Le pantin brisé

Amazing biography of an amazing man. Joe E. Lewis was the quintessential star of the roaring 20's, with apologies to Al Jolson. A great singer who crossed the wrong people and paid for it with a slashed throat. Sinatra's performance is beyond belief. Already noted as a great actor he outdoes himself. It's been heard that FS "walked" through his roles but not here. Shows how much respect he had for Lewis. A great supporting cast ( Eddie Albert, Jeanne Crain, Mitzi Gaynor and Jackie Coogan) help the film but without the "Chairman of the Board" it would have been just another biography. Sinatra's rendition of "All the Way" is not to be missed. Do yourself a favor and see this movie.

Sinatra offers a good account of Joe E. Lewis in a film made during his most fruitful as an actor before the laziness of the Rat Pack years crept into his work. Plus it contains one of his most beautifully sung songs "All the Way". The moody black and white camera work also helps set the tone for this rather downbeat bio pic. As the two women in his life Jeanne Crain and Mitzi Gaynor both perform well but the really strong woman's role goes to Beverly Garland, always an underused and undervalued actress, as Eddie Albert's loyal wife. She is strong, gritty, sensible and sympathetic as needs be doing a great deal with what could have been a nothing part.

I don't have a great number of DVD's and tapes, but this picture is one of them. My father was a good friend of the "CEO" and others involved in the management of the Beverly Hills Supper Club, in the northern Kentucky suburban area of metropolitan Cincinnati. This was a 5-star dining and show facility, with about 700-seat dining/show area, and full, Vegas-style gambling room (the same "interests," from Cleveland, also controlled the Desert Inn in Las Vegas). My parents and I went there often when I was a youngster, and I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Lewis, and several other of the headliners who appeared there. He was very courteous and nice to me, and this was at the high point of his career. It was the era when there were major venues throughout the U.S. - where in addition to Joe E. Lewis - the clubs also had shows starring Sophie Tucker, Jack E. Leonard, Ted Lewis, Jimmy Durante, Nelson Eddy, Billy Daniels, Lena Horne, and many, many others. Joe E. Lewis was in the very top echelon.

The movie is quite factual, overall - a couple of exceptions being that Austin Mack was very, very bald, while Eddie Albert possessed one of the greater heads of hair in Hollywood; and Lewis' wife Martha (played by Mitzi Gaynor) was actually a minor showgirl, and did not become the important Hollywood figure the film depicted. Some have indicated that in later years during his career he drank tea during his "post time" episodes on-stage. While he always had possession of his faculties whenever I saw him, I once asked Sam Tucker, the "capo" in-charge at Beverly Hills how much Mr. Lewis drank; he indicated it was still a substantial quantity.

Mr. Lewis said, when this film was released, that "Sinatra had more fun playing (his) life than (he) did living it." Sinatra's performance here is outstanding, as well as those of the two female leads, and Albert and Coogan, along with all the supporting cast. And this is one of those biographical films where I feel the personas of the subject individual and his portrayer were very, very similar in both their "real lives."

Tremendous 1957 film showcasing the life of Joe E. Lewis. After a brief singing career ended, due to Chicago gangsters, Lewis finds another voice in comedy. Nevertheless, he was left an embittered person unable to even be happy around those who loved him dearly.

After playing a junkie in 1955's "The Man With the Golden Arm," Sinatra again gives a wonderful performance as the alcoholic Lewis. He belts out "All the Way" the way that song was supposed to be sung.

Jeanne Crain is in fine form as the wealthy woman who loved him dearly but did not marry him due to his behavior and the advent of World War 11.

The real surprise here is the wonderful supporting performance of Mitzi Gaynor as the chorus girl that Lewis wed on the rebound. Gaynor proved that she could really act as well as sing and dance here. Her drunken scene where she told Lewis off was great.

Eddie Albert got plenty of practice being around alcoholics when he appeared with Susan Hayward twice in "Smash-Up The Story of a Woman," as well as "I'll Cry Tomorrow." Albert plays the part of Lewis' understanding pianist with conviction.

The ending may be a downer but is true to life. At least, Lewis was ready to stand on his feet despite being alone.

"The Joker Is Wild" gives us Frank Sinatra playing Joe E. Lewis playing Frank Sinatra. At least that's my read of this entertaining and rather revealing look at a performer's life.

In the 1920s, Lewis is a singer on his way up. Then he tries to part ways with a mobster who thinks he owns the singer and threatens violence if the singer thinks otherwise. Sure enough, Lewis's bid for freedom ends with his larynx slashed and his head busted in. Years later, Lewis re-emerges as a popular nightclub comic, but he's still haunted by what could have been, not to mention a taste for the bottle he works into his stage show a lot better than he does into his life.

Sinatra likened himself to Lewis; he jokes about the two of them forming an Olympic Drinking Team with Dean Martin on his classic "Sinatra At The Sands" album. Perhaps he saw a chance to portray a kindred spirit and a close friend on screen, but watching Sinatra's gritty, unsentimental performance, given at the peak of his career, suggests a deeper agenda. Even Sinatra's friendliest biographers say the man had a dark side, and certainly that is Lewis's situation here, a celebrity who falls into a deeper gloom the more he succeeds, lashing out at those who love him. He's fundamentally decent, but a manic-depressive streak runs deep inside him, coiled around his heart like a rattlesnake.

There's a scene, just after Lewis's wife leaves him, when his faithful pianist Austin Mack (Eddie Albert) suggests Lewis cancel the show. Lewis's reply is the classic entertainer's problem: "What would I do instead?" I get the feeling Sinatra knew that all too well.

Charles Vidor directs this film with assurance and a deft touch, giving Sinatra's early scenes the proper brooding background and his later ones a sense of instability as he amuses his audiences with his cocktail-fueled banter while worrying his friends, who hear the cynicism-bordering-on-nihilism just beneath the surface. The irony of Lewis's life is the bleaker it becomes, the funnier he gets. "I'm fine, I'm fine," he says after passing out on a nightclub floor. "It's you people that are spinning around."

The surrounding cast is competent enough, but this is Sinatra's film, and he carries it off very well, digging into the layers of Lewis's (and his own) tortured, schizoid persona. It's a fair criticism to call this a star vehicle (as Moonspinner55 does in an earlier review here) because Sinatra is sucking up all the oxygen on screen and every scene is designed to showcase his performance. Yet Sinatra's performance merits the treatment, because he serves the story. Watch the scene when Lewis wakes up in his hospital bed and realizes his voice is gone, a scene that works not only because it is so tautly acted but because we all know that's "The Voice" in that bed not able to muster enough vocal power to call over a sleeping friend. Watching him bang a wall in frustration is one of the lumpiest scenes in Sinatra's film career, ironically shot out of focus just like the famous card-showing sequence in "The Manchurian Candidate."

There's also great music, like "All The Way," a Sinatra classic that won an Oscar for this film and is showcased three different times, each in a different way, most effectively the last time, when Sinatra can barely get the words out. You could call this film "Star Is Born For The Straight Guy"; there's plenty of macho melodrama as we watch Lewis charging toward his own alcoholic doom while assaulted with dodgy lines like "I don't know what you're looking for in that bottle, but the faster you run toward it, the farther away it gets."

But the film does have the courage to end on a boldly downbeat note, one that leaves us wondering both about Lewis and the man who plays him. Is showbiz literally worth dying for, as Lewis seems to tell his doctor? Does that make a career like Lewis's heroism or suicide? The best part of "The Joker Is Wild" is the way it leaves you hanging. Was it a cry for help from the Chairman of the Board, or just him letting us know what's what? Your guess is as good as mine.