Frank Sinatra as Dirty Harry -- yes or no? in Classic Horror Polls Forum

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Frank Sinatra as Dirty Harry -- yes or no?

Author	Comment
Richard	Frank Sinatra as Dirty Harry -- yes or no?	Lead	[-]
Jul 16 09 11:44 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Dirty Harry (1971) is synonymous with Clint Eastwood who turned the character into a franchise. But he got the part only after Frank Sinatra, among others, turned it down. Should Sinatra have accepted Dirty Harry? Would you like to see Sinatra as Dirty Harry? Frank Sinatra as Dirty Harry -- yes or no? (Result) Yes. No. "... little by little the look of the country changes because of the people we admire." dialog in HUD (1963)
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Dennman		#1	[-]
Jul 20 09 6:27 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I'm somehow not surprised.
Ted Newsom		#2	[-]
Jul 20 09 11:44 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	When I think of the smart-ass delivery of a lot of his films, and the meanness in SUDDENLY... yeah, Frank woulda been fine.
Bob Morris		#3	[-]
Jul 23 09 10:00 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Not sure if I would have liked Sinatra as Harry. On the other hand, I would love to see DIRTY HARRY remade today, and there's only one guy I would want to see play him, actor William Fichtner...I really think he could play the character as good as Eastwood did.
rvoyttbots		#4	[-]
Jul 24 09 6:49 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	He was too old for the part by 1971
jbresurrection		#5	[-]
Jul 30 09 9:56 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I'm a big Sinatra fan, but action films of the 70s belongs to Clint Eastwood (and Charles Bronson). I prefer Sinatra's performance in "The Detective" to his Tony Rome character. Sinatra was getting on a bit in the 1970s (he was born in 1915)... Clint Eastwood was just right for the part.
Richard		#6	[-]
Aug 2 09 4:53 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Bob Morris wrote: Not sure if I would have liked Sinatra as Harry. On the other hand, I would love to see DIRTY HARRY remade today, and there's only one guy I would want to see play him, actor William Fichtner...I really think he could play the character as good as Eastwood did. He'd certainly win a look-alike contest. Are you sure he's not related to Eastwood? The son he doesn't know about yet? Richard "... little by little the look of the country changes because of the people we admire." dialog in HUD (1963)
FAMOUSMONSTERS62		#7	[-]
Aug 7 09 11:55 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I said no ,but if you ask my mother she would say yes,he could play any part.
blackbiped		#8	[-]
Aug 11 09 1:19 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Fichtner would make a cool Dirty Harry. Sinatra would've been acceptable in the part, because we wouldn't have known how much better Clint Eastwood would've been. What really makes me wonder is, would Dustin Hoffman have made a better Popeye than Robin Williams? Legend, oh legend, the third wheel legend...always in the way. Porfle's Secret Blog HK and Cult Film News Andersonvision.com
horrorfilmx		#9	[-]
Dec 2 09 5:49 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I don't think anyone could have made a better Popeye than Williams --- an incredible performance in an awful movie. I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned that John Wayne also turned down the part of Dirty Harry before Eastwood got it, and after seeing McQ and Brannigan I can only say --- phew!
Richard		#10	[-]
Dec 3 09 6:04 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I liked BRANNIGAN but not as much as I liked McQ. John Wayne would have given Harry Callahan the moral center the character needed which Eastwood doesn't project. John Wayne as Dirty Harry is okay with me, and he should have accepted it. Richard "If you can't learn from history, you can't learn." Charlton Heston
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darklordrob		#11	[-]
Dec 3 09 7:52 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	John Wayne would have been terrible, for the very reason Richard mentions; Wayne always projects a moral center. The Harry character is an antihero; he is morally repugnant yet a perfect representative for the cynical early 70's, riot-scarred and rampaged by serial killers. Think about Wayne delivering the "Don't know if I've fired five shots or six" line... it doesn't work. You'd always sense that he did know; with Eastwood you're not sure. Sinatra would have been OK, would have liked to see that actually so I voted yes though obviously not "instead of Clint Eastwood". Bad pacing tended to drag down his later detective films (I've had the "Tony Rome" theme stuck in my head for forty years however).
horrorfilmx		#12	[-]
Dec 3 09 12:11 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	darklordrob wrote: John Wayne would have been terrible, for the very reason Richard mentions; Wayne always projects a moral center. The Harry character is an antihero; he is morally repugnant yet a perfect representative for the cynical early 70's, riot-scarred and rampaged by serial killers. Think about Wayne delivering the "Don't know if I've fired five shots or six" line... it doesn't work. One of my favorite John Wayne movies is Big Jake, written by same duo who wrote Dirty Harry. In it Wayne has a somewhat similar speech ("Your fault, my fault, it don't matter...") which works beautifully but only, in my opinion, because the Duke is playing his larger than life character in a mythical Old West. As he became more iconic I think he worked less well in contemporary settings.
Wich2		#13	[-]
Dec 3 09 2:35 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	"I don't think anyone could have made a better Popeye than Williams --- an incredible performance in an awful movie." With you there, HF - one of THE missed bets! A near-perfect cast; nice production; fun score - and a director that couldn't find it with both hands, in this case. "The Harry character is an antihero; he is morally repugnant" ??? He is presented as a Slayer of Bad Guys - in a world where no one else seems able to do that.
davlghry		#14	[-]
Dec 4 09 5:20 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Remember how Johnny Weissmueller made those Jungle Jim movies and then they dropped the whole Jungle Jim thing and he just played "Johnny Weissmueller?" That's how I always felt about John Wayne in BRANNIGAN and Mc Q. By that time we were so used to seeing the Duke exclusively in Westerns that when he ventured into "the real world" there was a weird disconnect. By the 70's he was the most "larger than life" star there had ever been. He could still fit into the huge expanse of a Western, but the contemporary world was just too small for him. I don't think Dirty Harry would have been a good fit.
MikeTheMook		#15	[-]
Dec 4 09 8:03 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	You want look-alikes, here's a look-alike! Although, I think the aforementioned William Fichtner is a better actor than Jackman, and for that reason alone I'd sooner cast Fichtner as Dirty Harry in a remake.
Richard		#16	[-]
Dec 5 09 5:28 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	horrorfilmx wrote: darklordrob wrote: John Wayne would have been terrible, for the very reason Richard mentions; Wayne always projects a moral center. The Harry character is an antihero; he is morally repugnant yet a perfect representative for the cynical early 70's, riot-scarred and rampaged by serial killers. Think about Wayne delivering the "Don't know if I've fired five shots or six" line... it doesn't work. One of my favorite John Wayne movies is Big Jake, written by same duo who wrote Dirty Harry. In it Wayne has a somewhat similar speech ("Your fault, my fault, it don't matter...") which works beautifully but only, in my opinion, because the Duke is playing his larger than life character in a mythical Old West. As he became more iconic I think he worked less well in contemporary settings. Perhaps that has more to do with audience perception of John Wayne than with John Wayne himself. He was a better actor than Eastwood by far, and he would have brought dimensions to the character we don't know about. He could have delivered the line just fine. He delivered lines not dissimilar to that in other films. Take another look at John Wayne in McQ. Forget about the action and all that and just look into his face. You can even turn the sound off and just study what Wayne does. There's a lot going on in his face. His performance is quiet, small in size, but deep in feeling and complex in emotional expression. Like when he has to go to his ex-wife, whom he still loves, and her new-husband to ask for money. It's humiliating, but it also makes him sad for her, because he realizes in that moment their hands must be dirty. If they were clean, they would have turned him down. John Sturges got something out of Wayne nobody else did. The weird thing is that nobody notices. Richard "If you can't learn from history, you can't learn." Charlton Heston
horrorfilmx		#17	[-]
Dec 5 09 12:44 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Perhaps that has more to do with audience perception of John Wayne than with John Wayne himself. He was a better actor than Eastwood by far, and he would have brought dimensions to the character we don't know about. Man, you're a serious fan of the Duke, aren't you? John Wayne was a much underrated actor but you can't separate "audience perception" from the effect he gave on screen. In a review of Big Jake someone dismissed Wayne's introductory scene (which I think is brilliant) as ludicrous because a gang of toughs were intimidated by a pudgy old man on a horse, adding that except for the history that Wayne the actor brings to the role no one would buy the scene at all. He missed the point: by that time in his career Wayne the actor and Wayne the icon were inseparable, and that's why the scene plays so well. But that Mount Rushmore image works both ways, and I think (despite Wayne's acting ability) it works against him in more "realistic" roles. Hey, didn't this thread used to be about Dirty Harry....???
MikeTheMook		#18	[-]
Dec 5 09 1:25 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	"Hey, didn't this thread used to be about Dirty Harry....???" I think Joan Crawford would have been an awesome Dirty Harry!
Gord Shriver		#19	[-]
Dec 5 09 2:03 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I'm a fan of Eastwood and Sinatra, and Frank was a damn good actor. Look at his work in, as mentioned earlier, SUDDENLY, THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, for example, and he's great in all of those, so were he younger when DIRTY HARRY came along, he might have been all right. Not that he wouldn't have given a good performance (you never caught him acting, which is a sign of a great actor), but he was already in his mid-50's. At 65, he was still good in THE FIRST DEADLY SIN, but as an entirely different kind of detective than Harry Callahan.
Richard		#20	[-]
Dec 6 09 12:01 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	horrorfilmx, you miss my point. I separate performance from reputation and take each performance separately. Wayne was never anything less than professional in front of the camera and behind it, but he delivered some lazy performances. McQ is not a lazy performance; it's one of the most engaged and heart-felt of his long career. I think Harry Callahan would have engaged him as well; more so than Big Jake. I enjoy Big Jake, but Wayne relies on his persona more than on his chops in that one. The difference between the two performances is the difference between night and day. Richard "If you can't learn from history, you can't learn." Charlton Heston
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Frank Sinatra as Dirty Harry -- yes or no?

Frank Sinatra as Dirty Harry -- yes or no?

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