Continuing our shallow dive into the slump years of Frank Sinatra’s career (roughly 1949-53) here’s a clip from Sinatra’s TV show that he somehow maintained during the period, the daringly titled ‘The Frank Sinatra Show’. Frank sings ‘These Foolish Things’, one of the loveliest ballads of the era accompanied on piano by somebody seemingly named ‘Lyle’ (Sinatra says his name in passing at the top of the clip but it’s hard to make it out. To bad–he’s a very good pianist). Is that Lana Turner he’s singing to? I’m not finding any listing of a guest appearance by her on the show but he clearly substitutes the name when the lyric gets to ‘The smile of Turner when the bells have sounded…’ It doesn’t help that the director has awkwardly staged the scene so that her face is turned away from camera until the last twenty seconds. Sinatra looks to weigh less than a hundred pounds here, with the result that his head seems far to large for those scrawny shoulders to support. When he sits on the bench next to the pianist he looks like a ventriloquial dummy of Frank Sinatra. The singing is beautiful, yes. But Sinatra’s received enough praise over the years so why not take the opportunity to beat up on him a little? Here he has all the stage presence of a cruise ship entertainer, resembles Charlie McCarthy–at least I didn’t say Mortimer Sneard–and is clearly at the most pathetic low-point in his career–even worse in my opinion then those last few concerts where he was throwing knuckleballs vocally. If you find yourself having any sympathy for him at the moment just remember Shecky Green’s joke about how Sinatra saved his life after Green told a Sinatra joke in his act; “he watched three guys beating me up and said ‘he’s had enough fellas’.” Many thanks to my friend Marc Myers of JazzWax for supplying me with this invaluable (and absurd) piece of the Sinatra career puzzle.