The role Frank Sinatra quit before he’d shot a single scene: “I signed to do one movie, not two”
Historically, the term diva has been thrown around rather carelessly, and it is typically aimed at female stars with a strong sense of what they want. Women with outspoken personalities, or those who stand up against industry corruption and demands that they aren’t comfortable with, have long been called divas. Yet, there are many male stars who are much more deserving of the label. Iconic crooner-turned-actor Frank Sinatra had many diva-like tendencies, and he built quite a reputation for himself as a controversial figure in the industry throughout his time as one of the greatest-selling artists of all time.
We’re not here to say that Sinatra was a terrible person – after all, he was an outspoken advocate for many causes that his contemporaries were silent about, such as the civil rights movement – but he certainly had his moments of being difficult to work with.
During the 1940s, Sinatra began to find success as an actor, finding acclaim with a performance in the movie Anchors Aweigh in 1945. While his next few projects were a mix of successes and failures, he soon triumphed in the following decade with movies like From Here to Eternity, Guys and Dolls, and High Society, proving himself to be a multi-talented figure.
Yet, there were times when Sinatra evidently didn’t have the same work ethic as other actors of his generation, which Shirley Jones revealed in her memoir. The pair were slated to work together on the 1956 film Carousel, but Sinatra soon quit when he realised that the movie would be much harder work than he’d bargained for.
Perhaps he just didn’t have it in him to fully commit to Hollywood in the same way as other actors because he had a very successful musical career to uphold in the meantime. Regardless of his reasoning, he acted rather unprofessionally when he discovered that he wouldn’t be able to breeze through the production of Carousel with his eyes closed.
“All of us, including Frank, had been told beforehand that some of the Carousel scenes had to be shot twice because of the complexities of the new process, CinemaScope 55, which would help guarantee the movie’s success. We all knew that the new system was a crowd-pleaser and were happy to go along with whatever it took,” wrote Jones, who played Julie Jordan.
When Sinatra found this out, he was out of there faster than a bat out of hell. “On the first day of shooting, we were scheduled to shoot the first scene between Frank and me. I was on set, waiting for Frank to arrive, when his limo pulled up. Frank got out of the limo and took one look at the two lots of different cameras already in position. ‘I signed to do one movie, not two,’ he growled, then got right back into his limo and ordered the driver to take him straight back to the airport. Frank had walked out on Carousel on the very first day of filming.”
Evidently, Sinatra wasn’t truly dedicated to his craft, but as one of the most popular singers of all time, can you blame him? Carousel failed to make much of a dent at the box office, and it seems as though the singer didn’t particularly regret missing out on the musical.
