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The Man With the Golden Arm Reviews

These weaknesses can be ignored thanks to the admirable verisimilitude and powerful originality of the main character, wonderfully interpreted by Frank Sinatra.

Full Review | Dec 7, 2021

The scene in which Sinatra writhes and screams in pain and delirium is one of the most shocking I have ever seen on the screen. But it is strong and effective, and, I believe, justifiable.

Full Review | Dec 23, 2020

Producer-director Premlnger is one of Holly wood's most intelligent film makers. It is to be regretted that his artistic gifts were not channeled into a more uplifting drama.

This dramatization of Nelson Algren's novel provides a sometimes revolting, sometimes dreary excursion into the lives of a full set of American lower-depths characters.

Forgetting for a moment the contempt Otto Preminger has shown for the spirit of Algren's novel, he has committed the commercial sin of producing and directing a dull movie.

Saul Bass's credit titles are as brilliant as one might expect after Carmen Jones but this is an unattractive film: not because the subject is painful, but because [Preminger], with his thorough skill, shows himself so profoundly insensitive to its pain.

Sinatra gives a perfect portrayal of a man pulled out of line by forces stronger than he. Torn between his dream of a new life and the insidious circumstances of the old, Frankie is caught like a rat in a maze.

The core of The Man With the Golden Arm is its horrific and honest theme. And Frank Sinatra's performance makes it valid. This is a strong, lurid and gripping film.

It's not a pretty picture, but it packs a lot of punch.

Preminger gives you the feeling of claustrophobia, to be sure, but that's not the only reason you'd like to get out. Along with in there is a growing sense of monotony and, in my case at least, an increasing disassociation with the whole shabby affair.

The man who thinks The Man With the Golden Arm is apt to encourage would-be addicts just hasn't seen the picture yet. A better idea would be to show the film at high school assemblies. It's enough to discourage that first joy pop we hear about so often.

It is not a pretty sight and certainly not fit for the young. But, it is brilliantly acted by the principals.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 23, 2020

After a while, its unbroken grimness... becomes monotonous. The spectator finds his mind straying from the fervid activity taking place on the screen. He may even get a little bored.

Sinatra sweats out his craving for a shot -- thirst, hysteria, spasms, cramps, near-madness the will to suicide, unconsciousness, chills, and a hangover craving for sugar. Frankie makes it all look very terrible and very real.

It Is an interesting picture but neither so interesting nor effective as it might have been had Producer-Director Otto Preminger subjected himself to a few restraints.

Full Review | Dec 22, 2020

It's a strong picture and not a pretty one, but it focuses a spotlight on a problem and uses no pink filter to soften the exposure.

The main fact of the matter is that the Golden Arm film isn't by any means the sort of thing that has to depend on widespread sensationalism to get on record as both an unusual and a noteworthy picture.

Honest, sympathetic, and highly emotional.

Mr. Preminger's examination of a junkie is conventional, unimaginative and without any of the literary quality of the Nelson Algren novel from which it was lifted.

Though the story is heavy and in some respects even harrowing, it depicts drug addiction as being so unattractive that it may well be considered a most effective weapon in the effort to combat the use of narcotics.

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM: Spades For Veins

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Part of Frankie Machine’s ( Frank Sinatra ) problem is that consideration runs thin on his block. His initial determination and confidence – projected early on and in large part by Sinatra ’s trademark, glossy glaze – stand no chance against the money-peddling corruption his name was once synonymous with. It’s only until he reaches the brink of death that he admits the mountain he’s trying to climb is impossible to do alone, a bellowing pit in this neighborhood.

Otto Preminger ’s taboo classic, The Man with the Golden Arm , was born out of defiance. Legend has it that Preminger was unimpressed with the idea of adapting Nelson Algren ’s novel until he saw Frankie’s mountain – the up-and-pitfall battle of overcoming drug addiction – as another opportunity to wage war on the Production Code. The result was a largely disputed ( V.F. Perkins called the Oscar-nominated production a “well-made film on a forbidden subject”), controversial (it moved forward without the PCA seal of approval), and albeit appealing story.

This offscreen tug-of-war still seeps from the edges of the reel today. While the film makes considerable, almost criminal alterations to Algren ’s foundation, settling for the more pleasing, simplistic and surprisingly less ruthful finale, The Man with the Golden Arm still depicts drug abuse as an alarmingly uphill battle.

When Frankie steps off the bus, bags in hand, he looks as if he has just come back from a much-needed vacation. While the well-rested sentiment is true, it doesn’t take long to discover that he is actually returning home from a jail sentence, during which he kicked his “monkey” and found a new path: music (an almost ironic characteristic given Sinatra ’s own musical background and his desire to separate his singing and acting careers with this film).

These nauseating serpents, combined with his body’s misleading desires, are a lethal combination. For those who have experience with the heroin prison story – there are many more in a mainstream audience now than there were during its 1955 release – know that behind Sinatra ’s optimistic smile is an incredibly delicate system, one that is just as liable to break as it is to flourish. Preminger ’s tight knit arena – a congested RKO backlot with the bulk of the plot branching off its main street – hurls this balance with the subtlety of a lion’s den. His claustrophobic world-binding is no less a declaration of war ( Algren was apparently turned off by the director’s elitist attitudes from the moment they met) as it is an effective manipulation of space.

Finding the Needle in the Haystack

Needless to say, in this environment, Frankie’s prospects quickly sour. Unable to surpass his body’s beckoning calls, his initial hesitations and resistance are violently flushed and soon, he is no better off than he was before he left. With only two lifelines disappointed by this development – his ex-mistress Molly ( Kim Novak ) and fellow hustler compadre Sparrow ( Arnold Stang ) – his story is as symbiotic to the slum as it is to the narcotic.

That being said, The Man with the Golden Arm is very much a character piece. Dependent almost to a fault on people in comparison to the Algren novel – in which the city took a more active, if metaphorical role – the performances here are more important than anything. While Novak and McGavin bring authenticity to the two ends of Frankie’s struggles, Parker ’s nonstop demands and deceptions are beyond annoying, and Stang ’s wise-cracking sidekick is far less developed than the other main players.

Sinatra , however, fades beautifully into the role, which earned him his second Oscar nomination and, not to mention, a spot over rival leading man Marlon Brando . Where Walter Newman and Lewis Meltzer ’s script falters in description (the rather simplistic explanations behind the heroin addiction feel both cliché and surface-level), Sinatra fills the holes with a wildly active, animalistic turn. The “monkey,” as Frankie puts it, becomes the man towards the end of the film, and its resurrection is its most convincing, and lasting exhibit.

Of course, his performance was not all that shocked the PCA and the world. During Frankie’s sessions, usually preceded by morphing bouts of dread, decimation, and begging, Preminger leaves little to the imagination. Spoons, needles, and bands are all seen and implemented regularly, with Elmer Bernstein ’s rising jazz score and an eye-level examination completing the picture.

Conclusion: The Man with the Golden Arm

Though tame by comparison to the vein-ripping dramas since populated by Aronofsky , Boyle , and Van Sant , The Man with the Golden Arm ’s outlawed aesthetic and spirit make it a tangible and lasting achievement.

Have you had the chance to see this taboo classic? If so, let us know how you liked it in the comment section below!

Watch The Man with the Golden Arm

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Luke Parker is an award-winning film critic and columnist based in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. As an entertainment journalist, he has interviewed several members of the film industry and participated in some of its most prestigious events as a member of the press. Currently, he is working to obtain his bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication at Towson University.

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The Man with the Golden Arm

Otto Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm is a feature that focuses on addiction to narcotics. Clinical in its probing of the agonies, this is a gripping, fascinating film, expertly produced and directed and performed with marked conviction by Frank Sinatra as the drug slave.

By Variety Staff

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Otto Preminger ‘s The Man with the Golden Arm is a feature that focuses on addiction to narcotics. Clinical in its probing of the agonies, this is a gripping, fascinating film, expertly produced and directed and performed with marked conviction by Frank Sinatra as the drug slave.

Sinatra returns to squalid Chicago haunts after six months in hospital where he was ‘cured’ of his addiction. Thwarted in his attempt to land a job as a musician, he resumes as the dealer in a smalltime professional poker game.

Eleanor Parker is a pathetic figure as his wife, pretending to be chair-ridden for the sole purpose of making Sinatra stay by her side. A downstairs neighbor is Kim Novak, and the s.a. angles are not overlooked by the camera. Arnold Stang is Sparrow, Sinatra’s subservient sidekick with the larcenous inclinations.

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It’s the story that counts most, however. Screenplay from the Nelson Algren novel, analyzes the drug addict with strong conviction. What goes on looks for real.

Novel titles are by Saul Bass, and the music by Elmer Bernstein deftly sets the mood.

1955: Nominations: Best Actor (Frank Sinatra), B&W Art Direction, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture

Production: Carlyle/United Artists. Director Otto Preminger; Producer Otto Preminger; Screenplay Walter Newman, Lewis Meltzer; Camera Sam Leavitt; Editor Louis Loeffler; Music Elmer Bernstein; Art Director Joseph Wright
Crew: (B&W) Available on VHS. Extract of a review from 1955. Running time: 119 MIN.
With: Frank Sinatra Eleanor Parker Kim Novak Arnold Stang Darren McGavin Robert Strauss

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The Man With The Golden Arm Review

14 Dec 1955

119 minutes

The Man With The Golden Arm

Controversial in the 1950s because director Otto Preminger challenged the prevailing industry censorship codes and presented drug addiction as a central theme, this remains a powerful, noir-tinged melodrama.

With Elmer Bernstein’s jazzy hit theme striking up whenever Sinatra is jonesing for a fix, drawn across the sleazy nighttime neighbourhood to score from the sharp-suited local pusher (McGavin), it presents a junkie world that differs from latterday dope operas only in that everyone on the street is white.

The hero’s problem is not so much his ‘golden arm’ – as a mainliner, as well as a skilled card-dealer and a promising drummer – but the way all the lowlife losers around him, whether malicious like McGavin or the crook who runs the card-game (Robert Strauss), pretend-sympathetic Parker as the splendidly fake invalid/real hysteric wife (who even kills to keep him in line) or a genuine pal like a bespectacled, dog-kidnapping barfly (Arnold Stang, the voice of Top Cat), *want *Frankie to stay hooked, so their social lives and businesses can keep going.

The harrowing ‘cold turkey’ scenes are reminiscent of Billy Wilder’s treatment of booze withdrawal in The Long Weekend, which this often seems to be borrowing from, but Preminger’s and Sinatra’s best sequence is a three-day-long poker game which ruins Frankie’s chance of a drumming job as he turns up at an audition with the jitters. Novak is good, if a touch too beautiful, as the bar girl who really cares for and helps Frankie, and the hard-won triumph at the end (when the tune goes away) is very moving.

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The Man With the Golden Arm

This is one of those groundbreaking films. When it was released, the MPAA would not give it a seal of approval, because it dealt with drug addiction. It had been sort of okay to portray a drug addict as a pitiful, twitching, wild-eyed maniac desperate for a fix … like a puff of the killer weed, for instance, as in Reefer Madness . But to show that an addict could be an ordinary-looking man, a decent man in most ways, was not allowed. (It followed in the footsteps of The Lost Weekend , with Ray Milland.) After the flick was a huge success, the code was relaxed a bit, paving the way for films like The Days of Wine and Roses . If a sweet executive type like Jack Lemmon could end up in a strait jacket, screaming his lungs out, maybe this was something society ought to take a long, hard look at.

Frank Sinatra is Frankie Machine, an addict who has just been released from prison, clean and determined to stay that way. It doesn’t stay that way for long. He is married to one of the most clinging, dependent, desperate women I’ve ever seen in a movie, portrayed in all her horror by Eleanor Parker. She was injured in a car wreck three years ago, Frankie driving, natch, and is just fine now, only she’s not told anyone, least of all Frankie. She’s playing him for a sap. Sitting pitifully in a wheelchair is her only real hold on him. She does everything but leap from her chair and bite his ankle and make him drag her across the room, clinging like some horrible leech, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see her actually do that. She is weepingly opposed to his ambition, which is to get a job as a drummer in a band. She wants everything to go back to like it was, with him dealing an illegal card game. Darren McGavin wants that, too, and bamboozles Frankie back into that job, where the stress is so high that he’s soon back on the needle, which Darren happily supplies. Probably the first time anyone saw someone setting up for a fix in a movie, with the spoon and the necktie and all the ugly process of it, though we don’t see the needle go in. And Otto Preminger films this scene well, moving in for extreme close-ups of Frankie’s eyes, jittery at first, then relaxed. Just this once, he promises himself. Just this once. Yeah, Frankie, yeah.

Kim Novak is the girl he really loves, and she lives just downstairs, going out with a jerk, carrying a torch for Frankie. He’s forced to deal, forced to stay up 48 hours until his hands begin to shake and his judgment goes, so that the house is getting wiped out. Then, in a really dumb move, Darren denies him the fix he needs and at the same time commands him to start double-dealing. Naturally, he’s caught at it, and beaten up.

Soon Darren discovers that the girlfriend (called Zosh, and I never quite figured out why) can walk, and gets shoved down the stairs to his death for his knowledge. Zosh sort of implicates Frankie, who holes up with Kim to kick, cold turkey. No snakes crawling out of the walls, just Frankie writhing and hollering and doing the whole withdrawal bit. It’s pretty good performance, for its day. They say Sinatra spent some time in a rehab clinic, watching the hypes come down. It all comes out right in the end, with Zosh exposed and taking her own life.

The movie has very little in common with the novel, by Nelson Algren, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad movie. (Unsurprisingly, Algren hated it.)

The movie’s poster with its stylized arm was a masterpiece, and was rated at #14 of “The 25 Best Movie Posters Ever” by Premiere . Looking at the rest of them it strikes me that they should have had more than one category, such as pulp ( This Gun for Hire ) and graphics ( Vertigo, Anatomy of a Murder ). But there’s no question that this was one of the best. Also, Elmer Bernstein’s wonderful jazz theme is one of the best ever. My high school band played it often, and it was always popular.

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The Man with the Golden Arm

When it was first suggested to Preminger that he adapt Nelson Algren’s novel The Man with the Golden Arm for the screen, the director was allegedly unenthusiastic. However, his interest was piqued at the possibility of using the film as a vehicle for breaking the PCA’s restriction on the representation of drugs. Preminger sent the script to Jeffrey Shurlock, then director of the PCA, with the request that he read the script personally and recommending its potential for rendering public service. Ultimately, the film did not receive the PCA seal of approval. In a review at the time of the film’s release, V. F. Perkins wrote that although The Man with the Golden Arm was “inferior” to the rest of Preminger’s work to that point, it “could serve as a model of the well-made film on a forbidden subject” (1) . It earned a respectable sum at the box office and was nominated for three Academy Awards, including for Sinatra as Best Actor in a Leading Role. In 1956 the Production Code statute on drugs was amended, a change that no doubt owed much to Preminger’s campaign.

Critics of the film generally cite the film’s moral simplification and “unrealistic” conclusion, showing that its hero has freed himself from addiction by sheer willpower. In this regard, comparisons with Algren’s novel are inevitable. In Algren’s story, Frankie murders his drug dealer, Louie, and eventually commits suicide while his love interest, Molly, becomes a prostitute. Frankie’s fate is far less bleak in Preminger’s adaptation, which follows a more conventional Hollywood narrative line. Fundamentally, it is the story of Frankie’s redemption and triumph over his demons. Frankie is burdened by guilt over the fate of his wife Zosh, who was injured in a car accident while Frankie was drunk at the wheel. Zosh feigns paraplegia in order to keep Frankie for herself, exploiting his guilty conscience. She obstructs his ambition to be a drummer, the one thing that Frankie hopes will keep him clean, and urges him to take up his old job as a card dealer, a slippery slope that results in Frankie’s renewed heroin addiction. Although all the odds appear to be against him, Frankie succeeds through self-determination and the support of Molly (Kim Novak), and the film concludes with the promise of romantic closure.

Through the tight control and efficient use of space we get a sense that the world exists only for Frankie. It’s a claustrophobic bubble in which his internalised war plays out. The Man with the Golden Arm ’s visual style is characterised by its use of closed-off but connected spaces, the action constrained almost entirely to the main street and locations just off the street, so that we are able to create for ourselves a map of the film’s geography and understand how the spaces, and therefore the characters that inhabit them, are connected. The small cast of characters flit easily between one location and the next: the bar, Frankie’s apartment, Louie’s apartment, Schwiefka’s back room. There is a “stagey” feel to the action, an artificial quality that perhaps belies Preminger’s theatrical roots – he worked in theatre for over a decade in his native Vienna before hearing the call of Hollywood.

The foundation for Preminger’s control over filmic space is the use of the studio. Rather than shooting on location, The Man with the Golden Arm ’s Chicago slum was constructed on an RKO backlot. Depending on whether you believe Preminger or Algren, the decision to shoot The Man with the Golden Arm in the studio was either Preminger’s second choice, which he was forced to take to keep costs down (2) , or it was an example of Preminger’s prejudice against the lower classes. According to Algren, who had been aggravated by Preminger’s classist inferences ever since their first meeting, Preminger dismissed criticisms of his decision not to shoot on location, saying, “Oh, that neighbourhood’s all built up now; there are no slums left” (3) . The sets have been criticised, not entirely unfairly, as caricature-ish and unfaithful to Algren’s depiction of “real life” in the Chicago slums. But that is really beside the point; it would have been an entirely different sort of film if Preminger had resolved to shoot on location. Preminger perhaps even gives a cheeky preemptive nod to these sorts of criticisms in a scene in which, elated about his prospects of becoming a professional drummer, Frankie takes a stroll with Molly down a city street. They stop to peer in at a shop display. Behind the glass is an elaborate kitchen scene depicting a happy housewife washing dishes while her husband reads. The kitchen set fills the frame behind them, putting them in the scene with the husband and wife. However, the set is absurdly fake (“goofy” says Frankie), as is Frankie and Molly’s fantasy of themselves taking the place of the happy couple. The scene alludes to the fantasy of the set-within-a-set, but also serves as a bitter reminder of a life that Frankie may never attain.

The Man with the Golden Arm (1955 USA 119 mins)

Prod Co : Otto Preminger Films/Carlyle Productions Prod, Dir : Otto Preminger Scr : Walter Newman, Lewis Meltzer [and Ben Hecht, uncredited], based on the novel by Nelson Algren Phot : Sam Leavitt Ed : Louie R Loeffler Prod Des : Joseph C. Wright Mus : Elmer Bernstein

Cast : Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker, Kim Novak, Arnold Stang, Darren McGavin, Robert Strauss

Frank Sinatra’s legend lives on in films

When the book of 20th century popular entertainment is written, Frank Sinatra will get a chapter as the best singer of his time. As an actor, he will be remembered for the good films, and for a distinctive screen persona as a guy who could win a heart with a song.

The image that lingers is from “Young at Heart,” when he pushed back his hat, lit a cigarette, sat down at a piano and sang to Doris Day and broke her heart. He never had the looks to be a matinee idol, but he had a voice – the Voice – and he had a screen presence, and for a time in the 1950s, Frank Sinatra was one of the most interesting and successful actors in American movies.

But he will not be remembered as one of the greatest movie stars of his time, maybe because he simply never cared enough to make it his business. What is remarkable is that he made more than 60 films, was often at the top of the box-office charts, won two Oscars (one the honorary Hersholt award) and was nominated for another, and had starring roles spanning five decades – even though during most of that time movie acting, for Sinatra, was basically a side line.

The saga of how he got into the movies in the first place has become a show-business legend. By 1953, his singing career was (temporarily) on the skids and he was considered a has-been, but he persuaded Harry Cohn, the boss of Columbia Pictures, to let him play the supporting role of Maggio, a wise guy enlisted man, in “From Here to Eternity.”

How and why he got that role has been the subject of speculation ever since. The version absorbed by most people is the one fictionalized by Mario Puzo in his novel The Godfather , in which a Sinatra-like character named Johnny Fontaine was friendly with the Corleone family, which made a Hollywood mogul an offer he couldn’t refuse and backed it up with a special-delivery package: the severed head of his beloved racehorse, slipped between his sheets while he slept.

Those events, of course, never happened, and Sinatra and his family bitterly resented the popular belief that they contained an element of truth. But did the mob have anything to do with Sinatra’s getting the role that turned his career around? There is no evidence at all that it did, but throughout his career, it was informally understood that Sinatra had powerful “friends,” and that image did his career no harm. It enhanced his raffish aura as a veteran of many a late night in a smoky saloon (“It’s quarter to 3”), singing the love ballads of a lonely fighter who could get up off the mat for one more bout with romance.

In a way, you wanted to believe Sinatra was “connected,” because the clout was part of the appeal. The legends that collected about him often involved his influence, his feuds, his ability to get things done, or keep them from being done. There were two Sinatra images that overlapped, like a 3-D picture if you’re not wearing the glasses: The beloved entertainer, and the powerbroker with an element of menace. Henry Kissinger observed that power is an aphrodisiac, and certainly Sinatra’s power, real and imagined, magnified his sexiness. A famous Esquire cover in the 1960s showed him with a cigarette to his lips; the rest of the cover was covered with outstretched hands holding cigarette lighters.

No matter how Sinatra got cast in “From Here to Eternity,” it was the event that lifted the curtain on the long second act of his remarkable career. With that Oscar-winning role, and the films and songs that followed it, he put to rest his image as a crooner and teenage idol and began to fashion his mature image, as the singer who was better with a lyric than anyone else ever had been. Sammy Cahn, who wrote a lot of songs that Sinatra sang, told me that he would write a lyric, hear Sinatra perform it, and think, “Oh, yeah, that’s what I wrote.”

After “From Here to Eternity,” Sinatra cemented his reputation as a film actor in a remarkable series of box-office and critical hits in the mid-1950s: the film noir “Suddenly,” “Guys and Dolls,” “The Man With the Golden Arm,” “The Tender Trap” and “Young at Heart.”

These were all roles crafted for, and suited to, his emerging image as an underdog with a heart. Sinatra was nominated for best actor for “The Man With the Golden Arm,” Otto Preminger’s controversial version of the Nelson Algren novel, which defied the Production Code’s ban on movies depicting drug addiction. In “Guys and Dolls,” he was Damon Runyon’s professional gambler Nathan Detroit, the operator of “the oldest-established permanent floating crap game in New York,” and sang about “ever- loving Adelaide.”

For Sinatra in the mid-1950s, being a movie actor was central to his career. Before and after that golden period, he had his mind on other things.

In 1941, when he made his film debut as a saloon singer in “Las Vegas Nights” and sang “I’ll Never Smile Again,” he was, of course, the top singing idol in the world – the Beatles of his time. It was Sinatra, indeed, who inaugurated the 20th century spectacle of screaming, orgiastic fans.

Sinatra’s 1940s films all referred, in one way or another, to his off-screen image as a matinee idol and popular singer. The best of them was probably Gene Kelly’s “On the Town” (1949), with Sinatra and Kelly as sailors with 24-hour passes in Manhattan. The Leonard Bernstein score evoked a giddy sense of freedom, which Kelly exploited with a Hollywood first: He left the sound stages for a week of location shooting in New York City, the first time a musical had done that, as the characters played by him and Sinatra pursued Vera Ellen, Ann Miller and Betty Garrett around the town.

There were other big titles for Sinatra in the 1940s, including “Anchors Aweigh” (1945), “Till the Clouds Roll By” (1946) and “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” (1949).

As his musical career entered its richest period, from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, his films tended to be less remarkable. One of his best performances was as a would-be writer in Vincente Minnelli’s “Some Came Running” (1958), a project that signaled the rise of the Rat Pack movie, in which he joined friends, especially Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin , Angie Dickinson and Shirley MacLaine , to make movies in which the relaxed ambience betrayed the presence of a director who had been hired, rather than the one who had hired him. There’s fun to be had in “ Ocean's Eleven ” (1960), with the Pack again, but it’s relaxed and selfcongratulatory; Sinatra had entered a middle age of great power and influence, in which he didn’t need to try as hard on the screen, or care as much about each movie.

But there was still one great film left: John Frankenheimer’s “ The Manchurian Candidate ” (1962), with its chilling Cold War plot about Sinatra and Laurence Harvey as U.S. soldiers brainwashed by the Communist Chinese in Korea, as part of a plot to “activate” Harvey to assassinate a president. This was perhaps the best single film Sinatra ever made. But typically, its artistry took second place in his thinking to its personal implications; when his friend, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963, Sinatra, as its producer, held it out of release for many years “out of respect.” Only after 25 years had passed, in 1988, did he once again allow it to be shown.

If Sinatra had never made another film after “The Manchurian Candidate,” his ultimate reputation as a movie star would have remained much the same. He made some well-crafted crime movies, including “ Tony Rome ” (1967) and “ The Detective ” (1968), but already he had the reputation of wanting to work fast, of allowing his directors just a few takes. During the 1970s, he made not a single film, but in 1980, he returned for “ The First Deadly Sin ,” a hard-boiled crime melodrama in which he turned in an effective performance. He was coasting, however, in the dreadful “ Cannonball Run II ” (1984), in which he appeared only in one-shots, never in scenes with the other actors.

I received a letter from Sinatra once. I’d written a piece about his career, suggesting (not with blinding originality) that he did it “his way.”

“That would have to be the most flagrant lie,” Sinatra wrote, “because if I listed everybody who helps me every day and whom I need, this letter would run 90 pages.” Sinatra was playing with the lyric. True, he didn’t do it alone. But he did it his way.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)

Directed by otto preminger.

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Description by Wikipedia

The Man with the Golden Arm is a 1955 American independent drama film noir directed by Otto Preminger, based on the novel of the same name by Nelson Algren. Starring Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker, Kim Novak, Arnold Stang and Darren McGavin, it recounts the story of a drug addict who gets clean while in prison, but struggles to stay that way in the outside world. Although the addictive drug is never identified in the film, according to the American Film Institute "most contemporary and modern sources assume that it is heroin", although in Algren's book it is morphine. The film's initial release was controversial for its treatment of the then-taboo subject of drug addiction.

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Table Of Contents

The Man with the Golden Arm , American film drama, released in 1955, that broke new ground with its realistic look at the life of a heroin addict .

The film was based on the novel of the same name by Nelson Algren and starred Frank Sinatra as Frankie Machine, a struggling addict who gets clean while in prison. After his release, he hopes to become a drummer but is instead pressured to return to his career as a card dealer.

Publicity still with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman from the motion picture film "Casablanca" (1942); directed by Michael Curtiz. (cinema, movies)

Because the film dealt with the then taboo subject of illicit drug use , the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) refused to grant it their seal of approval. The film’s acclaim, however, contributed to the loosening of the MPAA ’s restrictions on subject matter the following year. Sinatra received an Academy Award nomination for his performance, and Darren McGavin also earned praise for his portrayal of a drug dealer. The movie’s riveting jazz score by Elmer Bernstein and striking graphics by Saul Bass—especially the latter’s animated paper cutout of a heroin addict’s arm in the opening sequence—were highly innovative and were influential in the movie industry.

Studio: United Artists
Director and producer: Otto Preminger
Writers: Walter Newman and Lewis Meltzer
Music: Elmer Bernstein
Running time: 119 minutes
Frank Sinatra (Frankie Machine)
Eleanor Parker (Zosch Machine)
Kim Novak (Molly)
Arnold Stang (Sparrow)
Darren McGavin (Louie)
Art direction–set decoration (black and white)
Lead actor (Frank Sinatra)

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The man with the golden arm.

Directed by Otto Preminger

An 'untouchable' theme… an unusual motion picture!

A junkie must face his true self to kick his drug addiction. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 2005.

Frank Sinatra Eleanor Parker Kim Novak Arnold Stang Darren McGavin Robert Strauss John Conte Doro Merande George E. Stone George Mathews Leonid Kinskey Emile Meyer Shorty Rogers Shelly Manne Herschel Graham Frank Mills Harry 'Snub' Pollard Jeffrey Sayre Jered Barclay Leonard Bremen Paul E. Burns Pete Candoli Harold 'Tommy' Hart Mike Lally Frank Marlowe Joe McTurk Gordon Mitchell Jack Mulhall Ralph Neff Show All… Norman Papson Ernest Raboff Frank Richards Suzanne Ridgway Charles Seel Martha Wentworth Will Wright

Director Director

Otto Preminger

Producers Producers

Otto Preminger Jack McEdward

Writers Writers

Walter Newman Lewis Meltzer

Original Writer Original Writer

Nelson Algren

Editor Editor

Louis R. Loeffler

Cinematography Cinematography

Sam Leavitt

Assistant Directors Asst. Directors

Horace Hough James Engle

Lighting Lighting

James Almond

Camera Operator Camera Operator

Albert Myers

Production Design Production Design

Joseph C. Wright

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Darrell Silvera

Title Design Title Design

Stunts stunts.

Helen Thurston Martha Crawford Paul Baxley

Composer Composer

Elmer Bernstein

Sound Sound

Jack Solomon

Makeup Makeup

Bernard Ponedel Ben Lane Jack Stone

Hairstyling Hairstyling

Hazel Keats Helene Parrish

Carlyle Productions

Releases by Date

15 dec 1955, 26 dec 1955, 16 jan 1956, 03 mar 1956, 23 mar 1956, 01 may 1956, 03 may 1956, 04 jul 1956, 19 jul 1956, 05 jun 1957, 26 jun 2003, 11 aug 2003, 11 jul 2023, 22 feb 2003, releases by country.

Theatrical AA
Theatrical e 12
Physical DVD
Physical Blu-Ray
Theatrical 12
Theatrical G

Netherlands

TV 12 RTL 5
Physical 12 DVD
Theatrical M/12
Premiere New York City, New York
Theatrical NR Los Angeles, California

119 mins More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Ethan Colburn ★★★★ 1

Watching Sinatra act is kinda like watching Michael Jordan play baseball, he’s not bad but his talents are best suited for other things. He’s quite charismatic, though Brando who was up for this part would have taken this film to a new level.

Still, the script and the themes of addiction and recidivism that the film tackles are quite ahead of its time. Drugs are seen as the antagonist and the drug users the victims which I appreciated.

Review by Paul Elliott ★★★★

Adapted from the 1948 novel by Nelson Algren, The Man with the Golden Arm distinctly displays a memorable opening animated title sequence courtesy of graphic designer and Oscar-winning filmmaker Saul Bass. It embodies a provocativeness from its director Otto Preminger who continues to increase the dramatic anxieties throughout; which serves this intensely grimy and distinctive noir about the moral degradations of drug addiction admirably. It’s strengthened by a terrific cast which includes Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker and Kim Novak and is further accentuated by an outstanding jazz score by Elmer Bernstein. This was a highly controversial movie in its day and continues to be a significant big-budget cautioning story about the ugliness of drug misuse.

Review by CJ Probst ★★★½ 10

Hmmm, okay this isn’t how I remembered it. First off, I don’t remember it being black and white but more of a lovely sepia-like monochrome. Oh well. This version I just watched looked like complete shit.

So the real reason I chose this was for Old Blue Eyes. I think everyone could admit Sinatra’s the best thing about it. As a matter of fact, he outacts all of the actual actors in this. That Sparrow character was obnoxious and annoying am I right? Sinatra is one of those guys that thinks he’s so damned cool and good at everything that I just want to hate him. The problem is he was that fucking cool and good at everything. Dammit. Some…

Review by Joe ★★★★½

There are parts of this that seem a little silly or a little pat now, and I'm not naive enough to think that they didn't seem so in 1955, but one thing that doesn't is Sinatra's lead performance, you see his every doubt and waver in his eyes and face, like blood in the water for all the selfish predators circling him from the moment he steps off the bus.

There was a q&a by an addiction expert after the screening, and she talked about how modern science sometimes characterizes addiction as a brain disease rather than a weakness in the will or a character flaw, and how this movie (and I would argue, Sinatra's performance specifically) possesses an implicit empathy for addicts that science is still catching up to. She also talked about how, sad as it is, the worst place for a person in recovery to go to is often their home.

Review by theriverjordan ★★★ 7

“Man with the Golden Arm” is a Casio watch made out of the parts of a Rolex.

“Golden Arm” is what would, in modern parlance, be deemed ‘Oscar bait.’ A roster of legends is is on its credit lines. Sinatra did thorough research with actual drug addicts to justly portray the part of a suffering junkie. But Preminger’s usual line-treading between gravity and camp is almost totally lost, given the grim subject matter.

“Golden Arm” is important not as an anti-drug morality tale, but an example of how filmmakers can create change together. United Artists blew past the stodgy production code to release “Golden Arm,” putting it into cinemas without a ‘pass’ seal, and, to massive box office success. It’s a daring fest even by today’s standards, and one that begs to be channeled to escape major studio box office monopolies.

Review by Danzel Vaughn ★★★½

i don’t know, man. something about sinatra playing a guy named frankie who talks about how great he is while everyone around him humors it just seems so phony to me.

Review by DBC ★★★★

A Year of Film History Challenge (watching a little bit of film history month by month, decade by decade) -- There's a very clever manipulation of perspective in The Man with the Golden Arm that I keep thinking about: when first we meet clandestine backroom card dealer Frankie Machine (played by Frank Sinatra ) he's walking around his home neighborhood in Chicago, fresh out of the joint but in recovery for an unnamed addiction that looks and smells an awful lot like heroin, and as we watch him walk it's usually from a distance, as if we're spying on him. When Frank talks of his addiction he frequently refers to it as the monkey that was on his back… but his…

Review by Amy Hensarling ★½ 8

Oof. Big Preminger fan— Daisy Kenyon, Anatomy of a Murder, Laura —but this was oddly bland considering the subject material. Read that Sinatra’s part was originally offered to Brando, and I’m not convinced that’d have been an improvement. Which is saying something. Every aspect is fine. Neutral. No impact. And it’s an addiction film with a fascinating backstory, so—what gives?

Perhaps if I’d seen this in ‘55, The Man with the Golden Arm would’ve had shock value, but it falls short compared to The Lost Weekend a decade earlier or Days of Wine & Roses in ‘62. C’est la vie.

Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★★ 2

Don't do drugs kids... -----------------

A drug addict gets back home after someone rehab, just to find himself deep into the world of betting and drugs.

Easily the best role from Sinatra, his inherent suave persona is just magnetic and helps you lash onto his character, especially when he's going through some harsh times.

The story plays very well with the conventions of other films that share the same themes, though it nevertheless reaches the same highs as a Requiem For A Dream. Thoughts there are still some nice twists and turn that makes it much engaging.

It takes a while for the film to actually pick up, and the whole final sequence with him battling with the abstinence seem…

Review by Libby Caldwell ★★★

Films Watched in 2022 - Film 420

This movie really knows how to use a score. I don’t even mean that the score itself is great (it is), but it utilises that great score better than essentially any movie I can think of.

I really liked how effortless the camera movement seemed but even with all that this seemed really slow-paced for me. There’s also some unintentionally hilarious moments even if the general gist of the film is undoubtedly ahead of its time.

Review by Headhunter666 ★★★★ 9

Kompromisslose Zerfallssstudie eines Drogensüchtigen und viel zu leicht einzuschüchternden Mannes. Wo Schatten ist, ist auch Licht und nach einem sechsmonatigen Sanatoriumsbesuch wittert Franke Machine neue Aufbruchsstimmung. Musiker möchte er nun werden und da ihm ein Talent als Schlagzeuger attestiert wurde, hat er auch nur noch dieses Ziel vor Augen. Nach der Rückkehr in sein Stadtviertel aber wartet nicht nur seine im Rollstuhl sitzende Frau, sondern mitunder auch Gestalten die mit Frankie´s Zukunft andere Pläne haben...

Kompromisslos ist vielleicht zu dick aufgetragen, aber dies liegt im Auge des Betrachters. Ich bin jedenfalls ziemlich beeindruckt vom Mimenspiel aller Beteiligten. Frank Sinatra gibt alles und überzeugt in seiner facettenreichen und fordernden Rolle. Der kalte Drogenentzug gegen Ende haut rein. Da fühlte ich…

Review by 🇵🇱 Steve G 🐝 ★★★★ 1

The Third Summer of Scam

There's a scene in this where Frank Sinatra is trying to think up a good stage name for himself if he makes it as a professional drummer. But there's one problem with this.

His real name is Frankie Machine.

Why the fuck would you need a stage name when your real name is FRANKIE MACHINE. I know you're on heroin, Frankie, but come on! It's staring you right in the face!

Kicking off with a brilliant Saul Bass / Elmer Bernstein opening, The Man with the Golden Arm is alarmingly on point for a mid-1950s film about addiction. Not just in terms of its shattering scenes of Sinatra scrounging for money and going cold turkey…

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The Man With the Golden Arm

Otto Preminger is a director who I’ve always had a hard time loving. That’s not to say I dislike his work either but Preminger’s films always leave me feeling a little unsatisfied for reasons that it’s hard to put my finger on. Unlike the best directors of his era, Preminger seems to lack an emphatic stamp. I could easily watch one of his films and not realise it was directed by him. This also speaks of a commendable diversity though, and Preminger has shown that he can turn his hand effectively, if not masterfully, to many different genres. Likewise, Frank Sinatra is an actor by whom I’ve never been entirely convinced but who frequently does a more than satisfactory job and displays an ability to slot himself into a variety of genres and roles from musical comedy to gritty drama and from brave hero to gun-toting bad guy. Sinatra’s ambition to be a serious actor often exceeds the talent he displays however, so the prospect of seeing him take on the role of a drug addict in a film by a director I’m not overly fond of may have seemed like an unpromising invitation.

Probably the genre most associated with Preminger is film noir, with his best and most celebrated work Laura falling under that category, and The Man With the Golden Arm borrows certain elements from the noir thriller. This is the story of Frankie Machine (yes, Machine!), a heroin addict who formerly made his money as the dealer in illegal card games arranged by local gangster Schweifka. During his time in prison Frankie has got clean and taken up drumming and as the film opens we find him returning to his Chicago neighbourhood free from drugs and looking for a job with a band. He quickly gets an audition but he faces opposition in the form of Schweifka, who wants to retain Frankie as his dealer, Louis, a drug-dealer who wants to get him back on heroin, and his own wife Zosh, a wheelchair-bound neurotic who has a tenuous hold on Frankie by way of his guilt over the car crash that caused her paralysis. Zosh’s manipulative behaviour (she can, in fact, walk and does so when there is no-one else in the room) and Frankie’s inability to shake off Schweifka’s influence over him soon drive him back into the illegal card games, the heroin addiction and the arms of old flame Molly.

The Man With the Golden Arm is certainly a film with a great deal of flaws but ultimately I was impressed and entertained, with most of my qualms being quashed by sheer enjoyment of this tight little tale. The story is set entirely in a very small neighbourhood with only a few recurring locations but Preminger makes the most of this claustrophobia as an influence on Frankie’s desperation for some kind of release. Everywhere he goes, Frankie is trapped by something. Even in his own home his nails-on-a-chalkboard wife is constantly driving him crazy, playing on his guilt while hiding the fact that she has actually fully recovered and can walk. This secret, like the heroin addiction, is one of several plot strands that we know must come to a dramatic head at some point and Preminger does a good job of presenting them to us individually and then yanking them altogether. The relentlessness of Frankie’s turmoil is what gives the film its notable energy, along with the driving jazz score that constantly (and, it must be said, somewhat irritatingly) pulsates under every scene.

The Man With the Golden Arm has the dubious honour of being most famous for its opening credits. While the film does retain some renown for Preminger’s insistence on tackling the then taboo theme of drug addiction in a mature and unflinching manner, the most famous moments on screen are actually the work of Saul Bass, the legendary graphic designer whose striking title sequences and poster art have become some of the most iconic images in cinema history. His work on The Man With the Golden Arm is particularly brilliant, with a snaking, jagged silhouette of an arm breaking into pieces alongside Elmer Bernstein’s equally famous title music. It makes for an arresting opening which threatens to overshadow the film. Fortunately Preminger stages the opening scenes in a pacey manner, giving us lots of information and introducing us to all the key players in the first half hour. Sinatra, too, is on good form, particularly in the film’s more subtle scenes. In the big set pieces, such as when he’s asked to portray the effects of cold turkey, Sinatra overdoes it a tad. It is probably these scenes that won him his Oscar nomination for this role (he ultimately lost to Ernest Borgnine in Marty ) but Sinatra is infinitely more effective in the contemplative moments that lead up to these crescendos. His large, sorrowful eyes say more than flailing histrionics ever could.

MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM

One of The Man With the Golden Arm ’s major flaws is the acting of most of the cast, although their melodramatics do make for extremely entertaining viewing and have probably given me a greater affection for this unusual little film than less wild performances would have. Top acting honours undoubtedly go to Kim Novak, whose measured and dignified work as Molly creates the film’s most believable character and she makes an excellent foil for the on-form Sinatra, their central relationship providing the film’s emotional anchor. In stark contrast to Novak’s classy turn, Eleanor Parker chews more scenery than Godzilla in her role as Zosh. Zosh is supposed to be annoying, needy and melodramatic and parker certainly fulfils all these requirements but she just doesn’t know when to stop. Perhaps encouraged by her director, Parker amplifies every reaction into a wild-eyed gawp. She seems to have wandered in (or wheeled in, if there are any people around) from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane and brought bucketloads of that film’s Grand Guignol with her. If Preminger’s aim was to tackle his weighty theme as realistically as possible, Parker is his major problem. And yet, the scenes with Zosh are some of the most compelling in the film and these frequent descents into madness are probably what linger in the mind most insistently after the film ends. Likewise, Arnold Stang as Frankie’s clingy buddy Sparrow is like one of Top Cat’s gang made flesh and his cartoon clowning sticks out like a sore thumb but it adds colour to what could otherwise have been an overwhelmingly grim picture.

For all its flaws, The Man With the Golden Arm was a very important film for its progressive approach to the issue of drugs. Most films that even touched on the subject during this era offered a black and white lie about crazed dope fiends who were barely recognisable as human beings. Preminger was determined to show the grey area and it cost him the support of the Motion Picture Association of America, who refused to certify the film. Preminger had encountered similar problems two years earlier with his light comedy The Moon is Blue , which was refused a certificate due to what the MPAA perceived as too light a treatment of the subject of illicit sex. In both cases Preminger stuck to his guns, the films were released and the MPAA eventually backed down. This was instrumental in weakening their influence and ultimately crushing the restrictive production code by the following decade, freeing up cinema to explore previously closed avenues.

It may be tempting to belittle the achievements of The Man With the Golden Arm as entertainment, as many have done, by suggesting that its history is more interesting than its content. While I’d certainly stop short of calling The Man With the Golden Arm a classic, it is most definitely an entertaining and worthwhile little oddity that displays elements of Preminger and Sinatra at their best, features an unforgettable title sequence by Bass, has a real gem of a performance from Novak and one of the battiest performances ever from Eleanor Parker. These diverse ingredients ricochet off one another to fascinating effect, making The Man With the Golden Arm probably my second favourite Preminger film.

The Man With the Golden Arm is released by Network on DVD and Blu-ray on June 22nd 2015. An image gallery is included as an extra.

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Movie Review

The man with the golden arm.

US Release Date: 12-14-1955

Directed by: Otto Preminger

Starring ▸ ▾

Frank Sinatra , as
Frankie Machine
Eleanor Parker , as
Zosch Machine
Kim Novak , as
Arnold Stang , as
Darren McGavin , as
Robert Strauss , as
John Conte , as
Doro Merande , as
George E. Stone , as
Sam Markette
George Mathews , as
Leonid Kinskey , as
Emile Meyer as
Detective Bednar

Frank Sinatra in The Man with the Golden Arm .

With From Here to Eternity , Frank Sinatra won the best supporting Oscar and proved that he was a serious actor. So inspired by his success playing the doomed Maggio that Sinatra went on to do many more dramatic movies. One of the most dramatically heavy roles he ever under took came two years later when he starred as the drug addict Frankie Machine in The Man with the Golden Arm .

As the movie opens Frankie has just returned to his rough neighborhood after getting out of drug rehab. Part of his rehabilitation was to keep himself busy by learning to play the drums. As we meet Frankie he is full of hope for his future clean of drugs. He has a connection from his doctor to meet someone who may lead to a job playing the drums.

Unfortunately, his old life is still waiting to drag him back into his old habits. His wheel chair bound wife uses the fact that he caused the accident that put her into the wheelchair to manipulate and emotionally blackmail him whenever she can. His old drug dealer attempts to get reacquainted but worse of all is his old employer whom Frankie use to deal illegal poker games for. He sent Frankie's wife money while Frankie was away and as such Frankie now owes him and must go back to dealing card games for him. Before you know it Frankie is back using and his future as a drummer seems very much in doubt.

Sinatra does a great job playing a junky looking for and wanting to get away from his drug fixes. He earned an Oscar nomination for this role. The fact that everyone in the movie has selfish interests makes for some realism. However, no one swears or has sex. It is as if the drugs were enough of an adult issue and no more could be allowed into the picture. Novak's character works at a strip club and Frankie hangs around gangsters. You would think that some more adult language and situations would be present. Granted this movie was made in the mid 1950's but it's subject matter deserved a more mature depiction.

The Man with the Golden Arm certainly demonstrates that the idealistic 1950's had a lot more going on than those simple episodes of Happy Days ever showed.

Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak in The Man with the Golden Arm .

This movie was quite controversial for its day due to its explicit depiction of drug addiction. The lack of adult language, as well as the overly dramatic score that seems to play nearly continuously throughout the movie, does give it a dated feel today but it remains an interesting watch with a fairly compelling story.

Marlon Brando was originally offered the lead but Sinatra snapped it up before his recent Guys and Dolls costar had the chance to accept the part. Sinatra was anxious to sink his teeth into the role of a strung out junkie. In a funny bit of irony Frank Sinatra - the star - was mentioned a few times in the 1949 novel on which this movie was based. The script also makes an inside joke on his former position as a teen heartthrob by having Frankie comment offhandedly to Kim Novak's character about his appealing to “the bobbysoxers”.

Director Otto Preminger takes his time with the story. It definitely could have moved at a brisker pace. The second half is by far the more entertaining, beginning with the marathon poker game scene where Frankie is forced to play dealer. The director makes interesting use of his camera shots and angles, including several dramatic closeups.

I agree that Sinatra is good as the junkie struggling to get clean on the mean streets of Chicago. He really shines in the final 30 minutes or so. The title comes from a line Frankie says to his buddy about his stint in prison, “Guy teaches me drumming down there, says I'm a natural, arms made of pure gold.” It actually has three meanings. Frankie Machine uses his “golden arm” not only to play the drums, but also to deal cards and, of course, to shoot heroin.

The supporting cast is filled with memorable faces.

Kim Novak wasn't the most talented actress in the world but she was stunning to look at. Eleanor Parker is good as Frankie's unhappy wheelchair bound wife, who is harboring a huge secret. She is just as unsympathetic here as she is in her most famous role as the Baroness in The Sound of Music . Arnold Stang plays Frankie's pathetic little sidekick. He was usually cast in comedies, like in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World as one of the owners of the gas station Jonathan Winters destroys. Pop-eyed Robert Strauss plays Frankie's greedy boss. He is probably best remembered as Animal in Billy Wilder's Stalag 17 . A young Darren McGavin plays the sleazy heroin dealer. He is, of course, most famous today for playing Ralphie's father in the holiday classic A Christmas Story . I had never before realized just how old he was at the time. He was in his 60s when he made that movie in 1983, although he seemed much younger.

The Man with the Golden Arm is a quintessential 1950s melodrama. It stars Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak, was produced and directed by Otto Preminger, has a jazz score by Elmer Bernstein and the titles were designed by Saul Bass. Not surprisingly, its script seems horribly dated now but the powerful central performance by Frank Sinatra still keeps your interest.

Sinatra's dramatic performance is definitely the best thing this movie has going for it. Frank's career as a popular entertainer was a long and successful one, but he was still willing to push himself occasionally with darker and edgier roles. Perhaps it was because he was coming off of the high of his Oscar win that he wanted to continue playing dramatic parts, but whatever the reason he does deliver a very solid performance as the junkie trying to go clean.

Showing illicit drug use in the way it is shown in this movie went against the Hayes Production Code, which was still in effect at the time. The MPAA refused to certify the film, so Preminger just released it without their approval. He did the same thing two years earlier with The Moon is Blue . He would continue to push the envelope and hasten the demise of the Code with Anatomy of a Murder , which dealt with rape, and Advise and Consent , which had a homosexual subtext. No stranger to controversy, Preminger would later openly hire blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo.

The movie's weakness is the one described by my brothers and that is the pacing. It is painfully slow at times and its depressing storyline makes it feel slower. The first half is a bit of a slog to get through. Things do pick up in the third act, with the poker game and the murder, but it should have got there quicker.

Like Patrick, I was struck by Darren McGavin's appearance. He doesn't look that different here than would almost 30 years later when he would appear in A Christmas Story . I couldn't help but be shocked at seeing Ralphie's father dealing drugs. So that's how he paid for the Red Ryder BB gun!

As good as the supporting cast is though, this is Frank's movie. Although his best remembered movies are usually lighter fare, he did prove in this and a number of other films that he wasn't just a star, he was also very much an actor.

sequence that first displayed stabbing white lines (representing needles, or a drummer's drum sticks), and then a paper cut-out of a jagged, bent, twisted (or crooked) and deconstructed forearm that moved downward (a symbol of addiction)

in his tenement rooming-house apartment, Frankie met up with his dependent, neurotic, greedy and nagging wife - the lying and deceiving 25 year-old Sophia "Zosh" Machine (Eleanor Parker in an over-the-top performance), who welcomed him home; he boasted: "I'm clean....I kicked it for keeps"; she was allegedly crippled from spinal injuries and wheelchair bound (but was secretly faking being an invalid) after a car accident three years earlier when DUI Frankie was at the wheel; they were married in the hospital chapel, and since then, she was using her disability and helplessness as a means to manipulatively maintain Frankie's support by keeping him guilt-ridden; she urged him to continue gambling and dealing poker games with Schwiefka, and give up his hopes for a musical career: ("But you always deal. You're a dealer; you're the best dealer in the business"), but he told her: "No more. I'm a drummer now"
in the downstairs apartment hallway, Frankie was briefly reacquainted with his neighbor - ex-flame and Club Safari stripclub/bar hostess/mistress Molly Novotny (Kim Novak) (with a heart of gold); during Frankie's absence, she told him that she had taken on an alcoholic boyfriend named Drunkie Johnny (John Conte), a professional pool player (houseman) for a corrupt boss, to keep herself from being lonely
after the struggling and vulnerable Frankie was forced to return to dealing, he visited Molly-O (his endearing name for her) during her work in Club Safari; she encouraged him to fulfill his dream of becoming a drummer: ("You've got a natural rhythm") when he doubted himself, and thought his idea of a new stage name (Jack Duvall) was "swell"; the next day, Frankie met up with musical talent agent Harry Lane (Will Wright) who set him up in a week's time for a drumming audition with a band

in the film's most devastating sequence, Frankie reverted to his addiction (presumably heroin) when he succumbed to becoming hooked again; drug-dealing Louie lured him to his apartment for just one fix (for $5 bucks), but knew what the disastrous results would be as he injected him - and told him: "Monkey's never dead, 'Dealer'. The monkey never dies. When you kick him off, he just hides in a corner waitin' his turn" - there were close-ups of Frankie's dilated eyes revealing that he had become high; however, Frankie vowed: "The monkey'll die waitin'. He ain't climbin' up on my back no more. Never again, I mean it"

Zosh continued to discourage Frankie from thinking he could make it as a drummer - she hid his drumsticks and told him: "There must be a million drummers play better than you do who can't get jobs"; meanwhile, Frankie admitted to Molly that he had just had one fix due to his addiction, but that he could control it: "There was a 40-pound monkey on my back. The only way to get along with a load like that is to keep leaning on a fix....I'm one of the lucky ones, Molly. I kicked it and I'm not too far hooked to kick it again. I've had my last fix"; and he became jubilant after joining the Musicians Union before a scheduled Monday audition to become a band-drummer
a marathon weekend poker game had been arranged by Schwiefka with two big-time gamblers Sam Markette (George E. Stone) and Williams (George Mathews); although the indebted Frankie knew that he could jeopardize his dreams to be a dummer, he agreed to deal after being threatened and offered $250 dollars, and was also enticed by Louie into one more fix to bolster his self-confidence and get him through the weekend; he also sought out a third fix after Molly protested that he had reverted back to drug use and stormed off in a taxi (to rent an apartment elsewhere)
the lengthy weekend gambling session culminated with the strung-out, careless and exhausted Frankie, who had begged for a 4th fix, returning to deal on Sunday morning and remaining until early the next morning; when Frankie was tempted by Louie to resort to cheating by palming cards (in exchange for the promise of another fix), he was caught and beaten up; the duplicitous Schwiefka denounced Frankie and fired him ("You don't deal for me no more") as the game broke up; Frankie barged into Louie's place desperate for another injection, but when he was denied any more fixes, Frankie knocked Louie out and searched the apartment for drugs without finding anything

after the long weekend without sleep, Frankie rushed to attend the Monday audition try-out arranged by musical talent agent Harry Lane (Will Wright); he was hoping to find work as a jazz drummer in bandleader Milton "Shorty" Rogers’ (as Himself) group, but experienced a devastating breakdown while heavily sweating and trembling (with debilitating withdrawal symptoms); he couldn't keep the beat, knew he had failed, and slinked away
Louie entered Frankie's apartment to seek revenge, and discovered that Zosh was faking her disability when he saw her walking around - he realized that she had only been pretending to be an invalid: ("You can walk. Since when?"); she retaliated with intense hysteria and pushed Louie to his death down the stairwell, because she feared that he would ruin her life by divulging the truth that she was a phony; Zosh then reported the death to Captain Bednar (Emile Meyer), and implicitly blamed and incriminated Frankie for the crime
after seeming to lose all hope, Frankie sought out Molly who had moved to another apartment and begged her for money for another fix - but she adamantly refused: ("Jump off a roof if you're gonna kill yourself, but don't ask me to help ya...You mustn't take that dirty stuff no more"); when she heard from Johnny that Frankie was the target of a man-hunt, she first sarcastically offered the newly-addicted Frankie to accept a wad of money (that would never be enough for more fixes), and/or turn himself in and surrender to the police: ("Why should you hurt, like other people hurt? Yes, so you had a dog's life with never a break. Why try to face it like most people do? No, just roll up all your pains into one big hurt, and then flatten it with a fix...Go on let him [Bednar] kill ya. Let him kill ya. It'll be quicker and better than doing it your way")
after Frankie responded that he wouldn't give himself up: "I won't let him kill me," she further challenged him to go "cold turkey" so that he could clearly answer questions when the police would predictably question him; Frankie decided with Molly - in a sensational and painful sequence, to detoxify himself: ("Here we go, down and dirty"); Molly kept Frankie locked in her room (after bundling up all sharp objects); at one point, she had to lock him in a closet to prevent him from suicidally jumping to his death; she also helped him to beat his habit (by keeping him from quivering, writhing, and feeling cold with blankets and the warmth of her own body); after a few days, he was again sober ("I feel like all the things inside me have settled into place")

in the final concluding twist in the film, Zosh was confronted by Frankie in their apartment who informed her that he was leaving to get away from all the tempting things that had lured him back into being a junkie: ("I got in the same old routine and before I knew it I was on it again"); and he admitted he could no longer be burdened with guilt; she objected and accusingly suspected he wanted to be with Molly: ("I know what's pullin' you away, Molly...You're only goin' just so you can be with that little tramp")
at the same instant that Zosh chased after Frankie to beg him not to leave, she forgetfully stood up; her self-incrimination was witnessed by Frankie, and by Captain Bednar and Molly who arrived at the door; obviously, she had been fraudulently stringing everyone along; before Zosh could be arrested by Captain Bednar, she fled from the apartment, blew her distress whistle around her neck, and committed suicide by throwing herself off the balcony onto the brick street below
her death freed Frankie to possibly live a cleaner life with Molly (in the tagged-on and contrived happy ending different from the source novel)

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Eye For Film >> Movies >> The Man With The Golden Arm (1955) Film Review

The Man With The Golden Arm

Reviewed by: Angus Wolfe Murray

This was the movie that broke the mould. Drug addiction was a taboo subject until Otto Preminger made the leap in 1955 with an adaptation of Nelson Algren's novel that the US board of film censors refused to categorise.

By modern standards, it looks stagy, with its studio set and stereotypical locations - the bar, Zosch's apartment, the street. Walter Newman and Lewis Meltzer's script is in the hard-boiled tradition, with a comic sidekick (Arnold Stang), a smarmy villain (Darren McGavin) and an hysterical wife (Eleanor Parker). The jazz score by Elmer Bernstein is exceptional and innovative.

Frank Sinatra's performance is a sharp reminder to those who missed From Here To Eternity that there is more to Ole Blue Eyes than Songs For Swinging Lovers and The Rat Pack. He plays Frankie Machine, a professional poker dealer, who comes out of chokey after a spell for the possession of heroin, off the habit and eager to make a new life as a jazz drummer.

He returns to the old neighbourhood in Chicago, where his neurotic invalid wife Zosch awaits. There is also devoted pal Sparrow, the cynical charm of Louie, the drug pusher, and Molly (Kim Novac), the girl downstairs, who loves him but doesn't want to ruin his marriage.

What with Zosch's nagging demands and Louie's insidious presence, Frankie gives in to the temptation and goes back on drugs. His new career is over before it starts. He steals from Zosch, hides out at Molly's, hits rock bottom and goes cold turkey to get the monkey off his back.

Sinatra is committed to this role and succeeds in exploiting Frankie's vulnerability, without resorting to sentimental tricks, or audience grabbing histrionics. His cold turkey scenes are genuinely upsetting and the relationship with Novak, who refutes her reputation as a dumb blonde with a sensitive, assured performance, is beautifully handled. By comparison, Parker appears melodramatic and dangerously over the top.

Director: Otto Preminger

Writer: Walter Newman, Lewis Meltzer, based on the novel by Nelson Algren

Starring: Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker, Kim Novak, Darren McGavin, Arnold Stang, Robert Strauss, John Conte, Doro Merande, Emile Meyer

Runtime: 118 minutes

Country: US

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The Man with the Golden Arm

A junkie must face his true self to kick his drug addiction.
Frankie Machine is a skilled card dealer and one-time heroin addict. When he returns home from jail, he struggles to find a new livelihood and to avoid slipping back into addiction. — Mike Campanelli <[email protected]>
Frankie Machine is no sooner back in his old neighborhood after a 6 month stint in prison and rehab than his old drug dealer, Louie is after him to restart his old drug habit. Frankie will have nothing to with him, proudly declaring that he is drug free and has no intention of letting that monkey get on his back ever again. Before going to prison he was a card dealer but learned to play the drums and now has hopes of becoming a professional musician. It's going to be a struggle however. His wife Zosch, clinging and wheelchair-bound and his old gambling boss, Schwiefka, stress him to the point that he soon falls back into his old drug habit. The girl he really loves, Molly, stands by him through thick and thin but when Louie is killed, the police believe Frankie is the man responsible and go after him. — garykmcd
Junkie Frankie Machine has just returned to his north-side Chicago neighborhood after a six month incarceration. He took the fall as the dealer for Schwiefka's raided illegal high stakes poker game, Schwiefka who in turn promised to take care of Frankie's wife, Sophia - who everyone calls Zosh - while Frankie was in prison for Frankie not talking. For three years, Zosh has been in a wheelchair, the result of a car accident caused by Frankie, the guilt associated which led to Frankie marrying her, despite he now being in love with a young woman named Molly, a strip club hostess, who lives downstairs in their tenement building. While in prison, Frankie became clean and learned how to play the drums, which he hopes will lead to a drug-free life on the outside as a union-carded musician. Dealing for Schwiefka, especially in high pressure all night games, exacerbated his need for drugs to remain on the edge during the games. Louie, Frankie's drug supplier, knows this, he who works in unofficial collaboration as the senior partner with Schwiefka. Despite Schwiefka and Louie trying to lure Frankie back into his old life, Frankie believes he can steer clear of that life. However, with their maneuvering, it may make it more difficult than Frankie imagines. But what Frankie may be unaware of is that the biggest obstacle to his staying clean in a literal and figurative sense is Zosh, who is keeping a secret all in an effort to hang on to Frankie and not have him leave her for specifically Molly. — Huggo
Fresh out of rehab after six long months of incarceration, the former card dealer and drug addict, Frankie Machine, returns to his squalid old neighbourhood in Chicago with dreams of a new and clean life. However, Frankie's hopes of an honest living as a professional drummer will soon collapse like a house of cards, when his ex-drug pusher, Louie, and his ruthless former employer, Schwiefka, force their way into his life--while at the same time--Zosh, the wheelchair-bound wife, clings to him for security. Suddenly, staying clean seems like an impossible task, and Frankie's itch for a way out grows stronger and stronger. Will Frankie ever get his share of happiness? — Nick Riganas
In the late 1940s, Frankie Majcinek (Frank Sinatra), who is known as Frankie Machine, returns to Chicago's South Side, which is mostly inhabited by Polish Americans, after serving a six-month sentence at a federal narcotics hospital. The denizens of Antek's Tug `n' Maul Tavern, Frankie's favorite bar, are pleased to see Frankie, especially his best friend, "lost dog finder" Sparrow (Arnold Stang). Although Frankie's former drug supplier, "Nifty" Louie Fomorowski (Darren McGavin), offers Frankie a free "fix, Frankie refuses and vows to Sparrow that he has kicked narcotics for good and intends to become a drummer for a big-name band. Frankie proudly shows off the drums he was given at the hospital, and after sending Sparrow to find him some new clothes, goes to the rooming house where he lives with his wheelchair-bound wife Zosch (Eleanor Parker). The neurotic Zosch, determined to keep Frankie with her by whatever means necessary, has manipulated him for three years by playing on his guilt over causing the accident that injured her while he was driving drunk. Zosch is dubious about his plans to become a musician and urges him to return to dealing poker for Zero Schwiefka (Robert Strauss). Frankie's consistent method of dealing has earned him a city-wide reputation as "the man with the golden arm," but Frankie is determined to improve his life so that he is not tempted to return to drugs. Frankie calls Harry Lane (Will Wright), a musical agent referred to him by his doctor at the narcotics hospital, and makes an appointment to see him. After Sparrow returns with a "borrowed" suit for Frankie to wear, they stop at Antek's for a drink and there run into Schwiefka. Frankie announces his intention to quit dealing, and the angry Schwiefka notifies "Cousin" Kvorka (Harold 'Tommy' Hart), a local beat policeman, that Frankie and Sparrow shoplifted a suit. Kvorka takes the pair to police captain "Record Head" Bednar (Emile Meyer), who wearily ignores Frankie's protests that he has a job interview and insists that he be locked up. Schwiefka then offers to bail out Frankie and Sparrow if Frankie returns to deal for him, and Frankie is forced to accept. Disturbed by a jailed junkie's tormented plea for a fix, Frankie returns home, where Zosch is pleased that he is going back to dealing cards. That night, Louie's taunts about Frankie's shaking hand unnerve the dealer and he leaves to visit the Safari Club, a nearby strip bar where Frankie's former sweetheart, Molly Novotny (Kim Novak), works as a b-girl. Although Molly and Frankie are still in love, Frankie's guilt over causing Zosch's paralysis have kept them apart. Frankie tries to tell Molly that she should leave her current boyfriend, the chiseling, alcoholic Drunky John (John Conte), but Molly states that she needs someone to stave off her deep-seated loneliness. Soon after, Frankie has an interview with Lane, who promises to call him with an audition for a band, but warns him that if he backslides even once, Lane will no longer sponsor him. Despite Frankie's happiness, Zosch nags at him that he is being unrealistic in striving for a better life. A week passes without word from Lane, and Frankie sinks into depression, until one afternoon, Frankie runs into Louie and, succumbing to temptation, accompanies Louie to his apartment for a fix and Frankie is hooked again. Later, after yet another quarrel with Zosch, Frankie storms down to Antek's. There he meets Molly, who encourages him to call Lane, telling him that Lane probably lost his phone number. Molly proves to be correct, and Lane arranges for Frankie to audition for Shorty Rogers' band on the coming Monday. Frankie then pleads with Molly to let him practice playing his drums in her room, as the spiteful Zosch has forbidden him to do so at their place. Although she is reluctant to encourage Frankie's hopes of building a future for the two of them, Molly agrees. After bragging that he has quit Schwiefka and joined the musicians' union, Frankie promises Molly that he is going to kick drugs again, and that after he has made some money and can send Zosch to a clinic, they will be together. Meanwhile, Schwiefka and Louie search for Frankie, as they have used Frankie's reputation to lure two big-time gamblers, Markette (George E. Stone) and Williams (George Mathews), to play in Schwiefka's poker game. After Zosch urges Frankie to deal the big game and tears up his musicians' union card, Frankie seeks refuge at Antek's, where Louie offers him some of the profits if he will deal for Markette and Williams. Desperately needing the money, Frankie agrees, and again gives in when Louie tempts him with another fix. Frankie then goes to the Safari Club, where a disappointed Molly berates him for getting high. When Frankie gets in a fight with John, Molly hurriedly leaves the neighborhood without telling Frankie where she is going. Later, Frankie deals the game for Markette and Williams, and with his skill easily wins. After dealing all night, an exhausted Frankie insists on leaving, but when he arrives home, he is suddenly overwhelmed by the need for a fix and rushes back to Schwiefka's. Louie refuses to give Frankie any drugs unless he resumes dealing, because Markette and Williams have begun to win. The game continues, and soon it is early Monday morning. Louie promises Frankie that if he cheats and wins, he will give him a fix, but Frankie, weary from his long hours of dealing, becomes careless, and Williams spots his card-palming and beats him. After Louie then refuses to give Frankie any drugs, Frankie knocks him out and searches his apartment, to no avail. Frankie then goes to his audition but cannot play competently due to his withdrawal symptoms. Meanwhile, Louie regains consciousness and goes to the rooming house to exact his revenge upon Frankie. Instead, Louie accidentally enters the room as Zosch is walking and deduces that she has been pretending to be paralyzed. When Louie threatens to reveal her secret, the hysterical Zosch pushes him down the stairwell to his death. Frankie, not knowing of Louie's death but fearing that he is after him, runs away and finds Molly, whom he begs for help. Molly then learns from John that Frankie is Bednar's main suspect. Molly then agrees to help Frankie quit drugs cold turkey, so that he can go to the police sober and withstand questioning to prove his innocence. After an agonizing few days, during which Frankie suffers great torment, he is free of his craving. John sees Frankie in Molly's apartment, however, and alerts Bednar. Frankie leaves before Bednar arrives, and Molly takes the police captain to Zosch's, where Frankie is telling her that he is going away with Molly. Just as a terrified Zosch gets up from her wheelchair to chase after Frankie, Bednar and Molly arrive, and they all realize that Zosch must have killed Louie. Before Bednar can arrest her, Zosch runs out to the fire escape and falls to street below. Frankie rushes to the street, where Zosch lays dying, and holds her as she tells him she loves him. After Zosch dies, Frankie and Molly slowly walk off together, leaving their old life behind.

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Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak, and Eleanor Parker in The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)

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Michael Gracey directs Raechelle Banno on the set of Paramount Pictures’ Better Man.

It is sometimes amazing to see what directors who have made a successful movie can get away with. One hit, and studios are willing to hand these people a fortune for their dream projects. Heaven’s Gate comes to mind as one archetypal example, but there are many other misfires from award-winning filmmakers. A few years ago director Michael Gracey scored a surprise smash with an original musical, The Greatest Showman . And now he has a new musical film about British pop star Robbie Williams — with a CGI monkey in the leading role.

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The Man With the Golden Arm
NEW. When illegal card dealer and recovering heroin addict Frankie Machine (Frank Sinatra) gets out of prison, he decides to straighten up. Armed with nothing but an old drum set, Frankie tries to ...
The Man With the Golden Arm
The core of The Man With the Golden Arm is its horrific and honest theme. And Frank Sinatra's performance makes it valid. This is a strong, lurid and gripping film. Full Review | Dec 23, 2020.
The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)
The Man with the Golden Arm: Directed by Otto Preminger. With Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker, Kim Novak, Arnold Stang. A junkie must face his true self to kick his drug addiction.
The Man with the Golden Arm
The Man with the Golden Arm is a 1955 American independent [3] drama film noir directed by Otto Preminger, based on the novel of the same name by Nelson Algren.Starring Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker, Kim Novak, Arnold Stang and Darren McGavin, it recounts the story of a drug addict who gets clean while in prison, but struggles to stay that way in the outside world.
The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)
This great movie brought out into the open the horrors of heroin addiction. It captured the struggle of a man, Frankie Machine, with a "monkey on his back". Frank Sinatra did his homework, well. The acting is superb, the score is first rate and the actors all gave above average performances.
The Man with the Golden Arm
The Man with the Golden Arm. ... Generally Favorable Based on 10 Critic Reviews. 63. 50% Positive 5 Reviews. 50% Mixed 5 Reviews. 0% Negative 0 Reviews. All Reviews; ... Find a schedule of release dates for every movie coming to theaters, VOD, and streaming throughout 2024 and beyond, updated daily.
THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM: Spades For Veins
Otto Preminger's taboo classic, The Man with the Golden Arm, was born out of defiance.Legend has it that Preminger was unimpressed with the idea of adapting Nelson Algren's novel until he saw Frankie's mountain - the up-and-pitfall battle of overcoming drug addiction - as another opportunity to wage war on the Production Code.The result was a largely disputed (V.F. Perkins called the ...
The Man with the Golden Arm
Otto Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm is a feature that focuses on addiction to narcotics. Clinical in its probing of the agonies, this is a gripping, fascinating film, expertly produced ...
The Man With The Golden Arm Review
Original Title: The Man With The Golden Arm. Controversial in the 1950s because director Otto Preminger challenged the prevailing industry censorship codes and presented drug addiction as a ...
The Man With the Golden Arm
The movie has very little in common with the novel, by Nelson Algren, but that doesn't mean it's a bad movie. (Unsurprisingly, Algren hated it.) The movie's poster with its stylized arm was a masterpiece, and was rated at #14 of "The 25 Best Movie Posters Ever" by Premiere .
The Man With the Golden Arm
The Man With the Golden Arm. By Richard Corliss Jan. 19, 2010. For Otto Preminger's film about a Chicago card dealer (Frank Sinatra) who falls victim to heroin addiction, then tries to get the monkey off his back, Elmer Bernstein came up with a powerful, pioneering concoction of cool jazz, big band and the Hollywood symphonic style. The score ...
The Man with the Golden Arm
The Man with the Golden Arm(1955 USA 119 mins). Prod Co: Otto Preminger Films/Carlyle Productions Prod, Dir: Otto Preminger Scr: Walter Newman, Lewis Meltzer [and Ben Hecht, uncredited], based on the novel by Nelson Algren Phot: Sam Leavitt Ed: Louie R Loeffler Prod Des: Joseph C. Wright Mus: Elmer Bernstein. Cast: Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker, Kim Novak, Arnold Stang, Darren McGavin, Robert ...
Frank Sinatra's legend lives on in films
These were all roles crafted for, and suited to, his emerging image as an underdog with a heart. Sinatra was nominated for best actor for "The Man With the Golden Arm," Otto Preminger's controversial version of the Nelson Algren novel, which defied the Production Code's ban on movies depicting drug addiction.
The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)
The Man with the Golden Arm is a 1955 American drama film with elements of film noir, based on the novel of the same name by Nelson Algren, which tells the story of a drug addict who gets clean while in prison, but struggles to stay that way in the outside world.
My Review of 'The Man with the Golden Arm' (1955)
This movie was based on the novel by Nelson Algren called The Man With the Golden Arm. And essentially it's about a heroin addict who is trying to stay off the habit, who has kicked the habit at ...
The Man with the Golden Arm
The Man with the Golden Arm, American film drama, released in 1955, that broke new ground with its realistic look at the life of a heroin addict. The film was based on the novel of the same name by Nelson Algren and starred Frank Sinatra as Frankie Machine, a struggling addict who gets clean while.
The Man with the Golden Arm
Adapted from the 1948 novel by Nelson Algren, The Man with the Golden Arm distinctly displays a memorable opening animated title sequence courtesy of graphic designer and Oscar-winning filmmaker Saul Bass. It embodies a provocativeness from its director Otto Preminger who continues to increase the dramatic anxieties throughout; which serves this intensely grimy and distinctive noir about the ...
The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)
Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 2005. Otto Preminger. Nelson Algren. Lewis Meltzer. Walter Newman. Reviews. 70. Written by CinemaSerf on November 14, 2022. Join the Community.
The Man With the Golden Arm
One of The Man With the Golden Arm's major flaws is the acting of most of the cast, although their melodramatics do make for extremely entertaining viewing and have probably given me a greater affection for this unusual little film than less wild performances would have.Top acting honours undoubtedly go to Kim Novak, whose measured and dignified work as Molly creates the film's most ...
The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) Starring: Frank Sinatra, Eleanor
I had never before realized just how old he was at the time. He was in his 60s when he made that movie in 1983, although he seemed much younger. The Man with the Golden Arm is a quintessential 1950s melodrama. It stars Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak, was produced and directed by Otto Preminger, has a jazz score by Elmer Bernstein and the titles ...
The Man With the Golden Arm (1955)
The Man With the Golden Arm (1955) In director Otto Preminger's code-defying, daring, ground-breaking, powerful drama about heroin addiction, with bleak film noirish elements and a memorable jazz score from Elmer Bernstein, based upon Nelson Algren's 1949 best-selling novel - it was the first major Hollywood film about the very taboo subject:
The Man With The Golden Arm (1955) Movie Review from Eye for Film
This was the movie that broke the mould. Drug addiction was a taboo subject until Otto Preminger made the leap in 1955 with an adaptation of Nelson Algren's novel that the US board of film censors refused to categorise. By modern standards, it looks stagy, with its studio set and stereotypical locations - the bar, Zosch's apartment, the street.
The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)
Fresh out of rehab after six long months of incarceration, the former card dealer and drug addict, Frankie Machine, returns to his squalid old neighbourhood in Chicago with dreams of a new and clean life. However, Frankie's hopes of an honest living as a professional drummer will soon collapse like a house of cards, when his ex-drug pusher ...
黄金の腕
黄金の腕 (小説) （en:The Man with the Golden Arm (novel)）水野晴郎シネマ館; 007 黄金銃を持つ男 - 原題が本作のパロディであることや、それを映画化したのが本作と同じユナイテッド・アーティスツだったりするなど共通点が多い。
'Better Man' Review: A Robbie Williams Biopic, With a Simian Twist
The film rushes through all the phases of Williams' life, beginning with his troubled family, then taking him through his years in a boy band until he decided to strike out on his own.

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The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)

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