Tom Santopietro is a film critic and biographer who seems to have a good handle on both the art and commerce that must be juggled by anyone who works in movies.
Santopietro carved out his own new turf in books he wrote about the film careers of two great pop singers who became accomplished actresses — Doris Day (“Considering Doris Day”) and Barbra Streisand (“The Importance of Being Barbra”).
The critical biographies are unusually smart career assessments by a writer who understands the strengths and weaknesses of his subjects — Santopietro also reminded readers how remarkable it was for the frequently underrated Day and Streisand to maintain careers at the highest levels of the pop music business and the Hollywood moviemaking machine.
The Santopietro book — “Sinatra in Hollywood” (Thomas Dunne Books), recently reissued in paperback — seems like an inevitable outgrowth of the two earlier volumes. Frank Sinatra’s film and recording careers were strikingly similar to those of Day and Streisand but his pop cultural reach was even greater — Sinatra remained a superstar for a half-century and maintained nightclub and concert careers that the two female stars more or less let go of after they conquered Hollywood.
“Sinatra in Hollywood” tries to counter-balance the major criticism of the star’s work as a film actor — that Sinatra didn’t approach acting with the same level of concentration and seriousness that he brought to his singing.
The big knock against Sinatra in Hollywood was that he didn’t work hard enough on his film performances — he preferred to do as few takes of a scene as possible and insisted on a relaxed shooting schedule that allowed him to continue the nightowl lifestyle he lived as a big band and club singer.
Santopietro points out that Sinatra’s greatest film successes were not in musicals, but in dramas where he delivered devastating performances — “From Here to Eternity,” “The Man With the Golden Arm” and “The Manchurian Candidate.”
When the performer really connected with a part he was as good a film actor as any of his peers. He also displayed good taste as a producer — hand-picking screenwriter George Axelrod and director John Frankenheimer for “The Manchurian Candidate” and then agreeing to Frankenheimer’s crucial choice of Angela Lansbury for the key role that Sinatra originally wanted to offer to Lucille Ball.
“Contrary to popular legend, Sinatra didn’t just wing it in Hollywood,” Santopietro writes. “At the start of his film career, he visited sets, observed directors, and studied the actors.”
“Sinatra in Hollywood” takes us through the making of each film and includes Santopietro’s clear-eyed dismissal of unfortunate dogs such as “Assault on a Queen” and “Dirty Dingus Magee.” In some of the most illuminating sections of the book, the writer makes strong cases for a few of Sinatra’s least seen performances, including such late work as “The First Deadly Sin.”
