The 1960s were, depending on your viewpoint, either the best or the worst time to release a film about political assassinations, and there weren’t many wilder examples than John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate. A wildly paranoid tale of a returning military veteran convinced that one of his brothers-in-arms is now a brainwashed Communist assassin, it essentially created the conspiracy thriller as we know it, and had a knockout cast including Laurence Harvey, Angela Lansbury and – the reason we are gathered here today – Frank Sinatra.
Geek Show head honcho Rob Simpson joins the podcast again to talk to Graham about Sinatra’s legacy, his Vegas residencies and his Rat Pack friends, including much praise for Sammy Davis Jr.’s wardrobe in Sweet Charity. There’s also some discussion of the very unexpected actress who could have taken Lansbury’s role, the Jonathan Demme remake and its political inspirations, and the vexed question of what, exactly, this film is saying about the Cold War.
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