The Rise And Fall Of The Shamus Game- Frank Sinatra’s “Tony Rome” (1967)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Bartlett Webber

Tony Rome, starring Frank Sinatra, Jill Saint John, 1967 

I am an old-time black and white film noir private detective, shamus, gumshoe, key-hole peeper, whatever you want to call guys who do the public coppers’ dirty work for chump change and a few lumps on the head, kind of guy. Have built a reputation in the cinematic and literary critics’ world for pushing up and pulling down the private eyes who filled up the screen when the film adaptations of guys like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain in an off moment ruled the roost and made many an audience forget their woes for a while in the 1930s Great Depression days and the waiting by the home fires for the other shoe to drop during the 1940s European and Pacific Wars. To give you an example, a famous one that others like the legendary film critic Sandy Salmon have commented on, I have taken Hammett’s classic Sam Spade from out his The Maltese Falcon and run him up the pole as super-hero that no DC or Marvel comic holy goof could even stand in his shadow, could beat with that ten foot pole, or have placed him down in the mud with the other geeks playing a bit role (picked out of the Frisco town telephone book to boot) against the real action between Brigid O’Shaughnessy and the “Fat Man.” I could give more but that should suffice.  

So it came as a challenge, what would have been a freak of nature thing under the old regime on this site of Allan Jackson, when new site manager, Greg Green, not knowing of my area of expertise, assigned me this Tony Rome private detective film from the 1960s. I had at first refused, had put my foot down, when Greg essentially ordered me to do the review to “broaden my horizons.” The coup de grace though was when he threatened me with having to do one of those super-hero comic holy goof reviews which he has foisted on virtually everybody under the false impression that his target audience, the younger crowd, even bothered to read hard copy or on-line reviews. Could give a fuck about such views. (He still believes social media, the real way that crowd forms a critical mass for anything these days, is just a passing fad like the hula-hoops of my youth.) As you can tell I have if under protest succumbed to his blandishment.         

Frankly it is hard to see what makes the post-World War II Technicolor private detective tick. What makes Tony run. A guy like Sam Spade, Phil Marlowe, hell, even Lou Dalton grabbed a case, a murder case usually although real private detectives mainly did, do, key-hole peeping and re-po work, maybe a security breech problem on an off-day, bang-bang the bad guys and went under the satin sheets with whatever femme was still standing. But most days they were sitting in some run down ill-kept small office in some seen better days office building filled with failed dentists, unlicensed quacks, re-po men, junk jewelers, insurance salesman and quick change artists reaching periodically for that low shelf whiskey bottle in the bottom drawer of that paper-strewn desk trying to figure how to keep this dunning fools away from his door.   

This Tony Rome, played by East Coast cool and collected Frank Sinatra last seen in this space playing Oscar-worthy Maggio the platoon wise ass who got tumbled by a sadistic prison guard in the film adaptation of James Jones’ From Here to Eternity, I can’t figure. Worked out of Miami in the post-Cuban Revolution days not a bad locale but too much sunshine and blue ocean seas floating out high white notes for serious detection world like in fog-bound San Francisco. Lived off a boat, dressed like a sportsman (complete with soft hat an emblem of a by-gone era), drove a swanky car and not a clunker like most key-hole peepers who are one step ahead of the loan company’s re-po man, and had an office that Sam, Phil, Lou would have died for. Where is there room for a low rent desk and sipping out of low shelf pint whiskey bottles in all of that. To boot our man Tony has a gambling jones that keeps the wolves at his door and the need to grab some kale on the off-track days. A man with feet of clay, an everyman.    

Even the caper Tony gets involved is a laugher of sorts. A cheapjack case that wouldn’t draw breathe one from the old-timers. Some young curvaceous dippy dame had about seven too many drinks and wound up passed out on a motel bedroom. Bad for business anyway you look at the matter so Tony does his old ex-partner a favor taking the nymph home to rich father and mother. The old man wonders what happened to his daughter and hires our man to figure on what was what. The key, a missing diamond pin “misplaced” by said dippy daughter, gives Tony an excuse to hunt high and low for that damn thing. Then the bodies start to pileup as his ex-partner, a fence, a jeweler and his bodyguard are wasted.   

Tony then spends the rest of his time trying to figure out what was going on since that so-called diamond pin was bogus, was glass. After some more shootings and mayhem it turned that the rich man’s daughter was hocking her step-mother’s jewelry to give some moola to his drunken sot of a mother and her ne’er do well husband what actually ordered the various and sundry killings to keep the cash cow coming. The hook? That step-mother was previously married to one of the bad guys and had never gotten a divorce so the squeeze was on when that bad guy hit town looking for the big pay-off. Instead getting lead, plenty of it. In the end the bad guys took it on the head and that was that.     

Well almost “that was that” because have you noticed something missing. Unlike in a Sherlock Holmes story line where Danny Moriarty (an alias for reasons he can explain if you run across him in this space) has been running a campaign to debunk the Englishman as a serious detective bringing up of late the question of his and Doctor Watson’s sexual preferences since neither has been seen lately with a dame, even a one night stand, Tony is strictly a lady’s man. Or so that is the way he wants to see himself in the private detection world where every male P.I. is chasing skirts and nobody thinks anything of it. Except Tony is not really chasing any dame, not even 1960s eye candy Ann Archer, played by Jill Saint John, whose only purpose is to do the other end of a lot of sexual foreplay and innuendo but no silky sheets. Yeah, not your grandfather’s shamus, no indeed.