The Joker is Wild

Prompt: How does Sinatra's portrayal of Joe E. Lewis compare to Frankie Machine? To earlier roles? How does Lewis compare to Sinatra himself?

While there are definitely some parallels between the characters of Joe E. Lewis and Frankie Machine, they are not exactly dealing with the same problems. Lewis is an overly confident and cocky young man who gets into trouble when he does not take mob threats seriously. Being attacked and getting his throat cut swiftly ends his rising singing career and seems to be the catalyst for driving Lewis to the bottle. By the time we once again see Lewis in the 1940s he seems to be well on his way to becoming an alcoholic, and is a man beaten down by life. He has a very low opinion of himself and doesn't really feel that he amounts to anything, and that attitude and chip on his shoulder later ends up ruining his relationship with the love of his life, Letty Page (played by Jeanne Crain). In addition to using alcohol to help mask the pain he was feeling, Lewis started telling jokes, many of them extremely self deprecating. Lewis and Frankie Machine both have substance abuse problems, but by the end of each film they both seem to have mastered their addictions. Even though Frankie does kick his heroine addiction, the end of the film is so depressing and melancholy, and the viewer is left not knowing if he and Kim Novak's character will end up together or if he will find a respectable job and be able to support himself. The end of The Joker is Wild is definitely a little more positive, even though Lewis has driven away everyone who loves him; at least he still has a job and it seems like he makes the decision to give up alcohol and enjoy the rest of his life. After thinking about Letty, Martha, and his best friend Austin (all whom have been driven away by Lewis' drinking and behavior), Lewis seems to realize that he does not want to throw away the rest of his life by drinking and cheerfully walks off to the nightclub where he is performing his act.

The character of Joe E. Lewis also seemed to influence Sinatra's later personal performance style. In class we watched a performance that Sinatra did at Caesars Palace in May of 1978, and one can definitely see some similarities between Sinatra's performance style at that point and the style of Lewis. They both had no inhibitions what-so-ever about drinking heavily before going on stage and Sinatra and Lewis both had drinks with them on stage while performing most of the time. When Lewis was being heckled by drunk men in the audience, he gave it right back to them and didn't seem to hold back at all. One thing that really shocked me during Sinatra's performance at Caesars Palace was when he called out William Randolph Hearst, and all of his writers, for being evil and pathetic people. Not only did Sinatra tear all of them down, he made jokes about Heart's death. While I can understand where Sinatra's anger is coming from (Hearst and his writers notoriously disliked Sinatra and went after him in the press any chance they could), I still cringed a little bit because the language Sinatra used was so harsh and accusing!