The one movie Frank Sinatra always regretted not making: “Things never worked out”
After being equally prolific as a musician and actor from the 1940s to the late 1960s, the following decade saw Frank Sinatra take a significant step back from both of the professions he’d seamlessly conquered.
He announced his retirement from the music industry at the beginning of the following decade, which didn’t last very long, but he’d definitely slowed down after his comeback. In the recording booth, he’d released 49 studio albums by the end of the 1970, but only another eight for the rest of his career.
Much the same was true on the big screen, with ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ appearing in over 50 features between his uncredited debut in 1941’s Las Vegas Nights and 1968’s Lady in Cement, with 1980’s crime thriller The First Deadly Sin the only theatrically released feature he made after that, supplemented by a couple of cameos and a pair of made-for-TV movies.
However, Peter Bogdanovich, who was familiar with Sinatra socially as well as being a huge fan, made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. He was on board to join an all-star comedy that sounded like it had the potential to be a hit, until the grubby fingerprints of agents, managers, and studio politics made their mark.
The Last Picture Show‘s writer and director was a known commodity and a recognisable figure in the ‘New Hollywood’ movement by the end of the ’70s, with eight features and two Academy Award nominations to his name. He shouldn’t have faced too much trouble in getting a comedic caper packed with big names off the ground, especially when Sinatra was so willing to lend an assist.
“In the early ’80s, Sinatra and I almost did a picture together,” he recalled in The Observer. “It was a Las Vegas comedy drama called Paradise Road, which I had envisioned to star him and James Stewart, Lee Marvin, Charles Aznavour, Dean Martin, and Jerry Lewis, all playing degenerate gamblers.”
That’s quite the roster, and even the simmering feud between Martin and Lewis shouldn’t have been an issue with the crooner on the case: “When I suggested to Frank that they would play two guys who were in the same group but never spoke to each other in the whole movie, only through intermediaries, he thought this was funny, but not easy to achieve.”
It would have been an ingenious case of art imitating life, and Sinatra said “he’d try to get Dean” while Bogdanovich put the feelers out to Lewis, who was a friend of his. “One afternoon, Frank called me, excited,” he explained. “‘I spoke to Dean’, he said. ‘He’ll do it’. I was amazed and thrilled. ‘Yeah’, said Frank, ‘I asked if he wasn’t bothered about Jerry, and Dean said, ‘Aw, who gives a fuck!'”
Lewis also agreed, and the stage was set for Paradise Road, until it wasn’t. Much to Bogdanovich and Sinatra’s chagrin, “the business people and middlemen got in the way, and things never worked out.” It sounds like a proto version of Last Vegas, except good, and seeing ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ sharing the screen with Martin, Lewis, Stewart, Marvin, and Aznavour in an ’80s romp would have been a sight to see.
