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Meet Danny Wilson
A lounge singer sees his career skyrocket after he signs a contract for a mobster nightclub owner.
Release : | 1952 |
Rating : | 6.3 |
Studio : | Universal International Pictures, |
Crew : | Art Direction, Art Direction, |
Cast : | Frank Sinatra Shelley Winters Alex Nicol Raymond Burr Vaughn Taylor |
Genre : | Drama Crime Music |
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Reviews
Very well executed
good back-story, and good acting
Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.
There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.
Once he got important enough to do such things Sinatra banned Suddenly (he blamed it for getting Kennedy shot) and this film (too close to his own life story). The former was released a few years ago and now, at last, this one. I first saw it on my honeymoon over 50 years ago and never again until now.The plot has been filmed some thousands of times before - both the love affair and the shoot out (unarmed Sinatra kills two armed hoodlums) are ludicrous but Sinatra acts well and sings sublimely. Despite this being filmed when his career was going downhill the singing is positively the best he ever did on film so it gets its 9 score for this.Forgetting the singing maybe 5 or 6 although Sinatras acting must be nearly up to his Maggio of a year later. Shelley Winters is o/k but many of the rest dire and there's some nice cameos - was that Ray Anthony on trumpet in Sinatras big time try-out? Buy the DVD even though for some reason there are no credits, extras or even scene selection spots on the version I purchased in the UK!
Anyone who saw this on its initial release in 1952 would not have been surprised when Sinatra unveiled his considerable 'acting' chops in his very next movie, From Here To Eternity for Meet Danny Wilson is a perfect Halfway House between the gauche Clarence in Anchors Aweigh (typical of all Sinatra's roles in the 40s,with the possible exception of Miracle Of The Bells which extended his range only to the extent of putting him in a dog-collar) and Maggio in Eternity. Here is the Sinatra the real fans knew and admired, primarily a great singer but also a flawed human being, volatile, arrogant, brash. Don McGuire weighs in with a tasty script with some great zingers and uses just enough material from Sinatra's real life to please the cognoscenti. A rare title today but one central to the Sinatra collection and unmissable.
Most enjoyable film with Sinatra and Shelley Winters in a love triangle and messy criminal goings on. Specifically interesting is the part of Raymond Burr, who is a real meany, and cameo roles abound including Tony Curtis and Jeff Chandler, among others who look like they're waiting for something to happen! It does! The music and singing is great! The acting is great! Be ready to enjoy! 7/10
Not at all bad. Meet Danny Wilson, a show-business melodrama with a lot of songs thrown in, betrays a distinct noirish tinge which darkens as the movie progresses. It's a thinly-veiled knockoff of the stories about Frank Sinatra's early days in show business from the shrieking bobby-soxers to the extortionist contract that almost held him back. Obviously, it stars Sinatra, at a low ebb in his career before he had gained the imperial control of his later days as Chairman of the Board, and before he had assembled the legendary `cool' that, as much as his voice, was to become his hallmark.Crooner Danny Wilson and his pianist/manager/buddy (Alex Nichol) are a couple of rough-and-ready slum-bred boys having trouble breaking into the big time. Through the help of a lounge singer they meet up with (Shelly Winters), they get a gig in a posh nightclub run by a mobbed-up entrepreneur (Raymond Burr). The catch is, Burr spots Sinatra's potential and demands half of his future take. A messy love triangle emerges, too, with Sinatra falling head over heels for Winters, who's smitten with the loyal square rigger Nichols. The plot points get connected with the arrival of Success, in the form of recording contracts, attendant royalties and even the movies.Most arresting is Burr as gangster Nick Driscoll. An indispensable fixture of the noir cycle, where so often he played the Heavy Menace, here he takes on a better-written, more shaded role. In addition, he's slimmed down drastically, and the slimming brings out his huge and expressive even seductive eyes. But he still doles out the menace, even if it's cushioned in unaccustomed suavity. Apart from Sinatra, he's the most memorable actor in the film (certainly more memorable than the generic Nichol).Sinatra performs several of the hits which were to enter his standard repertory; he also duets with Winters in a patter-song. Meet Danny Wilson remains strangely obscure, but, despite a warm and perfunctory wrap-up, it's a better crafted and more solid outing than many of the movies he made in his pigs-in-clover Rat Pack days.