Warner Brothers celebrates the cinematic legacy of Frank Sinatra with The Frank Sinatra Collection, a five disc set containing five of his films and a slick little hardcover book as well. Here's what you get…

Anchors Aweigh:

Directed by George Sydney in 1945, Anchors Aweigh stars Sinatra as Clarence Doolittle who, along with his fellow navy man Joseph Brady (Gene Kelly), is enjoying some well deserved shore leave. The guys hit the town in Los Angeles and they wind up in a pickle when the cops hand over a boy named Donald Martin (a young Dean Stockwell). He'd run away to join the navy but wound up getting caught. The guys escort the kid home and wait for his mother to arrive and low and behold, they learn he lives with his aunt, Susan Abbott (Kathryn Grayson), who just so happens to be a knockout.

Things get complicated for the guys when they start to have feelings for Susan. Joseph initially agrees to help Clarence win a shot for her heart but he can't help but fall for her himself. Eventually Clarence hits it off with a girl from Brooklyn (Pamela Britton) who he meets at the club where Susan performs. As the mess gets messier the guys try to help Susan with her singing career as she winds up auditioning for José Iturbi (playing himself).

This is light, breezy fun, a romantic comedy with some great musical numbers and some slick dancing from Kelly, who handled the choreography chores for the movie and did quite a fine job at it. The film is famous for its scene where Kelly dances alongside animated Jerry (the mouse from the famous Tom And Jerry cartoons and that scene is still an impressive one today. You really do get the sense that Kelly and Jerry are dancing together. Obviously they're not, but it's so well done that you can easily get wrapped up in it.

The songs in the movie are catchy and fun and the performances from all involved are decent enough. No one has to do any seriously heavy dramatic lifting here, but they all play their roles well. Sinatra and Kelly have good chemistry together and individually when paired with their respective ladies. Kathryn Grayson is really well cast as the female lead and she holds her own against the guys. You could easily dismiss this as light and fluffy, and you wouldn't be wrong, but the movie is still a pretty entertaining picture that moves at a decent, bouncy pace and that mixes up the comedy and the romance quite nicely.

On The Town:

Stanley Donan co-directed this one with Gene Kelly in 1949 and, not surprisingly given that Kelly once again co-stars alongside Sinatra, it has a bit in common with the first movie in this collection. This time around they were able to give their collaboration a bit more substance and the results are just as good, if not a little better, than what they were able to achieve the first time around.

Gabey (Kelly), Chip (Sinatra) and Ozzie (Jules Munshin) are three sailors once again out on shore leave. This time around they're living it up in Manhattan for twenty-four hours until they've got to get back to work, so they're going to make the best of it. As they start touring around the city looking for fun they wind up meeting three gals: Ivy Smith (Vera-Ellen), Brunhilde Esterhazy (Betty Garrett) and Claire Huddesen (Ann Miller).

From here, they basically spend the day seeing what there is to see in New York City, singing and dancing as the movie calls for it and having a blast and that energy proves effective as we move from one impressive set piece to the next. The film makes interesting use of actual location shooting and mixes it up with the more complicated numbers taking place on some lavishly decorated and impressive studio sets. There's great use of color throughout the film and once again the storyline mixes up romance and comedy in equal doses, never getting too heavy but giving us enough character development here that we want to see how these relationships, just beginning to blossom, will play out before the movie ends.

Not surprisingly the reason most will want to check this one out is for the singing and the dancing and the film delivers on those fronts. Kelly, a bit more experienced here than he was on the first movie, does an amazing job keeping everyone on their toes and moving to the music. His work in front of the camera is the best of the bunch but everyone else follows suit when they can. As such, there's loads of visual flair here and that compliments the quirky characterizations brought to life by the cast quite well. Kelly gets a fair bit more screen time here and as such, Sinatra gets less but don't that dissuade you if Frank is the prime reason you'd want to see this. He's still in plenty of the scenes and if he doesn't deliver his most memorable performance here he handles the musical bits well and is perfectly likeable in the part.

Guys And Dolls:

Joseph L. Mankiewicz's 1955 film essentially tells the story of Nathan Detroit (Sinatra), an infamous gambler who, when he isn't running a craps game, hangs out with his fiancé Adelaide (Vivian Blaine). She makes her living as a showgirl and is continually frustrated that she can't ever get Nathan to actually walk down the aisle with her despite the fact that they are engaged.

Nathan pals around with another gambler named Sky Masterson (Marlon Brando), with whom he has a pretty friendly rivalry. Nathan's hoping to talk Sky into fronting him the money he needs to setup some new digs to run his game out of, but he just can't seem to get Sky to bet the kind of cash he's hoping to win from him. When he finally talks Sky into taking a bet, it's an interesting one: he wagers Sky a cool grand that he won't be able to talk a Salvation Army employee named Sarah Brown (Jean Simmons) into going to Havana for dinner with him. Sky takes the bet but counters with a wager that he'll help Sarah out with her donation work, with some help from his crew, if she agrees to the date… though she doesn't know he's accepted a bet from Nathan in the first place. As the movie plays out, we learn whether or not each couple will ‘make it' or not. Nathan only has so much time left to marry Adelaide before she gets fed up and while Sky and Sarah are off to a good start, there's a chance that if she finds out the truth about his courtship that she'll just up and walk away from him. She is, after all, a woman of considerably higher moral standing than he!

Sinatra makes for a quality leading man here, obviously carrying himself without any issues at all in the musical numbers and crooning his way through the film with his own tough sort of charm. This is a very good role for him and he makes the most of it. He has surprisingly decent chemistry with Brando in the film and they make for fun friends and foils. The movie also offers the chance to see and hear Brando sing, which he does better than many might expect. He goes solo for Luck Be A Lady but also does a few duets with Jean Simmons in the film and while his voice isn't as strong as Sinatra's, he hardly embarrasses himself.

The chemistry between the characters carries the movie between the musical numbers easily enough. The entertainment value is high here and the film has a classy, cool look to it. Lots of great colors are used throughout the movie, be it in the sets and backdrops or the different costumes paraded out for the film. It's well paced and very competently directed by Mankiewicz. This one holds up well and is rightly recognized as a classic.

Ocean's 11:

The best known and most beloved of all the Rat Pack pictures, Ocean's 11 (later remade by Steven Soderbergh with George Clooney in the lead) stars Frank Sinatra as Danny Ocean, the man with the plan. Danny and his eleven buddies - Sam Harmon (Dean Martin), Josh Howard (Sammy Davis Jr.), Jimmy Foster (Peter Lawford), Tony Bergdorf (Richard Conte), Mushy O'Connors (Joey Bishop), Roger Corneal (Henry Silva), Curley Steffens (Richard Benedict), Vince Massler (Buddy Lester), Peter Rheimer (Norman Fell), Louis Jackson (Clem Harvey) and the old man who came up with the idea, Spyros Acebos (Akim Tamiroff) - used to be in the army together. Ocean gathers the gang up once again so that they can help him and Acebos pull off the heist of a lifetime. Their plan? To blow all the lights in Las Vegas and knock over five casinos at the same time and to hopefully make it out with a cool eleven million dollars in cold, hard cash.

Ocean and his crew encounter a few problems along the way, like Ocean's estranged wife Beatrice (Angie Dickinson), Bergdorf's mother, Gracie (Jean Willes) and her sneak of a fiancé, Duke Santos (Cesar Romero). To complicate matters even more, one of Danny's many ex-girlfriends, Adele Ekstrom (Patrice Wymore), is running around Las Vegas at the same time.

Ocean's 11 is a fun film whose success rests primarily on the shoulders of its ultra cool cast. Sinatra plays it straight here with most of the comic relief coming from the very capable Dean Martin (with drink perpetually in hand) and the equally goofy Davis. While Ol' Blue Eyes isn't in the film as much as he is in some of his other starring vehicles (thanks to the ensemble casting) his performance definitely stands out in the film. A young Henry Silva is memorable as one of the co-conspirators, and it's interesting to see his jovial work here, particularly if you're familiar with him only from the Italian crime films where he specialized in hardboiled tough guy roles. Cameo appearances from Pinky Lee, a young Shirley MacLaine, and Red Skelton don't hurt matters in this department either, this is an exceptionally well cast film and the perfect type of movie for the Rat Pack to tackle.

Even at two hours in length, the film doesn't feel particularly padded or overly long. It moves at a good pace even if much of the running time is made of up dialogue intensive scenes rather than action material (the only action set piece being the bar brawl at the burlesque club). Of course, it all builds up to a fantastic twist ending, one that still plays well today, even if you've seen the film before. While some of the players were better in other solo efforts than they were here, Ocean's 11 remains, for many, the definitive Rat Pack film as it lets the boys play it up big on what was, at the time at least, their chosen stomping grounds.

Robin And The 7 Hoods:

The last film in the set is in many critic's eyes the best of the bunch. When the film starts off, a hood named Guy Gisborne (Peter Falk) and the local corrupt Sheriff (Victor Buono) kill the current mob boss, Big Jim (an uncredited Edward G. Robinson). Guy forces all the mobsters in the area to come together as one big racket under his control. No one has the guts to stand up to Guy except for a mobster named Robbo (Frank Sinatra), who doesn't trust Guy as far as he can throw him.

Robbo heads to his speakeasy where he runs into a pool shark named Little John (Dean Martin). After a game of billiards they join forces and eventually befriend Allen A. Dale (Bing Crosby) the man who runs a local orphanage after one of Robbo's men, Will (Sammy Davis Jr.), makes a $10,000.00 donation to the charity in Robbo's name. Robbo soon becomes a Robin Hood like figure, donating portions from his illegal gambling and booze businesses to local charities and people in need. While this is going on, Guy is planning to knock over Robbo's business and take it over and Big Jim's daughter, Marian (Barbara Rush), is snooping around and playing both sides of the fence.

For this film, Sinatra essentially replaced Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford with Bing Crosby (this would be his last theatrically released musical) and Peter Falk. While the film lacks the 'cool' of Ocean's 11, Crosby and Falk prove to be good choices with both men contributing musical numbers to the picture (Falk's singing voice is less than pleasant but it does have character). Musical highlights include Sinatra, Martin and Crosby singing 'Style,' Davis singing 'Bang! Bang!' and Crosby's word of warning to would be alcoholics, 'Mr. Booze.' The film is a fun updating of the Robin Hood legend that contains a few solid laughs and a fairly surprising twist ending. The film breezes through its two hour plus running time and it's filled with enough mirth and mayhem to be enjoyable from start to finish.

Sinatra and Martin are as charming as ever but it's Crosby, very much cast against type in this picture, who really shines. He's obviously having a good time in the film and he's a joy to watch. Falk plays the same kind of surly, gruff character he's always excelled at but his inclusion in the film is a plus. He makes a great, sleazy foil to Sinatra's semi-honorable mobster. Ocean's 11 might be more famous (in no small part due to Soderbergh's trilogy) but Robin And The 7 Hoods is the more entertaining film and it's still very much an enjoyable musical comedy in the grand Hollywood tradition.

The Video:

Anchors Aweigh and On The Town are presented in 1.37.1, Guys And Dolls in 2.55.1 widescreen, and Robin And The 7 Hoods 2.40.1 widescreen, each in AVC encoded 1080p high definition. Ocean's 11 is presented in a VC-1 encoded 2.35.1 widescreen 1080p high definition transfer, identical to the one used on the single disc release that came out a few years back. Those familiar with these films on DVD will be pleased to see a noticeable upgrade in quality over the standard definition release. Detail is vastly improved and all the glitz and glamour of the old school sets and locations really come to life. Facial detail is exceptional for a batch of older movies while the texture in the different outfits and items in the backgrounds of the five films in the set look almost as if you could touch them. There aren't any compression artifacts or edge enhancement problems to complain about and any print damage that you might notice is very minor. Some scenes do look just a little bit soft from time to time but this looks to have to do with the way that the movies were shot rather than the transfers. All in all, fans ought to be quite pleased with Warner's efforts here, as the movies really look quite good.