Probably best remembered for introducing one of Sinatra's best 50's ballads "All The Way", "The Joker Is Wild" is otherwise a fairly run-of-the-mill biopic of what turns out to be a pretty unlikeable guy, singer-comedian Joe E Lewis, who, from what we see here, is a moderately successful headliner on the nightclub-circuit with a predilection for getting drunk, gambling, abusing his friends and treating his women shabbily. Sinatra in real life was a friend and drinking partner of Lewis on whose then recent same-title autobiography the film was based, but after establishing some sympathy at the start for the Chicago-based 30's entertainer when he gets badly beaten up and his throat slashed after crossing a big-time gangster's lieutenant (in reality, said gangster was Al Capone) for switching gigs to a competing night club, Lewis from then on comes across as a morose, selfish, self-destructive type who by the end of the movie, seems to have quite deservedly lost all his friends and supporters.
In the movie, Lewis compensates for the early damage to his singing voice by playing up the withering comedy ad-libs he used to link his songs and some of his jokes and put-downs are quite funny, giving Frank the chance to combine his singing with some deadpan humour but without ever really imbuing his character with any redeeming charm. By the time Lewis has at last admitted his own failings to himself in a corny me-and-my-conscience routine at the end, I found I didn't care whether or not he walked under a bus as he made his way back to the nightclub to perform his next act, a supposedly new man.
Sinatra's fair-to-middling but ultimately unsuccessful characterisation apart, I did like Eddie Albert as his long-suffering accompanist and the vivacious Mitzi Gaynor as the show-girl who inexplicably takes in Lewis on the rebound from his failed romance with rich society girl Lettie, played by Jeanne Crain. "All The Way" apart however, the rest of the songs aren't that great and by the end Lewis's "Chicago That Toddling Town" theme song will irritate you as much as his "It's post time" catch-phrase as he downs yet another drink.
I sense a darker treatment was possible of this material as other Hollywood films of the decade about alcoholism showed, so that in different hands Sinatra might have been stretched more, but maybe old Frank was too close to his still alive chum Lewis to appreciate this and dig deeper. Instead, this glossy, shallow screen biography doesn't play with a full deck and is ultimately trumped by its lack of conviction.
In the movie, Lewis compensates for the early damage to his singing voice by playing up the withering comedy ad-libs he used to link his songs and some of his jokes and put-downs are quite funny, giving Frank the chance to combine his singing with some deadpan humour but without ever really imbuing his character with any redeeming charm. By the time Lewis has at last admitted his own failings to himself in a corny me-and-my-conscience routine at the end, I found I didn't care whether or not he walked under a bus as he made his way back to the nightclub to perform his next act, a supposedly new man.
Sinatra's fair-to-middling but ultimately unsuccessful characterisation apart, I did like Eddie Albert as his long-suffering accompanist and the vivacious Mitzi Gaynor as the show-girl who inexplicably takes in Lewis on the rebound from his failed romance with rich society girl Lettie, played by Jeanne Crain. "All The Way" apart however, the rest of the songs aren't that great and by the end Lewis's "Chicago That Toddling Town" theme song will irritate you as much as his "It's post time" catch-phrase as he downs yet another drink.
I sense a darker treatment was possible of this material as other Hollywood films of the decade about alcoholism showed, so that in different hands Sinatra might have been stretched more, but maybe old Frank was too close to his still alive chum Lewis to appreciate this and dig deeper. Instead, this glossy, shallow screen biography doesn't play with a full deck and is ultimately trumped by its lack of conviction.