Frank Sinatra's Acting Career

Frank Sinatra was not just a amazingly talented singer.  He also had a great acting career.  Frank Sinatra made his first credited appearance in April 1943, in a movie singing " Night and Day" in Reveille With Beverly which was the launch of his acting career.  The next movie he appeared was Higher and Higher in which he played a minor role acting as himself.  which he followed up with another movie, Step Lively which was released in mid-year 1944 in which he played a larger role.  Anchors Aweigh, was the next movie Sinatra was in, which also starred Gene Kelly.  The movie was released in July 1945 and became the most successful movie in 1945.  He then appeared in other movie such as the MGM musical On the Town and The Kissing Bandit.  Sinatra received a special Oscar for his part in a short film The House I Live In (1946).  He also stared with Gene Kelly again in a movie called Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949).

Sinatra continued to act, now, appearing in more dramatic fare such as Meet Danny Wilson (1951), a vocal cord hemorrhage all but ended his career.His film work had nearly subsided athough in March 1952 he was featured in the drama Meet Danny Wilson which tested his acting skills on stage which gave him the opportunity to sing some of his greatest songs such as Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer's "That Old Black Magic," "I've Got a crush on You" by George and Ira Gershwin, and "How Deep Is the Ocean" by Irving Berlin.He fought back, winning the coveted role of Maggio in From Here to Eternity (1953). He won an Oscar for best supporting actor and followed this with a scintillating performance as a deranged assassin in Suddenly (1954) and arguably a career best performance and Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in the powerful drama The Man With the Golden Arm (1955).  Known as "One-Take Charlie" for his approach to acting that strove for spontaneity and energy, rather than perfection, he was an instinctive actor who was best at playing parts that mirrored his own personality.  He continued to give strong and memorable performances in such films as Guys and Dolls(one of my favorite movies ever) (1955), The Joker is Wild (1957) and Some Came Running (1958).  he was the Producer for the film A Hole in the Head (1959).  

He also produced Sergeants 3 (1963) and Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964) to the big screen.  He also had lighter roles with Rat Pack buddies Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr were lucrative, especially the famed Ocean's 11 (1960), however, Sinatra alternated such projects with more stern offerings, namely The Manchurian Candidate, arguably Sinatra's finest picture, and his directorial debut, None But the Brave, which was the first Japanese/American co-production. That same year Von Ryan's Express (1965) was a box office sensation.  In 1967 Sinatra returned to familiar territory in Sidney J. Furie's The Naked Runner (1967), one again playing as assassin in his only film to be shot in the U.K. and in Germany. That same year he starred as private investigator Tony Rome (1967), a role he reprised in the sequel, Lady in Cement (1968). He also starred with Lee Remick in The Detective (1968) a film daring for its time and a major box office success.  


In the 70's he appeared in the western comic Dirty Dingus Magee (1970).  For seven years Sinatra refrained from acting.  Then (1977) he produced the made-for-t.v movie Cherry Street.  Sinatra returned to the big screen in The First Deadly Sin (1980) once again playing a New York detective with a moving, understated performance that was a fitting coda to his career as a leading man. 


He made one more appearance on the big screen with a cameo in Cannonball Run II (1984) and a final acting performance in Magnum P.I. in 1987 as a retired detective seeking vengeance on the killers of his granddaughter in an episode entitled Laura. So in recap Frank Sinatra had a amazing Singing and Acting Career.