The no-show that cost Frank Sinatra an iconic role: “He made a lunch date and never showed”
Celebrities can be a tricky bunch at the best of times, and as one of the most famous people on the planet who’d become an unqualified success in film and music, Frank Sinatra pretty much did whatever the hell he wanted, whenever the hell he wanted to do it.
‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ basked in the glory that came with being both one of the bestselling recording artists of his era and an Academy Award-winning actor, which meant that he never felt under any pressure to do anything he didn’t feel comfortable with. It’s a nice gig for anyone lucky enough to get it, even if it did cost him an iconic role in an iconic movie from one of Hollywood’s greatest-ever directors.
Thanks to his fame, fortune, and ability to dominate the headlines to a much larger extent than all but a select few of Tinseltown’s brightest-shining stars, Sinatra was always a man in demand. He appeared in at least one feature every year between 1951 and 1968, but it’s a step too far to suggest his back catalogue of leading man outings is stacked sky-high with classics and masterpieces.
Sure, there are a couple, but not as many as his reputation would suggest. However, he could have added another to the collection if he wasn’t so damned unprofessional. Co-writer and director Billy Wilder was hammering the pieces into shape for what would become Some Like It Hot, and under a hint of studio pressure, he arranged a meeting with Sinatra for the part of Jerry.
“The first person we wanted was Jack Lemmon, but he was then under contract to Columbia, and the first actor we actually signed was Tony Curtis because we felt he could play both parts in an emergency,” screenwriter IAL Diamond recalled per Medium. “United Artists felt that we needed a big box office name and that Lemmon wasn’t big enough. They suggested that Mr Wilder see Frank Sinatra.”
A place and a time were arranged, and Wilder got stood up. “He made a lunch date with him, and Sinatra never showed up, which may be one of the luckiest things that could have happened to us,” Diamond explained. “At this point, we got Marilyn Monroe, and the studio no longer felt the need for another big name. Then we signed Jack.”
1959 saw Sinatra headline Frank Capra’s Academy Award-winning comedy A Hole in the Head and Preston Sturges’ war drama Never So Few, both of which made big money, so it wasn’t a total bust. Still, neither of those films is remembered anywhere near as fondly as Wilder’s Some Like It Hot.
One of Hollywood’s greatest-ever comedies, it earned over twice as much from cinemas as Sinatra’s two films combined, with Lemmon being rewarded with an Oscar nomination and Golden Globe win for the role Sinatra had no-showed his way out of.
It was his for the taking, but the lack of common courtesy he showed Wilder in ditching their meeting without a word of warning cost him the chance to play a leading part in one of the most beloved titles in Hollywood history.
