Accompanied by Shirley MacLaine, a hooker he picked up in Chicago, Sinatra, a self-described failed writer, is discharged from the US Army and wakes up, hung over, in his home town of Parkman, Indiana. It's the first time he's been home in eighteen years. It's supposed to be 1948, although you'd never know it. Thereafter, intrigues and jealousies and conflicts come and go, evoking memories of soap operas, only told from the man's point of view instead of Craig's other wife's.
There are no bands to welcome Sinatra. His older brother, Arthur Kennedy, is a pompous loudmouth who owns a jewelry shop. The script renders Kennedy as a hypocrite but doesn't deprive him of some human qualities. He loves his teen-aged daughter, is treated indifferently by his wealthy wife, and suffers a lapse in his morality when, stricken by an understandable loneliness, he makes it with his attractive secretary, Nancy Gates.
Sinatra has given up writing, almost, but take up with the town's intellectuals, including Martha Hyer as a professor of creative writing, who finds his work admirable and sells one of his stories to The Atlantic magazine. (Short story writing; an art now as dead as Medieval glass blowing.) Hyer is an actress whose appeal has always eluded me. She's attractive enough but her performances always sound as if she's demonstrating her skill in a beauty contest. Her character here is cultured and unnatural. She's physically attracted to Sinatra. Of course. He's Chairman of the Board. But the ex-soldier's emotions are to powerful for her and she rejects him and his lower-class friends.
Sinatra's friends include the gambler, Dean Martin, who is able to drink three times as much as Old Blue Eyes and the next morning, when Sinatra looks a thorough wreck, manages to be spic and span and on top of his game -- at least until he discovers he has Type 2 diabetes, which he shrugs off.
Shirley MacLaine is an agreeable actress. She's pretty, despite the make-up overload and wretched wardrobe, and forthright in her artless candor. She'd do anything for Frank because she loves him beyond imagining. In the end, that's what's required of her.
I know it was directed by Vincent Minelli but it's hard to tell. Everything about the movie is more or less routine. It's not one of Elmer Bernstein's better scores -- superabundant and lurid. Colorful characters in everyday settings doing things that aren't especially interesting.
There are no bands to welcome Sinatra. His older brother, Arthur Kennedy, is a pompous loudmouth who owns a jewelry shop. The script renders Kennedy as a hypocrite but doesn't deprive him of some human qualities. He loves his teen-aged daughter, is treated indifferently by his wealthy wife, and suffers a lapse in his morality when, stricken by an understandable loneliness, he makes it with his attractive secretary, Nancy Gates.
Sinatra has given up writing, almost, but take up with the town's intellectuals, including Martha Hyer as a professor of creative writing, who finds his work admirable and sells one of his stories to The Atlantic magazine. (Short story writing; an art now as dead as Medieval glass blowing.) Hyer is an actress whose appeal has always eluded me. She's attractive enough but her performances always sound as if she's demonstrating her skill in a beauty contest. Her character here is cultured and unnatural. She's physically attracted to Sinatra. Of course. He's Chairman of the Board. But the ex-soldier's emotions are to powerful for her and she rejects him and his lower-class friends.
Sinatra's friends include the gambler, Dean Martin, who is able to drink three times as much as Old Blue Eyes and the next morning, when Sinatra looks a thorough wreck, manages to be spic and span and on top of his game -- at least until he discovers he has Type 2 diabetes, which he shrugs off.
Shirley MacLaine is an agreeable actress. She's pretty, despite the make-up overload and wretched wardrobe, and forthright in her artless candor. She'd do anything for Frank because she loves him beyond imagining. In the end, that's what's required of her.
I know it was directed by Vincent Minelli but it's hard to tell. Everything about the movie is more or less routine. It's not one of Elmer Bernstein's better scores -- superabundant and lurid. Colorful characters in everyday settings doing things that aren't especially interesting.