Hank Henry Movies
- 1970
- PG
Two star-crossed losers are looking for diversion but find love instead in this romantic drama. Fran Walker (Elizabeth Taylor) is a veteran Las Vegas showgirl who is also the kept woman of Lockwood (Charles Braswell), a San Francisco businessman who is happy to pay her rent and keep her in designer clothes but isn't willing to divorce his wife in order to make a long-term commitment with her. Fran falls into a fling with Joe Grady (Warren Beatty), a piano player who works with lounge comic Tony (Hank Henry) when he isn't succumbing to his addiction to gambling. Fran and Joe agree at the start that their relationship is to be about sex and nothing more, but before long, the two have fallen in love despite themselves. Though set in Las Vegas, most of The Only Game in Town was shot in Paris at the request of Taylor, whose then-husband, Richard Burton, was working in France at the time; this helped boost the budget to 11 million dollars, while the film earned less than a fifth of that figure at the box office. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Elizabeth Taylor, Warren Beatty, (more)
The Rat Pack packed it in after this sprightly musical comedy that owes more than it should to Damon Runyon's stories and Frank Loesser and Abe Burrows's classic musical Guys and Dolls. Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen's bright and snappy score features such songs as "Style", "Bang-Bang" and the Sinatra standard "My Kind of Town". Set in 1920s Chicago, the tale begins during a birthday party for head mobster Big Jim (Edward G. Robinson) who is shot to death during the celebration. Rival gangster Guy Gisbourne (Peter Falk) immediately declares himself the chief gangster. The northside gang, headed by Robbo (Frank Sinatra) is willing to grant Guy his self-declared title as long as he leaves the northside territory alone. Guy refuses and when small time hood Little John (Dean Martin) joins Robbo's crew, turf warfare breaks out between the two gangs, resulting in the destruction of both Robbo and Guy's nightclubs. Meanwhile, Big Jim's daughter Marian (Barbara Rush) offers Robbo $50,000 to find the man who killed her father. Robbo demurs and gives the money to his henchman Will (Sammy Davis Jr.) to get rid of. Will, hoping to do a good deed, hands the money over to Allen A. Dale (Bing Crosby), who runs an orphanage. Allen, finding out that the money came from Robbo, informs the newspapers of Robbo's philanthropic enterprise and Robbo immediately becomes a local celebrity, referred to as Chicago's Robin Hood. For his part, Robbo is willing to go along with the publicity. On the romantic front, although Robbo is attracted to Marian, he gives her the brush-off when he finds she is using a charitable foundation as a front for a counterfeiting ring being run by herself and Little John. Robbo tells Marian to leave town. Instead, she hooks up with Guy, proposing that he kill both Robbo and Little John. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi
- Starring:
- Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, (more)
- 1963
In this offbeat crime drama, Mafia boss Johnny Colini (Marc Lawrence) has run afoul of the law and is being deported back to his native Sicily. Colini is not at all happy about this, and after he saves the life of a young thug, Johnny Giordano (Henry Silva), he knows the perfect way for Giordano to pay him back. Colini teaches Giordano the fine art of being a hit man, then sends him to America as Johnny Cool, with a long list of people who he believes informed on him to the police. Johnny Cool begins knocking off Colini's old enemies with a brutal violence that betrays the cool detachment of his personality; along the way, he meets Dare Guinness (Elizabeth Montgomery), a beautiful but promiscuous woman with whom Johnny falls in love. Several gangsters wanting to stop Johnny Cool's reign of terror rough up Dare as a warning to the hit man, but this only serves to make him all the more bloodthirsty. Produced in part by Peter Lawford, Johnny Cool features an interesting variety of notables as Johnny's associates and victims, including Telly Savalas, Mort Sahl, Joey Bishop, Jim Backus, and Sammy Davis, Jr., who also sings the theme song. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Henry Silva, Elizabeth Montgomery, (more)
The 1939 adventure classic Gunga Din is transferred from British India to the American West, courtesy of Frank Sinatra's "Clan." Sinatra, Dean Martin and Peter Lawford play three cavalry officers, always ready for a brawl but willing to die for each other if need be. Sammy Davis Jr. a cavalry bugler who has aspirations of being a combat soldier. The three officers and the bugler take on a Napoleonic Native American chief, who plans to unify all the tribes and kill every white man in sight. Davis does his "Gunga" bit by blowing his bugle and warning the approaching cavalry that they're riding into a trap. About all that isn't pilfered from Gunga Din is the death of the noble bugler; Davis survives being shot up by the Indians with little more than a flesh wound! Sergeants Three also stars another Sinatra crony, Joey Bishop, playing the role originally essayed in Gunga Din by Robert Coote. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, (more)
- 1961
Nudity and sex, sex and nudity, and various combinations thereof dominate this undistinguished soft-core film where none of the actresses seem to be using their real names. The thin storyline that barely strings the sexual interludes together is that the world has been transformed into a matriarchal society in which men have only one function -- and it is not related to their intellectual capacity. This state of affairs apparently creates only dominatrix women. This film was written, directed, photographed, and edited by men. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Hank Henry
During a Los Angeles Christmas, a group of 82nd Airborne vets assembles under the leadership of gamblin' man Danny Ocean (Frank Sinatra) to rip off five Las Vegas casinos just after the stroke of midnight on New Year's Day. Playboy Jimmy Foster (Peter Lawford) joins in the scheme because he's sick of needing his oft-married mother's money, especially now that she's about to wed Duke Santos (Cesar Romero), a self-made man with all sorts of underworld ties. After he receives the news that he could die at any time, newly released convict Anthony Bergdorf (Richard Conte) reluctantly agrees to participate so he can leave some money to his estranged wife and young son. Ocean's own wife, Beatrice (Angie Dickinson), doesn't think much of her husband's promise of a big score to come, but her quiet protests don't dissuade him. With Las Vegas garbage man and fellow vet Josh Howard (Sammy Davis Jr.) and several casino employees among their number, the titular band of thieves have just a few days to get ready for their caper. When Duke Santos, Jimmy's mother, and one of Ocean's discarded paramours all show up in Sin City at the same time as the veterans, the crew's perfect plans face some serious hurdles. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi
- Starring:
- Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, (more)
- 1960
Popular Mexican comedian Cantinflas (Mario Moreno) plays the title character in this star-studded, amusing comedy drama by George Sidney. Pepe is the same sort of impoverished stereotype Cantinflas made famous in several of his comedies; in this case he is a hired hand on a ranch who chases down a horse for his employer. A boozing Hollywood director buys a white stallion belonging to Pepe's boss and the determined ranch hand decides to take off for Hollywood to get the horse back. Once in this new and strange environment -- where a lot of cameos by the likes of Jimmy Durante, Frank Sinatra, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Bing Crosby, Maurice Chevalier, and many others enliven the action -- Pepe becomes a friend to the alcoholic director. Unfortunately, what is missing here is "Cantinfletico." That is the nickname for the rambling non-sequitur characteristic of Cantinflas that no one else could master. The film was originally released at 195 minutes, then edited down to 157. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Cantinflas, Dan Dailey, (more)
The John O'Hara/Richard Rodgers/Lorenz Hart Broadway musical Pal Joey created quite a stir during its original theatrical run in 1940. Here we had a heel of a hero who sleeps with a wealthy older woman in order to realize his dream of owning his own nightclub, and who breaks the heart of the girl who truly loves him when she impedes his plans to get ahead. Blossom Time it wasn't. Due to the seamy nature of the plot and the double- and single-entendre song lyrics (especially the original words for "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered", which you aren't likely to hear on most mainstream recordings of this tune), Pal Joey could not be faithfully filmed back in the 1940s. Even this 1957 version, made at a time when movie censorship was beginning to relax, was extensively sanitized for public consumption. Ambitious singer/dancer Joey (Frank Sinatra) is still something of a louse, but a redeemable one. The relationship between Joey and his older benefactress Vera Simpson (Rita Hayworth, who was actually a few years younger than Sinatra) is one of implication rather than overt statement. And Joey's true love, chorine Linda English (Kim Novak), is as pure as the driven snow, who vehemently expresses distaste at having to perform a striptease. The Rodgers and Hart songs ("I Could Write a Book" the aforementioned "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered") which seemed so cynical and ironic back in 1940, are given the typically lush, luxurious Hollywood treatment (many of the tunes, notably "There's a Small Hotel", were borrowed from other Rodgers and Hart shows, a not uncommon practice of the time). Pal Joey is nice to look at and consummately performed, but don't expect the bite of the original play, or the John O'Hara short stories which preceded them. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Rita Hayworth, Frank Sinatra, (more)
- 1957
Frank Sinatra stars as legendary nightclub comic Joe E. Lewis in this dramatic screen biography. In the 1920s, Lewis was a popular singer in Chicago who could fill any nightclub he chose to play. This doesn't go unnoticed by the mobsters who control many of the city's venues; when they ask Lewis to leave his steady gig and come work for them, he politely but firmly refuses. This does not make Al Capone and his men happy, and they respond by brutally attacking Lewis, cutting his throat and damaging his vocal cords so severely that he can never sing again. Lewis sinks into a deep depression and develops a highly caustic sense of humor, but his friend Austin Mack (Eddie Albert) suggests that he could put his sharp wit to work as a comedian. With little to lose, Lewis tries his hand at comedy, and with the encouragement of famous entertainer Sophie Tucker, Lewis once again rises to stardom as his salty material makes him the talk of late-night spots and burlesque houses everywhere. Along the way, he becomes involved with chorus girl Martha Stewart (Mitzi Gaynor) and wealthy socialite Letty Page (Jeanne Crain); while he marries Martha, he's not able to get Letty out of his thoughts for long. Lewis' romantic conflicts and the pressures of success fan the flames of his already potent taste for alcohol, and soon Lewis becomes a bitter drunk whose addiction to the bottle threatens to send his career (and his life) back into the gutter. The classic Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen number "All the Way" was introduced in The Joker Is Wild, and it won a 1957 Academy Award for Best Song; the film was later re-released as All the Way. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Frank Sinatra, Mitzi Gaynor, (more)
- 1946
Freddy Stewart and June Preisser, Monogram's answer to Donald O'Connor and Peggy Ryan, star in Junior Prom. The plot concerns a high-school election, with a snotty rich kid literally buying his way to the class presidency. The backers of hero Freddy Stewart garner votes by using music, specifically big-band numbers and dancing specialties. Guest stars include bandleaders Abe Lyman and Eddie Heywood, Harry "The Hipster" Gibson and the Airliners. Junior Prom represented one of producer Sam Katzman's final Monogram efforts before moving his base of operations to Columbia. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Freddie Stewart, June Preisser, (more)
Rating Systems
Blockbuster
BLOCKBUSTER name, design and related marks are trademarks of Blockbuster L.L.C.
2013 Blockbuster L.L.C. All rights reserved.
Portions of Content Provided by Rovi Corporation. 2013 Rovi Corporation.