ViewGuide

Created Feb 20, 2016 02:19PM PST • Edited Oct 08, 2022 07:56AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Frank Sinatra won a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical as the womanizing nightclub singer in Pal Joey. Sandwiched between the glamorous Rita Hayworth and the luscious Kim Novak, he’s at his lounge-lizard best in this mid-century paean to pre-liberation sexual politics. It’s a whole lotta fun.

   Pal Joey is also a postcard from San Francisco in the Fifties. The City by the Bay never looked better: glamorous and classic, beautiful and dramatic. To wit, the nightclub was set in the Spreckels Mansion.

   Speaking of esthetic wonders, click play on the nearby video to behold Sinatra crooning The Lady is a Tramp for a beguiled Hayworth. Wow, even a rocker like me gets dazzled by The Voice in full flower.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Frank Sinatra was second-billed to Rita Hayworth in Pal Joey, but it’s his movie all the way. “Pal” Joey was a convergence of his celebrity persona with a role that glamorized it. Itinerant saloon singer with a golden voice, streetwise manner and skirt-chasing habits: yep, that’s how we think of Sinatra. Indeed, Pal Joey is said to be the definitive Sinatra vehicle, though by whom is lost to the mists of Wikipedia.

   Rita Hayworth is one of the all-time great Screen Queens, here as the doyenne of San Francisco society, yet young enough to be a credible cougar on the hunt for young studs like Sinatra’s Pal Joey. How glamorous was Hayworth? The Barefoot Contessa was inspired by her early life as a Spanish dancer.

   Kim Novak has a more nuanced role in Pal Joey than she’d have in Vertigo the following year. Her’s is an iconic screen beauty.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    The film is cheesy in a mid-centery heteronormative way, a fantasy of white male privilege extraordinaire. But that’s viewing it through a joy-sapping politically-correct lens. Viewed as pure entertainment and as a lens into 1950s San Francisco, it’s a whole lotta fun.

11. Direction Great 4.0

    George Sidney was a consummate director of musical comedies.

12. Play Good 3.0

    Sinatra’s Pal Joey comments that someone could “pitch for the NY Giants”, in a movie set in San Francisco shortly before the Giants became the San Francisco Giants.

13. Music Perfect 5.0

    Sinatra sings several classics.

    • I Didn’t Know What Time It Was
    • Great Big Town
    • There’s a Small Hotel
    • I Could Write a Book
    • The Lady Is a Tramp

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.6

17. Sex Titillating 1.8

18. Violence Gentle 1.5

19. Rudeness Salty 1.6

21. Reality

    Glib 1.6

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.2

23. Biological Glib 1.5

24. Physical Natural 1.0