SUDDENLY: a Frank Sinatra podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Hi, Rabia here. I have Long COVID and am struggling. I need time to process things and figure out how to best use my energy. Podcasting is good for me but very energy consuming, and I need to work out how I'm going to manage this condition. So Season 3 will end here for now and we will pick back up at some stage in 2025. In the meantime, enjoy this episode of Rocky Fortune. Wear an N95, run an air purifier, avoid crowds, do whatever you can to avoid both contracting and spreading this virus. I dig you the most xx

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Melbourne's Medically Supervised Injecting Room (MSIR) in North Richmond opened in 2018. This was the result of a years-long grassroots campaign led by the local community, fed up with constant overdoses in the streets. The MSIR operates on principles of harm reduction which simply work and urgently need to be applied throughout the world. The stigma around drug use, and the criminalising of drug users, must end - and that begins with us.

In 1955, Frank Sinatra made a historically significant contribution to the destigmatisation of drug use on film in Otto Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm. In a depiction that is in many ways still radical today, Sinatra's character of Frankie Machine is a regular person who is trying his best to shake off a heroin addiction but is simply failed by a society that does not have the means to support him. A compelling and empathetic performance by Sinatra, and subject matter which openly defied the Production Code of its era, made this a memorable classic for many and contributed to a better world.

This week on SUDDENLY, friend of the show Spike Vincent joins us to watch The Man With the Golden Arm, sharing his thoughts and personal experiences. Meanwhile, Rabia has been reading up on the MSIR and reports back on the experience of touring the facility to see what goes on first-hand. As a thematic wild card, we also watched an Australian DVD of the film called A Night at the Cinema with extra footage intended to replicate the experience of seeing this film in 1955 in a cinema in specifically Castlemaine, Victoria - including "God Save the Queen", a newsreel, cartoon, local ads etc - which leads us to compelling footage of the 1955 Maitland floods. Plus, an update on Bobby Long.

Sources for this episode:
* The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) (watch in full - public domain)
* Jack Pearl - Robin and the 7 Hoods (novelisation) (1964)
* Lou Reed interview, "Reed Goes Public on Velvet Underground", The Canberra Times, 4 October 1987 
* Nobody Dies Here: Inside Melbourne's Medically Supervised Injecting Room (2023) podcast  
* Judy Ryan - You Talk, We Die: The Battle for Victoria's First Safe Injecting Facility (2022) 
* Link to book tours of the MSIR (Melbourne Supervised Injecting Room) 
* Photo of the "You Talk, We Die" mural in North Richmond 
* Stimulant Treatment Program at St Vincents Hospital in Sydney  
* A Year to Remember - 1955 (1965) Newsreel including Maitland flood footage
* Katie Carr, "The problem with the 'disabled villain' trope", The Nora Project, 7 October 2022.
* Detective Pikachu (2019)
* Where to obtain Naloxone - official advice from Australian Government
* Brian Jeffery, "Gays come out of the closet", The Canberra Times, 13 March 1982

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We went on Authorized Novelizations Podcast to talk about Jack Pearl's 1964 novelisation of Sinatra's Robin and the Seven Hoods. This episode was recorded around six months ago and just released by Authorized this week. They've graciously given us permission to repost it on our feed.

If you like what we do on SUDDENLY, you'll definitely have a good time with this epic two-and-a-half-hour deep dive into not just a lesser-known Sinatra film project, but the 60-year-out-of-print trashy novelisation of same. We delve into the bizarre circumstances surrounding the making of the film, and examine the psyche of pulp author Jack Pearl who added original strange details and incredibly violent, misogynistic content to the book. One surprise twist follows another. We're in good hands with the Authorized gang being experts in the maligned genre of film-to-book adaptations, having read Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, Cowboys and Aliens and the Cheetah Girls trilogy amongst many others.

Authorized is one of our favourite shows and we really recommend you check them out. Despite the cultural divide that comes with different regional spellings of "novelisation/novelization" and "authorised/authorized", everyone had a great time! 

Regular SUDDENLY programming will resume in April.  

AUTHORIZED:
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SUDDENLY:
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In Episode 43 ("Love and Marriage"), Rabia and Felix watched the infamous televised 1955 musical version of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, starring Frank Sinatra as the Stage Manager. The songs were so terrible, and the acting so bad, that Wilder personally called the station and ensured that it would never air ever again. Neither Rabia nor Felix had ever seen the play before, nor even heard of it. While a beloved cultural mainstay in the US, Our Town somehow never made it to Australia. Now, in his first solo episode, Henry explains to Australians what we're missing out on and why Our Town matters. 

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We think of Sinatra as emerging as a serious dramatic actor from the early 1950s onwards, shedding his clean-cut MGM image for the first time when he takes intense roles as mentally disturbed soldiers in From Here to Eternity and Suddenly. But there's a part of the story we've all forgotten. In January 1945, at the height of the bobby-soxer era and months before tapdancing in a sailor suit for Anchors Aweigh, Sinatra made his actual dramatic acting debut on the radio horror anthology series Suspense. This week, we listen to "To Find Help", shockingly ahead of its time, where Sinatra briefly shed his squeaky-clean status to play a violent and mentally ill man terrorising an old woman in her home.

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In the Wee Small Hours is often considered Sinatra's best work and arguably the first concept album. The "concept" is something along the lines of "I am awake at 3am and I am feeling deeply sad about a lost love." And that's really it. Just when you think there couldn't possibly be any more songs about the nuances of that kind of misery, there are seven more. It's relentless, it's brutal, it borders on self-harm and it changed the way we all listen to albums forever. So many emotions, such beautiful music, so much history, such an enormous legacy. And yet, what is there to say? Sometimes it's best just to listen - not just to Sinatra, but to the people out there in the world, all with their own problems, who heard this and felt something.

Selected resources:
* Woody Guthrie - Dustbowl Ballads (1940) (featured: "Dust Cain't Kill Me")
* Gordon Jenkins - Seven Dreams (1953) (featured: "The Cocktail Party (The Fourth Dream)")
* The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds (1967) (featured: "Wouldn't It Be Nice", "That's Not Me", "Caroline, No")
* Paul Kelly - How to Make Gravy (autobiography, 2010)
* Jane Russell & Hoagy Carmichael - "I Get Along Without You Very Well" (from Las Vegas Story, 1952)
* Bob Crosby and His Orchestra (with Marion Mann, vocal) - "Deep in a Dream" (1938)
* Laurie Anderson - "Smoke Rings" (from Home of the Brave, 1986)
* The Berlin Patient (podcast hosted by Joel White, 2016-17) (Complete series available on YouTube and Internet Archive)
* Sophie Calle - Take Care of Yourself (book and art project, 2007)
* Nick Hornby - High Fidelity (novel, 1995)
* Marian McPartland Trio - "This Love of Mine" (from self-titled album, 1956)

Special thanks to W.M. Akers.

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"Love and Marriage" was one of the worst songs Sinatra ever recorded, and the toxic ideas about marriage that it perpetuated left a negative impact on the world. This week, we look into the song's unlikely origins in a televised musical version of Thornton Wilder's Our Town and its shameful legacy as the theme song for the vile 1980s-90s sitcom Married... with Children. Watching this show for the first time in 2024 is a jaw-dropping experience, not least because of the jeering, catcalling studio audience. And of course, we've sought out the transphobic episode. Join us, won't you, as we travel down the "Tender Trap" to Al Bundy pipeline. This one made us feel bad.

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The phrase "tender trap" essentially didn't exist before the mid-1950s, entering common usage from the film and song which were both popularised by Frank Sinatra. The image of being lured into your downfall by a thing pretending to be soft speaks to a basic element of what it is to be human, and people all over the world have projected their emotions, hangups and life experiences onto this simple concept. This week, we examine Sinatra's classic film and song, plus the original play, then take a look at the many manifestations of the "tender trap" ever since, exploring 70 years of human sexuality and emotion. 

Selected references:

• Pamela Robinson Wojcik - The Apartment Plot: Urban Living in American Film (2010)
• The article about the musical they do in High School Musical
• Marjorie Holmes - I've Got to Talk to Somebody, God (1969) and Second Wife, Second Life (1993)
• Michael Walsh - How to Undo a Maiden (1971)
• Transvestia magazine, issue #110. "The Gift" by J. Reviere. (1971)
• Howard Cosell - Like It Is (1974)
• Seductress magazine, issue #6 (pornography) (1970s?)
• The Tender Trap (1978) (pornography)
• Gay Barchives - Interview with Doug Rehrer about The Tender Trap, Pittsburgh (2020)
• Ron Nyswaner - Blue Days, Black Nights (2004)
• Jay Matthews - "Youthful Lovers in China Find They Are Caught in a Tender Trap" 17 December 1978, Washington Post
• Alexander Abdennur - The Conflict Resolution Syndrome: Volunteerism, Violence, and Beyond
• The Sapphire Room (1997)
• Dave Damiani - "The Tinder App" (2016)
• Madeleine Davies - "Don't Fall for the Tender Trap" 13 July 2017, Jezebel
• The Tender Trap (2021, New Zealand)
• Interview with Sharon Armstrong, Woman Magazine NZ, 1 March 2021
• Death Trap aka The Tender Trap (1974) starring Vincent Price

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In a special emergency episode, we examine Frank Sinatra's long history with Israel, Palestine and Zionism. Many don't realise just how connected these topics are. This week, we weave a story all the way from Sinatra personally helping run guns to the Nakba in 1948 and his starring role as a fighter pilot for the IDF in 1966's Cast a Giant Shadow, all the way to the bombing of the Frank Sinatra International Student Centre by Hamas in 2002. Henry joins to share his experiences and thoughts from a Jewish perspective, and Rabia has a personal announcement.

Selected sources: 
* Rabbi Dovid Weiss - We Cry for the Palestinians (Interview with Let the Quran Speak, October 2023)
* The House I Live In (1945, anti-semitism PSA starring Frank Sinatra)
* Paul Robeson - "The House I Live In"  
* Hasan Hammami, Nakba survivor, interview with Middle East Eye, 2023. 
* Mahmoud Salah, Nakba survivor, interview with Democracy Now, 2018. 
* Nakba Day: What happened in Palestine in 1948?, Al-Jazeera, 15 May 2022.
* Eddie Cantor in Israel (1950, short film)
* Exodus (1960)
* Pat Boone - "This Land is Mine" (Theme from Exodus)
* Shalom Goldman - Starstruck in the Promised Land (2019)
* Sinatra in Israel (1962, short film)
* Sinatra: Supporting Israel "His Way", Friends of Zion Museum profile.
* George Jacobs - Mr. S: My Life with Frank Sinatra (2003)
* Cast a Giant Shadow (1966)
* Making the Desert Bloom: Why Europe Clings to the Colonial Mindset, Emile Badarin, Middle East Eye, 5 May 2023. 
* Melville Shavelson - How to Make a Jewish Movie (1971)
* "The Shadows and the Light", Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 5 episode.
* What'll It Be? Sinatra or Woody Allen?, Jack Engelhard, Israel National News, 8 July 2004.

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Who burnt down West Melbourne Stadium in the middle of Sinatra's 1955 Australian tour, and why did this happen? This week, on our final episode of the year, SUDDENLY investigates. And we're joined by David Nichols - Australian history expert, senior lecturer in Urban Planning at the University of Melbourne, and author of Dig: Australian Rock and Pop Music 1960-85 - to help us put together the pieces. We also learn about West Melbourne Stadium's second life as Festival Hall, and weave a story spanning seven decades that that takes us all the way up to 2023.

Selected media discussed in this episode:
* Frank Hardy's novel Power Without Glory (1950)
* Howard Cosell's introduction of Frank Sinatra from The Main Event (1974)
* Ben Folds Five's "Boxing" from Ben Folds Five (1995)
* Newsfront (1978)
* Recordings of The AMPOL Show from 1957, documenting early Australian performances of Bill Haley and the Comets, Litltle Richard and others. Released as Rock n' Roll Radio Australia 1957. Available in full on YouTube.  
* The Beatles' concert from Festival Hall, Melbourne, 1964. Filmed in full and available on YouTube.

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