1957 film directed by George Sidney
Pal Joey is a 1957 American musical comedy film directed by George Sidney, loosely adapted from the Rodgers and Hart musical play of the same name, and starring Rita Hayworth, Frank Sinatra, and Kim Novak.
Sinatra won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his role as the wise-cracking, hard-bitten Joey Evans. Along with its strong box-office success, Pal Joey earned four Academy Award nominations and one Golden Globe Award nomination.
Jo Ann Greer sang for Hayworth, as she had done in Affair in Trinidad (1952) and Miss Sadie Thompson (1953). Novak's singing voice was dubbed by Trudy Stevens (Trudy Erwin, born Virginia Lee Erwin). The choreography was managed by Hermes Pan. Nelson Riddle handled the musical arrangements for the Rodgers and Hart standards "The Lady Is a Tramp", "I Didn't Know What Time It Was", "I Could Write a Book", and "There's a Small Hotel".
Pal Joey is one of Sinatra's few post-From Here to Eternity films that did not give him top billing, which went to Hayworth. Sinatra was, by this time, a bigger star. When asked about the billing, Sinatra replied, "Ladies first." He said as it was a Columbia Pictures film, Hayworth should have top billing because "For years, she was Columbia Pictures" and being billed "between" Hayworth and Novak was "a sandwich I don't mind being stuck in the middle of." Hayworth had garnered top-billing status in Columbia Pictures' films starting in 1944's Cover Girl through the 1959 film They Came to Cordura with Gary Cooper.
Sinatra's earnings from the film paid for his new home in Palm Springs. He was so delighted that he also built a restaurant there dedicated to the film, named Pal Joey's.
Plot summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.