This musical has Frank Sinatra in the title role as a bantam rooster of a fellow, who picks fights with anyone who annoys him, but has a marvelous singing voice. Shelley Winters is Joy Carroll, a nightclub thrush Danny falls in love with. Alex Nicol is Mike Ryan, Wilson's manager, piano player and roommate. Raymond Burr is a gangster who owns the nightclub where Joy sings, and where Danny gets his big break.
Sinatra is in good voice here, especially on "That Ol' Black Magic" and his duet with Winters, "A Good Man Is Hard To Find". Aside from their duet, Sinatra has zero chemistry with Winters. Winters does well in her scenes with Burr and Nicol, but she seems angry in almost all of her scenes with Sinatra. Burr makes a good impression as the gangster Nick Driscoll.
From what I've read in Winters' autobiographies and biographies of Sinatra, the two apparently couldn't stand each other, and the film almost didn't get finished. They both walked off the set more than once, had multiple screaming matches, and during the shooting of a hospital scene, Winters capped off one screaming match with Sinatra during the filming of a hospital scene by throwing a bedpan at him. It connected. The film ends abruptly, with the two stars in separate shots, not together in the same scene.
Sinatra is in good voice here, especially on "That Ol' Black Magic" and his duet with Winters, "A Good Man Is Hard To Find". Aside from their duet, Sinatra has zero chemistry with Winters. Winters does well in her scenes with Burr and Nicol, but she seems angry in almost all of her scenes with Sinatra. Burr makes a good impression as the gangster Nick Driscoll.
From what I've read in Winters' autobiographies and biographies of Sinatra, the two apparently couldn't stand each other, and the film almost didn't get finished. They both walked off the set more than once, had multiple screaming matches, and during the shooting of a hospital scene, Winters capped off one screaming match with Sinatra during the filming of a hospital scene by throwing a bedpan at him. It connected. The film ends abruptly, with the two stars in separate shots, not together in the same scene.