Music Review: Frank Sinatra – Sinatra at the Movies

Written by General Jabbo

Throughout his remarkable singing career spanning parts of seven decades, Frank Sinatra also appeared in 58 films, winning three Academy Awards including Best Supporting Actor for From Here to Eternity, and four Golden Globes, including Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for Pal Joey. Sinatra contributed some of his best-loved music to these films, with 20 of those songs collected on Sinatra at the Movies.

Covering his brilliant Capitol years only, Sinatra at the Movies includes the title themes to The Tender Trap, From Here to Eternity, Young at Heart, Three Coins in the Fountain, and Not as a Stranger. Also from Young at Heart is the classic “Just One of Those Things,” which is done with its more familiar up-tempo arrangement (In later years, Sinatra sometimes performed the song as a ballad, or "saloon song" as he called them).

Four other movies are represented by two songs each, with “I Love Paris” and “C’est Magnifique” from Can Can, “How Deep is the Ocean” and “All of Me” from Meet Danny Wilson, “I Could Write a Book” and “The Lady is a Tramp” from Pal Joey, and “All the Way” and “Chicago” from The Joker is Wild.

It should be noted that while all of these songs are from Sinatra movies, they are not the versions recorded for the movies. Rather, they are the versions from his Capitol albums (“Chicago” is the version from Come Fly With Me for instance). To get the tracks from the movies, one may consider the Sinatra in Hollywood box set.

Sinatra at the Movies is part of a larger media blitz that includes a U.S. postage stamp (entering circulation in May) and television programming spotlighting Sinatra’s movies and television specials. While many of the tracks on Sinatra at the Movies are timeless standards, the CD barely scratches the surface of Sinatra’s recorded legacy, making it a bad starting point for new fans and a must-own for completists only.