The Frank Sinatra Show – High Hopes
Picture: C-
Sound: C Extras: C Episode: B-
In one of the more interesting installments of Frank
Sinatra’s Timex-sponsored series from 1957, this DVD of a strong show dubbed High
Hopes offers Dean Martin, Bing Crosby and Mitzi Gaynor opening the show
singing the title song. Jimmy Durante
later joins them in what is a very entertaining nearly hour-long installment of
the series. The songs performed
include:
1)
High Hopes (Martin/Crosby/Gaynor)
2)
Day In & Day Out
(Sinatra)
3)
Together (Sinatra/Martin/Crosby)
4)
Hurricane (Gaynor)
5)
Talk To Me (Sinatra/Gaynor)
6)
Dancing Cheek To Cheek
(Martin/Crosby/Gaynor)
7)
Wrap Up Your Troubles In A Dream
(Martin)
8)
Give Us The Old Songs medley
(Sinatra/Martin/Crosby)
9)
Old Man River (Sinatra/Martin/Crosby)
10)
High Hopes
(Sinatra & children)
11)
It Was Just
One Of Those Things (Sinatra)
12)
Angel Eyes
(Sinatra)
13)
The Lady Is
A Tramp (Sinatra)
14)
Start Each
Day With A Song/Ink A Doo/So Baby Won’t You Please Come Home –
Medley with Sinatra, Martin, Crosby and Jimmy Durante
The best thing is that everyone involved was great and are
great here, doing their work during peak eras of their careers. The song choices are exceptional and some of
the songs that were new then are classics now.
You can see them when they were fresh and realize why they stayed that
way.
The 1.33 X 1 image is an older film copy of the kinescope
of the show with artifacts throughout and low definition quality as a
result. We have seen muddier, but bit
as dirty in so many places. The sound
take the old monophonic track and spreads it out over Dolby Digital 5.1, but
the fidelity is so dated, it does not help much. Extras are few and include biography, filmography and discography
text for the Sinatra, Martin and Crosby, plus filmography-only text for Mitzi
Gaynor and Durante. Points to the
discographies for being more thorough than expected, though the other text is
fine. Even with tech limits, High
Hopes is worth a look.
- Nicholas Sheffo
