“He wants to be asked”: Frank Sinatra’s one condition for his 1987 acting swansong
After gradually winding down his acting career, Frank Sinatra didn’t think he had any gas left in his performative tank until he realised he could manoeuvre his way into one of his favourite TV shows.
He’d been completely absent from the big screen in a major capacity since 1980’s The First Deadly Sin, with a cameo appearance in Cannonball Run II and a voice-only contribution to Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the final theatrical releases of an Academy Award-winning stint in Hollywood.
From the beginning of the ’80s onward, he was a cameo kind of guy, with ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ avoiding anything that even remotely resembled a significant, dialogue-heavy part. However, everyone has their exceptions that they’re willing to make, and he found his in Tom Selleck’s procedural, Magnum PI.
If Frank Sinatra calls somebody up and asks them to cast him in their TV series, then that person is going to cast him in their TV series. The crooner was a massive fan of the moustachioed investigator’s ongoing adventures, and he told cast member Larry Manetti as much, letting him know in no uncertain terms that he wanted in.
“Larry comes to me and says, ‘Frank wants to do the show,'” Selleck remembered. “But he wants to be asked, so you have to call him’. And he wanted to do it right away.'” The star was on the spot, and because only an idiot would say no to Sinatra, he picked up the phone as fast as he could, inquiring as to what it would take for the ‘Rat Pack’ patriarch to commit.
“So I said to him, ‘Well, we’re gonna have to write it for you, what do you want to do?'” Selleck asked him. “He said, ‘Oh, I don’t care. Just make sure I get to beat somebody up.'” The non-negotiable had been laid down: Sinatra was ready to report to the Magnum PI set for duty, but only if he could kick some ass.
As you’d imagine, that’s what he got to do. In ‘Laura’, the 18th episode of the seventh season that aired in February 1987, ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ lent support as Michael Doheny, a retired police sergeant who enlists Magnum to help him track down the violent criminals who kidnapped his daughter and brought her to Hawaii.
The production lived up to its promise, with Sinatra still capable of throwing hands in his 70s in a scene that finds a rampaging Donen kicking lumps out of a character who refuses to give him the information he seeks. If he wanted to show up on Magnum PI on the sole condition that he indulge in some fisticuffs, who would realistically stand in his way?
While it wasn’t his final screen appearance, ‘Laura’ was the last substantial acting gig of Sinatra’s legendary career, and he made it happen with little other than a conversation and the demands of beating up some hapless extra.
