Sinatra Lit! “Golden Arm Revisited”
Another Sinatra! Birthday Special - and a Secret "Buried As Deep as God’s Toenails”
“Yet, after the manner of simple hearts, Violet was confident that her secret was buried as deep as God’s toenails. ” (from The Man With The Golden Arm, Nelson Algren, 1949.)
Nelson Algren’s The Main With The Golden Arm (1949) is one of the quintessential American noir novels, and, likewise, the 1955 film by Otto Preminger is one of Hollywood’s great later films noir. I first read it years ago, when I went on a literary spree inspired by Sinatra’s filmography; I was determined not only to see all of Sinatra’s movies, but also to read the books that they were based on. Although Sinatra himself never had what you would call much of a formal education, he was, as, my late editor and buddy Bob Gottlieb would say, very much an avid reader. (Bob had a great story about the one time he met Sinatra in person, at a dinner party hosted by Bennett Cerf, no less.)
At least four of Sinatra’s best movies were based on major novels; this was what Bob and I used to call “Sinatra Lit”:
From Here to Eternity (James Jones, 1951; film, 1953)
The Man With The Golden Arm (Nelson Algren, 1949; film, 1955)
Not as a Stranger (Morton Thompson, 1954; film, 1955)
The Manchurian Candidate (Richard Condon, 1959; film, 1962)
One of the many elements that makes The Man With The Golden Arm stand out is that Algren, like F. Scott Fitzgerald before him, uses contemporary popular music as a means of setting a scene in a very specific time and place. In Golden Arm, there are roughly 25 popular songs - some famous, some obscure.
Sinatra! “GOLDEN ARM Revisited”
Guest-starring:
KURT ELLING, MELISSA ERRICO & ALLAN HARRIS
(SSS #126 2024-12-14)
download: <OR> play online
In this week’s episode of Sing! Sing! Sing! On KSDS Jazz 88.3 (links to follow), in honor of Sinatra’s 109th birthday, I have put together a three-hour program celebrating The Main With The Golden Arm - the book, the movie, and the music that’s associated with both. (Below is quite possibly the most obscure song mentioned by Algren. This is “Big Town Blues,” a 1946 R&B side released on Capitol by a band led by drummer Jesse Price, most famous for playing on Stan Kenton’s “And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine” - a song famously heard in The Big Sleep.)
I play vintage recordings of those songs referenced in the novel, as well as excerpts from the film score by the great Elmer Bernstein - and also, a few pop single “covers” of that music, including tracks by Dick Jacobs and his Orchestra and Chorus, as well as The Gaylords, who released a single of “Molly-O,” a Bernstein “cue” from the score transformed into a pop song via lyrics by Sylvia Fine (wife of Danny Kaye and frequent writer of special material lyrics for that great funnyman) of all unlikely people.
In order to give listeners the full flavor of the novel, I also wanted to include some of the amazing writing of Nelson Algren. This is classic noir lit, in the tradition of Raymond Chandler, Dashell Hammett - with the distinction that this is not necessarily a mystery or even a crime story, although goodness knows there’s a lot of crime in it - and even Ernest Hemingway. I asked three very talented friends to help me out with this. Here are two of the ten or so readings that are heard on the program, the first by MELISSA ERRICO and ALLAN HARRIS and the second by KURT ELLING.
One aspect of the story that the film version illuminates - and I’m sure you gamblers out there are well aware of this - it was once a tradition for dealers to, in a sense, “narrate” the games and provide a kind of running commentary. It was semi-nonsensical, somewhat rap-ish line of gab that the dealers would improvise. The final part of the book is called “Epitaph,” and it’s written in the style of one of these dealer chants; I asked Kurt to read this for us, and I used one of Bernstein’s bluesy motifs as a background for it.
“It’s all in the wrist, with a deck or a cue,
And Frankie Machine had the touch.
He had the touch, and a golden arm—
“Hold up, Arm,” he would plead,
Kissing his rosary once for help
With the faders sweating it out and—
Zing!—there it was—Little Joe or Eighter from Decatur,
Double trey the hard way, dice be nice,
When you get a hunch bet a bunch,
It don’t mean a thing if it don’t cross that string,
Make me five to keep me alive,
Tell ’em where you got it ’n how easy it was—
We remember Frankie Machine
And the arm that always held up.
We remember in the morning light
When the cards are boxed and the long cues racked
Straight up and down like the all-night hours
With the hot rush hours past.
For it’s all in the wrist with a deck or a cue
And if he crapped out when we thought he was due
It must have been that the dice were rolled,
For he had the touch, and his arm was gold:
Rack up his cue, leave the steerer his hat,
The arm that held up has failed at last.
Yet why does the light down the dealer’s slot
Sift soft as light in a troubled dream?
(A dream, they say, of a golden arm
That belonged to the dealer we called ”Machine.”)
Lastly, at one point, somebody had the idea that there should be a title song for the 1955 Golden Arm film, and Sinatra or Preminger commissioned one from the new team of Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn, who had just launched their partnership with the double whammy of the title song for Sinatra’s MGM comedy, The Tender Trap, as well as the rather amazing six-song score for the NBC television production of Our Town.
Clearly Sammy read both the book and the screenplay by Walter Newman and Lewis Meltzer, and made every effort to translate the story, of the film even more than the novel, into song narrative form. In some spots, it seems kind of forced, but overall, it’s a very worthy slice of songwriting. Sinatra recorded his version with Nelson Riddle at the Capitol studio - it has the pacing and general format of a single rather than a main title them - on October 11, 1955, but it wasn’t officially released until 2002 on Rhino’s quintessential boxed set, Frank Sinatra in Hollywood 1940–1964.
However, Sammy Davis Jr. did record the song - by this point, after his car accident and subsequent conversion to Judaism - he was already close with Sinatra and his inner creative circle, and I’m sure he was keen to record this song as a favor for Sinatra, Cahn, and Van Heusen. His version is rather good - and it seems to be the only way that this song was ever legally heard until 2002, since there’s no trace of it in the actual film.
He makes his own dreams,
His own paradise
But paradise is just a false alarm.
And no one’s really sadder than
The man with the golden arm.He buys every thrill,
And pays any price,
And thinks he’s having fun,
And what’s the harm?
He’s following the devil’s plan
The man with the golden arm.What is that strange desire
That sets his soul afire?
The hopeless need for it,
That makes him plead for it,
The walls start closing in,
The room begins to spin.
There’s no escape,
And there’s no friend
How did it start?
Where will it end?The ending is clear.
And not very nice.
A nameless grave beside some prison farm.
There is no story sadder than
The man with the golden arm.But there’s a chance that he
Can shake the misery.
That’s if he’s strong enough,
And fights it long enough.
The ones who do are rare,
But with some hope and prayer,
The nightmare’s gone,
And so’s the end
You’ll find the sun and walk among men.And gone are the dreams.
The fool’s paradise.
The heaven that was just a false alarm.
And no one’s really gladder than
The man with the golden arm.
The man with the golden arm.
Lastly, I quite forget about this performance - the marvelous Molly Pope - alt-cabaret superstar diva - who performed the Cahn-Van Heusen song ten years ago at a concert that I produced along with Bill Zeffiro at Urban Stages:
Thanks to David Arizmendi for letting me pick his brain re Golden Arm-related singles!
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Guest-starring:
KURT ELLING, MELISSA ERRICO & ALLAN HARRIS
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download: <OR> play online
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yes! you are correct. I should have mentioned that - when FS makes his entrance in Monte Carlo, his walk on theme is "Clarke Street." very true! thanks for pointing that out!
PS The “Main Title” of Man With the Golden Arm is often listed as Clarke Street.