Monday, February 11, 2008

It's Frankie! (Or Is It?)

A few months ago I wondered what was the first movie to license a musical recording. I thought it might be the recording of Rudy Vallee in Margie (1946). (Though I'm still not sure if they used a real '20s recording of Vallee or just had Vallee re-record the song. But still, it was an attempt to at least sound like they were playing a real '20s recording by a real recording artist of the era.)

But then I saw the goofy 1945 Arabian-nights parody movie A Thousand and One Nights -- a very silly but fun movie with Cornel Wilde as Aladdin, Phil Silvers as his sidekick, and Evelyn Keyes pre-dating Barbara Eden as a magic genie with a crush on her master. The movie, which is full of deliberately anachronistic references, ends with Keyes doing Silvers a favor by turning him into Frank Sinatra, singing "All Or Nothing At All" for a harem of bobby-soxers. (Yes, everybody did this gag in the '40s, even live-action films.) I don't have Sinatra's own recording of "All Or Nothing At All," his first big hit, so my questions are:

1) Is that Sinatra singing, or an imitator?
2) If it is Sinatra, is that his actual recording of "All or Nothing At All," or is it a re-recording?



Update: Via comments, the answer is # 2, a Sinatra re-recording made at Silvers' request.

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous6:25 PM

    http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2007_02_07.html#012893

    Read Mark Evanier's post on this film from last year.
    If a whole page comes up, scroll down to the headline "Set the TIVO"

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  2. Anonymous6:27 PM

    It's Sinatra, all right. Phil Silvers, who actually conceived the gag and persuaded Sinatra to go along with it, talked about it in his autobiography. Silvers was close to the singer; he not only accompanied Sinatra on his extensive overseas USO tour, but helped assemble the act for him along with Saul Chaplin. I believe Silvers mentioned that the version was recorded especially for the film. The comic needled Harry Cohn that he'd come up with a great tag for the movie and hadn't received a penny for his trouble. The Columbia head's immediate response was characteristically unprintable, but Silvers was stunned a few days later when a costly baby grand was delivered to his home, courtesy of the studio. Silvers was amused that Cohn never bothered to compensate Sinatra, though.

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  3. Anonymous6:30 PM

    Sorry, the entire link didn't show uo...html#012893 should be at the end.
    Or... just go to Mark's site at www.newsfromme.com and do a search for Phil Silvers. Look for "Set the Tivo".

    I saw this movie with a packed house at a 35mm screening in Columbus, Ohio a few years ago. The crowd loved it...particularly the ending.

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  4. Anonymous6:33 PM

    Mark Evanier has it right. [I couldn't quite recall the details; I couldn't find my copy of Silvers' book.]

    ReplyDelete

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