"This is our fourth little get together and I'd like to explain that the title of our show is in the patois of the youth of today. Now no one would really explain to me exactly what my 'thing' is supposed to be, but it can't be all bad, baby, because they let me do it on television" - Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert Sinatra Does His Thing DVD Review
By Jonathan Boudreaux
Frank Sinatra's 1968 television special Francis Albert Sinatra Does His Thing is a half-hearted attempt by the Chairman of the Board and conductor/arranger Don Costa to appeal to a slightly more youthful audience than the singer normally commands. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite succeed.
The show starts out with a couple of standards for the old folks - "Hello Young Lovers" and "Baubles, Bangles, and Beads." During the "cuckoo, crazy" "Baubles" number, a weird drop is flown in behind Sinatra. Lazily draped with strings of beads and, well, baubles, the backdrop plummets abruptly a foot or so toward the stage in mid-song when unseen stagehands lose control of it. This kind of gaffe - along with mics that emit rustling noises whenever the performers touch them - only serves to point out what a disappointingly slapdash and cheap "special" this is. In "Hello Young Lovers" Sinatra even wanders onto a part of the set that isn't lit, singing there in the dark for several minutes.
At this point in the program, Sinatra pauses to welcome the audience and explains the concept of the show. He extols on wacky kid music in laughably "hip" language before lighting a cig and singing one of those newfangled songs, "Cycles." Of course Sinatra and Costa have ironed all of the life and modernity out of the song, so he might as well have picked "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" instead. Paying lip service to the new while ditching it in favor of the old occurs far too often in Thing.
Special guest Diahann Carroll then performs "Music That Makes Me Dance" while the shadow from the boom mic above her dances across the front of her dress and her face. Luckily a stagehand gives her a handheld mic - cue rustling noises - before she tears into a killer version of "Where Am I Going."
Sinatra then joins Carroll onstage. After exchanging kisses, he announces that they will sing a medley in tribute to "black Americans [who] are at last taking their place beside white Americans in the mainstream of our way of life." The sentiment is nice, but the execution is clumsy, from Sinatra's bored intro to the song choice. Carroll sings "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child," Sinatra follows with "Lonesome Road," and then Carroll takes on "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen." For a tribute to the end of segregation, the singers themselves are oddly segregated, performing only an awkward version of "Amen" together and singing the other songs tag team style.
Next up is a weird sequence that features a depressed Sinatra singing alternately in a motel room and in an abandoned house during a thunderstorm. He begins with "Glad to Be Unhappy" while packing his bags in the motel room. This segues into "Here's That Rainy Day" which mysteriously transports him to the abandoned house, complete with sheet-covered furniture and packed boxes. There is a convenient break in the storm when he walks out of the house to sing "It Never Entered My Mind" on the stoop. He tosses away the house key and wanders around the Astroturf "garden" to sing "Gone With the Wind" as fake leaves begin to fall around him. He is then transported back to the motel. Did his wife leave him? Did he lose his house? Did his cat die? Who knows?
Sinatra then introduces the "fresh, exciting sound" of The 5th Dimension. The group, wearing Star Trek meets Aladdin costumes of turquoise and silver lame, perform energetic versions of "It's a Great Life" and "Stoned Soul Picnic." Sinatra, dressed in a matching outfit, joins them on "Sweet Blindness." Again, his slightly condescending attitude negates his original praise of the band.
Sinatra literally strips off his 5th Dimension costume in favor of a Nehru jacket and love beads over a day-glo orange t-shirt before launching into "Nice and Easy" and "How Little We Know." He ends the show in a tux singing "Lost in the Stars" and "Put Your Dreams Away."
The special begins to play immediately after the DVD loads, but the menu can be accessed by using the remote control. This allows the viewer to jump to specific songs and to control the closed captioning.
