, Diana, seated at a small table having coffee.  Approaching them, I could quite literally feel the breath of my armed companion blowing hotly onto the back of my neck.  As I walked closer to the table, Ray arose from his chair.  I extended my hand in friendship and said “Ray, we have corresponded for many years.” He asked “What’s your name?” I answered “I’m Steve Vertlieb,” to which Ray’s mouth opened in amazement as he exclaimed quite loudly…”STEVE VERTLIEB?”  Turning to Diana, he yelled quite loudly “DIANA…IT’S STEVE VERTLIEB.” As this was transpiring, and as I was myself drowning in a self-manufactured sea of nervous perspiration, I felt the proximity between the guard and I grow ever wider. Ray clasped my hands warmly, and invited me to sit with them. This was to be only the first of many shared interludes with Ray Harryhausen over countless ensuing years, which included a special program in Baltimore at the Fanex Film Expo in 1990 in which I both hosted and shared the stage with Ray for a programmed event called “An Afternoon With Ray Harryhausen.”

Steve Vertlieb and Ray Harryhausen.

A year or so earlier, somewhere around 1980, I was able to make a trip to the home that Merian C. Cooper had shared with his wife Dorothy for many years until his death. The house was located in Coronado, California, and Erwin and I had been been invited by Dorothy to come and visit. She met us at the door, along with her son Colonel Richard Cooper. I was taken aback rather quickly as I noticed the striking resemblance between Dorothy and Fay Wray. Apparently, Cooper may have subconsciously cast his own wife in the key role of Ann Darrow in his film masterpiece. Their shared likeness was startling. Dorothy was very sweet and kind and showed us many of her husband’s mementos and artifacts. I held his original bound script for King Kong in my hands with his hand written notations. I was terribly excited and, frankly, stunned to turn around and see the famous caricature of Cooper directing “Kong” hanging quite prominently on the wall behind me. The drawing showed Cooper with megaphone in hand shouting “Make It Bigger…Make It Bigger,” and was a Christmas present given him by his cast and crew during December 1932. I found it difficult to hide my excitation over standing next to this fabled piece of art. Dorothy reminded us that she had appeared as an actress in films of the 1930s under the name of Dorothy Jordan, and that that she had actually come out of retirement, and returned to the screen as the woman whose family is massacred by “Scar” in her husband’s production of The Searchers, directed by John Ford in 1956.

Sharing an unforgettable afternoon with Dorothy (Jordan) Cooper, the widow of Merian C. Cooper, at their family home in Coronado, California, during September, 1980.

As we were preparing to leave Dorothy and Richard, after several hours of sheer magical conversation and memories, I grew emotional and said with tears filling my eyes that “I wish He was here.” Dorothy smiled, growing somewhat emotional herself, and replied simply…“He is. He is.” Dorothy would live another eight years. When I learned that that she had passed away in December, 1988, I telephoned the Cooper house and expressed my sadness to one of her daughters. When I explained who I was, Dorothy’s child became choked up and said “Oh, I remember you. Your letters meant to very much to my father.” That single farewell remembrance by the succeeding generation of Coopers brought a tear to my eyes, and a sense of final resolution to my heart. It had been a long, adventurous voyage upon often rough seas and alternately choppy waters with “Coop” aboard his beloved ‘Venture,” the embattled freighter that carried Carl Denham, Ann Darrow, and Jack Driscoll to Skull Island to meet their fate…and with them, my own.

 My association with Cooper and his larger-than-life creation has continued from my own childhood until now. In 1981, I was asked by legendary Philadelphia television children’s host Gene London to appear with him at The Philadelphia Art Museum for a one-hour lecture and presentation chronicling the making and production of King Kong before a live audience. Later, during the Winter months of 1993, I was invited to appear with Kong author and historian George Turner (The Making Of Kong Kong) on stage as a guest speaker at the venerable Gateway Theater in Chicago for the sixtieth anniversary celebration of the motion picture. George and I talked about the making of the film, and answered questions from an audience of some five hundred fans, prior to a 35mm screening of the historic motion picture, while Turner Entertainment sent over an “actor” in a gorilla suit to stroll about the theater lobby as King Kong. I couldn’t help wondering what “Coop” might have thought of the irony of that spectacle.

Together with American Cinematographer journalist, and co-author of “The Making of King Kong,” George Turner, at the official “King Kong” sixtieth anniversary celebration at The Gateway Theater in Chicago in 1993.

Merian C. Cooper remains a fascinating, legendary figure in the evolution and history of motion pictures. He was pioneer, and a founding influence in the development of the art of film. That this fabulous individual took such an interest in me and became my intimate correspondent and friend for the final years of his life is a source of perpetual astonishment on my part. He was larger than life and, in many ways, more colorful and gigantic than even the prehistoric ape that he created and so cherished. Eighty years have passed since Cooper’s King Kong first startled and thrilled theater goers around the world. As Carl Denham so triumphantly exclaimed to an audience of mere mortals, from the stage of the theater in which the immortal KONG was displayed to “gratify your curiosity,” the mythical creature was “A King And A God In The World He Knew.”  Much the same could be said of his creator.

 ++ Steve Vertlieb, March 2024

Kong at Yankee Stadium.

Pixel Scroll 3/1/24 Does Your Pixel Scroll Lose Its Flavor On The Bedpost Overnight?

(1) ‘MURDERBOT’S’ MENSAH CAST. “Noma Dumezweni Joins Alexander Skarsgård In Apple’s ‘Murderbot’”Deadline has details.

Noma Dumezwani (The Little Mermaid) is set as a lead opposite Alexander Skarsgård, in Apple TV+’s sci-fi drama series Murderbot, from Chris and Paul Weitz (About a Boy) and Paramount Television Studios.

Based on Martha Wells’ bestselling Hugo- and Nebula Award-winning book series The Murderbot DiariesMurderbot centers on a self-hacking security android who is horrified by human emotion yet drawn to its vulnerable “clients.” Murderbot must hide its free will and complete a dangerous assignment when all it really wants is to be left alone to watch futuristic soap operas and figure out its place in the universe.

Dumezwani will play Mensah….

(2) MEDICAL UPDATE. Today Nancy Collins told her GoFundMe donors the latest development (“What Doesn’t Kill Me Leaves Me With Medical Bills”).

Today I had my first outpatient follow-up at Georgia Cancer Specialists.
The hematologist I saw informed me that since my blood clot was “unprovoked”–ie I didn’t fall down, never smoked cigarettes, or utilize estrogen replacement therapy–I will probably have to remain on blood thinners for the rest of my life. They then proceeded to take 12 vials of blood and had me sign a waiver for genetic tests to check for cancer or other hereditary blood disorders (not impossible, as my grandmother was anemic). I go back in 3 weeks to find out what the testing says. I will also find out if my insurance agreed to pay for the genetic testing when I go back, which is $2400.

(3) IMPRESS NEIL GAIMAN AND THE OTHER JUDGES. Neil Gaiman will be one of the judges for The Folio Book Illustration Award, which will be taking entries through April 3 of artwork based on one of his short stories. Full guidelines at the link.

The Folio Book Illustration Award offers the opportunity for aspiring and established illustrators to provide one piece of artwork in response to Neil Gaiman’s short story ‘The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains’.

The judges – Folio Art Directors, Sheri Gee and Raquel Leis Allion, Folio Publishing Director, Tom Walker, FBIA 2023 winner, Cristina Bencina, and Neil Gaiman – will be looking for strong characterisation and atmosphere in the entries, along with a demonstrated ability to read and reflect the text. The final piece should illustrate a character-based scene from the story, not solely a portrait of a character.

To make the competition accessible to as many artists as possible, there is no entry fee. An initial longlist selection of 20 entries will be announced in June, with the judging panel announcing the winning artist and five runners-up in July.

The winner will receive a prize of £2,000 cash, plus £500 worth of Folio vouchers, and their artwork will appear in the upcoming Folio collection of Neil Gaiman’s short stories. Each of the five runners-up will receive £500 worth of Folio vouchers. The winning artist and runners-up will also receive a portfolio review by the Folio art directors….

(4) CON REPORT. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] SF² Concatenation has an advance-post now up ahead of its next seasonal edition with a review of Britain’s 2023 Fantasycon by Ian Hunter… See the full review at the link: “The 2023 Fantasycon”.

And here we are again, back in Birmingham, the home of many of my favourite Fantasycons from way back, and I do mean waaaay back, and from just two years ago when the city hosted Fantasycon 2021. Then, I certainly felt uneasy coming down from Scotland where facemasks were still being worn, down to Broad Street with all its hotels and pubs and clubs and lots of young people milling about who weren’t wearing face masks. No such worries this time, even the 2021 convention hotel changing names from the Jurys Inn to the Leonardo Royal Hotel couldn’t phase me….

(5) VINTAGE FILK SESSION. Fanac.org has posted video of a segment from a 1989 convention filksing: “Tropicon 8 (1989)–Part 3 of 3 — Filk with Julia Ecklar, Orion’s Belt & Linda Melnick”.

Title: Tropicon 8 (1989)-Part 3 of 3 – Filk with Julia Ecklar, Orion’s Belt and Linda Melnick
Description: Julia Ecklar was the special filk guest at Tropicon 8, held in Dania, Florida, in 1989. This recording captures the third part of an open filk at the convention, and includes 8 songs (of which Julia sings four, with one incomplete) and one poem. The performers on this recording in order of appearance: Julia Ecklar, Chuck Phillips, Dina Pearlman, Francine Mullen, Doug Wu, and Linda Melnick. The video includes much of the conversation between songs, the laughter and the occasional disagreement of a 1980s convention filk session. This video includes several songs by Orion’s Belt, which consisted of Dina Pearlman, Francine Mullen and Doug Wu.

Tropicon was a small convention, and you will see some of the author guests in the filk. That’s Tropicon 8 GoH Lynn Abbey sitting next to C.J. Cherryh for example, and Joe Green sitting back against the wall. Note that the last song is incomplete – the recording chops off in the middle. Many thanks to Eli Goldberg for sound editing on this recording and for the details in the song listing.

(6) GIVE A BONE A BAD NAME. “200 Years Of Naming Dinosaurs: Scientists Call for Better Rules”Nature has the story. The people doing the study say about 3% of species names are colonialist, have other issues, or reflect that some paleontologists like to name their discoveries after themselves.

It’s been 200 years since researchers named the first dinosaur: Megalosaurus. In the centuries since, hundreds of other dinosaur species have been discovered and catalogued — their names inspired by everything from their physical characteristics to the scientists who first described them. Now, some researchers are calling for the introduction of a more robust system, which they say would ensure species names are more inclusive and representative of where and how fossils are discovered. Megalosaurus was named by William Buckland, a geologist who discovered the enormous reptile’s fossilized remains in a field in Stonesfield, UK, in 1824. Buckland chose the name Megalosaurus on account of the immense size of the bones he and others had excavated. “It was a sensation — the first gigantic extinct land reptile ever discovered,” says Paul Barrett, a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in London. “Such an animal had never been conceived of before.” The word dinosaur — from the Greek meaning ‘fearfully great lizard’ — was introduced in 1841

Unlike in other scientific disciplines — such as chemistry, in which strict rules govern a molecule’s name — zoologists have relatively free rein over the naming of new species. Usually, the scientist or group that first publishes work about an organism gets to pick its name, with few restrictions. There is a set of guidelines for species naming overseen by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN). These include the requirements that the name is unique, that it is announced in a publication and that, for dinosaurs, it is linked to a single specimen….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born March 1, 1950 David Pringle, 73. Happy Birthday, David Pringle! He helped found the Interzone semiprozine, which he co-edited with a number of individuals through the beginning of this millennium. 

Need I say that Interzone has been one of my favorite genre zines for a very long time and even though it’s now digital only remains so? I say that because some print subscribers have abandoned since it went all digital last year.

David Pringle in 2019.

Intersection gave Pringle and Lee Montgomerie a Hugo for editing Interzone in 1995, and the SF Award Database credits him with an additional 19 Hugo nominations in connection with the magazine. And the 2005 Worldcon presented him with a Special Committee Award.

There’s six anthologies under the Interzone name out there as well. He’s also done a number of general anthologies, though the only one I remember reading is his Route 666 one which at this point in time I only remember because of the memorable title.

He is a noted scholar of J.G. Ballard having written books, monographs and newsletters on him.

Now  we come to what I consider two of the most indispensable guides to genre fiction in existence — Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels and Modern Fantasy: The 100 Best Novels. Yes, you’ll argue with his choices, but that’s the fun of them, isn’t it? 

They are definitely Meredith Moments at the usual suspects, a nice bonus I’d say. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) PUNCHING THE CLOCK. Colleen Doran answers the question “How Long Does it Take to Draw a Comic Book Page?” at Colleen Doran’s Funny Business.

… Items marked in red indicate the complete time cost of a single page from start to finish. Time costs are for penciled AND inked pages entire, not for just a page of pencils. So, the time cost for Wonder Woman page 5 is 7 hours 48 minutes pencils and inks completed.

On some of those pages you might be thinking, “Wow! Only 5 hours 9 minutes to draw an entire comic book page!”

However, keep in mind that this is self reporting. While my computer tracks whatever I do while I’m using a program, I have to enter all my offline work manually. I tend to under report. These are the hours I recorded. And that was a farily simple page.

If it had been a page of the Amazons going to war, you can double or triple that time cost.

Time cost would also not include writing the script, researching the material, or doing the thumbnails for each page….

(10) STEVE VERTLIEB INTERVIEWED ABOUT HIS LIFE AND CAREER BY “INTERFLEET BROADCASTING”. [Item by Steve Vertlieb.] Yesterday’s “Steve Vertlieb Interview” starts 45 minutes into the video.

“Join us for an interview with actor writer and Film Journalist Steve Vertlieb. He has spent most of his life around film makers!. John 1 hosts with the Tipsy Toaster since NY Pete is exploring and trying to find his way. Tiny Bean is also on Deck that is if those pesky internet people fix the lines after an Arcta class storm.”

I was both honored and humbled last evening to do a ninety minute interview with the folks at Interfleet Broadcasting that I hope you’ll find interesting. We discuss Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror Films and Literature, as well as Ray Harryhausen, Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, and the history of Music for the Movies, and such composers as Bernard Herrmann, Miklos Rozsa, and John Williams.

I’d like to thank the hosts of the program for their most gracious kindness toward me. You’ll find the interview some forty five minutes into the broadcast.

(11) FLYING IN FORMATION? [Item by Daniel Dern.] “’Shocked and delighted’: Astronomers find six planets orbiting in resonance” reports Astronomy. (As opposed to, say, a Klemperer Rosette (Puppetteer’s ‘Fleet of Worlds), or LaGrange points (in numerous space operas, can’t think of one specifically) The discovery was published in Nature.

A newly discovered system of six planets circling a nearby Sun-like star may be the key to unlocking how planetary systems form. All between the size of Earth and Neptune, the worlds are orbiting in a so-called resonant chain — a configuration that it’s relatively rare to observe in nature, making the system a valuable find that offers a window into a uniquely “gentle” history….  

(12) HE WAS WHACKED. Nature is where you’ll find out “The Life and Death of a Bog Man Revealed After 5,000 Years”. “Vittrup Man, who died in his thirties, was a Scandinavian wanderer who settled down between 3300 and 3100 BC.”

Before he was bludgeoned to death and left in a Danish bog, an ancient individual now known as Vittrup Man was an emblem of past and future ways of living.

He was born more than 5,000 years ago into a community of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who probably lived in northern Scandinavia as their ancestors had for millennia. But Vittrup Man spent his adult life across the sea in Denmark among farming communities, whose ancestors came from the Middle East.

It’s impossible to know the lives that Vittrup Man touched during his lifetime, but it was his death that caught people’s imagination thousands of years later. His remains — ankle and shin bones, a jawbone and a skull fractured by at least eight heavy blows — were discovered in the early twentieth century in a peat bog near a town called Vittrup in northern Denmark, alongside a wooden club that was probably the murder weapon.

His “unusually violent” death distinguished Vittrup Man from other similarly aged remains found in bogs, says Karl-Göran Sjögren, an archaeologist at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, who co-led a team that charted Vittrup Man’s life in a study published last week.

(13) REACHES MOON ON ITS LAST LEGS. “U.S. spacecraft on the moon finally sends home the money shot” at Mashable. See the photo at the link.

A new snapshot from the first private moon landing shows the moment the spacecraft touched down in what looks like a foggy mist — with a broken leg.

The image depicts Intuitive Machines’ lander Odysseus with its engines still firing. On the left side, pictured above, landing gear pieces are visibly broken off from one of the robotic craft’s six struts, said the company’s CEO Steve Altemus….

(14) TIME TO CHECK OUT. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Dr Becky Smethurst of Oxford University this week’s looks at the latest pics from James Webb and contemplates a time when our sun dies… “JWST discovers exoplanets orbiting DEAD STARS”.

When stars like the Sun die do their planets survive? In 5 billion years the Sun will swell into a red giant star, swallowing up the Earth, and maybe even Mars. But what about Jupiter and the rest of the gas giant planets? This month new research has been published, claiming to have found two exoplanets in orbit around two dead white dwarf stars with JWST. These planets are similar in mass to Jupiter, and orbit their stars at a distance similar to Saturn and Neptune in the Solar System.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] I’m not sure why he decided we needed a Pitch Meeting for a 2016 film, but here it is. “Gods of Egypt Pitch Meeting”.

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Kathy Sullivan, Daniel Dern, Rich Lynch, Steve Vertlieb, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]

Pixel Scroll 2/28/24 Two Scrolls Diverged In A File, And I — I Took The One Less Pixeled By

(1) WONKA EVENT SCAM, WITH AI ‘HELP’. [Item by Tom Becker.] A Willy Wonka-themed event closed immediately upon opening due to complaints from disappointed customers. UK correspondent Mark Plummer says there is a long-standing tradition of disappointing special experiences. A Christmas show turns out to be a muddy field with a donkey with reindeer horns tied to its head.

The Glasgow Willy Wonka fiasco is interesting because of its use of AI. The AI-generated images used to sell the show include total gibberish. Who would not want to experience a “Twilight Tunnel™” with features like “TWDRDING”, “DODJECTION”, “ENIGEMIC SOUNDS”, “SVIIDE”, and “UKXEPCTED TWITS”? Or “ENCHERINING ENTERTAINMENT” with “exarserdray lollipops, a pasadise of sweet treats”? “Cops called after parents get tricked by AI-generated images of Wonka-like event” at Ars Technica.

Actors were given AI generated scripts that were pathetically bad. They showed the guests responding “with a mix of excitement and trepidation” to the trite lines and meager offerings of candy. “The AI-Generated Script From the Fake Willy Wonka Experience Is Beyond Wild” says The Mary Sue.

And then there was the AI generated character of the Unknown, “an evil chocolate maker who lives in the walls.” At this point the children started crying and ran away. “Willy Wonka Experience Actor Says Event Had AI-Generated Script, Unknown Character, and No Chocolate” reports IGN.

The promoter behind the House of Illuminati also sells AI-generated books on Amazon. “’Willy Wonka’ Huckster Sells AI-Written Vaccine Conspiracy Books” at Rolling Stone.

Scams have always been with us, but now they are glitzier and weirder than ever. Who could possibly have predicted this? (Besides Cory Doctorow and thousands of others.)

(2) VERTLIEB NOMINATED FOR RONDO “BEST ARTICLE OF THE YEAR”. Congratulations to Steve Vertlieb whose File 770 article “Subversion of Innocence: Reflections on ‘The Black Cat’” is a finalist for the 2024 Rondo Hatton Awards. Steve’s article is an analysis of the sumptuous, Grand Guignol, pre-code Gothic decadence of Universal Pictures’ horrific Boris Karloff/Bela Lugosi classic of 1934.

Public voting has begun for the 22nd Annual Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards. You’re invited to vote for your favorites in any or all 28 categories. Click the link for instructions and the complete ballot. The deadline to participate is midnight April 16. Mail Votes (and your name) to David Colton c/o [email protected].

(3) WORMSIGN. Io9 interviews the filmmaker: “Denis Villeneuve Talks Making Dune: Part Two an Epic Theatrical Experience” at Gizmodo.

io9: Got it. I love that both movies have this weird little moment before the studio logo of some kind of Dune language statement. Is that something you have to okay with the studio? Because ultimately it’s their movie and you’re putting your mark before their logo. Was there any pushback and what was your thinking in doing that?

Villeneuve: The first time in Part One, the truth is that as we were doing sound design and developing ideas for sound, we came up with this language that was developed by Hans Zimmer that I absolutely adored. And there was this idea of putting a statement right before the logo to own the space. And maybe it was a reaction at that time, an arrogant reaction by me, but I didn’t get any pushback. Everybody loved the idea. And I love it when you watch a movie and it’s not a slow-down descent, it’s an abrupt start. You put away the parking lot and your concern about dinner. [Slap noise] Right away, it’s like, “Okay, guys, listen.” A bit like in theater when you have the boom at the beginning to say to the audience, “Okay, quiet down, we start right now.” I love that.

(4) CONLANG IN CINEMA. And The New Yorker devotes a whole article to “’Dune’ and the Delicate Art of Making Fictional Languages”.

A trailer for Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Two” features the boy prophet Paul Atreides, played by Timothée Chalamet, yelling something foreign and uninterpretable to a horde of desert people. We see Chalamet as the embodiment of charismatic fury: every facial muscle clenched in tension, his voice strained and throaty and commanding. A line at the bottom of the screen translates: “Long live the fighters!”

The scene fills barely a few seconds in a three-minute trailer, yet it establishes the emotional tone of the film and captures the messianic fervor that drives its plot. It also signals the depth of Villeneuve’s world-building. Part of what made his first excursion into the “Dune” universe such an experiential feast was its vivid, immersive quality, combining monumental architectural design with atmospheric soundscapes and ethereal costuming. We could see a few remnants of our world (remember the bit with the bagpipes?), but the over-all effect was transportive, as if the camera were not a piece of equipment but a cyborgian eye live-streaming from a far-flung alien civilization. Chalamet’s strange tongue is part of the franchise’s meticulous set dressing. It’s not gibberish, but part of an intricate linguistic system that was devised for Villeneuve’s adaptations.

Engineered languages such as the one Chalamet speaks represent a new benchmark in imaginative fiction. Twenty years ago, viewers would have struggled to name franchises other than “Star Trek” or “The Lord of the Rings” that bothered to invent new languages. Today, with the budgets of the biggest films and series rivalling the G.D.P.s of small island nations, constructed languages, or conlangs, are becoming a norm, if not an implicit requirement. Breeze through entertainment from the past decade or so, and you’ll find lingos designed for Paleolithic peoples (“Alpha”), spell-casting witches (“Penny Dreadful”), post-apocalyptic survivors (“Into the Badlands”), Superman’s home planet of Krypton (“Man of Steel”), a cross-species alien alliance (“Halo”), time-travelling preteens (“Paper Girls”), the Munja’kin tribe of Oz (“Emerald City”), and Santa Claus and his elves (“The Christmas Chronicles” and its sequel).

A well-executed conlang can bolster a film’s appearance of authenticity. It can deepen the scenic absorption that has long been an obsession for creators and fans of speculative genres such as science fiction and fantasy….

(5) MORE TBR. NPR’s “Here and Now” program recommends “Black genre fiction to pick up this History Month”. There are lists for romance, horror, thriller/mystery and —

Speculative fiction/science fiction/fantasy

(6) EXPERT EYE. In Gabino Iglesias’ column “4 New Horror Novels That Are as Fresh as They Are Terrifying” for the New York Times, the Stoker-winning author reviews new books by Emily Ruth Verona, Jenny Kiefer, Christopher Golden and Tlotlo Tsamaase.

(7) ANIME ART GOING UNDER THE HAMMER. Heritage Auctions will run “The Art of Anime, Dragon Ball, and More Animation Art Showcase Auction” on March 23-24.

Heritage Auctions celebrates the world of anime with its largest showcase sale, “The Art of Anime, Dragon Ball, and More,” on March 23-24. This event features over 700 lots, including an extensive collection from the iconic Dragon Ball series, celebrating its decades-long journey from its inception in Weekly Shonen Jump. The auction spans a wide range of anime titles, offering production art, promotional materials, model kits, and action figures. Highlights include rare items from Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, Pokémon, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and more, alongside unique finds like Akira T-shirt prototypes. This showcase aims to reconnect fans with the unforgettable moments of their favorite anime series.

Here’s an example of what’s up for bid: “Dragon Ball Z Goku, Gohan, Master Roshi, Piccolo, and Cel Ice | Lot #85069”.

Some of Dragon Ball Z‘s most famous characters take a break from training and put on their ice skates in this incredibly rare hand-painted production cel featuring our beloved protagonist Goku, accompanied by his son Gohan, Piccolo, Master Roshi, and even the heinous Cell in his imperfect form! Possibly created for a TV commercial, this four-layer 12-field production cel offers sensational full-figure images of the characters with Gohan and Cell stopping as skillfully as they fight. 

(8) “HOMAGE” TO WARD SHELLEY’S HISTORY OF SCIENCE FICTION ON DISPLAY IN THE CHENGDU SF MUSEUM. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] The SF Museum in Chengdu has been re-opened to the public for almost exactly a month now, and whilst I’ve been trawling the likes of Bilibili and Xiaohongshu for any coverage, there hasn’t been much I thought that I thought was worth writing up and submitting to File 770.

However, tonight I encountered the image below in a small XHS gallery.  I’d not noticed it before; whether that’s because it has been newly added to the museum, or simply that previous posters didn’t consider it worth taking pictures of, I don’t know.  I’ve not tried to read any of the Chinese text, but the English subtitle reads:

Together, let’s write imaginative explorations of the future science fiction world

which I assume relates to the Post-It notes shown on the left of the image.

Readers may well find this image vaguely familiar.  For those who don’t, it bears a startling resemblance to Ward Shelley’s “The History of Science Fiction”.

Source: Andrew Liptak / The Verge

That earlier image was included in a talk that was part of “[the] First Industrial Development Summit of [the] World Science Fiction Convention”, which also had Ben Yalow as a speaker. Whether that earlier presentation was the genesis for this new display, who knows?

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born February 28, 1909 Olan Soule. (Died 1994.) Olan Soule, an actor who had at least two hundred and fifty performances in his career. So let’s look at this career that I find so interesting. 

First genre role? That’d be Mr. Krull, a boarding house resident in The Day The Earth Stood Still.

Remember Captain Midnight? From the third year on the radio serial, Soule had the role of L. William Kelly, SS-11, the second-in-command of the Secret Squadron. When it became a television series where it was rebranded Jet Jackson, Flying Commando, he was scientist Aristotle “Tut” Jones for the entire series. He was the only actor who performed on both the radio and television shows.

Olan Soule on Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

He was in two Twilight Zone episodes, the first as IRS agent in “The Man in Bottle” and then as Mr. Smiles in “Caesar and Me”. The letter was the one with that evil ventriloquist dummy. Brrrr. The former which involves a couple and a genie I just don’t remember. 

He was on My Favorite Martian as Daniel Farrow in one of my favorite episodes, “Martin’s Favorite Martian”. 

He would appear as a newscaster on Batman in “The Pharaoh’s in a Rut”.

Olan Soule as newscaster on Batman.

He voiced Mister Taj in the English language version of Fantastic Planet. One seriously effing weird film. 

And now for a roll call of his other genre appearances: One Step BeyondBewitchedThe Addams FamilyThe MunstersMission: ImpossibleThe Six Million Dollar ManBuck Rogers in the 25th Century and Fantasy Island.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • F Minus – could this be Pluto’s revenge?

(11) REALLY EDUCATIONAL COMICS. “A Boom in Comics Drawn From Fact” – the New York Times says “One in four books sold in France is a graphic novel. Increasingly, those include nonfiction works by journalists and historians.”

Soon after the journalist and historian Valérie Igounet heard about the killing of Samuel Paty, the schoolteacher whose 2020 murder by an Islamist extremist shocked France, she knew she wanted to write a book about him.

Paty, who had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to students during a class on freedom of expression, was murdered near the middle school where he taught in a Paris suburb. “I absolutely wanted Samuel Paty’s students to be able to read this book,” Igounet said, “and it was obvious that a 300-page book with footnotes would be reserved for a different kind of readership.”

Instead, Igounet decided to produce a comic book: “Black Pencil: Samuel Paty, the Story of a Teacher,” based on two years of reporting and made with the illustrator Guy Le Besnerais, was published in October. It meticulously reconstructs the events leading up to the murder while also showing Paty’s daily life in the classroom. Le Besnerais’s illustrations are accompanied by Paty’s handwritten notes, newspaper clippings and messages exchanged by his students in the weeks before he was killed.

One in four books sold in France is a comic book, according to the market research company GfK, and a growing number of those are nonfiction works by journalists and historians. In the past year, they have included titles such as “M.B.S.: Saudi Arabia’s Enfant Terrible,” a biography of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman by Antoine Vitkine and Christophe Girard; “What Are the Russians Thinking?” based on the cartoonist Nicolas Wild’s conversations about the war in Ukraine during a 2022 trip to Russia; and “Who Profits From Exile?,” by Taina Tervonen and Jeff Pourquié, which looks at the economics of European immigration….

(12) FANAC FAN HISTORY ZOOM IN MARCH. “The Women Fen Don’t See” is the last FANAC Fan History Zoom for this season. The March 16 event promises to be an exceptionally interesting program on a topic that is often overlooked in fannish annals.

The Women Fen Don’t See

With: Claire Brialey, Kate Heffner, and Leah Zeldes Smith

Saturday, March 16, 2024. Time: 3PM EDT, 2PM CDT, Noon PDT, 7PM London (GMT), and Mar 17 at 6AM AEDT in Melbourne. To attend, send a note to [email protected]

[Click for larger image.]

(13) NEUROMANCER TO TV. “Apple Orders ‘Neuromancer’ Series Based on William Gibson Novel” reports Variety.

Apple TV+ has ordered a series adaptation of the William Gibson novel “Neuromancer,” Variety has learned.

The 10-episode series hails from co-creators Graham Roland and JD Dillard. Roland will also serve as showrunner, while Dillard will direct the pilot. Skydance Television will co-produce with Anonymous Content.

Per the official logline, the series “will follow a damaged, top-rung super-hacker named Case who is thrust into a web of digital espionage and high stakes crime with his partner Molly, a razor-girl assassin with mirrored eyes, aiming to pull a heist on a corporate dynasty with untold secrets.”…

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. From The Simpsons several years ago, “What about Ray Bradbury?”

Martin is running for class president, and this is his platform.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Ersatz Culture, Tom Becker, Kathy Sullivan, Joe Siclari, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

2024 Rondo Awards Nominees

Online voting has begun for the 22nd Annual Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards. You’re invited to vote for your favorites in any or all 28 categories. Click the link for instructions and the complete ballot. The deadline to participate is midnight April 16.

Don’t be shy about voting for Steve Vertlieb’s “Subversion of Innocence: Reflections on ‘The Black Cat’” from File 770, a Rondo nominee for Best Article! (Congratulations, Steve!)

And as a teaser, below are the Best Film and Best TV Presentation nominees.

BEST FILM OF 2023

Includes wide release, video-on-demand and streaming

  • THE CREATOR
  • EVIL DEAD RISE
  • THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER
  • FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S
  • GODZILLA MINUS ONE
  • INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY
  • KNOCK AT THE CABIN
  • LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER
  • LEAVING THE WORLD BEHIND
  • M3GAN
  • NO ONE WILL SAVE YOU
  • THE NUN II
  • RENFIELD
  • SCREAM VI
  • TALK TO ME

BEST TV PRESENTATION

  • AHSOKA, Disney+ Reluctant Jedi encounters the ghost of Anakin Skywalker. ‘Let’s just say I didn’t follow standard Jedi protocol.’
  • CHUCKY, SyFy. There’s a new visitor to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. ‘How do we get into the White House?’
  • CREEPSHOW, Shudder. Anthology series in its fourth season. ‘See you around the graveyard, kid.’
  • DOCTOR WHO BBC/Disney+ In series of specials, the 13th Doctor regenerates into a familiar 14th, and then a 15th. ‘I know these teeth.’
  • THE FALLOF THE HOUSE OF USHER, Netflix. Mike Flanagan connects a modern world of Poe adaptations.  ‘In this little pill is a world without pain. This world needs changing.’
  • FOUNDATION, Apple+ Isaac Asimov’s epic trilogy brought to life, with psychohistory twists. ‘I’ve met Hari Seldon. I’m used to fame.’
  • THE LAST OF US, HBO. A young girl is immune to the violent infection that has decimated the world. ‘Bomb this city and everyone in it.’
  • MONARCH: Legacy of Monsters. AppleTV+. Prequel series with Godzilla and the Titans. ‘If you want to save millions of lives, we can use some help.’
  • STAR TREK: PICARD Paramount+. Every crew member of Next Generation unites against the Borg. ‘What began over 35 years ago ends tonight.’
  • THE WALKING DEAD: Daryl Dixon, AMC. Fifth spinoff takes Daryl to Paris where zombie virus began. ‘If I don’t make it back, I want them to know I tried.’
  •  WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS, FX. The misadventures of four vampires who live on Staten Island. ’Being a vampire is no different than being a human. We’re all just doing what it takes to survive.’

Pixel Scroll 2/8/24 It’s The Great Singularity, Charlie Brown

(1) SEE ICONIC ARTWORK IN BAY AREA THIS WEEKEND. Leo and Diane Dillon’s original cover art for The Left Hand of Darkness, recently in the news as one of the items sold from the Carr-Lichtman estate by Mark Funke, will be on display at the Antiquarian Book Fair in San Francisco, February 9–11 reports KQED in “The Painting That Became an Ursula K. Le Guin Book Cover”.

…“When I talk to other LGBTQIA+ science fiction writers and people who are immersed in science fiction, they always point to The Left Hand of Darkness as a book that kind of showed them how expansive, how rich and how multilayered speculative fiction could be in its approach to gender and sexuality,” says Charlie Jane Anders, a San Francisco-based transgender science fiction writer, who wrote the afterword for the 50th anniversary edition of the novel….

How the cover was acquired by Terry Carr for the Ace paperback edition, and the artistry of Leo and Diane Dillon, is discussed at length in the KQED article.

…Diane Dillon says science fiction writers inspired some of their best work. Leo introduced her to the genre when they met as students at Parsons in the ’50s. They were drawn to sci-fi’s imaginative worlds and the promise of what could be possible.

“Science fiction, fantasy and myth gave us the freedom to invent and challenge our imagination,” Diane wrote via email.

In a 2000 interview, Leo said he and Diane wanted their illustrations to “take science fiction out of that spaceship-and-craters-on-the-planet look.” (Leo died in 2012.)

In the case of The Left Hand of Darkness, the Dillons drew inspiration from Gustav Klimt. The original 24-by-19-inch acrylic painting evokes an uncanny world. Two figures with blurry features melt into a muted luster — an allusion to the icy planet of Gethen that provides the setting for the novel.

“That’s a sprawling piece, and it says volumes in just that one image,” says Paul Gulla, manager of R. Michelson Galleries, which represents the Dillons, in Northampton, Massachusetts.The Dillons’ work was recognizable, but the duo enjoyed experimentation. They used various techniques and materials — including stained glass, woodcarving and clay — throughout their decades-long career, which spanned book covers, album covers, kids’ picture books and advertisements.

The Dillons even forged a new artistic identity. They described their collaboration as a “third artist,” drawing on the combined powers of their own individual styles….

Leo and Diane Dillon’s painting for the cover of Harlan Ellison’s ‘No Doors No Windows.’ (Courtesy R. Michelson Galleries)

The article also has this photo of another item – an album of fan photos, some dating back to the Fifties.

(2) ON THE FRONT. Austin Conrad has more advice for SFWA Blog readers in “Sourcing Art on a Budget (Part 2)”

High-quality art plays an important role in creating the well-presented products expected by most consumers of tabletop games, but commissioning bespoke art can be expensive. Like a novel’s cover, an RPG’s interior graphics evoke the game’s aesthetic and market the game to the audience. Many tabletop writers—especially new creators—don’t have the resources to commission the expected quantity of art. What, then, are a tabletop writer’s ethical alternatives?…

(3) 2024 FANAC FAN HISTORY ZOOM SERIES: AUSTRALIA. [Item by Joe Siclari.] In 2022, we had a very interesting Fan History Zoom Session on Australian history with Leigh Edmonds and Perry Middlemiss. We didn’t even get to the first Australian Worldcon so we are going to continue.

Wrong Turns on the Wallaby Track, Part 2 with Leigh Edmonds and Perry Middlemiss. Saturday, February 17, 2024. Time: 7PM EST, 4 PM PST and 11AM Feb. 18, Melbourne AEDT

To attend, send a note to [email protected]

(4) WRITERS OF THE FUTURE WINNERS Q&A. Space Cowboy Books will host four Writers of the Future winners in an online event late this month. Register for free HERE.

Online Reading & Interview with Writers of the Future Winners

Tuesday Feb. 27th 4:30pm PT

Reading and Interview with Writers of the Future Winners: David Hankins, Elaine Midcoh, Jason Palmatier, & TJ Knight.

Be amazed. Be amused. Be transported … by stories that take you by surprise and take you further and deeper into new worlds and new ideas than you’ve ever gone before…. Twelve captivating tales from the most exciting new voices in science fiction and fantasy accompanied by three from masters of the genre.

Get your copy of the book at Bookshop.org.

(5) VERSE IS BETTER. Holly Henderson recommends “Using Poetry to Enhance Your Writing” at the SFWA Blog.

Poetry can be one of the shortest forms of fiction, but it has the ability to make an outsized impact on the reader. This is especially true when poetry is combined with fantasy and science fiction—both forms aspire to express common concepts in uncommon ways.

From classics like The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien to recent Hugo Award winner A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, poetry has been used throughout the history of speculative fiction to jumpstart brainstorming, enhance worldbuilding, and reinforce themes so they resonate far beyond the last page….

Effective Poetry Is Its Own Skill Set

Study poetry as you would any other aspect of your craft. Read collections with a wide variety, such as Chris Riddell’s Poems to… series. Pick apart your favorites to figure out why they work. Explore different forms to expand your horizons beyond the ABAB rhyme scheme.

That being said, you don’t need an MFA in Poetry to incorporate it into your novel. Just like with prose, there’s a lot to be said for writing poetry you like to read. Don’t get caught in the trap of it having to be a certain way to be “right.” One of the most beautiful things about poetry is that it encourages you to break the rules….

(6) SWANWICK’S TRIBUTE TO WALDROP. “Howard Waldrop, Implausibly, Is No More” mourns Michael Swanwick at Flogging Babel.

Howard Waldrop is dead. This seems impossible–almost as impossible as that he could have existed in the first place. He was unlike anybody else. I once labeled him in print as “the weird mind of his generation,” and it was true. He simply didn’t think the way other people did.

You could see it in the best of his stories. People would come back from conventions where he’d read a new story (he incubated them in his mind for a long time and didn’t write anything down until the story was letter-perfect; fans learned that you could squeeze a new one out of him by making him the guest of honor at a con and requesting that he read something new at it; the night before the reading, he’d sit down and write out… something amazing) and say something like, “Howard wrote a story about dodo birds surviving in the American South,” or “Howard wrote a story about Dwight D. Eisenhower becoming a jazz musician,” and I’d think: Damn. I wish I’d had that idea! One day somebody said, “Howard wrote a story about Izaak Walton and John Bunyan going fishing in the Slough of Despond.”…

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born February 8, 1969 Mary Robinette Kowal, 55. Author, puppeteer, voice actor. Mary Robinette Kowal is an amazing individual indeed.

As I always find out who is narrating the audio works I’m listening to, I first encountered her when she was voicing some of the works that I like best, such as Seanan McGuire’s Indexing novels which are so wonderfully narrated by Kowal. 

Mary Robinette Kowal

She has an ability to give life to each character in a novel so that the listener can tell each of them apart by the way that she voices them. Her narration of her novel is Ghost Talkers is both properly spooky and horrifying in equal measure. 

While doing this essay I got curious about the idea of her as a puppeteer. She has been one for over thirty years and her production company is the Other Hand Productions. So she worked for Jim Henson Pictures in the Elmo in Grouchland film, she assisted Martin P. Robinson who was Sesame Street’s Telly Monster in “Jackstraws” piece, and her design work has been recognized with UNIMA-USA citations of excellence for Mark Levenson’s Between Two Worlds and Other Hand Productions’ Old Man Who Made Trees Blossom. The Citation of Excellence was founded by Jim Henson and is the highest award possible for an American puppeteer. Cool, eh? 

Now for the third part of her quite impressive career. I asked one of our Filers, Paul, to talk about that as I figured he’d read more deeply of her than I have. (I personally loved The Spare Man, Ghost Talkers and the Glamourist series. Her narration of The Spare Man is an  amazing experience speaking as one who only gets his long form fiction now in that way.)

So here’s Paul: “I was immediately enchanted with her first Glamourist history novel, Shades of Milk and Honey. I enjoyed the characters, the magic system and saw her homage to Regency romances, and liked it. I also particularly think that the last book in that series, Of Noble Family, engaging with some difficult subjects of class and race, is a strong entry that shows Kowal’s willingness to work with such material and face the issues therein.  Her recent The Spare Man encapsulates a lot of what she does, on a luxury liner, in SPAAACE.  And while many will point at her Lady Astronaut series as her current pinnacle of work (and I did borrow Elma York’s mental trick of composing fibonacci numbers in my head while hiking in Nepal), I think her alternate WWI fantasy novel Ghost Talkers is very unjustly overlooked as a compelling novel of a woman caught by her duty and needs in a terrible, dangerous wartime.”

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Frank and Ernest has an encounter with a librarian about Robin Hood. But they’re not arguing whether it’s sff….
  • F Minus says there’s a downside to owning a superpet.

(9) PATRICK S. TOMLINSON. The Independent invites readers to “Meet the most ‘swatted’ man in America”.

Mr Tomlinson told The Independent he had woken in the middle of the night to find officers banging on his door, been handcuffed, and had guns shoved in his face during the yearslong ordeal. He was once swatted four times in one day.

Mr Filion has not been charged in relation to the swats on Mr Tomlinson’s home, and investigators believe there are at least two individuals behind the Torswats account.

The FBI, Milwaukee Police Department and the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office in Florida where the teenager is facing four felony counts declined to provide further information, beyond an extensive account of Mr Filion’s activities in a probable cause charging document.

After Mr Filion was arrested on 18 January at his home in Lancaster, Los Angeles County, Mr Tomlinson said he and his wife Niki Robinson had their first decent night of sleep in years.

Their relief was short-lived. Within a day of Mr Filion’s arrest, a Telegram channel named “Torswats Return” was created by someone claiming that their “partner has been arrested”, according to posts viewed by The Independent.

The channel stated that it would continue offering “swats” for as little as $40, and offered returning customers a discounted rate. It also posted derogatory photographs and text about Mr Tomlinson — noting that there would be no charge for requested swats against him.

“And of course swats to Patrick… are free,” read the Telegram message.

… The science fiction author has endured relentless harassment from an anonymous online army of what he describes as “cyber terrorists”. He says they have stalked and impersonated him, defaced his home, and continue to send a daily avalanche of abusive phone calls, voicemail messages and emails.

“I wont stop until one of them die (sic),” a message posted to the channel, referring to Mr Tomlinson, on 6 January stated.

As swatting incidents have spiked in recent months, victims and cybersecurity experts say law enforcement are failing to deal with the threat.

Last month, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley revealed she was targeted by swatting hoaxes twice in two days, and has requested Secret Service protection amid the rising threats to her safety. She is among the dozens of lawmakers, judges in Trump trials and public figures who have experienced tactical response teams turn up at their homes in response to the false callouts.

Swatting, defined by the Anti Defamation League (ADL) as a “malicious act of reporting a false crime or emergency to evoke an aggressive response”, emerged from online gaming communities in the early 2000s, where rivals would call 911 on each other and watch the armed response on livestream.

The ADL estimates there were over 1,000 swatting incidents in 2019, but the true figure is unclear as there is no federal statute against swatting that would enable convictions to be recorded….

(10) IF COVER REVEAL. Worlds of IF magazine has shared Bob Eggleton’s cover art and the table of contents for the relaunch’s inaugural issue. Issue #177 will be released later this month as both a digest-sized print version and digital download. The PDF version will be free for a limited time at this link. Subscribe to the mailing list for updates.

Featuring stories, poetry, and art by:

  • Renan Bernardo
  • David Brin
  • Michael Butterworth
  • Tara Campbell
  • Kwame Cavil
  • J. Dalton
  • Tatiana Daubek
  • Bob Eggleton
  • Zdravka Evtimova
  • Richard Grieco
  • Akua Lezli Hope
  • Pedro Iniguez
  • Ai Jiang
  • Leslie Kean
  • Rodney Matthews
  • Bruce Pennington
  • Charles Platt
  • Daniel Pomarède
  • Paulo Sayeg
  • Robert Silverberg
  • Andrew Stewart
  • Nigel Suckling
  • Dave Vescio 

(11) CLASSIC FILM MAGAZINE BACK IN PRINT. L’Incroyable Cinema: The Film Magazine of Fantasy and Imagination is available once more. The five issues published in the Sixties and Seventies have been reproduced in paperback editions for sale at Amazon.uk.

For example, issue #4 with Hitchcock on the cover includes the writing of Harry Nadler, Steve Vertlieb, Allan Asherman, and Charles Partington and their coverage of  Mystery of the Wax Museum, The Vampire Lovers, Countess Dracula, and “Hitchcock – Master of the Eloquent Absurdity”.

Please note: This is a REPRODUCTION scanned from an original printed copy – whilst every care has been taken to make this as accurate as possible to the original some flaws etc will be evident. The only changes made to the layout have been to comply with Amazon printing guidelines. They have been reproduced with the permission of Tony Edwards who printed the originals way back when. Brought to you by Steve Kirkham and Tree Frog Publications.

Issues #2-#5 had color cover artwork by Eddie Jones, featuring Boris Karloff, Star Trek’s Spock and Kirk, Alfred Hitchcock and Ray Harryhausen. All issues had extensive picture coverage of sf and horror films.

(12) HOW TO READ A CHARCOAL SCROLL. “First complete passages from ancient Herculaneum scroll decoded” at CNN.

After using artificial intelligence to uncover the first word to be read from an unopened Herculaneum scroll, a team of researchers has revealed several nearly complete passages from the ancient text, giving insight into philosophy from almost 2,000 years ago.

The Herculaneum scrolls are hundreds of papyri that survived the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. In their charred state, the ancient documents would crumble if anyone attempted to unroll them, and any writing on surviving pieces would be nearly illegible to the human eye.

By using computer technology and advanced artificial intelligence, researchers can now analyze the Herculaneum scrolls without unrolling and risking damage to the extremely fragile documents. More than 2,000 characters — the first full passages — have been deciphered from a scroll, according to an announcement Monday by computer scientists who launched the Vesuvius Challenge, a competition designed to accelerate the discoveries made on the scrolls….

… The recently decoded passages were pulled from the end of a scroll and reveal words written by the philosopher Philodemus, who was believed to be the philosopher-in-residence working at the library in which the scrolls were found, the announcement said.

…In the deciphered text, Philodemus writes on “pleasure,” and whether the abundance of goods available can affect the amount of pleasure they give. “As too in the case of food, we do not right away believe things that are scarce to be absolutely more pleasant than those which are abundant,” the first sentence reads….

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. TheHow It Should Have Ended crew say that when it comes to Dune what they really need to fix is “How It Should Have Started”.

An animated Dune cartoon. When House Atreides dares to pass on the spice, who will take on the job? Only a Lethal Company will do.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Anne Marble, Kathy Sullivan, Joe Siclari, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 1/25/24 The Pixels Will Continue Until Morale Improves

(1) SWIMMING AGAINST THE TIDE. Malcolm F. Cross takes a deeply skeptical look at “AI, the Algorithm, and the Attention Economy” at Sin Is Beautiful.

…People using AI, even this theoretical ‘good’ kind, are shooting themselves in the foot and don’t know it.

Why? Most generative AI users are trying to participate in the attention economy – attempting to get eyes on their work, to get appreciative comments, sales, to build an audience for content that they produce.

When a generative AI user posts their image on social media, when they use it for their profile, for their website, for all the things art gets used for, they are competing for attention. And they are competing with everything else generated by AI. The same AI everyone else gets to use.

Generative AI for creating images has been big news since DALL-E’s first iteration was released in early 2021. By October 2022 it was generating two million images a day. DALL-E is only one player in the generative AI space for art.  It is estimated that in August 2023, 34 million images were being generated every day across the major generative AI art tools. 15 billion pieces of art, and that was about six months ago.

Assuming you only looked at the most excellent top 0.001% of those 15 billion images, that is still a hundred and fifty thousand images to look at….

… The best the AI artist can hope for in this ideal situation is to be a brief flicker in a constant feed of content we can barely remember.

If the ideas you were trying to express mattered, you wouldn’t have needed AI to win at the attention economy – you could have expressed them with stick figures and still won.

If your ideas actually are that good, then why obscure them by using generative AI?…

(2) AI AND THE FTC. Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission today announced it has launched an “Inquiry into Generative AI Investments and Partnerships”. However, apparently is the beginning of a study, not an action in response to a law violation.

…The FTC issued its orders under Section 6(b) of the FTC Act, which authorizes the Commission to conduct studies that allow enforcers to gain a deeper understanding of market trends and business practices. Findings stemming from such orders can help inform future Commission actions.

Companies are deploying a range of strategies in developing and using AI, including pursuing partnerships and direct investments with AI developers to get access to key technologies and inputs needed for AI development. The orders issued today were sent to companies involved in three separate multi-billion-dollar investments: Microsoft and OpenAIAmazon and Anthropic, and Google and Anthropic. The FTC’s inquiry will help the agency deepen enforcers understanding of the investments and partnerships formed between generative AI developers and cloud service providers….

(3) TOC OF ELLISON COLLECTION. J. Michael Straczynski had announced the table of contents for Harlan Ellison’s Greatest Hits.

  • “Repent, Harlequin,” Said the TickTockman
  • I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
  • The Deathbird
  • Chatting with Anubis
  • The Whimper of Whipped Dogs
  • Jeffty is Five
  • Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes
  • Shatterday
  • Mefisto in Onyx
  • On the Downhill Side
  • Paladin of the Lost Hour
  • The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World
  • I’m Looking for Kadak
  • How Interesting: A Tiny Man
  • Djinn, No Chaser
  • How’s the Night Life on Cissalda?
  • From A to Z, in the Chocolate Alphabet
  • Eidolons All the Lies That Are My Life
  • With a Preface by me.
  • Foreword by Neil Gaiman
  • Intro by Cassandra Khaw

Straczynski also drew attention to a Barnes & Noble Exclusive Edition of the book.

(4) ANOTHER SFF FILM SHELVED. “Netflix Axes Halle Berry’s Sci-Fi Film ‘The Mothership’” reports Variety.

Netflix has scrapped the release of “The Mothership,” a science-fiction film starring Halle Berry.

The movie finished filming in 2021, but it couldn’t be completed after multiple delays in post-production, Variety has confirmed.

“The Mothership” is the latest Hollywood movie to disappear even though filming had wrapped. Since 2022, Warner Bros. has axed three movies — John Cena’s “Coyote vs. Acme,” the $90 million budgeted DC adventure “Batgirl” and the animated “Scoob! Holiday Haunt” — for the purpose of tax write-offs….

(5) LOVECRAFT’S MAIL. Bobby Derie explores “Her Letters To Lovecraft: Edith May Dowe Miniter” at Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein.

The details of Mrs. Miniter’s long career—a career inseparable from amateur journalism after her sixteenth year—will doubtless be covered by writers well qualified to treat of them. Reared in Worcester, taught by her poet-mother and at a private school, and given to solid reading and literary attempts from early childhood onward, the erstwhile Edith May Dowe entered amateurdom in 1883 and was almost immediately famous in our small world as a fictional realist. Controversies raged over her stories—so different from the saccharine froth of the period—but very few failed to recognize her importance. After 1890 she was engaged in newspaper and magazine work in the larger outside world, though her interest in amateur matters increased rather than diminished.

H. P. Lovecraft, “Mrs. Miniter—Estimates and Recollections” (written 1934) in Collected Essays 1.380

(6) REASONS TO READ. “25th Century Five and Dime #2: You Should Be Reading Judith Merril!” says columnist David Agranoff at Amazing Stories.

…One of the reasons I started this column is to share these discoveries. Early in the process of doing the show, I discovered the book The Future is Female edited by one of our most popular guests Lisa Yaszek. A few stories into the anthology I knew I had to have her on the show. That book has a similar mission to this column. While women like Octavia Butler and Ursula K. Leguin are famous now but The Future is Female as a book more importantly will introduce you to more obscure authors like Katherine Maclean and well known in her day Judith Merril. Her name was always a respected one in SF.

In that collection which collected the best of the pulp era SF ranging from the 20s to the end of the 60s was a story from the 40s by Merril that really stood out for me. “That Only a Mother.” The story of fall-out sickened children of atomic wars was a brutal and powerful stand-out. When Lisa gave us background on the story and author it was clear that JM was an important figure in the community and I needed to know more.

Since then, reading several histories from Fredrik Pohl, Damon Knight, Boucher, and Malzberg further made the point Judith Merril is an important voice in SF. Her role as a founding member of two major NYC clubs The Futurians and the Hydra club predates her publishing that began in 1948…. 

(7) RUBY SUNDAY MAYBE NOT GONE? RadioTimes’ Louise Griffin claims “Millie Gibson’s future on Doctor Who is still very bright”. Gibson plays Doctor Who companion Ruby Sunday.

Emotions have, understandably, been high as reports about Millie Gibson ‘being replaced’ in Doctor Who have rolled in.

First, let’s get the facts right. It’s been reported that Varada Sethu has been cast as the companion in season 15. Great news! Millie Gibson has not been “dropped” or “axed” – actually, the opposite as she’ll still be in season 15, just in a smaller role. But I think this is actually incredibly exciting….

(8) IN THE BEGINNING.  He wasn’t in it, he’s just telling the story: “Sylvester McCoy reminisces about first ever Doctor Who broadcast” in RadioTimes.

Sylvester McCoy has spoken of his fond memories of Doctor Who and reflected on the sci-fi’s first ever episode….

…He said: “It’s been 60 years now. I know where I was when it first came out, partly because I know where I was when John F Kennedy was shot, which happened the day before Doctor Who was broadcast.

“The BBC had to repeat the first episode of Doctor Who the following week because no one had watched it. They were all glued to the news about the Kennedy assassination and Doctor Who got pushed out. But when Doctor Who started, we had no concept it would go on forever and ever and ever.”…

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born January 25, 1926 Bob Clarke. (Died 2013.) Stepping not quite outside of genre, or maybe not at all, we have Bob Clarke. 

Clarke started at the age of seventeen according to the stories he tells as an uncredited assistant on the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! comic strip. Ripley himself traveled the world collecting his fantastic trivia tidbits and sent them back to Clarke who drew them, captioned them and circulated them. There’s no way to prove or disprove this story.

(It’s most likely true because years later, he illustrated MAD‘s occasional “Believe It or Nuts!” parody in that style.) 

Quite a few sources, briefly and without attribution, say he designed the label of the Cutty Sark bottle.

After two years with Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, Clarke joined the army, where he worked for the European edition of Stars and Stripes and met his wife. Clarke remained with Stars and Stripes after being discharged as a civilian contributor, before eventually returning to America and joining the Geyer, Newell, and Ganger (GNG) advertising firm. He was among the artists there who designed the box for the children’s game Candyland

Now to MAD Magazine. Clarke was one of the artists who took up the slack he after original MAD editor Harvey Kurtzman left MAD in an absolute rage, taking two of its three main artists Will Elder and Jack Davis, with him. He claimed working at GNG with its design needs was his best training for this endeavor —“I learned about typefaces and layouts, how to prepare comps in the styles of many artists and cartoonists.” 

In his first year alone there, he illustrated twenty-four separate articles; he would eventually draw more than six hundred. Yes, six hundred.  Here’s one of those illustrations from MAD magazine # 156.

And that doesn’t count myriad covers such as the one below. He was a principal artist of the magazine as it rose fast in circulation, being one of four general-purpose artists who took MAD through the late Fifties and early Sixties, arguably the best years of the magazine. 

(10) OH NO! File 770 contributor Steve Vertlieb had a close call but fortunately sustained just a small injury. He explained what happened on Facebook.

This has been a week from Hell. At approximately two o’clock in the afternoon on Monday, January 22nd, the proverbial “Kracken” was released onto the highway. I was driving to the post office, going North on Bustleton Avenue in Northeast Philadelphia, on “a wing and a prayer,” when an elderly woman of Russian descent, driving her car going South, took a dangerous left hand turn into opposing traffic in order to gain entrance to her apartment complex.

I was on the inside lane, and so my vision was obstructed by cars to my left. Suddenly, out of nowhere, her vehicle appeared directly in front of me, less than a car length ahead. I screamed in panic, and jammed my foot on the brakes, but it was too late. I crashed into the side of her vehicle with a sickening crunch that I’ll not soon forget.

My vehicle’s airbags deployed upon impact, hitting me in the chest, and grazing my right hand which was clutched on the steering wheel. Smoke filled my car, and fluid drained onto the street all around me.

It could have been worse, I suppose. I could have been seriously injured or killed. A bloody gash adorns the torn skin of my injured hand. My car was totaled. It was paid off, and running in fine condition. I’d taken it in for a four thousand mile checkup only several days earlier.

Now I’m facing an expensive search for a replacement vehicle, while literally stranded in my apartment for the better part of a week. I’m picking up a rental on Friday.

I’m grateful to be alive, yet wondering why my recent mini-stroke, or T.I.A., was followed in rapid succession with a nearly deadly car crash. I seem to be on a roll of late in health threatening catastrophies.

(11) ECHO OVERCOMES. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Prepare for the cries that “wokeness is out of control.“ This despite the fact that the Marvel character’s description (female, indigenous, deaf) is pretty darn well matched by the actor’s description (female, indigenous, deaf, amputee). Echo, starring Alaqua Cox, is on Disney+ and Hulu. “Alaqua Cox Was Bullied for Being Deaf and an Amputee, Now the Marvel Star Is ‘Proud’ to Prove She ‘Can Do Anything’” in People.

Preparing to play a formidable Marvel character is a notoriously demanding process that pushes actors to the pinnacle of physical fitness.

For Alaqua Cox, who’s making history as the first Native American star to lead a Marvel series in the new Disney+ show Echo, it meant training five days a week with a stunt team to learn a slew of butt-kicking moves.

“I grew up playing different kinds of sports — I would play one-on-one basketball with my older brother — so I love doing those kinds of physical things,” the actress, who, like her character Maya Lopez, is an amputee and has been deaf all her life, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue.

Cox, 26, originated the ruthless role with her breakthrough performance opposite Jeremy Renner in the series Hawkeye. Echo, who debuted in Marvel comics in 1999, is a gifted fighter with superhuman strength and a thirst for vengeance.

(12) CALLING WOLF. Sam Sykes on X. I laughed.

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. 2023 Hugo Award finalist O. Westin has started a MicroSFF YouTube channel where a selection of their stories are read and presented in a simple format. For example:

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Daniel Dern, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Lis Riba.]

Pixel Scroll 1/6/24 10 Pixels To Scroll, Number 9 Will SHOCK You

(1) 2024 IS LAST YEAR KRESS AND WILLIAMS RUNNING TAOS TOOLBOX. Taos Toolbox, a two-week master class in writing science fiction and fantasy helmed by authors Nancy Kress and Walter Jon Williams, is open for submissions.

And as part of the announcement Williams told Facebook readers, “This will be the last year that Nancy and I will be doing this. Taos Toolbox may continue under new management (it’s under discussion), but Nancy and I won’t be running things.”

This year’s Taos Toolobox workshop will take place June 2-15, 2024, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Special Guest for 2024 is the creator of The Expanse, James S.A. Corey, in reality the writing team of Daniel Abraham and Ty Frank…

Special lecturers this year include Jeffe Kennedy, who currently holds the office of President of the Science Fiction Writers of America. She’s been widely published and has special expertise in indiepub, and owns her own press.

The second special lecturer is Diana Rowland, who at various times been an Air Force pilot, a Las Vegas card dealer, a detective for a sheriff’s office in Louisiana, and a morgue assistant, occupations that contributed to writing her Demon and White Trash Zombie series.

(2) MISSING ROYALTIES. Authors are the hidden victims of the cyber-attack on the British Library, which has prevented them receiving an annual rights payment. The Guardian explains: “Richard Osman among authors missing royalties amid ongoing cyber-attack on British Library”.

…In February 2023, those authors would have been paid thousands of pounds each from Public Lending Right (PLR) payments – money earned by writers, illustrators and translators each time a book is borrowed. But not this year.

Ongoing fallout from a massive cyber-attack means that PLR payments will not be paid as expected while the British Library, which manages the service, fights to restore its crippled systems.

Every time an author’s book is borrowed from a library, they get about 13p, capped at £6,600 a year. To authors like Osman and JK Rowling, whose first Harry Potter book was also on last year’s top read list, this might be a drop in the ocean, but for many authors whose books are library favourites it is a different matter….

The British Library was hit by a cyber-attack at the end of October. At the time, its chief executive, Sir Roly Keating, said that access to even basic communication tools such as email was initially lost. “We took immediate action to isolate and protect our network but significant damage was already done.

“Having breached our systems, the attackers had destroyed their route of entry and much else besides, encrypting or deleting parts of our IT estate.”…

(3) STEVE VERTLIEB MEDICAL UPDATE. File 770 contributor Steve Vertlieb was briefly hospitalized after suffering a mini-stroke on January 4. He told Facebook friends:

Well, there’s good news and bad news early in the new year. The bad news is, that while at needed physical therapy for my balance on Thursday afternoon, I began babbling unintelligibly. I knew what I wanted to say to my trainers but, when it physically left my lips, it became distorted beyond recognition, rather like mumbling incoherently in my sleep.

They called an ambulance and rushed me to nearby Nazareth Hospital where I spent the next twenty-four hours.

I continued complaining, while in the ambulance, that I simply wanted to go home but they drove me, instead, to the Emergency Room.

I began recovering once we reached the waiting hospital. However, to be on the safe side, they kept me overnight in a hospital room. I knew that I must have been returning to “normal,” however, when I began cracking jokes.

It appears that I must have suffered a “T.I.A,” or what’s called a “mini-stroke.” However, following that isolated assault on my sensory nerves, the seemingly isolated attack that apparently came out of nowhere somehow abated and I’ve recovered.

I had a single previous occurrence some eighteen months earlier on what was to have been my last night in Los Angeles. It’s frightening. I can tell you that. The wiring in your brain goes … you should excuse the expression … “haywire.”

I asked the doctors what I can do to keep this from happening again. They said “You’re doing it. You’re taking all the right medications. Just keep an eye out for trouble signs in future.”

What’s the good news, you may well ask?????????? Well, the simple answer is that I’m Home once more!!!!!!!!!! Unlike the esteemed Mr. Bond, I’m “shaken, yet stirred.” “Toto, We’re home …. We’re Home.”

(4) SFWA’S COPYRIGHT OFFICE RESPONSE. Following up SFWA’s October 30th comments to the Copyright Office, they had the opportunity to respond to some of the many other comments received. With over 9,000 responses, SFWA “focused on specific aspects of the conversation around fair use that we felt were not given due attention, as well as to raise concerns that are unique to our community.” Their 10-page response document can be downloaded from Regulations.gov at the link.

One topic SFWA discussed is the scraping of content that is offered free to readers by online sff magazines.

…SFWA acknowledges the problem of generative AI scraping pirated material published as copy-protected ebooks by professional publishers, but SFWA additionally has the unique position of representing many authors who have fought to make their work available for free for human readers. Over the last twenty years, many science fiction and fantasy authors of short fiction have embraced the open Internet, believing that it is good for society and for a flourishing culture that art be available to their fellow human beings regardless of ability to pay. That availability is not without cost; it is quite difficult to bring an online magazine to market, and being freely available has never meant abandoning the moral and legal rights of the authors, nor the obligation to enter into legal contracts to compensate authors for their work and spell out how it may and may not be used. But on balance, many writers and fans believe that freely sharing stories is a good thing that enriches us all.

The current content-scraping regime preys on that good-faith sharing of art as a connection between human minds and the hard work of building a common culture. The decision to publish creative work online to read and share for free is not guaranteed; it is a trade-off of many factors including piracy, audience, and the simple (albeit elusive) ability to make a living. In too many comments to enumerate here, individual authors have made clear that they regard the use of their work for training AI to be another important factor in that mix, and the ultimate effect on the short fiction marketplace and its role in our culture is far from certain. Bluntly, many authors do not want their work taken for this purpose, and that cannot be ignored.

“If my work is just going to get stolen, and if some company’s shareholders are going to get the benefit of my labor and skill without compensating me, I see no reason to continue sharing my work with the public — and a lot of other artists will make the same choice.” (N. K. Jemisin, COLC-2023-0006- 0521)

The developers of AI systems seem to believe that a green light to use scraped copyrighted work will result in a clear field for them to continue freeloading forever; we fear rather that it will result in large swathes of artistic work removed from the commons, locked behind paywalls and passwords to the detriment of all….

(5) AURORA AWARDS. [Item by Danny Sichel.] The Eligibility Lists for this year’s Aurora Awards are open. If you’re aware of any genre work produced by Canadians, submit it. (CSFFA membership required — $10 – to make an addition to the lists.)

(6) WESTERCON 2025 UP FOR ADOPTION. Kevin Standlee announced a “Committee Formed to Select Site of 2025 Westercon” at Westercon.org.

Because no bid filed to host Westercon 77, selection of the site of the 2025 Westercon devolved upon the 2023 Westercon Business Meeting held at Westercon 75 (in conjunction with Loscon 49) in Los Angeles on November 25, 2023. The Westercon 75 Business Meeting voted to award Westercon 77 to a “Caretaker Committee” consisting of Westercon 74 Chair Kevin Standlee and Vice Chair Lisa Hayes with the understanding that they would attempt to select a site and committee to run Westercon 77 and transfer the convention to that committee.

Any site in North America west of 104° west longitude or in Hawaii is eligible to host Westercon 75. There are no other restrictions other than the bid has to be for dates in calendar year 2025. All other restrictions in the Westercon Bylaws are suspended, per section 3.16 of the Westercon Bylaws.

To submit a bid to the 2025 Caretaker Committee to host Westercon 77, contact Kevin Standlee at [email protected], or send a paper application to Lisa Hayes at PO Box 242, Fernley NV 89408. Include information about the proposed site, the proposed dates, and the proposed operating committee. The Caretaker Committee asks that groups interested in hosting Westercon 77 contact them by the end of February 2024.

Should the Caretaker Committee be unable to make a determination for a site for Westercon 77 by Westercon 76 in Salt Lake City (July 4-7, 2024), and assuming that no bid files to host Westercon 77, the Caretaker Committee will ask the Business Meeting of Westercon 76 for additional guidance on how to handle Westercon Site Selection.

(7) MOVING FORWARD – AT OLD MAN SPEED. Tor.com notified those not reading Bluesky that “Netflix’s Adaptation of John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War Is Still In The Works”.

We first found out that Netflix optioned the rights to John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War over six years ago, back in December 2017. It’s not uncommon for things to get optioned but never get made (Old Man’s War, in fact, had been previously optioned by Paramount and Syfy without making it to the production stage), but it sounds like the Netflix movie adaptation is still moving forward.

Scalzi gave an update on the project over on Bluesky yesterday, where he said that work on it is “slowly but surely moving along.”…

(8) COPPOLA’S NEXT APOCALYPSE. Another long-awaited sff project finished filming last year and should actually get released sometime: “Francis Ford Coppola Says ‘Megalopolis’ Is Coming Soon” at Collider.

Francis Ford Coppola is renowned as the mastermind behind some of the greatest pieces of cinema in history but as all legends do, he refuses to rest on his laurels and he’s preparing to release his first film in over a decade with his self-funded star-studded sci-fi drama, Megalopolis. The film has been mired by a number of setbacks, but filming wrapped on the project back in March. And now, we won’t have much longer to wait for it to arrive, as Coppola revealed on the latest episode of The Accutron Show.

The film has an eye-watering array of talent attached, including Adam Driver, Forest Whitaker, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Chloe Fineman, Kathryn Hunter, Dustin Hoffman, DB Sweeney, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Bailey Ives, Grace Vanderwaal, James Remar, and Giancarlo Esposito.

All that’s known so far about the film so far is that it has a futuristic setting and that it will revolve around the idea of humanity attempting to build some sort of utopian society in the wake of a natural disaster. Other than that, it’s anybody’s guess, and Coppola isn’t up for explaining more quite yet.

(9) WAS THIS THE BEST SF OF 2023? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Every January the SF2 Concatenation have an informal survey as to the best SF novels and films of the previous year. It is strictly informal and a bit of fun, enabling team members see what more than one of the others rate. The years have shown that this informal survey has form in that invariably some of the chosen works go on to be short-listed, and sometimes even win, major SF awards later in the year. SF² Concatenation have just advance-posted their selection for 2023 as part of the “Best Science Fiction of the Year Possibly?” post. Scroll down to see how previous years’ choices fared…

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born January 6, 1905 Eric Frank Russell. (Died 1978.) So let’s talk about the British writer Eric Frank Russell. His first published piece of fiction was in the first issue of Tales of Wonder called “The Prr-r-eet” (1937). (Please don’t tell me it was about cats.) He also had a letter of comment in Astounding Stories that year. He wrote a lot of such comments down the years. 

Eric Frank Russell

Just two years later, his first novel, Sinister Barrier, would be published as the cover story as the first issue of Unknown. His second novel, Dreadful Sanctuary, would be serialized in AstoundingUnknown’s sister periodical, in 1948.

At Clevention, “Allamagoosa” would win a Short Story Hugo.  The Great Explosion novel garnered  a Prometheus Hall of Fame Award.

Now let’s note some reworkings he did as I like them a lot. Men, Martians and Machines published in 1955 is four related novellas of space adventures at their very best. 

The 1956 Three to Conquer, nominated for a Hugo at NY Con II is a reworking of the earlier Call Him Dead magazine serial that deals with an alien telepath and very well at that. Finally Next of Kin, also known as The Space Willies, shows him being comic, something he does oh so well. It was a novella-length work in Astounding first.

And then there’s the Design for Great-Day novel which was written by Alan Dean Foster. It’s an expansion by him based off a 1953 short story of the same name by Russell. I’m pretty familiar with Foster has done but this isn’t ringing even the faintest of bells. Who’s read it? 

He wrote an extraordinary amount of short stories, around seventy by my guess. 

(My head trauma means numbers and I have at best a tenuous relationship. I once counted the turkeys left over after we distributed them at a food pantry I staffed pre-knee injury. Three times I counted. I got, if I remember correctly now, twelve, fifteen and eighteen birds. I had someone else do it.)

Short Stories Collection is the only one available at the usual suspects. He’s an author who needs a definitive short story collection done for him. 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • Free Range shows there are always lines.
  • Edith Pritchett’s cartoon for the Guardian recalls how “I climbed the tube station steps and entered another dimension.” Steven French adds, “Of marginal genre interest but having walked up those steps, this made me laugh!”

(12) PIONEERING WOMAN COMICS ARTIST RETIRES. BoingBoing pays tribute as “Aquaman, Metamorpho, and Brenda Starr cartoonist Ramona Fradon retires”.

Famed cartoonist Ramona Fradon is retiring at the age of 97, according to a January 3 announcement from her comic art dealer Catskill Comics….

An extremely long run, indeed. Her comic book career started in 1950, and her career highlights include a 1959 revamp and long run on Aquaman, the co-creation of DC’s offbeat superhero Metamorpho with writer Bob Haney in 1965, a run on Super Friends in the 1970s, and the comic strip Brenda Starr, Reporter from 1980-1995.

She also was a pioneer, as one of the only women working in comics during the first decades of her career.

Cartoonist and curator of the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco Andrew Farago wrote on BlueSky, “Ramona Fradon retires today at the age of 97, just a little shy of Al Jaffee’s retirement age of 99. Not sure if that means that cartooning keeps you young or if it just means that cartooning keeps you broke, but what a body of work she’s produced over the past eight decades!”…

(13) WHAT THEY WILL READ IN 2024. “’I want some light in my life’: eight writers make their new year reading resolutions “ – the Guardian’s collection of quotes includes a declaration from Sheena Patel.

‘I’m turning to sci-fi and dystopia’
Sheena Patel

I have a fascination with sci-fi that is purely theoretical. I often think about reading it but never make any attempt to go near such books because I am afraid of the imagination I will find there. Perhaps I haven’t felt I can really access the genre because sci-fi feels like what Black and Brown people can go through on a daily basis. We’re still in an age of empire, even though we are distracted from this knowledge.

I do love sci-fi films though. I had a true epiphany when I saw Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin at the cinema. It was so strange, the alien mixed with the mundane, documentary spliced with fantastical set pieces. Next year I think I will read the Michel Faber book from which the movie was adapted.

In 2024 I also want to tackle Frank Herbert’s Dune books. Earlier this year, I watched the film on my laptop maybe 50 times. At first, I hated it, but then I totally fell in love with it – the visual representation of different worlds opened my mind. Throat singing and nomadic desert tribes could be used as a mood board for the future, but this is already happening now in communities that are regarded as “primitive”. It is the future because it is eternal – such a beautiful thought.

We are fed so much dystopia that reading it in fiction feels hard – but, as the world burns, maybe it is a good idea to hear from artists about where we might be heading. So the other three titles I will try are classics: Octavia E Butler’s KindredStanisław Lem’s Solaris and The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin. The present feels so bleak, and our vision of the future so foreshortened, it almost seems like tempting fate – but, without science fiction, how can we dream?

I’m a Fan by Sheena Patel is published in paperback by Granta

(14) HOOFING IT TO MOUNT DOOM. They say “One does not simply walk into Mordor,” but apparently they exaggerated. The Conqueror Virtual Challenges is a thematic program to encourage you to exercise by walking, running, and biking, with solo variations costing from $49.95 to bundles costing $299.95 and up. This link takes you to All 8 LOTR Conqueror Virtual Challenges.

Follow Frodo and Aragorn on an epic journey across Middle-earth with the ULTIMATE THE LORD OF THE RINGS Virtual Challenge Series.

Walk, run or cycle all the way from The Shire to Mount Doom in an epic adventure with one goal – destroying the One Ring. Complete this unforgettable saga by following Aragorn into battle and restoring peace to Middle-earth.

(15) CITY OF HEROES. “11 years after this cult classic superhero MMO was shut down, the original publisher has given its blessing to the community’s custom servers” reports GamesRadar+.

Despite the shutdown of the beloved superhero MMO City of Heroes over a decade ago, fans have been keeping it alive for years with a variety of custom server efforts. Now, one of those projects has just gotten the blessing of the game’s original publisher and license holder, NCSoft.

City of Heroes: Homecoming made the surprising announcement earlier today that “Homecoming has been granted a license to operate a City of Heroes server and further develop the game – subject to conditions and limitations under the contract.” The Homecoming project will remain free and donation-funded, and while there are a few changes to how the project is being managed, it doesn’t look like players will see any meaningful differences in the game itself.

“NCSoft has always had (and will continue to have) the right to demand that Homecoming shuts down,” as the announcement notes. “This agreement provides a framework under which Homecoming can operate the game in a way that complies with NCSoft’s wishes in hopes of minimizing the chances of that happening. We’ve had a really positive and productive relationship with NCSoft for over four years now, so we do not anticipate there being any issues.”…

…The question mark that currently weighs over the license for Homecoming is what this means for other custom server projects, like City of Heroes Rebirth. Today’s announcement notes that “other servers are out of scope” for this license, and the devs say that “our hope is that our license will help us consolidate our userbase with City of Heroes fans from other servers.” There’s already a bit of fear in the community that other private servers might start to disappear following this news, but only time will tell what will happen on that front….

(16) RECORDS BROKEN. Gizmodo tells why “Doctor Who’s New Streaming Home Has Been a Huge Success” – that is, for viewers who can accesss the BBC platform.

To celebrate Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary last year, the BBC made a huge, unprecedented move: for the first time, almost the entirety of Doctor Who, from episodes from 1963 all the way up to the then-airing anniversary specials, would be made available to stream in the UK in one place, on the BBC’s own streaming platform iPlayer. And it turns out doing so has helped the BBC break streaming records over the festive period.

The corporation has announced that Doctor Who—and most specifically Doctor Who episodes from 2005 onwards—were streamed 10.01 million times over the week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve, helping the platform break a previous record for streamed content for the week between January 2 and January 8, 2023, with 177 million programs being streamed in total….

It’s hard to say just how that success has panned out internationally, however. The BBC’s new deal with Disney to stream Doctor Who on Disney+ everywhere but the UK and Ireland only covers new episodes from the 60th anniversary onwards—other contemporary and classic Doctor Who access is spread out on various platforms elsewhere, such as Britbox for classic Doctor Who and Max for post-2005 Doctor Who.

(17) MY BLUE HEAVEN(S). [Item by Mike Kennedy.] So you know how astronomers are always using false color images to show this detail or that detail or what something would look like if it was only in the visible spectrum or some such? well, those can leave lasting misimpression.

New images showing color-corrected true-color likenesses of Uranus and Neptune show the latter ice giant—rather than being a dark blue—is only slightly darker than the former.  “True blue: Neptune only slightly deeper colour than Uranus, say Oxford scientists” in the Guardian.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kevin Standlee, Kathy Sullivan, Danny Sichel, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley  for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Thomas the Red.]

Sinatra: All The Way

Steve Vertlieb and poster of Frank Sinatra.

By Steve Vertlieb: This is a love story, as wondrous, tender, and affectionate as any that you’ll ever read.  In the current vernacular, it might be referred to as a “bromance,” the non-romantic affection for one man by another. For, in all my life, I have never felt the adoration for another human soul…beyond my brother, my parents, and my beloved girlfriend, Shelly, that I have felt for more than half a century for a man called Sinatra. 

Music and films have, I imagine, played an integral role in my life from my earliest memories, perhaps as early as 1950 when I was but four years old.  We got our first television set that year and, from the moment that the magical square box came to life, I would be permanently and adoringly enchanted and entranced by the sights and sounds that came lovingly from its intimate screen and speakers. 

In my early youth, my mom and dad would take me to the movies, either at our premiere local movie house, The Benner Theater or, during more sophisticated journeys beyond the realm of the Oxford Circle in Northeast Philadelphia, to Philadelphia’s first-run downtown theaters such as The Mastbaum, The Stanley, The Boyd, The Fox, The Randolph, The Stanton, or The Arcadia.  My dad would always take me to see adventure movies such as Ivanhoe with Robert Taylor, The Searchers with John Wayne, or Mogambo with Clark Gable.  My mom, on the other hand, would escort me to the big musicals of the time such as Annie Get Your Gun with Betty Hutton and Howard Keel, The Bandwagon, with Fred Astaire, and a little musical opus from the pen of Cole Porter called High Society.  It was during a screening of the latter motion picture that I first encountered Frank Sinatra on the big screen in 1956.

Now, to be candid, my singular man crush of the period was with Bing Crosby.  I discovered at the tender age of ten or younger that I’d developed a reasonably good romantic singing voice, and that I aspired to follow in the theatrical footsteps of Harry Lillis Crosby (“Bing” to you) when I grew into manhood.  I only had eyes for Bing at the time, and had little interest in an upstart named Sinatra.  My cousin Marsha had developed something of a teen crush on Frank, but the purity of my ten-year-old “vision” would only allow for the more traditional warbling of “the old groaner.”

I had first encountered the enigma called Sinatra a year earlier during a “live” television broadcast of Thornton Wilder’s classic Our Town.  The highly publicized and significant tv production was to be aired in “Living Color” on NBC.  The famous story was given a new wrinkle for television.  It was to be an entirely new and original musical production with words and music written expressly for the show by the popular composing team of Sammy Cahn and James (Jimmy) Van Heusen.  Cahn and Van Heusen had become Sinatra’s composers of choice, and their tunes for the program went on to achieve their own “star” status on America’s Hit Parade.  Van Heusen, whose real name was Chester Babcock and who took his stage name from his favorite shirt, was often spoofed by friend Bob Hope when the comedian used the song writer’s real name as his character name in some of the Crosby and Hope “Road” pictures for Paramount. 

Our Town premiered as a part of the “Producer’s Showcase” series on September 19, 1955, and featured Paul Newman as George, Eva Marie Saint as Emily, and Frank Sinatra as “The Stage Manager.” The program contains the only known visual record of Paul Newman singing. Network news commentators and personality hosts all stood gleefully in line to extract interviews from the cast and, in particular, from Frank Sinatra whose recently revitalized career offered him the rare opportunity to introduce four new songs for the production.  These included the title song from the production, “Our Town,” as well as newly realized Sinatra standards such as “Look To Your Heart,” “The Impatient Years,” and the program’s mega hit tune, “Love and Marriage.” The color elements of the original program seem to have been lost over the ensuing years, but a fine black and white “kinescope” survives, and attests to the still poignant drama of this unique interlude in early television history and development.

Now, I’d seen the coming attractions at The Benner Theater for a new film biography “Coming Soon,” and decided in 1957 to go see The Joker Is Wild starring Frank Sinatra as comedian Joe E. Lewis.  It was a wonderful experience which further intoxicated my growing dreams of pursuing a show business career as a singer, further reinforced by Sinatra’s screen performance of a new Cahn and Van Heusen song called “All The Way.”  The film had originally been produced as All The Way, which must have exasperated Cahn and Van Heusen when their carefully fashioned title tune was sung for a film now titled The Joker Is Wild.  Nevertheless, that song would come to play an important role in the transition of my own musical tastes.

Wedged somewhere between my growth from childhood to maturity came a transitional period often referred to as one’s teenage years.  It was during this often troubling period that I came to fall in love with the voice of a young folk/rock singer named Jimmie Rodgers.  I had left Crosby behind, and was purchasing every recording I could find by Rodgers.  “Honeycomb,” “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine,” and “Oh-Oh, I’m Fallin’ In Love Again” became my favorite songs of this era, and I played them quite literally until the grooves on the recordings had been worn to dust.  I was the singer’s biggest fan from 1957 until somewhere midway through 1960 when a curious thing happened.  I was fourteen years old.  I became aware of politics for the first time, adored Jack Kennedy and Camelot, and wistfully longed for adulthood to consume me.  I was conspicuously aware of searching for more evolved, mature role models.  As an aspiring singer, I began looking for a new musical influence from which to pattern my own vocal development.  In the back of my ever curious, expanding mind and experience, I heard once again the rich, warm, deep strains of “All The Way,” as interpreted by Frank Sinatra.  The “single” of the recording was the first record I’d ever purchased as a determined young eleven-year-old, transitioning to adulthood in 1957.  That record came back to haunt me in the Fall of 1960, and would come to have a profound effect on the meaning and direction of my subsequent life.

One of the first record albums I ever purchased, after Johnny’s Greatest Hits by Johnny Mathis, and Music From One Step Beyond by Harry Lubin, was This Is Sinatra, followed quickly by This Is Sinatra Volume Two.  I’d borrow a little portable record player each weekend from my neighbor, Art Soren, and play these Sinatra recordings over and over again throughout these now interminable weekends for my parents.  That was it.  I was in love.  I wanted to BE Frank Sinatra.  Sinatra’s friendship with Jack Kennedy only served to solidify my connection with the artist.  As for the singer’s validity and credentials as an actor in the motion picture community, these early years in which my cinematic and musical tastes were rapidly developing became integral to my adult years as a writer.  I was growing ever more serious, both about my adoration of Sinatra and the career path that would subsequently guide the direction and meaning of my life.  This, then, was no simple “idol” chatter.

Of Sinatra’s progression from the bobby sox idol of his day to a motion picture star, his evolution was alternately maddening and unforgettable.  It seemed inevitable that the crooning recording artist, first for Harry James and then for Tommy Dorsey, would eventually wind up appearing on movie screens across America.  How to cast the youthful singer, however, became problematic, as his squeaky clean image with drooling teenage girls allowed for little more than fluff appearances in those early war-related years. 

His first appearance came in 1941 with a minor effort produced by Paramount entitled Las Vegas Nights.  This decidedly less-than-stellar endeavor remains notable only for its inclusion of an appearance by the Tommy Dorsey band, and its fledgling male vocalist singing Ruth Lowe’s classic lament for a woman who had lost her husband to war, “I’ll Never Smile Again.”  MGM’s Ship Ahoy followed a year later in 1942 as a thoroughly innocuous musical for dancer Eleanor Powell, and comedian Red Skelton. Tommy Dorsey and his band appeared once again, accompanied by an ambitious crooner named Sinatra who would sing “The Last Call For Love,” and “Poor You.”  Moving over to Columbia Pictures in 1943, Sinatra would perform a single tune, but what a tune.  Sans the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, he sings Cole Porter’s “Night And Day” for an otherwise forgotten Ann Miller vehicle titled Reveille With Beverly. Later the same year, Sinatra would co-star with Michele Morgan and Jack Haley in his first somewhat “starring” screen role in Higher And Higher (which he would later refer to as “Lower And Lower”), an ineffectual musical “comedy” produced for RKO.  He plays a boy-next-door type who, not surprisingly, is actually Frank Sinatra.  He loses the girl to “the tin man,” but virtually steals the show when crooning “I Couldn’t Sleep A Wink Last Night,” and “This Is A Lovely Way To Spend An Evening.”  In one memorable sequence, he sings standing by a piano played by Rick Blaine’s Casablanca accompanist, Dooley Wilson.  RKO managed to step lively when preparing their star’s next screen fling, Step Lively, co-starring Gloria De Haven and future United States Senator George Murphy.  As innocuous as its predecessor, the more white than black comedy featured Sinatra as a young country bumpkin aspiring to conquer Broadway as a budding playwright.  The music, however, overwhelmingly steals the show as Sinatra’s stunning interpretation of “As Long As There’s Music” dominates the picture’s legacy.

It was only natural, and clearly inevitable, that Sinatra would soon move over to the reigning bastion of musical comedies, Metro Goldwyn Mayer and, in 1945, the studio released its blockbuster extravaganza, Anchors Aweigh starring Sinatra, along with his new partners, Kathryn Grayson and Gene Kelly.  While no more sophisticated in his characterizations than in his previous roles, Sinatra had dramatically grown in importance to Tinseltown, earning a coveted starring role in a huge MGM musical featuring outstanding production values, and memorable songs.  Adding his usual class to the presentation was the incomparable classical conductor Jose Iturbi who was, in his own right, becoming a highly dignified staple of the MGM musicals.  It is Gene Kelly, however, who steals the show in his immortal dance duet with Jerry The Mouse from the Tom and Jerry cartoons.  Sinatra’s defining moment in the cherished musical comes with his tender performance of “I Fall In Love Too Easily” by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn.  The film was helmed by George Sidney who would direct a decidedly different, far more artistically developed Sinatra a mere twelve years later in Pal Joey for Columbia. 

RKO would produce, perhaps, the most influential and important Sinatra film of the decade later in 1945. The House I Live In, written by blacklisted writer Albert Maltz (one of the celebrated “Hollywood Ten” accused by Senator Joseph McCarthy), and directed by Mervyn LeRoy, was a powerful ten-minute short focusing on racial intolerance in America in which Sinatra, playing himself, records in a studio, blithely unaware of the street kids in the adjoining alley terrorizing another boy from a different ethnic background.  Sinatra’s heartfelt plea to the youngsters for love and tolerance won the singer and the film a special Academy Award.  Sinatra, known even then for his liberal politics, had been visiting area high schools preaching racial acceptance and harmony.  These caring, selfless acts on the part of the singer prompted the studio to produce its celebrated, Oscar winning short film.  Performing with arranger/conductor Axel Stordahl, Sinatra sings “If You Are But A Dream,” and the stunning title anthem by Earl Robinson and Lewis Allan.

In 1946, MGM produced one of their most lavish and respected musicals. Till The Clouds Roll By, inspired by the life and music of composer Jerome Kern, featured a vast ensemble of the studio’s musical contract players in separate set pieces and production numbers, including Judy Garland, Lena Horne, Kathryn Grayson, Van Johnson, June Allyson, and Dinah Shore.  The film’s climactic masterpiece, however, remains the brilliant performance by Frank Sinatra, dressed in a stunning white tuxedo, echoing the pain of millions, in a spectacular rendition of Kern’s superb “Old Man River” from Show Boat.

Sinatra’s next starring vehicle for MGM would be the delightful It Happened In Brooklyn, released by the studio in 1947, pairing Sinatra once more with Kathryn Grayson, along with Jimmy Durante and his later Rat Pack pal, Peter Lawford.  Two army buddies, stationed in England, return to the United States at the conclusion of the Second World War, and vie for the attentions of the proverbial girl next door.  Naïve, but utterly charming, the Sinatra vocals include “Time After Time,” “I Believe,” “It’s The Same Old Dream” and, in a memorable duet with Durante in which Sinatra wonderfully emulates the elder statesman of comedy, “The Song’s Gotta Come From The Heart.”

Sensing the need to expand his artistic horizons, Sinatra took a gamble with his next picture, playing his first somewhat dramatic part in RKO’s tale of faith and spiritual miracles. The Miracle of the Bells, a deeply moving story of a young actress whose untimely death precedes the opening of her first starring role in a film about Joan of Arc, premiered in 1948. Fred MacMurray stars as a hungry studio publicist trying to keep the producers from shelving the picture after the death of its star.  Alida Valli (The Third Man) stars as Olga Treskovna, the film’s ill-fated star, along with Lee J. Cobb as Marcus Harris, the conflicted studio head trying to save his studio.  Sinatra appears in a brief, but pivotal and moving performance as Father Paul, the young parish priest whose small Coaltown, Pennsylvania church has been chosen as the location of Olga’s final farewell.  Sinatra sings the deeply moving “Ever Homeward,” written by Kasimierz Lubomirski, along with Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn.

MGM’s The Kissing Bandit, released in 1948, found the crooner adrift once more in a likeable, if sappy variation of The Pirate in which Gene Kelly was mistaken as a notorious buccaneer.  Sinatra, a milquetoast business school graduate from Boston, finds himself in old California where he impersonates a kissing bandido in a gang once run by his late father.  The film, while colorful and entertaining, has been acknowledged by Sinatra as the least favorite of his various screen roles (together with his performance as Miguel in The Pride and The Passion.  The exquisite Kathryn Grayson co-starred once again as his romantic lead.

Take Me Out To The Ball Game from MGM in 1949 was the second and, perhaps, the weakest of the Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly musical collaborations, featuring the pair of unlikely sports figures, playing both baseball and vaudeville while simultaneously wooing Esther Williams and Betty Garrett.  To Sinatra’s credit, the singer underwent punishing dance steps and routines under the supervision of Kelly in both this film, as well as their earlier collaboration, Anchors Aweigh, and emerged a highly professional dance partner for the more remarkably skilled hoofer.  Their next collaboration, however, would become the most memorable of their three dance films together.

On The Town, produced by MGM in 1949, directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, with music by Leonard Bernstein, and lyrics (as well as screenplay) by Betty Comden and Adolph Green became the first musical film ever to shoot on actual locations, rather than indoor stages and sets, in the city of New York.  The city, its streets, subways, skyscrapers and bustling landscape were as much the stars and personality of the beloved musical as were its human protagonists.  New York, with its exuberance, excitement, and pulsating electricity, provided the vibrant backdrop and story of three sailors on leave in Manhattan who discover romance, music, and adventure along Rockefeller Center and The Great White Way.  The incomparable vitality of Kelly and Donen’s direction and choreography, together with spirited live on location performances by Kelly, Sinatra, Jules Munshin, Ann Miller, Betty Garrett, radiant Vera Ellen as the ever elusive “Miss Turnstiles,” the music of Leonard Bernstein, and the shattering steel and chrome exhilaration of the world’s greatest city, joyfully combined to create a truly one of a kind motion picture musical experience.

RKO’s embarrassing Double Dynamite co-starring Jane Russell and Groucho Marx followed in 1951, nearly ending the long careers of each of its players, but Sinatra’s next performance, though largely forgotten today, would powerfully shape the dramatic career path and stature of its star for virtually the remainder of his life. 

Frank Sinatra was going through the worst period of his life.  He had grown beyond the adoration of his one-time bobby soxer fans. MGM had tired of his seeming one-dimensional screen persona, although they had helped to fashion and perpetuate it…and, while trying desperately to resuscitate his singing career, his vocal chords had hemorrhaged, leaving him to wonder if he’d ever sing again. His cronies, sensing the end of his career, deserted him and wouldn’t pick up the phone to take his calls.  With professional medical care and prescribed rest, the voice eventually returned, but Sinatra remained a professional hot potato in Hollywood. 

Meet Danny Wilson, released in 1951 by Universal International Pictures, should have changed the singer’s fortunes but, astonishingly, it didn’t.  As Danny Wilson, Sinatra plays a brash, hip performer with ties to the mob.  This was not the Sinatra of old but, rather, a self-assured, dramatic powerhouse whose explosive acting and mature vocals set the stage for virtually everything that would establish his familiar persona in years to come.  The baby fat, both physically and vocally, had disappeared, replaced by a lean and confident cocoon preparing to give birth to the most remarkable singer of the Twentieth Century.  Sadly, neither the film’s budget nor cast prompted anything more than unremarkable “B” film reviews. Directed by Joseph Pevney, with an original screen play by Don McGuire, Meet Danny Wilson introduced a brand new, revitalized Sinatra to an audience that simply didn’t care.  Had audiences gone to see this little film with overpowering aspirations, it might not have taken another two years for Sinatra to return to the top.

While traveling with then wife Ava Gardner for location shooting in Africa, Sinatra seemed out of place and uncomfortable.  He was simply along for the ride.  Gardner was starring with Clark Gable and Grace Kelly in John Ford’s remake of an earlier Clark Gable vehicle, Red Dust.  For Mogambo, Gardner was playing the role earlier essayed by Jean Harlow in the MGM 1932 original.  A novel by writer James Jones was being prepped for filming back in the states, and its casting was the hottest ticket in Hollywood.  From Here To Eternity had taken the country by storm, and director Fred Zinnman was busily searching for the actors who would grace the most highly anticipated film in years. The bestselling novel concerned the tumultuous lives of army personnel in Hawaii prior to the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor. Among the characters populating James Jones’ novel was a hot headed, arrogant little Italian private named Angelo Maggio.  Sinatra read the novel, and identified so strongly with the character of Maggio that winning that role in the film had obsessed him.  He believed that he WAS Maggio, and that no one else could play the part.  Zinnman wanted no part of him, but Sinatra persuaded Gardner to talk to Harry Cohn, the Columbia Pictures studio head who had wisely purchased the rights to film the novel.  To virtually everyone’s astonishment, Sinatra’s screen test won him the role and what followed became the stuff of cinema legend.  Sinatra became Private Maggio.  He ate, slept, and breathed the characterization.  In the film’s pivotal scene, Sinatra is brutalized by Ernest Borgnine in the company brig.  He escapes imprisonment in the back of an army truck, only to fall out of the vehicle and bounce cruelly along the darkened road.  He crawls in agony to his friends (Montgomery Clift and Burt Lancaster) where he dies in Clift’s arms.  That performance and, in particular, that sequence won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor of the year.  Suddenly, everyone in town was looking at him with new eyes.  Those who had written him off and forgotten him were now knocking at his door, begging for his attention.  He was back.  Sinatra had returned, and he would become bigger than ever.

Hungry for meatier roles, along with a desire to effectively immolate his former screen persona, Sinatra next enacted one of his most frightening performances and, indeed, one of the most chilling performances in cinema history…that of the psychotic assassin John Baron in Suddenly.  Released in 1954 through United Artists, and directed by Lewis Allen (The Univited), Sinatra plays a vicious killer for hire who, with his lethal associates, arrives in the innocuous California community of Suddenly, where he toys sadistically with conservative, old world ideals and balances while meticulously plotting to kill the President of the United States whose train is scheduled to stop in the quiet suburban community.  America, in the middle 1950’s, still reeling from the subversive shock of war in which its traditional values and morality were challenged and nearly decimated by Hitler and his conquering armies, has returned to the complacency and isolationism inherent in world weary societies, tired of war and seared by pain.  Its citizens ache for the simplicity of an idealistic culture painfully absent from the imposing international landscape.  Into this hedonistic plateau arrives a cold-blooded assassin whose narcissism explodes in ranging contempt for the human Ostrich community refusing to lift up its collective head from the sand.  Baron, too, has been irrevocably scarred by the brutal reality that no man or country is an island unto himself, but his insecurity and fear have been manifested in aggression, suspicion and the seething hatred of an animal cornered in ever diminishing space.  His ugly contempt for humanity shocks his hostages into seizing once more their emasculated strength, embracing their beliefs, and standing firm in the face of fear.  Their unity defeats Baron, exposing his naked cowardice and callous contempt for peace.  Sinatra delivers a fiercely frightening performance as a wounded psychotic, a coward with a gun, finally crumbling in both humiliating and numbingly terrified defeat.  Standing against him in accumulated courage and resolve are Sterling Hayden, James Gleason, Paul Frees (War of the Worlds and The Thing From Another World) and Nancy Gates who would appear once again with Sinatra four years later as Arthur Kennedy’s mistress in Some Came Running.

Young At Heart, released by Warner Bros in 1955, was based upon Fanny Hurst’s “Sister Act,” which had been filmed previously by the studio as Four Daughters.  Sinatra plays “stumble bum Barney Sloan,” a talented song writer plagued by torturous doubt and self defeating insecurities whose insertion into a traditional middle America family wreaks havoc upon their naïve confidence and values.  His edgy, conflicted performance as a ”victim” of bad breaks and circumstances beyond his comprehension, echoes perfectly the cynical interpretation of a talented “loser” earlier enacted by John Garfield in the original production.  Doris Day is the uncomplicated “girl next door” he falls in love with and who, ultimately, saves him from his personal demons. Sinatra escapes the fate rendered Garfield at the sad conclusion of the original version, although his performance is every bit as edgy and emotionally vulnerable.  The film gives both stars an opportunity to shine musically, and Sinatra delivers definitive, unforgettable performances of “One For My Baby, “Just One Of Those Things,” “Someone To Watch Over Me,” the haunting “You My Love” (in his single screen duet with Day), and the hit title theme, “Young At Heart.”

Sinatra next essayed the role of an amusingly cynical young doctor in Stanley Kramer’s ensemble directed Not As A Stranger (United Artists, 1955), based upon the bestselling novel by Morton Thompson, with a screenplay by Edward and Edna Anhalt.  A young, idealistic doctor (Robert Mitchum) nobly climbs the medical ladder of success, sacrificing all human interaction to the aspirations of his clinical beliefs, realizing nearly too late that the frailty of human emotion is as essential a component as medical knowledge in healing the sick.  With an all-star cast, including Mitchum, Olivia DeHavilland, Charles Bickford, Sinatra, Lee Marvin, Broderick Crawford, and Lon Chaney, Jr as Mitchum’s alcoholic father, the film is interesting but, ultimately, flawed as Mitchum’s lead character is written and portrayed as an entirely unsympathetic son of a bitch, failing virtually everyone whose love and support he callously abandons and betrays in the name of blind ambition.

MGM’s The Tender Trap, released in 1955, is an innocuous bit of sexist fluff based upon a Broadway play by Max Shulman, the celebrated creator of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.  Sinatra stars this time as theatrical agent Charlie Reader, a womanizing bachelor romancing multiple secretaries and starlets until he meets Julie Gillis (no relation to Dobie), charmingly portrayed by Debbie Reynolds. David Wayne appears as his best friend, frustrated by the perceived restrictions of a perfect marriage, and longing to emulate his swinging pal.  The wonderfully sophisticated Celeste Holm plays Sinatra’s wise, if ultimately jilted girlfriend of convenience.  Predictably scripted, The Tender Trap offers comparatively little in the way of originality.  Its surviving strength is in its remarkably memorable opening and closing sequences, particularly the former, in which Sinatra emerges from the distance on an empty, barely camouflaged soundstage, adorned in his signature sports jacket and designer hat, swaying persuasively in rhythmic, self-assured confidence as he flirts mesmerizingly with the camera while singing “Love Is The Tender Trap”.  The musically evocative, sexually intoxicating introduction to an otherwise unimaginative bedroom farce, remains both the film’s and its star’s character defining moment of the decade.

Samuel Goldwyn’s lavish Technicolor production of the Broadway smash Guys and Dolls, released the same year, is an ambitious, if slavishly stage bound version of the Abe Burrows hit (based upon “The Idyll Of Miss Sarah Brown” by Damon Runyon) musical with memorable songs by Frank Loesser.  Unimaginatively directed by the usually gifted Joseph L. Mankiewicz, this colorful  screen translation seemed mis-guided and miscast by period star value, rather than genuine musical talent.  Starring the superb Marlon Brando in one of his oddly ineffectual early performances, the otherwise astonishing actor plays the lead role of Sky Masterson in a musically impotent interpretation that begs credibility. Playing the second banana role of ultimate “stooge,” Nathan Detroit, is Sinatra who, at this stage of his re-emerging career, should have played the lead. Sinatra is said to have referred to Brando during the production of the film as “mumbles,” while the method actor delivers a nearly catastrophic performance of the show’s most memorable tune, “Luck Be A Lady.”  Guys and Dolls is remembered more as a curiosity, sadly, than as a successful screen visualization of a classic Broadway show.

Sinatra would fare significantly better in his next film, Otto Preminger’s explosive production of Nelson Algren’s novel, The Man with the Golden Arm.  Released in 1955 by United Artists, Sinatra’s title role in this unflinching look at the world of drug addiction was one of the first American films to explore the raw underbelly of substance abuse.  Still shocking today, the film was revelatory and unimaginably horrifying upon its controversial release in the mid-Nineteen-Fifties.  With a pounding, electrifying jazz score by composer Elmer Bernstein, Sinatra’s stunning performance as a “dealer” of cards in backroom games and marathon betting sessions won him another Oscar nomination for Best Actor.  Sinatra visited a variety of drug rehabs and sanitariums while researching the part, witnessing firsthand the horrors of drug addiction.  It was an experience that would haunt him in years to come, nearly severing his long friendship with Sammy Davis, Jr., when the gifted performer briefly succumbed to the drug culture of the Sixties.  Sinatra’s performance in a key sequence in which Frankie Machine is locked in a room, forced to go “cold Turkey” in order to kick his addiction alone, writhing and screaming in physical torment on the floor, is nearly unwatchable even by modern standards in its violent ferocity and realism.  Kim Novak co-stars with Sinatra as an understanding neighbor secretly in love with dealer, while deservedly acclaimed actress Eleanor Parker is a revelation as his sick, manipulative wife.  The role would become the defining dramatic performance of Sinatra’s screen rebirth.

His next starring role would find Sinatra in a courageous performance as a young coward in one of the first Freudian westerns, the failed yet ambitious story of Johnny Concho.  Released by United Artists in 1956, the complex tale concerned a bully riding on the reputation of his gunslinger brother, until his infamous sibling is killed in an armed confrontation, and Johnny is left exposed and vulnerable.  Naked and ridiculed by the community he once lorded over, the young sibling must prove to the town and his girl that, in the face of avenging brutality by gunslingers and bandits overriding the quiet community, he is a man.  The score by Nelson Riddle is subtle, yet effective, producing the single “Wait For Me,” a brooding, evocative hit for the singer.

His next film, a starring role in one of the most delightful musical comedies of the fifties, would prove a lyrically defining moment for the actor and singer.  MGM’s big budget, glossy remake of the Broadway hit and Oscar winning comedy The Philadelphia Story (Katherine Hepburn’s “comeback” vehicle) provided the basis for the immortal Cole Porter’s final score.  High Society, produced and released by MGM in 1956, was among the most delightful, sophisticated, effusively joyous musicals of the decade.  Pairing Sinatra with his lifelong idol, Bing Crosby, for the first time on screen was a major coup for the studio, for there were no more important musical stars in Hollywood at the time of this inspired collaboration.  Joining forces with Sinatra and Crosby were the reigning dramatic queen of the film industry, Grace Kelly, and jazz musical legend Louis Armstrong.  With Crosby in the lead as C.K. Dexter- Haven (in the role originally enacted by Cary Grant), Grace Kelly as the rich, untouchable Tracy Samantha Lord (the role first played by Hepburn in her career-saving performance), and Sinatra (co-starring once again with the wonderful Celeste Holm) as Macauley “Mike” Connor (originally played by Jimmy Stewart), the film is a musical gem.  Heralded as Grace Kelly’s final screen performance before assuming the real-life royalty persona and duties as Princess of the Principality of Monaco, High Society is a joyous marriage of music, wit, and sophistication.  Both Crosby and Kelly won a gold record for their million selling recording of “True Love,” while Sinatra and Crosby literally steal the show with their incomparable rendition and performance of Cole Porter’s alcohol induced set piece, “Well, Did You Evah?”… a classic screen duet that never fails to invite warm smiles and magical, delectable, happiness and delight.

Among the strangest and, perhaps, most ill-advised films in the Sinatra canon was Stanley Kramer’s ambitious take on the Peninsular Wars and the Napoleonic campaign in Spain, during which Spanish peasants and freedom fighters courageously fought the French with passionate resistance.  An abandoned cannon, left by Spanish soldiers under attack by advancing French forces, is a valued prize coveted by both the peasants and a British captain eager to secure its weaponry.  Cary Grant co-starred with Sinatra and Sophia Loren in The Pride and the Passion, released by United Artists in 1957. The finished film was a colorful extravaganza, but Sinatra seemed uncomfortable in his performance as Miguel, a Spanish rebel, and his accent appeared both forced and at times awkward.  While the actor’s efforts were noble and sincere, the actor himself regarded his performance as embarrassing and among his least favorite roles. Kramer may have overextended himself with this massive, yet somehow lethargic production, which seemed overburdened at times by the weight of its location shooting and self-important dialogue.  Consequently, the film is often more ponderous than impactful and is remembered more as a curiosity than an epic.  

Despite an awkward start to the year, however, Sinatra’s next two films would join the most iconic, beloved productions of his motion picture career.  The Joker Is Wild provided the actor with one of his most ingratiating performances.  Based upon the popular book by Art Cohn, the film recounts the turbulent life story of standup comedian Joe E. Lewis.  Lewis is beginning a promising concert and recording career as a singer when his throat is slashed by rival nightclub owners, retaliating for his defection to another club.  His vocal chords cut and permanently damaged, Lewis can no longer sing.  Sophie Tucker finds the savaged performer hiding beneath the greasy camouflage of a clown’s makeup on a burlesque stage, and helps him to find an unsuspected calling. His cynical wit and comic swipes at his own misfortune lead him on a secondary path as a celebrated, yet volatile, comic whose temper often strains the patience of those who love him.  His tantrums and alcoholic binging ultimately decimate the tenuous bonds of both love and friendship, leading to a final self realization that will either destroy him, or lead to his personal salvation.  Sinatra is wonderful as the conflicted comedian whose real life friendship with the singer played an integral role in his seeking the role.  Upon the film’s release by Paramount in 1957, Lewis remarked that “Frank had more fun playing my life than I had in living it.”

The film had originally been titled All The Way when production began, and Sinatra collaborators Sammy Cahn and James Van Heusen had been asked to pen the title song.  However, after the song had been written and submitted, Paramount decided to revert to the original title of Art Cohn’s biography.  The song remained in the picture although it could no longer be considered a “title” tune, winning an Oscar in the process, thereby becoming one of Sinatra’s most closely identified signature songs for the rest of his life.  Directed by Charles Vidor, with a sterling cast that included Eddie Albert as his beleaguered long time pianist Austin Mack along with Mitzi Gaynor and Jeanne Crain as his battle scarred romantic leads, and the fabulous Beverly Garland as Albert’s caustic wife, the picture remains among the brightest lights in the singer’s dramatic film career.  Interestingly, it was during the production of a key sequence in the film involving Sinatra and Mitzi Gaynor that Gaynor was asked to come in and audition for Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein who were casting the leads in their upcoming film translation of South Pacific.  When Sinatra heard that Gaynor could not make the audition due to scheduling demands and conflicts imposed by the film’s director, Charles Walters, he instructed Walters to “just shoot around her.”  According to Gaynor herself, it was thanks to Sinatra’s personal intervention that she made the audition and won the coveted role of Nellie Forbush in the 1958 Joshua Logan production.

Following on the heels of his enormous success as Joe E. Lewis, Sinatra next essayed, perhaps, the most iconic role of his career…that of Joey Evans, novelist John O’Hara’s despicable womanizer and cad, while everyone’s Pal Joey.  Produced on Broadway in 1940 by Richard Rodgers and then partner Lorenz Hart, the modestly successful New York musical made a star of Gene Kelly in the lead performance.  While Rodgers and Hart, along with O’Hara, envisioned Evans as a dancer for the original theatrical production, the suave heart throb became a singer when Columbia Pictures and director George Sidney offered the coveted role to Sinatra.The character of the “character” was softened somewhat for the screen version but Joey, although overwhelmingly charming, particularly to women, remained a narcissistic “louse.”  The part was tailored perfectly to fit Sinatra’s post-comeback swagger and macho persona.  Women adored him, and men wanted to BE him.  As a wisecracking, romantic “user,” Sinatra fit Joey Evans like a well worn glove, twisting and manipulating everyone in his selfishly evolving web of deceit and personal aggrandizement. Aided and abetted by two of Columbia’s biggest female stars, Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak, Sinatra was at the peak of his heavily publicized, lecherously sophisticated charm and sensual appeal.  Adorned in a white dinner jacket while seated on a revolving piano stool, his cocky, finger snapping, self assured rendition of “The Lady Is A Tramp” is as classic a male “temptress” in its imagery as John Travolta’s acrobatically sexual movements in Saturday Night Fever.  Waving his fingers in the air, gently clutching a lit cigarette while singing and fondling the piano keys in rapturous romanticism, THIS was Sinatra at the pinnacle of his allure and success.  If the film is deficient in any manner, it would be in the abandonment of a more elaborate musical finale than what ultimately appeared on the screen.  Hayworth, a veteran “hoofer” and dance partner to both Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, had rehearsed a complicated musical routine with Kim Novak for the climactic “What Do I care For A Dame” sequence with Sinatra.  While Sinatra had himself performed many stylish, energetic dance steps with Gene Kelly over the years at MGM, he appeared unwilling to participate in an elaborate new choreographed sequence.  Whether due to time constraints or growing insecurity about his earlier film career path, Sinatra chose a more simplistic, stylized treatment over the more ambitious choreography rehearsed by Hayworth and Novak.  Sinatra needn’t have worried about his prowess as a dancer, however.  Years later, after his abrupt retirement from the stage, he returned to television with a musical special entitled “Old Blue Eyes Is Back” in which both he and Gene Kelly sang a remembrance of their musical pairings called “We Can’t Do That Anymore,” all the while reprising their original dance steps and proving that they actually still could.

Kings Go Forth, released the next year by United Artists, and directed by Delmer Daves was a comparatively small film shot in black and white with Sinatra playing an essentially subordinate role opposite Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood in a World War Two drama concerning the dangerous love affair between an innocent Italian girl and a shallow soldier played by Curtis.  Sinatra is torn between his love for Monique (Wood), and his friendship with Curtis.  In the end, the film is a curiosity at best with a romantically unsatisfactory conclusion, and ineffectual hints of racial prejudice. It did, however, generate another modest hit recording for the singer in its title tune, “Monique” written by Elmer Bernstein with Sammy Cahn. Sinatra’s next role as a disillusioned soldier returning to his small Indiana home town after the war would yield one of his most remarkable, deeply sensitive performances, as well as an extraordinarily powerful motion picture.  

Vincente Minnelli was known primarily as a director of musicals, and was MGM’s premier song and dance interpreter.  He would, however, wander off into new areas from time to time and work on some notable dramas.  His non-musical films for the studio were among MGM’s dramatically finest, and included such remarkable films as The Bad And The Beautiful, Madame Bovary, and Lust For Life (the latter two films featuring brilliant scores by three-time Oscar winning symphonic composer Miklos Rozsa.)  In 1958 Minnelli directed one of the most compelling dramas of his distinguished career.  Some Came Running, based upon the novel by James Jones, would be Sinatra’s second involvement with the author of his Oscar-winning characterization in From Here To Eternity.  Once again, he is an enlisted soldier in the Second World War. This time, however, he is a disillusioned veteran returning home to a small town in Indiana.  He is accompanied on his Greyhound bus trip by a floozy he drunkenly picked up in a bar along the way.  As interpreted by Sinatra, Dave Hirsh is a world weary soldier torn between several worlds, searching for his roots as well as a starting point from which to begin again.  He is a writer whose single published novel caused a minor stir upon its publication, but whose creative well has seemingly run dry.  Punctuated by composer Elmer Bernstein’s lush, passionate score, Some Came Running is a tale of loneliness, seething anger, frustration, and sexual repression longing for release.  In his first of many later “Rat Pack” pairings with Sinatra, Dean Martin scores as an alcoholic professional gambler named Bama Dillert who hooks up with, and befriends Hirsh.  Shirley MacLaine is wonderful as Ginny Moorehead, the sweet “hooker” who wants only to “love and be loved” by Dave, while Martha Hyer quietly ignites her surroundings as a sexually inhibited school teacher encouraging Sinatra to begin writing again.  Rounding out the outstanding ensemble cast is the always reliable Arthur Kennedy as Sinatra’s older brother, a traditional small town moralist who wishes that Dave had stayed on the bus.  Some Came Runnng offers Sinatra an opportunity to play a scarred artist reaching out for beauty and meaning in his life following the war, while MacLaine’s bittersweet, Oscar nominated performance is heartbreaking in its fragile, often simple humanity.  The stunning conclusion of Some Came Running brings each of its deeply flawed characters to their inevitable ends, and beginnings with, perhaps, a wiser appreciation for what lies ahead.  This is a superb, often underappreciated, motion picture with unforgettable characters, performances, and the eloquent writing of author James Jones.

The years between 1957 and 1962 were, perhaps, the most creatively fertile for Frank Sinatra as an actor, and his next film would further demonstrate his ever-unfolding artistic talent and expressive range.  A Hole In The Head (United Artists, 1959) features the actor as Tony Manetta, a down on his luck dreamer, and is among Sinatra’s most charming and endearing characterizations.  Manetta owns a small, quirky hotel filled with equally quirky guests in a low rent district of Miami Beach, Florida.  He is a wistful widower living with and raising his young son, Ally (played by Eddie Hodges) on the grounds of a decidedly “down scale” rental facility.  Tony longs to escape the sordid confines of his surroundings, and “hit it big” one day.  As reality closes in and foreclosure threatens, Tony reaches out to his older brother, Mario, and his wife (wonderfully played by the delightful Edward G. Robinson and Thelma Ritter) for money.  Into this mix comes a beautiful widow played by the enchantingly versatile Eleanor Parker whose frightening performance as Sinatra’s conniving wife in Otto Preminger’s The Man With The Golden Arm would ordinarily have led him to run very far from her character, Mrs. Rogers.  Sinatra is both entirely sympathetic and ingratiating in his love for his little boy, and his seemingly unlikely ambitions.  His desperation and ultimate despair at the races as he gambles and ultimately loses the money that might have renewed his hotel lease is painted poignantly upon his face and emotional vulnerability.  As so eloquently written by Sammy Cahn and James Van Heusen, he has “High Hopes” for “All My Tomorrows.”  As directed by one of the screen’s greatest, most revered and influential directors, Frank Capra’s “American Dream” is lovingly exhibited here in one of his last motion pictures, proving that just when you think that all is lost…It’s A Wonderful Life after all.  Capra was scheduled to direct Sinatra once again in a proposed screen biography on the life of comedian Jimmy Durante with Dean Martin as the legendary comic, and Sinatra as his partner but, sadly, the project was never realized.

A private disagreement with cherished friend Sammy Davis, Jr. led to a creative opportunity for another young actor in Sinatra’s next film, Never So Few, released by MGM in 1959.  Davis had been signed to play the role of Sinatra’s brash subordinate but, when their long friendship abruptly (albeit briefly) derailed over some derogatory statements uttered in public by Davis, the plum role went to an up-and-coming young actor by the name of Steve McQueen.  It was a breakout performance by McQueen, effectively leading to starring roles in shortly subsequent progression.  Directed by ultimately frequent McQueen collaborator John Sturges, Never So Few is an exciting adventure film placed in the Burmese jungles as Captain Tom C. Reynolds (Sinatra) and his guerilla fighters engage in combat with the Japanese during World War Two.  With lush orchestral foliage provided by composer Hugo Friedhofer, and a most decorative cast including Gina Lollobrigida, Peter Lawford (soon to join Sinatra’s exclusively jubilant pals in “The Rat Pack”), Steve McQueen, Paul Henreid, Richard Johnson, Brian Donlevy, and another up and coming young actor named George Takei, still seven years away from his own iconic performance as Mr. Sulu on NBC’s Star Trek series, Never So Few is a profoundly underrated, though thoroughly entertaining and exciting war epic.

The cold war between The United States and Russia grew momentarily warmer in 1960 when Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev and his wife visited the set of Can Can at 20th Century Fox during a diplomatic trip to the U.S.  The pair were invited to meet the cast of the film, as well as witness the filming of the infamous “Can Can” sequence with Shirley MacLaine and Juliet Prowse.  The Russian premier, it was reported, openly enjoyed the dancing until his wife grimaced in disapproval.  After that, it was business as usual between the two countries with the cold war growing ever more frigid.  Can Can, directed by Walter Lang, was a big budget musical based upon the legendary stage production with music and lyrics by Cole Porter.  The film is a colorful delight with wonderful comedic performances by Sinatra as a rogue Parisian attorney, Shirley MacLaine as the owner of a popular club specializing in performances of the outlawed dance, Maurice Chevalier as a lecherous judge, and Louis Jourdan as the prudish addition to the court insisting upon the letter of the law.  The obvious chemistry between Sinatra and real life “pal” MacLaine is joyous, while Chevalier and Jourdan both sing and mug deliciously for the cameras.  Sinatra is at the peak of his career, clearly in command of his vocal artistry, and relishing his performances of “C’est Magnifique,” “Let’s Do it” (with MacLaine) and, particularly, the exquisitely performed “It’s All Right With Me,” a nearly heart wrenching lament set characteristically in a Parisian “saloon.”  It is a definitive homage to popular music’s ultimate “saloon singer.”

Old Sinatra pal Peter Lawford had purchased the screen rights to a hip, “buddy,” caper movie about a bunch of former soldiers conspiring to rob the Las Vegas casinos of their substantial loot.  He brought it to Sinatra who then recruited many of his own buddies to co-star in the production.  What seemed a simple heist adventure became one of the most iconic films of the period.  Released by Warner Bros. in 1960, Ocean’s Eleven, based upon a story by co-writer, George Clayton Johnson and directed by Lewis Milestone (All Quiet On The Western Front), became significantly more than a mere motion picture.  The film, its production and, in particular, its nearly all male cast, transformed the city of Las Vegas into the billion-dollar industry it has since become.  While Las Vegas had offered night clubs, celebrities, alcohol, and women to high rollers for years, and had functioned prominently as a “mob” run franchise under the watchful guidance of such legendary gangsters as Bugsy Siegel, the turbulent filming of Warners’ Ocean’s Eleven changed the topography of Vegas nearly over night. 

The film also gave birth to the legendary “Rat Pack,” headed by Sinatra, who gleefully invited his pals to join the laughter.  While filming by day, the cast adjourned to The Sands Hotel, owned by Jack Entratter, in the evenings and often well into the night to perform, cavort, drink, and party.  The nighttime attraction became as big a draw to the public as the filming of the movie.  High rollers from around the globe would fight to pay exorbitant tabs just to witness Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop perform their wildly talented, anarchic musical and comedic turns on stage at The Sands at night, and into “the wee small hours of the morning.”  After the death of its founding member, Humphrey Bogart, The Holmby Hills Rat Pack (of which Sinatra was a member) floundered without a rudder until Sinatra assumed command of the ritzy social group, transforming it into the hippest ensemble on the planet.  The group’s legendary comradery and razor-sharp wit, performing night after night during the filming of the movie, and for countless years thereafter, by all credible accounts, virtually changed the face of the gambling city from a modest destination for gamblers to the showplace of the world.  As for Ocean’s Eleven, the film itself influenced generations of celluloid caper movies, contained an uncredited voice performance by actor Richard Boone as a Las Vegas chaplain, and inspired a series of high-quality remakes starring George Clooney in the role of Danny Ocean.  As overblown and expensive as these high-priced remakes were, however, they somehow never compared to the chic simplicity of the 1960 Warner Bros. original featuring Sinatra and his legendary troupe of talented bad boys, The Rat Pack.

In the wake of Columbia Pictures hugely successful adventure film The Guns Of Navarone, the studio cast Sinatra with, perhaps, the greatest screen actor of both his, and any subsequent generation, Spencer Tracy, in an explosive tropical paradise on the brink of volcanic devastation.  The Devil At Four O’Clock, based upon the novel by Max Catto, and directed by Mervyn LeRoy, aspired to repeat the success of the earlier production.  The early poster art for the picture proclaimed that it was “in the tradition of The Guns Of Navarone, hoping that cinematic lightening might strike yet again at the box office. 

While few films could survive such an unrealistic advertising comparison, The Devil At Four O’Clock is actually a vastly underrated romantic adventure filled with memorable performances, particularly by Tracy and Sinatra, as an alcoholic priest and cocky convict consigned to a lushly beautiful island soon to be consumed by volcanic ferocity.  Despite some obvious indoor sets substituting for mountainous trails, the film is often exciting, powerful, and exceedingly poignant.  Bernie Hamilton is a standout as a co-conspirator, struggling to break free of his shackles, while unexpectedly finding heroism in one final incomparable act of self-sacrifice, while Barbara Luna is sensually innocent and appealing as the blind girl who guides Sinatra’s own path to spiritual rebirth.  The film “scores” musically, as well, with the finest work of composer George (Picnic) Duning’s long career.  His original music for the picture is as profoundly haunting and beautiful as any of the film’s exotic locations.  Although historically overlooked, and often ignored by self-important film “critics,” The Devil At Four O’Clock is often thrilling, singularly moving, and powerfully dramatic and poignant in its tale of irrevocable disaster and spiritual redemption.

Sinatra’s own Essex Productions was responsible for the filming of his next film.  Directed by the venerable John Sturges, Sergeants 3 is a western remake of George Stevens’ 1939 RKO classic Gunga Din.  Released by United Artists in 1962, Sinatra saw this somewhat updated re-telling of the Rudyard Kipling classic adventure as the ideal vehicle for his Rat Pack pals.  Featuring Dean Martin in the role created earlier by Cary Grant, Peter Lawford in the Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. part, Sinatra essaying the Victor McLaglen role, and Sammy Davis, Jr. as Gunga Din, Sergeants 3 is an entertaining, comedic,  irresistibly irreverent take on a beloved film.  Sinatra performs most of his own, often dangerous stunt work in the picture.  Out of release and distribution for some four decades, the film is largely remembered today as the second and final Rat Pack motion picture.  While the later Warner Bros. production of Robin And The Seven Hoods is often erroneously looked upon as a genuine Rat Pack picture, its pairing of Sinatra, Martin, and Davis excludes both Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop.  Only Ocean’s Eleven and Sergeants 3 two years later includes all five of the original Sinatra Rat Pack members in its ensemble cast.

Sinatra’s next performance and film would be remembered as, perhaps, the finest work of his sizeable career.  Richard Condon’s controversial political thriller The Manchurian Candidate was a favorite novel of President John F. Kennedy, and Sinatra was eager to purchase the rights to the book.  United Artists was intimidated by its theme of attempted presidential assassination, and wary of financing or releasing the picture.  When President Kennedy reached out to the studio, at Sinatra’s personal request, indicating that he would love to see the film produced, United Artists relented and allowed the film to be made.  Released in 1962, with superlative direction by John Frankenheimer, a riveting, brilliant, and convoluted screenplay by George Axelrod, superbly valiant performances by Lawrence Harvey, Frank Sinatra, Angela Lansbury, and Janet Leigh, as well as a stunning musical score by composer David Amram, The Manchurian Candidate took the country by storm.  Its shocking, often mesmerizing story of brain washing and robotic homicide during and following the Korean War, became the most fervently discussed and admired motion picture of the decade.  Frankenheimer’s documentary style direction gave the film a brutally realistic look, delivering its controversial themes with ever more immediacy than might have been provided by a traditional, studio bound production. 

Filmed on locations throughout New York City, the picture seems often horrifyingly real and frightening in its depiction of chemically induced paranoia and ultimate societal madness. Harvey’s performance as Raymond Shaw is the most compelling and poignant of his illustrious career, while Angela Lansbury as his morally bereft mother delivers, possibly, the most evil interpretation of motherhood ever committed to film. James Gregory is all too sadly believable as John Iselin, an intellectually bereft, reprehensible Senator based largely upon the real life proclivities of Senator Joseph McCarthy who, like the fictional John Iselin, sells his soul, as well as the reputations of numerous innocent victims of his fictitious witch hunt for communists, in order to further his own purely personal political ambitions and aspirations.  After the real life assassination of President Kennedy, the film’s single greatest champion, on November 22nd, 1963, The Manchurian Candidate disappeared for decades, reportedly due to the remorse of Sinatra who felt somehow complicit in the murder of his president and friend. When the film re-emerged from exile in the early 1990s, it was both hailed and critically acclaimed as a lost masterpiece.  A mediocre, ill-conceived and incoherent remake starring the otherwise gifted Denzel Washington has not diminished the reputation or reverence deservedly afforded the original production.

Paramount Pictures released Sinatra’s next film in 1963.  Based upon Neil Simon’s first Broadway play, which premiered in 1961 in New York with Hal March in the lead, Come Blow Your Horn is a Jewish coming of age comedy in which a restless young man yearns to leave his ever suffocating, traditional ethnic nest, create his own bachelor apartment, and emulate his swinging older brother.  Sinatra plays Alan Baker, the wayward roguish son of traditional, old world parents, who lives the high life while lecherously chasing after numerous models and aspiring actresses from his decadently lavish pad.  His younger brother, Buddy (Tony Bill), sees only the glitzy romance of youthful bachelorhood, and decides to move in with Alan. Come Blow Your Horn, directed and scripted by Norman Lear (All In The Family), is a sparkling, often hilarious comedy gem marred in its ensuing years by changing times, revisionist interpretation, and politically correct criticisms having little or nothing to do with the trendy times in which it was first produced.  The supporting cast is wonderfully befuddled with Molly Picon and Lee J. Cobb as quintessential Jewish parents charmingly out of touch with The Age of Aquarius, while Barbara Rush as Sinatra’s love interest, Connie, is radiantly beautiful in her “good girl” performance.  Logic, admittedly, has been tossed out of the window here with audiences blindly accepting Sinatra as a Jewish Romeo but, with Molly Picon and Lee J. Cobb as his parents, he’d hardly be playing to his Italian heritage.  Cobb and Sinatra became friends some years earlier when the older actor was stricken with a heart attack, and Sinatra paid all of his hospital bills, putting him up at his house while Cobb convalesced. Despite some dated dialogue, the film remains frequently delightful and, even by today’s moralistic standards, a joy to watch.  Its musical highlight is Sinatra introducing his baby brother to the world of exclusive clothing lines while reaching astonishing high notes singing the title tune by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen in the frenetic mean streets of New York.  

Four For Texas, directed by Robert Aldrich and released by Warner Bros. in 1964 featured Sinatra with pal Dean Martin in a strictly by the numbers western with forced humor and utterly routine costume melodrama.  Co-starring Charles Bronson as a gun slinging thug, along with Anita Ekberg and Ursula Andress as a mismatched pair of tough, overly masculine femme fatales, the unappealing western seems more like left over scripting than anything remotely original or inspired.  The film appeared tired when it opened, and has not worn well with the passage of years.

His next film for Warner Bros. would prove far more elaborate and creatively ambitious.  Robin And The Seven Hoods, released in 1964, was a clever take on the legend of Robin Hood, updated to reflect Chicago’s gang wars of the 1930s. Directed by Gordon Douglas with a screenplay by David R. Schwartz, the original satire provided audiences with a big jolt of electrical star power, often amusing situations and comedic writing, bombastic performances by stars Sinatra, Dean Martin, Bing Crosby and, particularly, the enormously gifted Sammy Davis, Jr. in a delightfully over the top, quasi Jerry Lewis performance, as well as a completely new song score written for the film by the incomparable team of Sammy  Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen.  Peter Falk, however, very nearly steals the show as Sinatra’s hoodlum rival, Guy Gisborne.  Falk mugs delightfully, and evidently delighted, for the camera in an often hilarious performance as a nefarious hood from the wrong side of the “hood.”  Sammy Davis Jr. scores mightily with his wonderfully choreographed song and danced homage to his machine gun (“Bang Bang”), while Sinatra sublimely introduces what would soon become one of his most identifiable signature tunes, “My Kind Of Town,” on the steps of a bustling Chicago court house.  This would be the last attempted film reunion of The Rat Pack (or “The Clan,” as it was alternately known) in that it featured three of the original five members (only the sadly disenfranchised Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop were absent from the ensemble), and was billed essentially as a Rat Pack movie.  Although Lawford and Sinatra would never speak again, due to a personal falling out over Lawford’s brother in law (President Kennedy) snubbing Sinatra’s elaborate invitation to stay at his pad, a final tragic irony would forever haunt the making of the film.  It was during the funeral scene for “Big Jim” (Edward G. Robinson) that Sinatra and the cast received word that former pal, John F. Kennedy, had been assassinated in Dallas.

Warner Bros. would release Sinatra’s next film, as well.  None But The Brave, released by the studio in 1965, introduced Sinatra as a first time director, as well as co-star in a subordinate role to Clint Walker, in a surprisingly thoughtful anti-war drama in which both American and Japanese soldiers find an uneasy truce while stranded on a small Pacific island during the Second World War.  Based upon a story by Kikumaru Okuda, with a corresponding screenplay by John Twist and Katsuya Susaki, None But The Brave provides Sinatra with an ultimately selfless opportunity to sublimate himself in favor of Walker’s starring performance, while offering his quietly dignified direction and morality play as the true stars of the film.  The final outcome of the story, though not unexpected, remains sadly haunting and poignant, and is profoundly underscored by the beautifully poetic music of composer John Williams.  None But The Brave is largely forgotten today, but remains the first co-production between American and Japanese studios to be filmed in The United States, as it was lensed on Kauai Island in Hawaii.  Subtle, rather than flashy…thoughtful, rather than bombastic, None But The Brave survives as a noble cinematic document portraying the madness of war.

Another war film, albeit far more successful at the box office, followed the tropical solitude of None But The Brave.  Released by 20th Century Fox the same year, Von Ryan’s Express would provide Frank Sinatra with another of his most memorable roles, that of Colonel Joseph L. Ryan, captured in Italy in 1943, and thrown into a crowded prisoner of war camp run by a sadistic fascist commandant.  Ryan’s conciliatory exchanges with their captors earns him the name “Von Ryan,” considered a collaborator rather than a patriot, until a daring escape through German enemy lines reveals the colonel to be far more courageous than previously imagined.  A thrilling train chase through the Italian Alps toward the Swiss Border provides the climactic highlight of the film.  Directed by Mark Robson, with panoramic Cinemascope photography by William H. Daniels, special effects by L.B. Abbott, and a stirring musical score by composer Jerry Goldsmith, Von Ryan’s  Express would provide Sinatra with one of his most charismatic performances, as well as one of his biggest hits.  His death scene, occurring ironically just when victory appears certain, while Nazi soldiers desperately attempt to prevent a final escape, is as memorable and poignant a finale as any in film history.

Physically exhausted upon the completion of Von Ryan’s Express in Italy, Sinatra’s next project appears equally tired, an awkward attempt to catch his creative breath.  Marriage On The Rocks, released by Warner Bros. in 1965, is an utterly humorless comedy with simplistically bland “sit com” aspirations that never rises beyond its dreary plot devices.  Utterly predictable, and predictably boring, this unimaginative look at a crumbling marriage features Sinatra, unbelievably cast as a lifeless spouse whose wife, played by Deborah Kerr, looks for greener pastures and a more exciting mate.  Pal Dean Martin plays his playboy bachelor friend who tries to teach Sinatra how to be a swinger.  Directed by Jack Donohue, Marriage On The Rocks lectures and preaches with a sledge hammer, and is among the most forgettable of Sinatra’s screen appearances.  Not even a “laugh track” would have saved this laughably inarticulate attempt at farce.

Sinatra fared far better, and somewhat more credibly, in his next starring venture for Paramount Pictures.  Relatively comfortable and at home in another caper film, the singer and pals conspire to “stick up” The Queen Mary while at sea in Assault On A Queen, released by the studio in 1966.  Lacking the charm, humor, clever scripting and sophistication of his earlier Ocean’s Eleven, this Jack Donohue directed thriller was infinitely more user friendly and comfortable for Sinatra than his earlier, Donohue helmed “romantic comedy.”  Based upon a novel by writer Jack Finney (“The Body Snatchers”) and a screenplay by Rod Serling (“The Twilight Zone”), Assault On A Queen is a reasonably well defined heist flick that offers a degree of suspense, along with attractive performances from Sinatra, Virni Lisi and, particularly, Tony Franciosa as an overly greedy provocateur whose nervous unprofessionalism ultimately sabotages the not so well oiled machinery.  Duke Ellington’s edgy jazz score gives the picture a quirky lift, adding to the necessary tension of the story.  While not a great or memorable film, Assault On A Queen is, nonetheless, a pleasant escapist diversion.

The Naked Runner, released by Warner Bros. in 1967, is a ponderous, slow moving spy thriller filmed in Europe, featuring a largely European cast that somehow feels out of kilter with Sinatra’s decidedly American persona.  Unimaginatively directed by Sidney J. Furie, The Naked Runner never seems to come to life or find a voice of its own.  Sinatra plays Sam Laker, an American businessman residing in London with his fourteen-year-old son.  A wartime marksman, Laker is contacted by British Intelligence, and asked to assassinate a double agent who has defected to the communists.  When Laker refuses the assignment, his little boy is kidnapped and held for ransom until the killing has been accomplished.  Sinatra appears uncomfortable both in the role, and in his surroundings, while Furie’s uninspired direction and an often lethargic cast of performers do little to enhance the dullness of an ultimately shabby, unpleasant story.  As a cold war thriller, the picture fails miserably and has all but been forgotten, lost in the shadow of far more memorable thrillers such as The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.  Perhaps the single memorable element to emerge from this turgid melodrama was its theme song, “You Are There” with music and lyrics by Harry Sukman and Paul Francis Webster, which Sinatra recorded with modest success at the time of the picture’s release.

20th Century Fox released the first of two relatively popular Sinatra hits in 1967.  Tony Rome began a brief new franchise about a hip Miami private detective whose arsenal of accoutrements included his own boat (“The Straight Pass”), a ready supply of booze, and an even readier supply of women.  Hard-bitten, cynical, and world weary, Rome is a classic private investigator in the mold of Humphrey Bogart, and authors Raymond Chandler, and Dashiell Hammett.  As directed by Gordon Douglas, he is a gritty no-nonsense sleuth delving into the sleazier sides of the Miami strip.  Joined by old pal Richard Conte as local cop, Lieutenant Santini, Sinatra is very much in his element as a swinging private eye aided and abetted by bikini draped women (Jill St. John), rich, pouting young girls (Sue Lyon), and a predatory stepmother (Gena Rowlands).  Punctuated by Lee Hazlewood’s sultry title tune, provocatively sung by daughter Nancy Sinatra for the soundtrack, Tony Rome is a solid, if cliché ridden, look at the often sordid world of private eyes and their similarly assorted, well oiled “dames.”

The following year would welcome the release of, perhaps, the final major film of Sinatra’s career.  Directed once more by Gordon Douglas, released by 20th Century Fox in 1968, and based upon the bestselling novel by Roderick Thorp, The Detective concerns a career minded police officer investigating the brutal murder and gruesomely sensational, sexual mutilation of a prominent gay man.  Sinatra’s Joe Leland is an intensely honest police detective whose crime solving skills have made him the best homicide cop on the force.  Desirous of promotion, Leland is pressured by his superiors and by City Hall to crack the case quickly or see his promotion given to another.  When Felix Tesla (Tony Musante) is suspected of the killing and subsequently arrested, Leland uncomfortably coerces a confession out of the obviously disturbed felon, thereby sending him to the electric chair for the crime.  Joe then receives his needed acclaim for cracking the case so quickly.  When the apparent suicide of a respected businessman, Colin MacIver (William Windom), occurs sometime later, his widow, Norma (Jacqueline Bisset), comes to Leland with the proposition that her husband could not have taken his own life, and that his death was enabled by politically motivated circumstances more sinister and entrenched than initially imagined.  Leland’s life is further complicated by an alcoholic, nymphomaniac wife (Lee Remick), and the possibility that his psychologically manipulated confession from Tesla was responsible for electrocuting the wrong man.  With an outstanding supporting cast of players, including Remick, Bisset, Windom, Ralph Meeker, Horace McMahon, Lloyd Bochner, Jack Klugman, and Robert Duvall, The Detective benefits from a strong, mature performance by Sinatra as the veteran police detective conflicted by his personal integrity and honor, and by the departmental pressure to score just one last big arrest in order to insure his future and security on the force.  Accompanied by composer Jerry Goldsmith’s haunting, melancholy jazz score, The Detective provided a significant box office hit for both Sinatra and his studio.  Mia Farrow, then the third Mrs. Sinatra, had been set to play the part of Norma MacIver in the film, alongside her husband, but when the high-powered couple separated after Farrow’s insistence on starring in Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby for Paramount, the relatively unknown Jacqueline Bisset was signed for the coveted role.

Following on the heels of Joe Leland, Sinatra decided to hang out his investigator for hire sign once again, starring in the glossy sequel to Tony Rome.  Lady In Cement, directed once again for 20th Century Fox by Gordon Douglas, essentially completed the “detective” trilogy, pairing the actor and director for the third consecutive time in two short years.  More entertaining, perhaps, than its gritty, deadly serious predecessor, the second and final film in the brief Tony Rome series finds the flip gumshoe discovering the nude, dead body of a shapely young blonde adorning the bottom of the local waters where he has been scuba diving.  Her feet encased in a thick block of cement, thereby “sealing” her fate, the young woman’s murder sets Tony off on his latest case and, in the process, encountering a bikini draped Raquel Welch as his soon to be love interest, along with Richard Conte as Lieutenant Santini, and an overly imposing ex-con named Earl Gronsky (Dan Blocker) who, like Moose Malloy in the earlier Murder My Sweet, hires Rome to find out who murdered his own reincarnated version of “Velma.”  Though innocuous, Lady In Cement remains a joyful guilty pleasure.

Dirty Dingus Magee, released by MGM in 1970 will ever stand as the worst career decision of Frank Sinatra’s otherwise brilliant film career.  With a screenplay inexplicably crafted by, among others, Joseph Heller (Catch-22), and directed by Burt Kennedy, this atrociously unfunny western “comedy” unimaginably stars Sinatra as a hopelessly simple minded “boob,” an incompetent crook whose artless thievery places his uninspired freedom in jeopardy.  Sinatra, the virtual epitome of style, class, and sophistication, is cast as a half-witted hick whose unappealing stupidity keeps him barely one step ahead of the law, and in the beds of equally simple minded whores and witless young ladies of questionable intelligence.  This utterly tasteless, supposed “spoof” stands as a horrid testament to one of the most heinously wrong casting decisions in film history, and to a film whose original “negative” elements are hopefully corrupting more aggressively than the corroded production decisions that sired its production in the first place.    

Stung, perhaps, by critical derision and mediocre box office receipts for Dirty Dingus Magee, Sinatra would not return to the screen for seven years and, when he did, it would be for a medium that he had more control over…television.  Contract On Cherry Street was one of the most highly promoted and anticipated events of the late 1977 tv season.  Produced for NBC Television, the motion picture aired over two nights, beginning on November 19th, 1977.  Directed for television by William S. Graham, with a teleplay by critically acclaimed screen writer Edward Anhalt, and original music by Jerry Goldsmith, Contract On Cherry Street was vintage Sinatra.  Produced by Sinatra’s own production company, Artanis (Sinatra spelled backward, and the name he used when painting), the actor played Frank Hovannes, a tough New York cop battling the mob and local thugs whose eventual undoing is unwittingly determined by one of his own men, a rogue cop bent on his own brand of street vigilantism. Co-starring Martin Balsam, Harry Guardino, and Martin Gabel, Contract On Cherry Street knocked it out of the park for Sinatra.  His performance as a scarred veteran of the police force was tough, unflinchingly honest, and utterly mesmerizing.  The book by Phillip Rosenberg, upon which the mini-series was based, was said to be a favorite of the actor’s late mother, and so he took pains to deliver a carefully textured and gritty performance.  Location shooting on the streets of New York and New Jersey added a sense of urgency and realism to this often compelling and exciting movie for the deceptively “small” screen upon which it premiered. 

Three years later, Sinatra returned to theatrical screens for one more outing.  The First Deadly Sin (Filmways,1980), directed by Brian G. Hutton, was a slow, depressing tale of a police officer struggling with a series of grizzly unsolved murders, while caring for his cancer-ridden wife, hospitalized without hope of survival.  The film had originally been intended as a vehicle for director Roman Polanski but, when Polanski fled the country after accusations of raping an underaged young girl, the directing chores were regretfully re-assigned.  Had Polanski remained and directed the film, the end results might, perhaps, have been more interesting.  With a fine, mature cast that included Fay Dunaway as Edward Delaney’s (Sinatra) wife, James Whitmore, Martin Gabel in his final performance, and a walk on by an uncredited young actor named Bruce Willis, The First Deadly Sin contains deeply melancholy performances by both Sinatra and Dunaway that caress one’s heart strings.  The film, however, fails to ignite its pivotal story, ultimately degenerating into successively brooding, dark interludes that leave its target audience deflated and depressed.  Sinatra is particularly touching in his portrayal of a weary soul watching his minimal world crumbling before him.  Sadly, the film failed to reach an audience and passed mercifully into memory.

While it initially appeared that his role as a grieving cop would become his last screen performance, a seemingly improbable invitation would lead, some seven years later, to Sinatra’s actual dramatic swan song.  Tom Selleck was an enormous admirer of the legendary performer and Sinatra, in turn, was an admitted fan of Selleck’s hit CBS television series, Magnum P.I.  Sinatra openly declared that if the producers of the series ever found a suitable role for him, he’d seriously consider acting on the series.  On February 25th, 1987, an episode of Magnum entitled “Laura” debuted on the network.  A tough New York police officer has announced his retirement from the department.  On the night of his retirement dinner, an innocent little girl in a large apartment building is raped and murdered by a savage, predatory pedophile.  Michael Doheny (Sinatra), now retired but working as a private investigator, is haunted by the case and actively devoting his time to pursuing a suspect now living in Hawaii.  His abrasive methods run afoul of Magnum, causing conflict in an uneasy relationship between the two investigators, until the alleged murderer is finally confronted and accidentally killed in a fall off of a roof, and it is ultimately revealed that Doheny…was the child’s loving grandfather. Sinatra’s performance is quite touching, while his grieving over the loss of his beloved granddaughter is genuinely poignant, and heartbreakingly moving.  After garnering positive critical and audience approval, there was some discussion of the actor returning to the series for yet another episode during the following season.  Time and availability would eventually erase the possibility of a return to the series, however, but…for one brief shining moment in the sun…Frank Sinatra had once more touched the stars, and risen beyond the clouds to create magic yet again…for one enduring, final moment.

Over the years, Frank Sinatra’s legend has grown with justifiable admiration and respect.  His film career, as it must for everyone who has lived a full, rich life, hasn’t always yielded desired results, however.  There have been highs and lows. Prominent among miscalculations in his fabled career was the decision to abandon his starring role opposite Shirley Jones in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s big screen version of Carousel (1956).  Sinatra had been signed to play the coveted starring role of Billy Bigelow in the highly anticipated, big screen production.  He had recorded some of the songs for the soundtrack and flown to the location to begin work on the film.  As technology had not yet progressed to the point where a film need be “shot” only once, and then modified as needed in the lab, Carousel (as had been Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma the year before) was scheduled to be filmed twice, concurrently, for traditional 35 millimeter projection, and for larger “roadshow” presentations.  When Sinatra learned of the shooting schedule he balked, stating that he was only being paid for one film…not for two.  Consequently, he left the production, allowing Gordon MacRae to be called in at the last moment to replace him.  MacRae had performed similar chores during his earlier duties with Shirley Jones in Oklahoma (1955).  While MacRae performed with vocal mastery in the part, his dramatic abilities could never have equaled those of Sinatra’s, and Frank’s loss would forever be felt by cast and crew alike.  Shirley Jones, though friendly with her two time co-star, felt the loss acutely, and has wondered both wistfully, and publically, what the picture might have been had Sinatra remained in the lead.  Their vocal pairing in a duet of “If I Loved You” on ABC’s Frank Sinatra Show in the late 1950s, offered a tantalizing hint of what the film might have been had he stayed.   A planned pairing of Sinatra with Barbra Streisand in MGM’s big budgeted film project, Say It With Music, in the late 1960s, promised a similarly tantalizing marriage of two major musical stars but it, too, failed to rise from the ashes of dreamlike inspiration.  

Sinatra’s numerous film appearances included all star cameos in such films as Around The World In Eighty Days, Pepe, Cannonball Run, The List Of Adrian Messenger, The Road To Hong Kong (the last Crosby/Hope “Road To” picture), as well as an extended cameo in Cast A Giant Shadow with Kirk Douglas.  Among the more bizarre suggested appearances in his extensive filmography were a failed feature length animated version of Finian’s Rainbow for which a preliminary soundtrack had been recorded but, ultimately, never filmed and offers to star as James Bond (before Sean Connery) and Dirty Harry, prior to the eventual casting of Clint Eastwood in what turned out to be a dramatically altered interpretation and script.  There were also films in which Sinatra’s voice was recorded, but not his physical persona.  His voice can be heard crooning “Heart Of Mine” (by Bronislau Kaper) on a juke box for the gay bar sequence in Advise And Consent.  He even recorded a powerful title track for a tune written for, but never used, in Otto Preminger’s The Man With The Golden Arm.  The song, recorded by Sinatra for the trailer, and composed for the film by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, was left out of the finished film due to the sensitivity of its provocative subject matter.

One cannot mention the Sinatra movie songs, of course, without discussing his lush Oscar-winning title track for Three Coins In The Fountain, the 1954, 20th Century Fox film of the same name whose memorable theme was written by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn. However, the most stunning use of his off camera vocal brilliance was an unforgettable sequence from Carl Foreman’s The Victors, a memorable, if largely forgotten anti-war film, in which Sinatra’s specially commissioned recording of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” is played over army loud speakers in a bitter, snow covered military camp, as a sobbing and frightened young soldier is led to his demise at the hands of a firing squad for deserting his combat unit during war time.  Finally, in what must be considered an historic, definitive four-hour documentary for HBO, Alex Gibney’s two-part examination of the life and legend of Sinatra, All Or Nothing At All, premiered over two successive evenings during Easter weekend, 2015.

Frank Sinatra has been idol, my hero, my role model, and my inspiration for fifty-five years.  I fell in love, both with “The Man and His Music,” in the Fall of 1960 when I was just fourteen years old.  Now, in “September of My Years,” at the not so “tender trap” of sixty-nine years of age, my passion for his artistry and life is unabated.  I have reached out to him at various stages of my life and his, and he has often responded. 

When I fell ill to the ravages of hepatitis, and disregarded my health and the warnings of my doctor in order to see his live Philadelphia concert in 1974, a friend remarked that my jaundiced eyes had resulted in a classic confrontation between Ol’ Blue eyes and “Ol’ Yellow Eyes.”  When I wrote Sinatra of the comparison, he was kind enough to respond with a joyful, yet caring note.  When I wrote him once more of my support during his legal battles with the Nevada gaming commission, he wrote a powerful and passionate letter of gratitude.  It was in March, 1976, that I finally got to meet him backstage at the old Latin Casino in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.  It was, for me, one of life’s defining moments.  He put his arm around me for one magic filled, unforgettable moment, and smiled that incomparable smile.


Slideshow: Sinatra-signed letters to Steve, photos, and records.


Singer, actor, artist, director, conductor, philanthropist, civil rights champion, humanitarian…He did it all, and he did it His Way.  Some years ago, back in 1993, I wrote a poetic tribute to his artistry entitled, quite simply, SINATRA.  While both Frank and his lovely wife, Barbara, expressed their appreciation for the piece, I was never entirely happy with what I’d written.  I struggled with the ending, not knowing quite how to finish it.  I couldn’t bring myself to accept the stark inevitability of his advancing age and mortality.  I vowed one day to return to my work, however, and finish it properly.  On the tenth anniversary of his passing (May 14th, 1998), I revisited my efforts and addressed at last the solemnity of what (along with the passing of my father) would remain one of the most pain filled days of my life.  During this year of tribute, and remembrance of the centenary of his birth, here is my revised poetic tribute to Francis Albert Sinatra, the most influential, beloved entertainer of the Twentieth Century, and one of the most profoundly significant influences in my life…

++ Steve Vertlieb   April, 2015

Frank Sinatra and Steve Vertlieb

                                                      SINATRA

                  He walked in solitude, traveling that lonesome road
                  a lean and hungry young man brawling his way
                  through back alley scrapes and clubs to the legendary street of dreams
                  bringing with him an eloquence, integrity, and unremitting individualism
                  unparalleled in American music

                  When he sang, he echoed the infinite yearning of lonely souls
                   a brooding, timeless homage to the music of the night

                   He was the premiere romantic voice of our time
                   sweet, tinged with a hint of bitterness
                   a world weary longing for love
                   and an impassioned understanding of the heartache of despair

                   Through evolving tastes and times, he managed to survive
                   and though scars remained, he emerged more potent than ever before

                   He had witnessed and endured a nation in pain
                   yet, through his eyes
                   we basked in reflected wisdom

                   Intensely loyal, he revered those friends who had remained by his side
                   and abhorred those who had callously deserted him
                   while, through it all, a burning new intensity inspired his music
                   enraptured in smoldering sensuality

                   Alone in the burning spotlight, vulnerable
                   bathed in swirling mists of vaporous cigarette smoke
                   he stripped bare our emotions
                   singing his velvet vocals with searing honesty
                   a private anguish expressed in exquisite phrasing
                   as his consummate artistry lit the stage

                   When he snapped his fingers, we came of age
                    and we’d joyfully cling
                    to his Ring-A-Ding-Ding
                    as the world we knew matured

                    Tough, eloquent, sophisticated
                    he was the hippest of the hip
                    perched atop a wondrous rainbow
                    dangling the world on a string

                    An integral component of the rich fabric of our lives
                    his songs pulsated forever under our skin
                    a primal rhythm, throbbing beneath the mannered pretense of society

                    From September of his years, and on into Winter
                    he continued to thrill, caress, and excite our hearts
                    magically transforming verse into poetry
                    for he was the essence of life, love and aspiration

                    And when his own days had at last been spent
                    he put his dreams away for still another day
                    living on in our collective consciousness
                    sublimely young at heart, vibrant and eternal
                    through a timeless portal to the music of his soul.

                                                                  …Steve Vertlieb   05/14/2008                                           


SINATRA: THE MUSIC OF THE NIGHT

While the thrust of this remembrance has focused largely on the somewhat checkered film career of Francis Albert Sinatra, it must be affectionately remembered that his lasting, eternal, and most significant contribution to the popular culture will forever be his legacy as a singer, an interpreter of music and lyrics and it is for that, particularly, that he will be remembered as the most enduring voice of the Twentieth Century. 

Sinatra’s recording career began in earnest in 1939 with the Harry James Orchestra.  He is justifiably credited with having invented the “concept” album in the early to late 1950s in his Capitol collaborations with brilliant arranger/conductor/composer Nelson Riddle.  Their association for Capitol Records, beginning in 1954 with Songs For Young Lovers (preserved by The National Registry as one of music’s most priceless recordings) contributed substantially to the success of long-playing records, and revolutionized the recording industry. Sinatra’s vibrant performance of “I Get A Kick Out Of You” sets the powerful stage for the return of music’s most gifted popular vocalist, while his finger popping rendition of “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” showcases the singer like he had never been experienced before.  “A Foggy Day In London Town” quickly became a staple of the singer’s repertoire, while the glorious sadness artfully conveyed by his definitive interpretation of “My Funny Valentine” is delivered here by a master musical poet.  The delectable mood of this first Capitol recording  is further exemplified by the singer’s eloquent delivery of the now classic “Violets For Your Furs.”

Life, its scars, disappointments and rejection enabled  Sinatra’s impeccable phrasing, deeply passionate, and acutely sensitive vocal performances, and these sublime recordings have cannily stood the test of time, remaining as fresh today as when they were first recorded more than sixty years ago.  He was a tantalizing troubadour on a provocative long day’s journey into sacred night, mining the deepest loneliness and darkest despair of our collective souls and defining consciousness.

Frank Sinatra sang for countless albums during his recording lifetime.  However, his richest treasure trove of priceless recordings would seem to have been produced during the period of artistic comeback, following the release of From Here To Eternity, during his early association with Nelson Riddle at Capitol Records. 

While a listing of supposedly “Best” recordings would, at this juncture, be entirely subjective, and dictated by the tastes of those compiling such a quietly personal list, common critical consensus will play a stalwart role in any such determination. As much as I love and respect his early work for Columbia Records with Tommy Dorsey and arranger Axel Stordahl, it is with the collaboration between Sinatra and Nelson Riddle that vocal artistry truly came of age.  No one could jolt an audience out of its lethargy as definitively and electrically as Sinatra in his prime.  His swinging stylizations and charts (he methodically chose his own song stylings and selections) continue to infuse and energize the most sophisticated listeners with exhilarating enthusiasm, while his rapturous ballads and torched performances effortlessly transform the most cynical of audiences with their poignant, poetic beauty.  The startling, yearning honesty of each performance quite literally bleeds from the singer’s microphone onto recorded vinyl in world weary sadness, resignation, and emotional defeat.

Their second collaboration for the label, Swing Easy, recorded in 1954, produced more Sinatra classics, including “Just One Of Those Things,” “Taking A Chance On Love,” and the venerable “All Of Me.”  Capitol’s teaming of Sinatra with Riddle was both catching and breathing creative fire, and this new album added considerable fuel to the flame.

In 1955 the team introduced a quintessential recording of gut wrenching proportion, and featured some of their most identifiable signature tracks.  In The Wee Small Hours was an unbearably melancholy collection, featuring some of the singer’s most soul searing recordings.  These included “In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning,” “I See Your Face Before Me,” “It Never Entered My Mind,” “Deep In A Dream,” and probably the two most meaningful Sinatra vocalizations of my life…the unimaginably painful “When Your Lover Has Gone,” and every delusional loser’s terminal lament…”I Get Along Without You Very Well.” 

This Is Sinatra, released in 1956, was a superb collection of “singles” never before afforded the honor of assemblage on a single album…And what an album.  This amazing LP gathered together under one roof the best of the best, and included “I’ve Got The World On A String,” “Three Coins In The Fountain,” “Love And Marriage,” “From Here To Eternity,” “The Gal That Got Away” (from A Star Is Born), “Rain…Falling From The Skies,” “My One And Only Love,” and “Learnin’ The Blues.”

In 1956 the team of Sinatra and Riddle released one of their most successful compilations of up tempo recordings designed for hip young lovers.  Songs For Swingin’ Lovers became one of their most highly regarded, best selling LP’s.  Featuring such pulsating Sinatra standards as “You Make Me Feel So Young,” “Too Marvelous For Words,” “Anything Goes,” and the Sinatra classic “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” their latest album was a winner by any stretch of critical interpretation and imagination. However, it was during the following year, in 1957, that the duo produced, recorded, and released their definitive finger snapping classic, A Swingin’ Affair.  This astonishingly high powered recording lit turntables on fire with its remarkable recordings of “I Wish I Were In Love Again,” “Stars Fell On Alabama,” “I Won’t Dance,” “The Lonesome Road,” “You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To,” “From This Moment On”, and the incomparably produced, arranged, and performed “Night And Day,” arguably the most fundamentally perfect of all of Frank Sinatra’s thousands of recordings.

Where Are You, released in 1957 by Capitol, pairing Sinatra with his second major collaborator of the period, Gordon Jenkins, is born of the same emotionally naked creativity and inspiration.  Intensely personal, with haunting torch songs that included the title track, “Where Are You,” “I Cover The Waterfront,” the unforgettable “Maybe You’ll Be There,” “Laura” (composer David Raksin’s favorite vocal performance of his tune), “Autumn Leaves,” and “I’m A Fool To Want You,” a melancholy version of a song he’d originally recorded some years earlier when first devastated by his calamitous affair with Ava Gardner. Between 1956 and 1957, however, Sinatra’s voice had decidedly deepened, revealing a hitherto unexpected maturity and world-weary surrender.  Some of the sweetness of his earlier years had now been replaced by a softening of his vocal chords, and he expressed legitimate concern that listeners might not be comfortable with the dramatic change in both the tenor and texture of his voice.  He needn’t have worried.  His audience was, after all, aging along with him.

For the 1957 recording season, Sinatra and Riddle returned to basics with a small ensemble presentation, Close To You.  Performed with The Hollywood String Quartet, this collection of smoldering ballads included the title track “Close To You,” “Everything Happens To Me,” “I Couldn’t Sleep A Wink Last Night,” “Blame It On My Youth,” “Love Locked Out,” and the poignant “P.S. I Love You,” a mournful contemplation of life without his now separated wife.

Come Fly With Me, released in 1958 by Capitol, paired Sinatra with composer/conductor Billy May for their landmark recording of “a little traveling music.”  With tunes covering destinations around the globe, listeners were treated to sumptuous up and slow tempo treatments of Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen’s title track “Come Fly With Me,” “Moonlight In Vermont,” the haunting “Autumn In New York” (among my favorite Sinatra recordings), “April In Paris,” “Blue Hawaii,” and the torch lit “London By Night.”  This brilliant concept album remains one of Sinatra’s most enduring and popular sets, while the title track will ever be identified with one singer alone.

1958 saw the release of what must be considered the finest recorded album of Sinatra’s life and career.  Only The Lonely, recorded by Sinatra with arranger/conductor/composer Nelson Riddle is the creative panacea for both artists, a remarkable collaborative effort which produced many of the most searing, poignant tunes ever recorded, and is the definitive highlight product summing up both men’s careers.  It is a landmark album from any standpoint and is easily my personal favorite of all of Sinatra’s hundreds of albums. The startling, yearning honesty of each performance quite literally bleeds from the singer’s microphone onto the vinyl in world weary sadness, resignation, and emotional defeat.  Every performance, every song, sounds as though it had never been sung before, and should never be sung by anyone else again.  Each song is reborn in his recorded imagery.  Selections include “Only The Lonely.” “Angel Eyes,” “What’s New,” “Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out To Dry,” “Spring Is Here,” and “One For My Baby,” in which the artist musically descends into alcoholic retreat, oblivion, and spiritual redemption.  If ever a pop vocal recording could be considered a masterpiece, this is the one.  Frank Sinatra, Jr., a brilliant musicologist and chronicler of his father’s recordings, famously remarked that this album should never be listened to without a doctor’s prescription.  It is the masterpiece of the Sinatra, Riddle collaborative years.

Sinatra and Billy May joined forces once again in 1959 for their multi-honored, Grammy winning recording of Come Dance With Me.  Featuring Cahn and Van Heusen’s gem “Come Dance With Me” (“come on cutes…put on your Basie boots…and come dance with me”) “Something’s Gotta Give,” “Too Close For Comfort,” “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “Saturday Night Is The Loneliest Night Of The Week,” “Cheek To Cheek,” “The Song Is You,” and “Baubles, Bangles And Beads,” this highly respected, classic collection continues to receive generous airplay today, nearly six decades following its original release, and is still one of the hippest albums ever produced.

Sinatra returned to the studio once more in 1959 to record yet another definitively produced album of ballads and torch songs with Gordon Jenkins entitled No One Cares.  Featuring the Cahn and Van Heusen title track “When No One Cares,” along with such titles as the soul searing “Cottage For Sale,” “I Don’t Stand A Ghost Of A Chance With You,” “I’ll Never Smile Again,” and the eternally beautiful “Here’s That Rainy Day,” this latest recording of classic saloon songs established Sinatra once again as the premier balladeer of the last century.  His interpretations are startling in their degree of vocal honesty, pain, and nearly intoxicating vulnerability.  

Look To Your Heart, released by Capitol in 1959, is among the sweetest of Sinatra’s “singles” compilations.  His voice is in glorious shape as he croons such tender ballads as “Look To Your Heart,” “Not As A Stranger,” “Our Town,” “You My Love” (from Young At Heart), “Impatient Years,” “I could Have Told You,” the powerful “When I Stop Loving You,” as well as yet another Sinatra anthem…”I’m Gonna Live Till I Die.”

As the dawn of a new decade emerged, Sinatra and Nelson Riddle returned to the studio to record a relaxed, yet passionate album of ballads entitled Nice ‘N’ Easy released in 1960.  With another title track written especially for Sinatra by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, this new recording revealed a more mature singer, growing comfortable with his age, as well as the evolution of his romantic progression and emotional resignation.  Tracks for this memorable album included “Nice ‘N’ Easy,” “How Deep Is The Ocean,” “I’ve Got A Crush On You,” “She’s Funny That Way,” “Try A Little Tenderness,” and the rapturous “Embraceable You.”

Wishing to break out of what he perceived as an increasingly stagnating artistic box, Sinatra began his own recording company with the advent of Reprise Records.  The first album from his own label, Ring-A-Ding-Ding (1960) knocked it out of the proverbial ballpark.  This stunning new recording was electrifying in both acoustical sound, and revitalized performance.  Teaming for the first time with arranger Johnny Mandel, this newest album from the Sinatra stable included the astonishing title track “Ring-A-Ding-Ding” written especially for the album by old friends Cahn and Van Heusen, along with such explosively produced charts as “Let’s Fall In Love,” “Be Careful…It’s My Heart,” “A Foggy Day,” “A Fine Romance,” “In The Still Of The Night,” “The Coffee Song,” “Let’s Face The Music And Dance,” and “I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm.”  This began an amazing new chapter in Sinatra’s ever developing bag of goodies and surprises. 

The singer contractually returned to Capitol in 1961 to record the wildly enthusiastic Sinatra’s Swingin’ Session, a joyful, impossibly brash collection of up tempo standards that redefined the meaning of recording on the “fast track.”  Sinatra, together with Nelson Riddle were evidently consuming bucket loads of coffee during these sessions which included “When You’re Smiling,” “It All Depends On You,” “My Blue Heaven,” “I Concentrate On You,” “You Do Something To Me,” and “My Blue Heaven,” and all arranged to beat the band with their electrifying rhythms.

All Alone, released by Reprise in 1962, was among the label and singer’s most disappointingly received concept albums, and yet remains one of their most artistically brilliant.  Arranged and conducted by frequent collaborator Gordon Jenkins, this often remarkable collection of torch songs featured some of Sinatra’s most breathtakingly beautiful song stylings.  His eloquent performances throughout this astonishing album are among the most perfectly rendered poetic vocals of his career.  The tracks include the title tune “All Alone,” the haunting “Are You Lonesome Tonight,” “Oh, How I Miss You Tonight,” “The Girl Next Door,” and his heart searing rendition of Irving Berlin’s tribute to his late wife, “When I Lost You,” recorded on the day Sinatra’s dear friend Jack Benny had succumbed to Cancer.  One can hear the tragic sense of personal loss in the singer’s voice, and his performance remains unbearably grieving and sad.

Point Of No Return, Sinatra’s final recording for Capitol Records, was released in 1962.  Arranged and conducted by old friend Axel Stordahl, a veteran of the singer’s Columbia years with Dorsey, this poignant farewell to the label that re-established Sinatra’s legacy for all time is among his finest.  Featuring eloquent performances that would echo his recorded vocal mastery far beyond his own mortality, this wonderful finale included such unforgettable tracks as “When The World Was Young,” “September Song,” “There Will Never Be Another You,” “I’ll Be Seeing You,” and the sublimely haunting Sinatra standard “These Foolish Things…Remind Me Of You.” 

These remarkable recordings set the stage for Sinatra’s lasting, eternally complex and powerful imprint upon the popular American musical scene, establishing the singer as, perhaps, the most significant artistic voice of this or any other century.  While many of his later collaborative recordings would dramatically change our musical landscape in historic pairings with Count Basie and Antonio Carlos Jobim, among others, it was the ground breaking concept albums created at Capitol Records with Frank Sinatra, Nelson Riddle, Gordon Jenkins, and Billy May that would forever alter the musical tapestry of a generation.

++ Steve Vertlieb, April, 2015


Slideshow: News photos taken throughout Frank’s career


The JFK Assassination At 60: New Frontiers In Scientific, Medical, Legal And Historical Research

By Steve Vertlieb: My brother Erwin and I joined friends Howard Weitz and Gary Hoffman over the past several days in order to attend this fabulous once in a lifetime event.

The legacy of Camelot still resonates for historians and the public alike. On Nov. 15-17, 2023, experts gathered in Pittsburgh for Duquesne University’s JFK Assassination at 60 symposium.

“Former Secret Service Agent for President John F. Kennedy, Paul Landis, who recently made headlines around the world with new details about the 1963 assassination, was one of the featured speakers.

Speaking with Alec Baldwin, an actor and social activist who has garnered my personal admiration and respect over the years, at the JFK 60th anniversary symposium held at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, during opening night remarks on Wednesday evening, November 15th, 2023.

Rob Reiner speaks to the JFK assassination symposium via a zoom conference call.

Together with a truly courageous American hero, Paul Landis, at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh for the 60th JFK anniversary assemblage in Pittsburgh on November 16th. Paul is one of the two last living secret service agents riding with the presidential motorcade when the fatal shots rang out on November 22nd, 1963.

“Don’t Let It Be Forgot
That Once There Was A Spot
For One Brief Shining Moment
That Was Known As Camelot”