Customer Reviews

Frank Sinatra - They Were Very Good Years

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is awesome stuff for any serious Sinatraphile. Many of the other compilations of his career contain poor-quality clips, particularly from his short-lived TV show of the 50's. But this six-volume DVD manages to unearth some truly rare B & W clips of Frank on TV, dating back to gigs on the Milton Berle and Jackie Gleason shows. The quality of the snippets has somehow been cleaned up and the resulting images are quite good. There is also an abundance of color clips from the Chairman in the 60's, guest hosting the Kraft Music Hall, guesting on the Dino show, singing duets with Perry, Bing and even some oddities like a comedy routine with Bobby Darin.

More surprisingly is some great concert footage of Sinatra, much of it from late in his career. Some of it is actual fan movies, taken directly from the audience, and it's fascinating stuff. You can see Frank singing One for My Baby with his Jack Daniels, cigarette and the obligatory stool: classic moments! He also delivers a stunning rendition of I've Got You Under My Skin. In addition to all of this little-known material, there's an abundance of film clips, all of good quality. There's even a few outtakes from Suddenly and the The Manchurian Candidate, as well as brief interviews conducted with Frank at various premieres and engagements.

The weakest part of this DVD are the interviews with people who worked with Frank. Some of them are interesting, others are not, but I'd rather just watch actual footage of the man himself. But there's plenty of that to enjoy and you can watch this Night and Day, into the Wee Small Hours of the Morning. If you love Frank, you gotta love this DVD, baby! So kick back with a glass of J.D., snuggle up with your favorite chick and get down to some serious living with this exceptional DVD.

A nice package of three discs which is an extended version of a 2 DVD set with the same title which lacks of last part Sinatra Memorial. One of the most important advantages of this DVD is it has more than 5 hours running time. So the price is very cheap for such a DVD with long playing time. The set includes 6 parts ("The Bobby Sox Years", "The Hollywood Years", "Hollywood: The Second Time Around", "The Swinging Years", "The Vintage Years" and "Sinatra Memorial". This DVD is replete with many old footages from his early years. Particularly, if you are looking for Sinatra's historic movie career, this DVD will satisfy you. DVD includes some interviews with his friends and co-stars such as Sammy Davis, Jr., Shirley Jones and Juliet Prowse. It is disappointing that within these different parts, some scenes and footages are used couple of times. It is not good to see the same things over and over again. From time to time, picture and sound quality decreases due to the age and rarity of the footages used. Unfortunately, at the fifth part, some scenes freezes very frequently. I am not sure if this defect is on my copy only or not. However, considering its long playing time and cheap price, it is still worthwhile to add this one to your Sinatra Collection even with all these disadvantages.

There are very few DVDs or Videos covering Frank Sinatras life. This set is the closest I ve found. If you are looking for a lot of his music this isn't the set,but it covers Sinatras life very well. You'll find clips from many of his movies and TV shows as well as important milestones in his life. If you get a couple of his TV shows such as "A Man and his Music",the Rat Pack Dismas house DVDand the excellent A@E Rat Pack Biography along with this set you would have a nice DVD collection of Sinatra..his music and his life.

I had no idea when I purchased the Sinatra DVD set that it would be a 5 hour history of his life and career (most of which we know) and very little singing.
Most of the 3 DVDS consist of short musical sound bites and talk.

This is probably as definitive a set of "extended bio" as you will be seeing in a while. Since the original set comprised of 6 VHS tapes (which I also still own), the video quality on the newer interviews (Jeanne Carmen, Joey Bishop and others) are pretty standard to a late 80s set. However, due to questionable (read: poor condition) source material, the video quality for the "Colgate" "Frank Sinatra Show" and the promotional footage for Sinatra's movies are substandard. Very soft, almost kinescope video footage for a nearly 60 year old TV ad or stage footage is acceptable to a certain extent.
The narrator seems to be reading from a script that doesn't offer many revalations, I'm afraid. The way he phrases sentences together, one sometimes thinks he's summarizing (a la E! THS) an event and allow the video and/or audio finish the rest of the thought.

All in all, it's a good comprehensive collection of video footage, though I would certainly like to have seen more of the Frank/Ava video footage and pictures as opposed to "Their marriage was one of turbulence" and then move onto an affair he had with Juliet Prowse. Certainly Frank and Ava were the Bradgelina of the 50s, weren't they? Why no more attention to that than there was for the Kennedy afillation?

Good images. Very interested in early years of Frankie.

Great DVD, but the edition is not that good.
Anyway, it is worth buying!

I am very pleased with the dvd - received promtly. Will order again
F. Ramsden

I was disappointed by this production but perhaps that was because I was expecting something different. Sinatra's life and growth was outlined from the early years but I found it repetitive and a little tedious. There is not much Sinatra fans don't know about his life. What I really wanted was the hear him sing! Why couldn't the producers have played the songs in the sequence they were recorded and weave the story around them.

One scene showed him sitting on a stool saying how wonderful the song he was about sing was ... unfortunately, we never heard it! The same thing happened more than once and was extremely frustrating.

If you want to hear The Man sing then this is not the collection for you. Stick to the CDs.