'Tony Rome II' (The Same But A Little Different')

From my post on "Tony Rome" (1967):

In the late fifties and early sixties, Frank Sinatra's top singing career was equalled by his bankability as a movie star. Producers maneuvered like hell to get Sinatra to say "yes" to a script. For awhile, he said "yes" to "Some Like It Hot," and when he pulled out, a star of equal magnitude had to be sought for another part (Marilyn Monroe.) Sinatra was that big.

Things peaked for Sinatra in both recordings and movies as the sixties started. He was pals with President JFK, he had the Rat Pack thing going (with a few movies to show for it like "Ocean's Eleven" and "Robin and the 7 Hoods"), and he managed to anchor a true classic with a great performance: "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962.)

But JFK was blown away in 1963 and The Beatles hit the US in 1964 and by the time the late sixties counterculture arrived, Sinatra started to look more old hat than cool.

Still, the studios saw him as a star, and Sinatra managed to round up a few final headline roles in the late sixties.

"Tony Rome" came in 1967. It's a "wobbler": a 1967 movie that feels more like a 1962 movie, except for a healthy dose of sex-and-drug issues that point the way to the R-rated era just around the corner.

Sinatra is every inch the star in the movie. His great singing voice was the perfect tool for acting: our best movie stars often have great voices. At age 52, Sinatra looked a little worn and puffy yet still sexy and virile -- a perfect fit for a private eye perhaps a little long in the tooth for the action and the babes...but not that much. And his voice kills.

Though things get a little campy and "in-jokey" along the way, "Tony Rome" stays admirably within the class of its forbears: there is a REAL mystery here, real danger, real things at stake. Everything plays out in talk, with a little action, at a variety of low-life locations (bars, strip-clubs) mixed with up-scale mansions of the Miami rich... Sinatra ably walks where (his friend) Humphrey Bogart did, with just enough "ring-a-ding-ding" humor to make the part his own.

Richard Conte, a bona-fide film noir 40's star, does fine as Tony's cop friend who, as usual for these things, has to stand by while Tony kills people ("justifiable self-defense") and refuses to tell him what's going on ("In due time," Sinatra reassures Conte.) The two men have a great little scene where we see that cop Conte has a tiny house (but next to a nice Miami canal), a pretty wife, and two little boys, and mows his own lawn. Tony comes over, helps himself to a beer, offers Conte one and keeps him hanging about the mystery.

.....

"Tony Rome" gets the job done as an entertaining mystery, but a couple of "racy" scenes hit a false note today. In one, Sinatra meets up with a pair of lesbians -- a gorgeous young stripper and her fat old butch girlfriend -- and stares upon them in amused disgust. In the other, Sinatra manhandles a broadly-played gay drug pusher played by Lloyd Bochner. Sinatra beats the guy up for being a drug dealer -- but maybe also for being gay. It's an embarrassing scene today.

Those bumps in the road aside (like a lot of movies, "Tony Rome" was old guys trying to confront a new era), this is a solid detective movie in a solid tradition.
...

Sinatra famously retired from singing in 1971, only to come back a few years later for a couple of more decades of singing and performing. But he also pretty much retired from ACTING in 1971. Cary Grant famously retired in 1966, but Sinatra could be seen as another former superstar who threw in the towel when the 70's came. His time was over. Sinatra did a TV movie (as a cop fighting the Mafia, ha), and one rather tepid "comeback" theatrical in 1980("The Last Deadly Sin") and pretty much checked out of movies.

Put it all together and in "Tony Rome" you likely have Frank Sinatra's last performance as a fully formed Movie Star. You also have a nicely atmospheric mystery set in Miami Beach when it was oh-so-swingin', baby. Those days are over, man. Go back and take a look at them sometime.

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I guess "Tony Rome" did well enough at the 1967 box office to merit an immediate follow-up in "Lady in Cement." Pretty much everything above fits and matches. "Tony Rome" and "Lady in Cement" were made close enough together to feel almost like one seamless movie.

I would note here that when Sinatra crony Dean Martin did the spy spoof "Matt Helm" series, Sinatra was offered "Our Man Flint" and passed (James Coburn got the part, and stardom from it.) Sinatra probably figured that he would look downright silly doing karate and having all sort of women swoon over him in packs.

But Tony Rome looked like a better fit for Sinatra: a private eye in the Bogie tradition, working Miami, where Jersey/New York showbiz types like Sinatra went for the winter and their later years.

"Lady In Cement" seems to be a slightly bigger production than "Tony Rome." For awhile there, Racquel Welch was a star of sorts, and so her replacing Jill St. John as Sinatra's teasing love interest was more "starrish." Dan Blocker is wonderfully effective in a role that seems like it could only have been written for a man of his size (George Kennedy was off winning Oscars in '68 for "Cool Hand Luke" in '67, and was no longer available to play Big Bruisers.)

Sinatra makes a bit of a change from "Tony Rome": he loses the porkpie hat and switches to a creamy off white suit that makes more sense for sultry Miami. He NEVER changes that suit in "Lady in Cement," so one kind of gets the effect of Cary Grant in "North by Northwest," wearing that silver-gray suit all the time. Or kinda not.

Crucially, "Lady in Cement" came out in November of 1968, just in time for the debut of the "R" rating for the first month in history. "Lady in Cement" thus can go a bit beyond "Tony Rome" just one year before. The titular (in more ways than one) lady in cement is discovered by scuba diving Frank in a topless state (well, nude, actually, but seaweed covers her nether regions.) A few nude drawings and paintings are shown, along with a nude model showing just enough to merit a 1968 "R." (She keeps begging the male artist to let her go to the join, creating a weirdly anti-erotic mood, not to mention a misgyonistic one: Sinatra finally grants her potty privileges...but evidently, only a MAN can do this.)

The "Tony Rome" attitude towards gay men accelerates here; Sinatra keeps making vocal-copycat fun of the ones he meets, who are pretty overdone and, in most cases, villains. Thus did Old Hollywood tough-guy cinema allow for the introduction of gay men in the late sixties. Between "Tony Rome" and "Lady in Cement," Sinatra did the "serious" cop drama "The Detective," which dealt with the particularly lurid of a gay man by closeted one. What was Sinatra's issue with the gay guy culture?

"Tony Rome" and especially "Lady in Cement" stand as testimony to how the cultural upheavals of the late sixties helped kill off one film era, while beginning another one. The brief nudity and sexual references of the Tony Rome movies could not have been done in 1948, but Sinatra and company still seemed locked in another time and place, unwilling to fully confront the new culture aborning. Gay men could now be mentioned and shown in a 1968 movie, but for Sinatra, they were to be made fun of and beaten up.

Those uncomfortable embarrassments aside, Sinatra IS good in both Tony Rome movies. You can read young Roger Ebert's reviews of both movies on the internet, and Ebert pegged it: Sinatra could have been another Bogart, could have won another Oscar. But he just wasn't interested in taking things that seriously anymore.

(Where Ebert is WRONG in his reviews is in his attack on director Gordon Douglas. Douglas was actually responsible for many crisp and entertaining studio films in his time, including "Them" and "Rio Conchos." Sinatra liked Douglas because the man was pliable, but the Tony Rome movies ARE entertaining. I credit Douglas with some of that.)

Two more things:

1. "Lady in Cement" features a car chase through Miami late in the film, and one remembers: "Bullitt" with Steve McQueen came out the same month. Bad luck for Sinatra...his protege Steve McQueen turned in a much better car chase, and a much more "adult" version of a hip detective (police division).


2. We are reminded that Frank Sinatra was originally attached to "Dirty Harry" and almost starred in it (an injury pulled him out.) On the evidence of "Tony Rome," Sinatra would have been pretty good as Dirty Harry. He had the voice and the attitude for it, and "Harry" was originally scripted as an older cop nearing retirement. But we're lucky Sinatra backed out of "Harry." He likely would have hired a hack director and turned in a slipshod movie with an OK Sinatra performance. The combination of Clint Eastwood AND director Don Siegel made "Dirty Harry" a classic; young Eastwood in the role guaranteed sequels for almost two decades.

P.S. One reason "Lady in Cement" is not as good as "Tony Rome": Racquel Welch is nowhere near as accessible and enjoyably sexy as Jill St. John.