THE MOVIES

ON THE TOWN (1949) The movie version of the Leonard Bernstein/Comden and Green musical had some sass—and some classic songs—sucked out of it. One weeps at the missed opportunity for The Voice to do "Some Other Time." Still, the crooner soon-to-no-longer-be-known-as-Frankie and a young Gene Kelly, playing sailors on leave in Manhattan, made a very appealing screenbuddy team. The unforgettable opening number "New York, New York" (the "a helluva/wonderful town" song, not the "if I can make it there" one) has some nifty views, and the whole thing coasts on a youthful, infectious energy.

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953) Silver-screen mythology deems Sinatra's turn as cocky-but-feckless Private Maggio (whose verbal tic of never using contractions is very Rat Pack avant la lettre) in this sweeping, all-star prelude-toWWII picture as one of the great comebacks in U.S. film history. The Fred Zinnemann-directed movie is still a driving, emotionally roiling powerhouse, and Sinatra's heavyweight performance within an equally swaggering ensemble (Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, and Method man supreme Montgomery Clift) established his dramatic-actor bona fides once and for all.

YOUNG AT HEART (1954) In Meet Danny Wilson from 1952 Sinatra played a hottempered singer; in the 1954 B thriller Suddenly he played a tightly wound would-be assassin. But it's in this picture, with underrated directorial stalwart Gordon Douglas, that Sinatra brought a trademark downhearted/cynical persona most brightly to silver-screen life. As gloomy musician Barney Sloan, Sinatra provides stark relief to Doris Day's sunniness for this melodrama-withmusic. The scene in which he performs "Someone to Watch Over Me" to a spectacularly indifferent barroom crowd is one for the ages.

During a lull in his singing career, Sinatra turned to acting. Here, his 10 best movies—cop dramas, war pictures, and classic American musicals.

Glenn Kenny

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM (1955) Nelson Algren fans don't think much of director Otto Preminger's adaptation of Algren's great novel of addiction, and they've got a point: The narrative is compromised, and Preminger's typical mastery of milieu failed him—the movie was restricted to unconvincing studio sets. But Preminger did get a remarkably varied performance out of Sinatra as the title junkie who returns to Chicago after prison, confiding "The monkey's gone" to a low-life nerd pal (Arnold Stang). But soon the monkey is back, as are old loves Kim Novak and Eleanor Parker.

HIGH SOCIETY (1956) Connoisseurs of show-biz kitsch may insist on 1964's Robin and the Seven Hoods, but this MGM musical provides a much snazzier showcase for Bing Crosby and The Voice. A remake of The Philadelphia Story with tunes—by Cole Porter, no less—it also offers Grac last screen appearance, Louis Armstrong leading an exceptional band, and much more. During production, some smart fellow realized Sinatra and Crosby had no song together, so they dusted off Porter's "Well Did You Evah?" Kelly in her from Du Barry Was a Lady. This is the version that everyone remembers.

SOME CAME RUNNING (1958) Sinatra and Dean Martin gave director Vincente Minnelli unholy hell on the set of this picture, adapted, like From Here to Eternity, from a gargantuan James Jones novel about World War M's homefront postlude. For all the backstage drama, Sinatra, Martin, and Shirley MacLaine give pitch-perfect performances in this story of a sensitive soul's return from war to a hypocritical small town. When Sinatra's Dave Hirsh unpacks his duffel-bag library and looks lovingly at his editions of Faulkner and Thomas Wolfe, you absolutely believe he's read them cover to cover.

OCEAN'S li (i960) Sinatra starred in this breezy, insubstantial, but still-fun heist film the same year he founded Reprise Records, earning him the nickname "Chairman of the Board." He calls the shots here, too, aptly enough, as Danny Ocean, leading some of his old 82nd Airborne mates in a daring Vegas robbery. Co-stars Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop, Peter Lawford, and more made this the first true Rat Pack movie, and it's still the best.

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962) Sinatra's alternately tortured and soberly cynical performance grounds this often-outrageous paranoid thriller. The lurid nightmare depictions of brainwashing, Angela Lansbury's virtuoso turn as History's Greatest Monster Matriarch, the playing-card symbolism—it would all look cartoonish without Sinatra's seriousness. His strangers-on-a-train exchange with Janet Leigh is one of the oddest pickups in cinema history.

VON RYAN'S EXPRESS (1965) Every screen superstar of the 60s got to do an escape-from-the-Nazis movie, and this is Sinatra's. His role—as an American P.O.W. in Italy who does things differently from the British soldiers with whom he shares his lot—is stolid and downbeat. His character seems driven to appease his captors, but the Yank has a daring plan up his sleeve. The Mark Robson-directed film is no Great Escape, but it's undeniably solid.

THE DETECTIVE (1968) Sinatra is a stoic, no-nonsense cop investigating the grisly murder of a gay man. And he's the least homophobic guy on the case. ("They don't disturb you?" asks a forensics guy. "I got my own bag," Sinatra drawls back.) A collection of moments admirable (Sinatra schooling Robert Duvall) and cringe-inducing (Tony Musante's mugging as a psycho is almost unwatchable), it showcases one of Sinatra's most deft late performances.