Saloon Singer

This is interesting for several reasons. First, it seems to be semi-biographical, presenting, as far as we can tell, a rather sanitised portrait of the star. Secondly, it was made just before the inexplicable slump in his popularity which found him performing at half-empty venues until his renaissance in 1953 with 'From Here to Eternity'. Third, it shows his emergence from the shadow of Bing Crosby and the development of a style of his own that was to be consolidated in the Capitol recording studios. Perhaps the major difference between the two singers was that Crosby could credibly sing anything from Brahms to W C Handy, while Sinatra honed to pefection a narrower range of style and repetoire. Here, Sinatra rather fudges a silly duet which Crosby could have walked, but the ballad singing, in which he surpassed Crosby, is superb. The earlier scenes dealing with the rise of the singer with criminal assistance are much more interesting than the later, which become a conventional gangster movie.