MEET DANNY WILSON (1952)

Saloon singer Danny Wilson (Frank Sinatra) and his pianist and manager Mike Ryan (Alex Nicol) are a small-time duo looking for a break. Danny has a tendency to be brash and get into fights that Mike has to finish for him, but they are truly the best of friends. One night as they skedaddle out of a cheap, noisy dive where Danny's caused trouble, they run into Joy (Shelley Winters), a dolled-up woman out for a night of drinking, so she gets the two to join her at a fancy bar, hoping their presence will protect her from unwanted male attention. The evening ends in a scuffle with a cop and the three wind up in jail. Their bail is paid by Joy's employer Nick (Raymond Burr), a gangster who runs the club where Joy sings. Sobered up, the three realize they've hit it off and Joy gets Nick to give the fellas a job. The one sticking point: Nick wants 50 percent of all of their earnings, present and future. They agree and Nick says no written contract is necessary, implying he has other ways of ensuring that they'll stick to the agreement. From then, it's a rocket to the top for Danny, always accompanied by Mike. Danny falls in love with Joy, but he is unaware that Joy and Mike are in love, and neither can bring themselves to tell him. Eventually, Danny becomes a big star and chafes under Nick's drain on his income. When Nick has to go into hiding, Danny's tempted to stop making payments to him. At the same time, he impulsively announces that he's going to marry Joy. Melodrama ensues.

This movie has a bit of a tone problem. The first third, and the most enjoyable part of the film, is basically a musical comedy, with Sinatra singing a number of standards ("How Deep is the Ocean," "I've Got a Crush on You") in the context of public performances. The energy between the starring trio is fun, and I especially liked Alex Nicol, who comes off as sort of a cross between Dan Dailey and Sterling Hayden; he's the person we most identify with. Sinatra and Winters are fine, but honestly I was most impressed by Raymond Burr, playing his usual 1950s menacing thug in a very low-key manner that made him all the more threatening. The tone becomes darker in the last half, to the point where I was worried that one of our leads might wind up dead. The screenplay has some nice dialogue. In the jail scene, a guitar player is there because he "hit a be-bop guy right in the goatee," which gets an approving nod from Sinatra. When, early on, Sinatra and Burr are discussing musical tastes, Burr says he prefers Crosby, and Nicol, wanting to get down to business, says, "Now that the byplay is over…" Near the end, when Burr comes out of hiding to get the money Sinatra owes him, Sinatra smarts off by saying, "Sue me." Burr pulls out a gun and says, dead seriously, "Meet my lawyer." The character of Danny Wilson seems obviously based loosely on Sinatra—apparently he was at a career low point when this was made, though the next year, things would turn around with his Oscar-winning role in From Here to Eternity. I knew this movie mostly because it was the inspiration for the one-hit wonder 80s pop band Danny Wilson ("Mary’s Prayer") but it was a short essay online in the New Yorker that made me look this one up. Pictured are Sinatra, Nicol and Winters. [TCM]