The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) on Netflix
Frankie Machine returns home clean after six months at a federal narcotic farm. He wants to drum for a big band, but his old card-game boss and his drug dealer are waiting.
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- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.3/1013,566 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes81%
Trailer
Plot summary
After six months off drugs at a federal narcotic farm in Lexington, Kentucky, Frankie Machine comes back to his Chicago neighborhood. He believes he can play drums for a big band, and Sparrow, who makes a living selling stray dogs through a scheme, sticks close to him like a younger brother. Frankie's wife Zosh, who says a drunken crash he caused years ago left her unable to walk, wants him at home. Molly, an old flame who works as a hostess in a strip joint and lives in the apartment below his, is the one who pushes him toward the audition. Schwiefka, for whom Frankie dealt cards in an illegal game, and Louie, his former drug dealer, greet him as well.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Frank Sinatra took the lead in The Man with the Golden Arm before reading the whole script, and Marlon Brando was given the script around the same time. Sinatra still resented Brando for beating him to the lead in On the Waterfront.
- In early December 1955 the Production Code Administration denied The Man with the Golden Arm a Code seal, and the decision was upheld on appeal. Distributor United Artists resigned from the Motion Picture Association of America that same month, rejoining a few years later.
- The fight over the Code seal pushed the MPAA to investigate and revise its production codes, giving later films more freedom to explore taboo subjects including drug abuse, kidnapping, miscegenation, abortion and prostitution.
- Otto Preminger released the film before submitting it for a Code seal, arguing that drug use was shown to have severely negative consequences. United Artists, which had put $1 million into the production, distributed it anyway, risking a $25,000 MPAA fine.
- Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen wrote an alternate theme song, recorded by Sinatra with Nelson Riddle's orchestra, but it was dropped from the film and its soundtrack album. It stayed officially unreleased until 2002, when it appeared in the box set Frank Sinatra in Hollywood 1940-1964.
- Preminger replaced novelist Nelson Algren as screenwriter with Walter Newman and rewrote the story extensively, leaving Algren bitter. Asked by his friend, photographer Art Shay, to pose under the film's marquee, Algren reportedly said, "What does that movie have to do with me?"
- To prepare to play the addict Frankie Machine, Frank Sinatra observed addicts going cold turkey at drug rehabilitation clinics. He also learned to play drums from drummer Shelly Manne.
- Saul Bass designed the film's crooked-arm advertising symbol, and Preminger liked it so much that he threatened to pull the picture if an exhibitor altered the ads. Bass also made the film's animated title sequence, the first of many he created for Preminger, Hitchcock and others.
