Monday, August 17, 2015

100 Years of Frank Sinatra: "Not as a Stranger"


Frank Sinatra receives 3rd billing, below Olivia de Havilland and Robert Mitchum, in the medical drama Not as a Stranger, directed by Stanley Kramer (The Defiant Ones, On the Beach).  The movie opened at the Capitol Theater in New York City on June 28, 1955.   It is based on a doorstop of a novel (956 pages) written by Morton Thompson, a #1 best seller in 1954



New York Times movie critic Bosley Crowther has decidedly mixed feeling about the movie.
But again we must say that Mr. Kramer has got a fine sense of medicine, especially of hospital treatment and the practice of surgery. His wards are stacked with vivid patients (he must have cast them with people who were running temperatures), and his operating rooms and operations are as orderly and charged with tension as if they were real. The final operation, in which the hero opens the chest and works on the heart of his old friend, is a strong bit of candid realism. We wouldn't suggest it for anyone who tends to qualms.

With so much dissecting in his picture—and so much of it being good—it is too bad that Mr. Kramer couldn't have done a little on his characters.

Sometime in 1955, Dad took my brother and me to see our first movie in a theater -- at the Civic Center (now the Mansfield Theater, part of the Mansfield Center for the Performing Arts) in Great Falls, Montana.


Other Frank Sinatra 100 posts:
"Our Love".  (2/14/2015)
"I'll Never Smile Again".   (2/15/2015)
"Fools Rush In".  (2/16/2015)
"Dolores".  (2/17/2015)
"Oh Look At Me Now".  (2/18/2015)
"This Love of Mine".  (2/20/2015)
"There Are Such Things."  (2/24/2015)
"Night and Day".  (2/26/2015)
"The Night We Called It a Day".  (2/27/2015)
Paramount Theater, December 30, 1942.  (3/2/2015)
Reveille with Beverly.  (3/4/2015)
"You'll Never Know".  (3/7/2015)
Higher and Higher.  (3/8/2015)
"People Will Say We're in Love".  (3/10/2015)
The Shining Future.  (3/17/2015)
"I Couldn't Sleep a Wink Last Night".  (3/19/2015)
Step Lively.  (3/20/2015) .
"Saturday Night (is the Loneliest Night of the Week)".  (3/21/2015)
"You'll Never Walk Alone".  (3/23/2015)
"Oh What It Seemed to Be".  (3/24/2015)
Anchors Aweigh.  (3/26/2015)
"Day by Day".  3/27/2015)
Till the Clouds Roll By.  (3/29/2015)
"Always".  (3/30/2015)
It Happened in Brooklyn.  (3/31/2015)
"I've Got a Crush on You".  (4/3/2015)
"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas".  (4/5/2015)
"It Only Happens When I Dance With You".  (4/7/2015)
The Miracle of the Bells.  (4/9/2015)
The birth of Tina.  (4/11/2015)
The Kissing Bandit.  (4/16/2015)
"Some Enchanted Evening."  (4/19/2015)
Take Me Out to the Ball Game.  (4/22/2015)
"The Huckle Buck."  (4/24/2015)
On the Town.  (4/28/2015)
A blowup in Houston.  (4/30/2015)
1st television appearance.  (5/3/2015)
"The Frank Sinatra Show".  (5/5/2015)
"I'm a Fool to Want You".  (5/7/2015)
"Mama Will Bark".  (5/10/2015)
Double Dynamite.  (5/13/2015)
Frank and Ava get married.  (5/15/2015)
Meet Danny Wilson.  (5/19/2015)
"I Could Write a Book".  (5/24/2015)
His Final Recording for Columbia Records, "Why Try to Change Me Now?"  (5/28/2015)
A new musical era with Capital Records.  (6/2/2015)
Filming begins on From Here to Eternity.   (6/15/2015)
"I've Got the World on a String".  (6/20/2015)
"Young at Heart".  (6/21/2015)
Songs for Young Lovers.  (6/22/2015)
Best supporting actor Oscar.  (6/28/2015)
Swing Easy.  (7/4/2015)
Suddenly.  (7/10/2015)
"Three Coins in the Fountain".  (7/16/2015)
Young at Heart (the movie).  (7/26/2015)
"Learnin' the Blues".  (8/5/2015)
Songs for Swingin' Lovers.  (8/12/2015)

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