The X-rated Frank Sinatra movie Roger Ebert couldn’t stand: “The worst”

When you think of Frank Sinatra, the first thing that comes to mind is probably a song. ‘My Way,’ for example, or ‘New York, New York.’ You might even be humming along right now, or wishing that I hadn’t brought it up at all. Sinatra remains one of the most popular singers of all time. More than 150million copies of his records have been sold, and his voice is still a ubiquitous presence on our airwaves. 

However, he was also a prolific actor. He started appearing in musicals in the 1940s, often alongside the ultimate song-and-dance man, Gene Kelly. In the 1950s, Sinatra’s career took a leap forward when he appeared in From Here to Eternity, a wartime romantic melodrama featuring a star-studded cast. In addition to Sinatra were Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr, and Donna Reed, all of whom were top-tier dramatic actors. The movie was nominated for 13 Oscars and won eight, including for Sinatra.

Ol’ Blue Eyes didn’t quit when he won the industry’s top prize, and he didn’t stay beholden to Old Hollywood. He earned another Oscar nod for his performance in the 1955 thriller The Man with the Golden Arm and starred in the original Ocean’s 11. In the 1960s, he shifted into playing detective roles, most notably in three films – Tony Rome in 1967, The Detective a year later, and Lady in Cement the same year. None of them were received particularly well, but it was the last one that received the most backlash.

In Lady in Cement, Sinatra reprises his role as Tony Rome, a private investigator in Miami trying to solve the murder of a woman whose body was found at the bottom of the ocean, her feet encased in cement. Raquel Welch plays little more than eye candy, a woman Sinatra’s character describes as “a very good looking broad who’s got a crazy breast stroke.” Her character is loosely part of the plot, a possible friend of the dead woman, but her role is mostly to be nude, semi-nude, or dressed in completely transparent clothing to look like she’s nude.

In his review of the film, Roger Ebert didn’t pull his punches. He started by conceding that Tony Rome and The Detective were plagued with issues – excessive flashbacks, an effort to keep Sinatra’s brand intact while also turning him into a hardened cynic, and far too many plot lines. “But Lady in Cement is the worst,” he wrote. “Somewhere in the middle of this vulgar exercise, a good movie might be buried. But we’ll never know.”

Interestingly, it was Welch who received most of his disdain. “She can’t act,” he wrote, “It’s cruel to force her. She may be the first pizza waitress discovered as a movie star.” This seems unfair considering the material she had to work with. Even Meryl Streep couldn’t turn the character into anything akin to lifelike. Sinatra, Ebert asserted, was an excellent actor and showed occasional flashes of his immense dramatic talents. “So why,” the critic wondered, “Does he surround himself with second-raters?”

Not surprisingly, Lady in Cement hasn’t gone down in history as one of Sinatra’s greatest moments. The three films in which he played detectives did, however, grant him two surprising opportunities. He was initially cast as the titular cop in Dirty Harry, only to drop out and have Clint Eastwood take over shortly before shooting commenced. Even stranger, he was the first actor to be offered the role of John McClane in Die Hard, the role that turned Bruce Willis into an action star. 

The reason for the latter had more to do with contractual obligations than casting directors. Because he had originated the role in The Detective (the character was originally named Joe Leland), Sinatra got first dibs. At 70, however, he was more than happy to admit that he wasn’t up for running around a skyscraper in a tank top.