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FRANK SINATRA SINGS DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES, MOON RIVER, AND OTHER

ACADEMY AWARD WINNERS

Arranged and Conducted by

The winners are:

Days of Wine and Roses, 1962

Break{ast at T1ffany’s, 1961

THE WAY YOU LOOK TONIGHT Swing Time, 1936 —

THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN Three Coins in the Fountain, 1954

IN THE COOL, COOL, COOL OF THE EVENING Here Comes the Groom, 1951

SECRET LOVE Calamity Jane, 1953

SWINGING ON A STAR Gomg My Way, 1944

IT MIGHT AS WELL BE SPRIN State Fatr, 1945

THE CONTINENTAL Gay Divorcee, 1934

LOVE IS A MANY-SPLENDORED THING Love Is a Many-Splendored T hing, 1955

ALL THE WAY

The Joker Is Wald, 1957

1934: THE CONTINENTAL 1936: THE WAY YOU LOOK TONIGHT

1944: SWINGING ON A STAR 1945: IT MIGHT AS WELL BE SPRING

1951: IN THE COOL, COOL, COOL OF THE EVENING _ 1953: SECRET LOVE** ~~

1954: THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN 1955: LOVE IS A MANY-SPLENDORED THING

1957: ALL THE WAY 1961: MOON RIVER

1962: DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES

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When I was invited t0-write the jacket notés for an album to be entitled “Frank Sinatra Sings Days of Wine and Roses, Moon River, and Other Academy Award Winners” it took me only a couple of seconds to fire back, “Sure — why not?” As an interviewer and even as a reviewer I had always found Frank friendly and cooperative, in spite of his reputation of being a lion rampant among the press; and while I never regarded myself as one of the “in” group, neither did I feel that I was one of the “out” group. It was somewhat the same way with me and the august Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. We have had our differ- ences throughout the years (more years than I care to count), but on the whole

we have settled down to a kind of truce. Or at least I have, on the assumption that we shall just have to live with this Academy till a better one comes along.

So... I was sent what is called a reference dub but which looked and felt like any other long-playing record except that the label was typed instead of printed and I put it.on the machine and sat down and listened. Frank appeared to have chosen his eleven Oscar winners almost at random; there was nothing to tie them. up neatly into a “trend” or anything like that; but it didn’t really matter. This was a more relaxed Sinatra, and he and the swinging but discreet Nelson Riddle, as arranger and conductor, took them at an easy lope.

To paraphrase a line, “with each word his tenderness grows.” If Frank showed any favoritism in his selections, he carefully limited them to

twos—a couple of tunes by Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini, a couple by Paul Francis Webster and Sammy Fain; two oldies from those enchanting Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals, and two introduced by Frank’s long-time chum and counselor, Bing Crosby.

Although Frank skips all around, ignoring chronology, he has managed to include the first Best Song Award ever tendered by the Academy — Herb Magid- son and Con Conrad’s “The Continental’ — from 1934, and another as late as 1962’s “Days of Wine and Roses,” by Mercer and Mancini. Frank pours plenty of spirits into his wine and color onto his roses, but I still catch myself wondering what this type of love ballad could possibly have to do with the tragedy of a pair of falling-down drunks, as exemplified in that searing temperance lecture by Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick.

In these days — and nights — of the Bossa Nova and the Twist, “The Continen- tal,” as danced by Astaire and Rogers in “The Gay Divorcee,” may not be quite the “something daring, really ultra-new” that the lyric cracks it up to be, but it is pleasant to recall as Frank delivers it. Another standard from Astaire and Rogers is “The Way You Look Tonight,” written by Dorothy Fields and Jerome Kern for the 1936 “Swing Time.”

“I feel so gay in a melancholy way...” and that’s the way Frank makes us feel, too — not only in the Hammerstein-Rodgers “It Might As Well Be Spring,” taken from not one but two “State Fairs,” but likewise in “Secret Love” from

“Calamity Jane” (that one:starred Doris Day and Howard Keel) and in “Moon

River,” complete with the inevitable guitar, that Audrey Hepburn gave voice to in the otherwise sophisticated “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

A footnote to those two “State Fairs”: Jeanne Crain sang “It Might As Well Be Spring’ — ostensibly —in the 1945 movie version, and Pamela Tiffin sang it — ostensibly — in the 1962 version. Sinatra, happily, doesn’t have any need for a double.

He gives the f

Thing,” as hauntingly composed by Sammy Fain to Paul Francis Webster’s words and symbolizing the broken romance between William Holden and Jennifer Jones in the picture of the same title, and also to the theme from “Three Coins in the Fountain,” set against Riddle’s plashing strings.

The pair from the Crosby collection, both in jauntier style, are “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening,” out of “Here Comes the Groom,” and “Swingin’ on a Star,’ with which, you may remember, Der Bingle admonished the kiddies in “Going My Way.” —

_ Frank also sings “All The Way” from his own film, “The Joker Is Wild.” It should also be chronicled, for the record, that he received an Academy Award himself as Best Supporting Actor (“From Here to Eternity,” 1953) and a nomi- nation for Best Actor in 1955 (“The Man With the Golden Arm”). In 1963

he further identified himself with the Academy by m.c.ing the Oscar ceremonies. — PHILIP K. SCHEUER

Motion Picture Editor, Los Angeles Times

Cover Photos: Ted Allen / Printed in U.S.A.

ill treatment to the rather superior “Love Is A Many-Splendored

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