The Final Curtain

On February 25, 1987, history was made.

I’m not talking about how astronomers witnessed Supernova 1987A, the first supernova visible to the naked eye since 1604, although I am referring to a big star.

No, this day marked Frank Sinatra’s last full character acting project when he appeared in an episode of Magnum P.I. as Michael Doheny, a retired New York police officer.

Sinatra had starred in over 40 movies in his career, including such classics as Guys and Dolls, From Here to Eternity, The Manchurian Candidate—my personal favorite—and The Man with the Golden Arm, for which he won the Academy Award.

One of my earliest memories of O’ Blue Eyes dates back to 1965 when my family went to see Von Ryan’s Express at the Casino Theatre in Mount Pocono, PA, where we were vacationing.

Sinatra played an American POW who leads a prison break during World War II, and my father—who had fought in Europe—was less than thrilled about seeing someone who had avoided combat in the real world taking on the Nazis in the movies.

I should mention that my dad had a ferocious hatred for Sinatra that seemed to go far beyond his 4-F status.

I have no idea where it came from, but when the old man hated someone, he went at it with a jihadist’s fury, to a point he wouldn’t even acknowledge Sinatra’s singing or acting achievements.

I despised Sinatra when I was younger, partially because I disliked his songs, but mostly because he often came off as a nasty piece of work.

He had some rather…interesting associates, to put it mildly, and there are enough stories and rumors to make a dozen movies.

In fact, there is a widely held belief that Sinatra inspired the Johnny Fontane character in The Godfather.

I have since grown to love Sinatra’s singing—especially his early work, and I was amazed to find out that my mother was a bobby-soxer—a devoted Sinatra fan who had seen the Chairman of the Board perform at the Paramount Theater in New York in the 1940s.

I only wish I had known about this when she was still with us. I’d have so many questions for her.

The End is Near

Legendary director Frank Capra once told Sinatra to quit his musical career and concentrate solely on acting, as he was convinced the “My Way” singer would go down as the greatest actor who ever lived.

Far be it from me to disagree with the man who gave us It’s a Wonderful Life, It Happened One Night and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, but I don’t see Sinatra ever reaching that level.

First of all, asking the Sultan of Swoon to give up his musical career would be like asking him to give up breathing.

Secondly, while he did some fine work in the movies, he reportedly found the filmmaking process tedious and frustrating.

There’s a story that Sinatra would typically only do one take for scenes during the filming of Ocean's Eleven.

Some attribute this is his confidence, while others say he just wanted to get back to the casinos.

I decided to watch “Laura”, the Magnum PI episode, where Sinatra storms all over Hawaii looking for his granddaughter’s killers. Full disclosure—I was never a fan of the show and this episode, despite Sinatra’s presence—did nothing to change my mind.

The story is tepid, the fight scenes are excruciating with an aging Frankie—he was 72 years old at the time—limply bashing around men a fraction of his age, who go tumbling through air like they’ve been shot out of cannon.

Worse yet, Miami Vice was in its heyday at the time, so the program featured a long, tedious montage sequence of Frank searching for the suspects, while Tom Selleck searched for him as “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight” by Genesis plays on.

Sinatra, who enjoyed the program, agreed to waive if his fee if the network paid his expenses while he was in Hawaii. That wound up costing CBS something like $300,000 or about $845,000 today.

This was the highest-rated episode in over two years and Sinatra agreed to play Doheny in another episode if he and Selleck could work it into their respective schedules. It never happened.

Sinatra appeared as himself in an episode of Who’s the Boss? the following year and died in 1998 at the age of 82.

Most of the Magnum reviews on IMDB were positive, although one person complained about “4-F Sinatra in another tough guy role.”

“Aside from the plot, etc....what undermines everything is that Sinatra---4-F during WW II, and never made any effort to bypass the odorous/embarrassing classification…after the US was attacked, again is shown as a tough guy on the screen…A slap in the face to all the people who quietly DID serve our country,” the author wrote.

Somewhere my dad is nodding in agreement.