Another round of online store titles is ready to go live. Today’s additions include Milos Forman’s “The Firemen’s Ball,” “Missing” by Costa-Gavras, and Otto Preminger’s “The Man with the Golden Arm.”
After flourishing as the biggest singing star of the 1940s and starring in a trio of musicals with Gene Kelly (“Anchors Aweigh,” “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” and “On the Town”), Frank Sinatra’s career — both as a singer and actor — hit the skids. 1951’s “Double Dynamite” and “Meet Danny Wilson” both fared poorly despite featuring “Ol’ Blue Eyes” in the lead, and his record label of nearly a decade dropped him the following year. Sinatra came roaring back the following year, however, winning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Fred Zinneman’s “From Here to Eternity” and beginning a fruitful relationship with arranger Nelson Riddle after signing with Capitol Records.
With his career back on track, Sinatra’s film roles progressed until he was able to land the lead in Otto Preminger’s “The Man with the Golden Arm,” in which Sinatra plays Frankie Machine, a talented card dealer desperate to stay clean after kicking his drug habit in jail. Based on a novel by Nelson Algren, the book’s rights had initially been acquired by John Garfield’s production company. However, the Production Code’s refusal to grant script approval delayed the film’s shooting until after Garfield’s untimely death in 1952, at which time Preminger — who’d made “The Moon Is Blue” despite not getting the Production Code’s seal of approval — acquired the rights from the actor’s estate.
United Artists released “The Man with the Golden Arm” in December of 1955 despite failing to get approval from either the Production Code or the MPAA, which would go on to amend its rules the following year so that films depicting previously taboo subjects such as drug addiction were allowed; alas, “The Man with the Golden Arm” would not get the Production Code’s approval until 1961. After all its problems with the censors the movie was a box office success and even nominated for three Oscars, including a Best Actor nod for Sinatra.