Frank Sinatra Films

1949. Three USN sailors on 24-hour shore leave. They all get a girl. American Museum of Natural History, Empire State Building, Coney Island. Everyone happy. Nobody dies.

1954. A songwriter enters the lives of a musical family. The three daughters fall for him. Indigo Irises (II) enters the picture with a pocketful of negativity in his pocket. Everybody starts falling in love with everybody else . A marriage proposal. A pregnancy. Everyone happy. Nobody dies. I will wait till it comes out on DVD, thank you very much.

1953. Stubborn, bugle-playing, ex-boxer private. His only friend, a none-too-bright soldier who provokes an NCO assigned to the local stockade, into giving him a fatal beating. Extramarital affair. Tora! Tora! Tora!

1957. A night club singer in Chicago has his throat slashed by organised naughty boys for refusing an offer he really should not have. Singing career over, he gains success as a stand up comedian. But like a character above, he has a pocketful of negativity in his pocket. With an increasing reliance on liquor, his world comes tumbling down.

1966. When a U-boat is recovered from the waters off the Bahamas, a group of naughty boys make it sea-worthy again and plan to rob a well-known ocean liner.

1955. Tense stuff. A man released from prison makes the decision to straighten himself out. He returns to his old neighbourhood in Chicago. An ex-junkie, his old dealer soon starts to work on him to regain his custom. The walls move in on him. Nobody is happy. People die.

1962. Korean War. Brainwashing. Solitaire. Queen of diamonds. Matricide. Suicide.

1960. 82nd Airborne Division. The Sahara, the Riviera, the Desert Inn, the Sands and the Flamingo casinos. Didn't the film industry worry too much about fictionalisation and possible lawsuits in 1960?

1956. Jazz musician tries to win back the affections of his ex-wife who is about to remarry. Everybody starts falling in love with everybody else. Indigo Irises (II) plays a reporter at the wedding. Grace Kelly's last film before she toddled off to marry a Monegasque royal prat.

1955. Indigo Irises and Cotton Wool Cheeks together again in a musical, for the very first time. Nathan Detroit (II) a gambler and illicit gambling organiser, runs into Sky Masterson (Brando), an old gambling acquaintaince. What looks like the start of a good, old-fashioned Chicago Piano Two Penny Opera soons deflates the viewer's interest when these Hollywood prima donnas start exercising their vocal chords in high C. According to Hedda Hopper and Dorothy Parker, the aspiring Legion etrangere recruit and the purchaser of a twelve island atoll in French Polynesia... did not see eye to eye.

1957. Second-rate singer and womanising scroundrel who calls women Mus musculus. Wants his own nightclub and rekindles his romance with an old girlfriend to bankroll the enterprise. Kim Novak tried to save him in an above film. She gets better results in this outing.

1967. Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett would be tickled pink in their big sleeps if they knew their pioneer, literary genre would have reawakenings for decades after their last kiss goodbye to the 'platinum blonde' whose 'offer of five bucks a day plus expenses' would not really 'ease my uneasiness about whether I had met her before on 'The Busted Flush' or 'The Pigeon-Toed Orange Peel'. In my opinion, II performs well in his venture into neo-noir.

1968. The sequel to the above. The opening sequence had this Little Black Duck wondering if it was really necessary to learn how to swim. When Dan Blocker a.k.a. Hoss Cartwright waltzes in and tries to kill the eponymous character of the original... I felt a little down. Then 'Hoss' joins forces with the star and my spirits rose again. Alas... he is kilt by naughty boys. I said to my parents... "I canna not watch this anymore, ma... pa. I jest might goes to bed." Then Rachel Welch appeared. I sez to my pa "Daddy, she looks exactly like my teacher!" Anyway, for the next week... my father drove me to school and picked me up as well. My father was wonderful in realising when us boys were hurtin' real bad. He sez " Don't worry, boy. Hoss is alive and well. Cheer up and I will walk you to your classroom. Which one is it?"

1965. A film that suggests that soldiers on opposite sides will resort to collaboration if it means survival. One side learns from the other... appreciation of their different beliefs, ways of life, religious practices... all destroyed when a fanatic of either side gate-crashes the party waving national flags and threatening court-martials or induced self-destruction.

1965. A film made with better pyrotechnics, better portrayals of English officers as they really were, better portrayals of US soldiers as the frightened, "What the goddamn hell am I doing in this forsaken place?" Ludicrous portrayals of seasoned German troops walking half-dressed out of a guardhouse and toppling dead without a twitch from a burst of Thompson sub-machine fire from a clip the shooter who had two seconds previously brought down a water tower with. Reliance on subterfuge by dressing up Mrs Muir's ghost in a German uniform and not suggesting he should lose his Cambridge accent.

1968. II gets back into the swing of things with this taut, unpredictable piece.

1970. "An actor/actress should never go out of type"- Roger Ebert. Going along with that train of thought... II did not belong in a western movie. Leonardi di Cappuccino does not belong in a western movie. Robert de Niro does not belong in westerns, romances, comedies or any movie that does not have at least a hint of murder or organised crime in it. Meryl Streep fails when her character is not required to speak Spanish, Yiddish, Croatian, Outback Australian, New Hebridian Creole or Venezuelan Voodoo. Paul Hogan became popular in one movie... that suggested that Australians are people of highly low intelligence... rely on killing animals for food, clothing and ornamental accessories. We only drink Foster's and in such a small amounts that we never roll a truck, can shoot at white hooligans shooting kangaroos illegally on Aboriginal land, save an American beauty from death by crocodile bite with the plunge of a Bowie knife into its circuitry... without its tail thrashing around in its death throes and taking off both the damsel's head and yours off in one swell swoop. Driving into an Aboriginal Reserve in a vehicle that stinks to high heaven of illegal crocodile shooting, smuggling... and expecting the park rangers to not notice you until you have taken your load and crossed the demarcation line on your way out once more?

1980. During my research for this quiz... I have developed a new-found understanding and perhaps a sort of respect for the man. I find it hardly unlikely that I will ever appreciate his singing. But remembering the film's that he was in... bring back enjoyable memories to me. Indigo Irises! Salud!