One of Those Things: Doris Day and Frank Sinatra in Young at Heart

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Posted on 02/01/2025 4:42:33 PM PST by Twotone

Frank Sinatra was emerging from the infamous dark period of his career in 1954, buoyed by his performance in From Here to Eternity and the Oscar he won for best supporting actor. Long gone was "Swoonatra" and the bobby-soxer legions outside the Paramount Theater on Times Square a decade previous. Also gone was Ava Gardner, now with matador Luis Miguel Dominguin, though their divorce wouldn't be finalized for three more years.

It was a leaner, meaner Sinatra that rebounded from what was considered a fatal career slump, and he followed up Maggio in From Here to Eternity by playing a psychopath trying to assassinate the American president in Suddenly, an economical, noir-inflected picture where he made no less than Sterling Hayden the good guy. That might have been a bit too dark, so he corrected course – slightly – by signing on to star opposite Doris Day, another former band singer, though one whose career had been on a steady rise since she went Hollywood.

Day herself was at a career crossroads, near the end of her hated contract with Warner Bros. and itching to prove herself as an actress. It was a significant moment for these two American icons to meet – their only appearance together apart from an episode of the radio show Your Hit Parade in 1947 – and reactions to it in the long decades since have always seemed coloured by disappointment that it wasn't more momentous.

Sinatra was also at the beginning of what is considered the zenith of his recording career, free of Columbia Records and their musical director, Mitch Miller.

(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...

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1 posted on 02/01/2025 4:42:33 PM PST by Twotone

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