I watched the Frank Sinatra movie THE FIRST DEADLY SIN last night. I was surprised by the score by Gordon Jenkins. I usually just think of him in terms of his arrangements for Sinatra albums, or his musical "concept" albums such MANHATTAN TOWER or SEVEN DREAMS. It was quite interesting to hear him working in a rather dark thriller mode. Parts sort of reminded me of Mancini things, like parts of WAIT UNTIL DARK or EXPERIMENT IN TERROR. There was also a bittersweet theme for Sinatra's love for his dying wife, which I found to be a tad Herrmann-like.
Anybody know if this score could be a candidate for CD release?
I'm not familiar with the film, Jim, but I'm not surprised that you found the Jenkins score memorable. This kind of goes back to the recent Lalo Schifrin thread which OnyaBirri started - how "arranging" can be such an important background for "composing" (Onya didn't even make the distinction between the two). The silky arrangements which Jenkins did on some of the Sinatra albums are beautifully "filmic". And let's not forget Don Costa's work on MADIGAN. Some of that wonderful score sounded like it was building up to a Sinatra vocal.
I know the film - its the later re-run of the same character from The Detective isnt it? The Ice hammer murders one? Not quite as powerful a plot and performances as the original film of course. Yeah I remember liking the score but being such a little known film with a relatively unknown score I doubt its a candidate for release. Its one of many dozens from that period - especially thrillers and westerns - that never saw an LP and probably wont see a CD either. And I'd think there is a hell of a lot of scores ahead of it in the queue due for release. Too much went unreleased back then.
Interesting thing comes to mind when this film is mention. I remember a few weeks before it open a guy I was working with who was a Sinatra freak said to us movie guys that film is going to make a lot of money. When I asked him why he said because SINATRA is in it and there are so many SINATRA fans. I tried to tell him that just because somebody is successful in the music industry[mind you this is 1980, not the 50's or 60's when it came to Frank] does not mean people are going to go see these music stars in the theatres.Different crowd of people. I told him the BEE GEES [riding high in 78] were in a bomb called SGT PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND with BEATLES music to boot. Of course there are many examples of this FILMS Madonna has been in that failed at the B.O, ETC ETC.If ELVIS was alive in 1980 and made a movie it too would have lost money probably in that era. The guy was stubborn , he said the film will be a big hit. We made a $50.00 bet. Guess who won. I saw THE FIRST DEADLY SIN at a $1.00 movie house shortly after the film came and went after a week or two in theatres. I liked the music score though.
