Well, here we go. The last of the many, many movies I wanted to see before they left HBO Max for who-knows-how-long. And it’s one more with Frank Sinatra. I do somewhat remember this because I saw the title as a kid and assumed some guy could go around whacking people with his hard metal arm.

Then my mom told me gold is a soft metal, so that probably wasn’t likely. Plus, the movie has nothing to do with that.

Frankie Machine (Sinatra) returns to his Chicago neighborhood after a stint in a federal Narcotic Farm. He’s clean, and has a real gift for the drums, saying he has a “golden arm”. He wants nothing more than to become a professional musician, and he has a real shot at it. True, his wheelchair-bound wife Zosh (Eleanor Parker) is a bit of a nervous wreck who would rather he go back to dealing cards in an illegal gambling operation, and the cops don’t exactly trust him, plus his old dealer Nifty Louie (Darren McGavin) is just waiting for Frankie to come by again, but he has support from squirrely pal Sparrow (Arnold Stang) and former flame Molly (Kim Novak) might be there to help him out at least a little bit if he can just stay clean.

Granted, he doesn’t. Then again, it’s a little weird seeing McGavin play a drug dealer considering I know him best as an older actor in cult TV favorite Kolchak the Night Stalker and the holiday classic A Christmas Story.

This was a bit of a treat. While Frankie’s drug-of-choice is never exactly named (it’s implied to be heroin), his gradual fall from clean to addicted is paced out well, and he gives a solid performance as a man just trying to get away from everything bad in his life. That this just so happens to include a smothering wife who may be a lot healthier than she appears to be is part of his bigger problem. He feels responsible for Zosh’s condition, but she wants him to return to his card dealing ways, certain his skills as a musician will never get him very far.

Now, this being a movie from the 50s with the central message that drugs are bad, it isn’t really that surprising that all of the various figures in Frankie’s life trying to force him back to where he was are all in some way punished. Frankie’s eventual self-rehab seems a little too pat in the end, but the movie doesn’t sugarcoat the effects his withdrawal has on him. I’ve seen better movies about addiction, but given the time it came from, this one seemed a lot closer to reality than many, and it was well worth a look.

Grade: B+


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