The stars (1962)

FRANK SINATRA Sinatra as a hired gun in Suddenly, a cold-blooded, bravura performance. From a career as a boyish, relaxed and cheerful chirper of songs for teen-agers during the war, Frank Sinatra, through sheer force of will, in 1953, converted himself, into an entirely new screen personality. His career at low ebb, both musically and on the screen, he waged a desperate war for the part of Maggio, the tragic, scrappy, funny eight-ball of From Here to Eternity. He played the role for an $8,000 fee, $142,000 less than his usual price. For it he won an Academy Award and a new start that has made him virtually a one-man entertainment industry. In maturity he has become undoubtedly the finest popular singer of his time, an artist of impeccable taste. As an actor he is limited, but no less effective for his limitations. He markets a brand of bouncy toughness not unlike that of the late John Garfield, but combines it with an air of hip sophistication — he knows what the score is, he knows how to come out on top — that would have been quite beyond Garfield's tough but threatened slum kid. In this, perhaps, we see a reflection of the difference between our time and the late thirties. The economic hopelessness which formed Garfield's screen personality has disappeared. Once again, Americans are sure that anyone may rise to fame, wealth or, most important, popularity. The fact that Sinatra's comeback was mercilessly documented in print certainly informs our vision of his screen character, as does the knowledge that in real life he is a man of mercurial moods, sudden generosity and equally sudden temper, of fierce loyalty to friends and implacable hatreds. 258 From Here to Eternity. The film that turned the tide for Frank Sinatra.