Sinatra in Hollywood 1940-1964

AMG Review of Sinatra in Hollywood 1940-1964

William Ruhlmann
All Music Guide

Frank Sinatra's studio recordings have been collected in comprehensive box sets issued by the various record labels for which he recorded (RCA Victor [when he was a singer in Tommy Dorsey's orchestra], Columbia, Capitol, and Reprise) and there have also been multi-disc collections of his V-Disc recordings and radio shows. That leaves his work in television and film, a more challenging prospect for compilation (at least, legally) since so many different companies are involved. Yet Reprise has managed to do the job here for the singer's movie performances, gathering together soundtrack recordings made for films released by Paramount, MGM, Columbia, RKO, Universal, Warner Bros., United Artists, and 20th Century Fox between 1940 and 1964. The chronological sequencing provides a portrait of Sinatra's musical development that parallels his studio recordings during the same period. He first turned up on screen in the Dorsey band in Las Vegas Nights, released in 1941, not acting, but merely singing the previous year's breakthrough hit "I'll Never Smile Again," albeit under a dialogue scene by the film's principals. After he went solo, he began making tentative appearances in films like Higher and Higher that traded on his bobbysoxer appeal. With 1945's Anchors Aweigh, he graduated to big-budget movie musical stardom at MGM, but by the end of the decade was making forgettable pictures for RKO. At the end of the third disc, one begins to hear the mature Sinatra, singing standards in his familiar '50s style, emerge in the tracks from 1951's Meet Danny Wilson, and the rest of the '50s are triumphant, with the Rat Pack movies of the early '60s providing a coda. The seven-hour, six-disc set is more than complete, containing outtakes and promotional spots in addition to the actual soundtrack recordings for a box packed with material Sinatra fans will eat up.