List Price: $14.94You Pay Only: $10.99 You Save: $3.95 (26%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9780767821803
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0767821807
Label: Sony Pictures
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Sony Pictures
Region Code: 1
Release Date: December 14, 1999
Running Time: 109 minutes
Sales Rank: 12154
Studio: Sony Pictures
Theatrical Release Date: October 25, 1957
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
First born in the pages of The New Yorker, then translated into a hit Rodgers and Hart Broadway musical, the title character of Pal Joey had undergone quite a transformation by the time he hit the movies in 1957. He was a singer, rather than a dancer, but more importantly he'd had his rough edges sweetly softened; the callous heel dreamed up by novelist John O'Hara was more of a naughty scamp in the film version. However, Pal Joey remains delightfully watchable for two very good reasons: a terrific song score and a surplus of glittering star power. Frank Sinatra, at the zenith of his cocky, world-on-a-string popularity, glides through the film with breezy nonchalance, romancing showgirl Kim Novak (Columbia Pictures' new sex symbol) and wealthy widow Rita Hayworth (Columbia Pictures' former sex symbol). The film also benefits from location shooting in San Francisco, caught in the moonlight-and-supper-club glow of the late '50s. Sinatra does beautifully with the Rodgers and Hart classics 'I Didn't Know What Time It Was' and 'I Could Write a Book,' and his performance of 'The Lady Is a Tramp' (evocatively shot by director George Sidney) is flat-out genius. Sinatra's ease with hep-cat lingo nearly outdoes Bing Crosby at his best, and included in the DVD is a trailer in which Sinatra instructs the audience in 'Joey's Jargon,' a collection of hip slang words such as 'gasser' and 'mouse.' If not one of Sinatra's very best movies, Pal Joey is nevertheless a classy vehicle that fits like a glove. --Robert Horton
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Hollywood Whitewash
"Pal Joey" (1957) makes a sanitized translation to the big screen, with a trio of classic stars - Rita Hayworth, Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak - elevating an uneven, overlong musical. The film is worth seeing for Sinatra's signature tune "The Lady Is a Tramp" and director George Sidney's visual stylishness, yet lacks the hard-edged quality of the stage version. Thanks to the prudish Hays Office, "Pal Joey" emerges as another casualty of Hollywood censorship.
Rating: - Classic Rodgers-Hart Songs Provide Framework for a Swinging Sinatra in a Predictably Drawn Triangle
If Frank Sinatra had a signature role in his long movie career, this must be it because he plays one of his coolest cats in this fairly adult 1957 musical drama based on a book by John O'Hara. However, it's better remembered for the fourteen songs by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, many of which became Sinatra standards. Written by Dorothy Kingsley, the rather slight story has the crooner play womanizing nightclub singer Joey Evans who keeps losing jobs because cad that he is, he likes to fool around with married women. Joey lands in San Francisco and finagles his way into a job as singer and emcee at a dive called the Barbary Coast. There he meets innocent Linda English from Albuquerque, a chorine who refuses to strip and just wants to be a torch singer. In typical Sinatra swinging fashion, Joey flirts with her but plays hard-to-get. One night, both are recruited for a charity show held at a posh Nob Hill mansion. The hostess is Vera Simpson, a former striptease performer who has since become a wealthy society matron. Sparks fly between Joey and Vera but only after mutual acts of humiliation. He breezily moves in with her on her yacht, and she decides to fund his pipe dream, owning a sophisticated nightspot she dubs "Chez Joey". Never one to leave his cards on the table, Joey hires Linda to sing, and you can guess the rest as the inevitable romantic triangle takes the expected turns.
Directed by George Sidney (Anchors Aweigh, Viva Las Vegas), it plays out rather lugubriously with nary ... Read More
Rating: - the ultimate Sinatra musical
As other reviewers have noted, Frank Sinatra was at the top of his form when he starred in PAL JOEY, the film version of the celebrated Rodgers and Hart musical (originally staged on Broadway in 1940 starring Gene Kelly).
Based around the cynical short stories of John O'Hara, PAL JOEY is the story of womanising nightclub entertainer Joey Evans (Sinatra) and his various affairs, most notably with Mrs Simpson (Rita Hayworth), a widowed millionairess trying to escape her past as a stripper; and Linda English (Kim Novak), a naive showgirl whose heart is stolen by the caddish Joey.
The main reason why PAL JOEY works so well is the delicious score, which includes "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered", "I Could Write a Book", "Zip", and "That Terrific Rainbow". Orchestrated by Sinatra's frequent musical collaborator Nelson Riddle, the film version of PAL JOEY also interpolates several more Rodgers & Hart standards into the score ("My Funny Valentine", "There's a Small Hotel", "The Lady is a Tramp").
Rita Hayworth (in what turned out to be the final movie under her Columbia contract) exudes lots of steamy, repressed sensuality with her performance as the widowed society dame taken in by Joey's charms; and in a rare musical role, Kim Novak dazzles. Frank Sinatra, with trademark raincoat and jaunty hat, is his charming best as lady-killer Joey. Look out for talented Barbara Nichols among the showgirls.
The DVD for PAL JOEY sadly doesn't have much in the ... Read More
Rating:  - Three Great Stars, Superb Music
"Pal Joey," (1957), a dramatic musical romance, is a product of Harry Cohn's Columbia Studio, a fact easily gleaned by a quick glance at the movie itself; while it's in Technicolor, the colors themselves are not nearly so saturated as is the signature palette of rival Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. The movie, as was common at the time, was based upon the 1940 Broadway hit of the same name that made a star of Gene Kelly. That play was based upon a series of fictional letters from "Your Pal Joey," written by noted American writer John O'Hara, and published in "The New Yorker." O'Hara wrote the play's book; Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart provided the all-grown up music; George Abbott produced and directed. The still knocking them dead Elaine Stritch created that nifty song "Zip," on Broadway, where it was given to "The Reporter," rather than the Vera Simpson character.
What was rather unusual about "Pal Joey" was that it took 15 years to get to the screen, owing to the fact that the play was more cynical, and risqué, than was permissible in Hollywood at the time. And a lot can change in 15 years. Anyway, the witty screen adaptation, somewhat sanitized, given a Hollywood happy ending, but still sailing pretty close to the wind, was by Dorothy Kingsley, nimble direction was by the under-appreciated George Sidney.
But the hard-edged director Billy Wilder was said to be Cohn's first directorial choice; they say studio mogul and director went to lunch to discuss it - and at the ... Read More
Rating: - Wowweewowwow!
Despite its Broadway success, Pal Joey took his time reaching thescreen. Gene Kelly came to fame in the title role in the original Broadway production of Pal Joey and was the logical first choice for the screen version but when MGM would not lend him out the project sat on the backburner so long that his intended co-star Rita Hayworth swapped female roles to play the older woman who bankrolls Joey's club - on her terms - by the time the film finally reached the screen in 1957.
One of the few Columbia musicals that creates some of its own magic rather than trying to copy the RKO and MGM formula, Sinatra is so perfect as John O'Hara's heel that it is now impossible to imagine Kelly in the role. Not all of the Rodgers and Hart's songs are well served - some, such as I Didn't Know What Time It Was, are all but thrown away - but the score is a strong one (The Lady Is A Tramp, Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, If They Asked Me I Could Write A Book ) and the film is one of the few successful Broadway-to-screen transfers of its day. Great dog too.
The only real extra is the original five-minute trailer, but it's a gem. Filmed on the film's set, with Sinatra introducing us to Joey's vocabulary with the aid of a blackboard and ruler, it's terrific fun and a genuine collector's item!
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