December 4 movie: The Joker is Wild. Frank Sinatra stars in a biopic of comedian Joe E. Lewis. Apparently Lewis was a singer who ran afoul of the Chicago mafia, and was the victim of a botched hit which left him alive but unable to sing. So he became a comic. Unfortunately I missed the first half hour, so by the time I came in Sinatra wasn't singing, and when he did he pretended his voice was ruined. He did sing "All the Way" near the end.
According to this movie, Joe E. Lewis's comedy was exactly like Frank Sinatra's comedy, except in the absence of Dean Martin, Sinatra had to do all the drunk jokes himself. Most of the movie, in fact, is about Lewis drinking himself to death and doing stand-up comedy. At the very end he has an epiphany and decides to clean up his act. IMDB says that the real Lewis lived 15 years after the movie was made, so I guess he did cut back on the drinking in real life.
I must say, I don't normally think that much of Sinatra's acting -- I mean I love his movies, but the acting isn't why you watch a Sinatra movie -- but he nailed it here. It's all about Sinatra, but there's also great supporting work by Mitzi Gaynor, Eddie Albert, Jeanne Crain and Jackie Coogan. Yes, that Jackie Coogan.
Post a comment