SUDDENLY: a Frank Sinatra podcast

Melbourne's Medically Supervised Injecting Room (MSIR) in North Richmond opened in 2018. This was the result of a years-long grassroots campaign led by the local community, fed up with constant overdoses in the streets. The MSIR operates on principles of harm reduction which simply work and urgently need to be applied throughout the world. The stigma around drug use, and the criminalising of drug users, must end - and that begins with us.

In 1955, Frank Sinatra made a historically significant contribution to the destigmatisation of drug use on film in Otto Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm. In a depiction that is in many ways still radical today, Sinatra's character of Frankie Machine is a regular person who is trying his best to shake off a heroin addiction but is simply failed by a society that does not have the means to support him. A compelling and empathetic performance by Sinatra, and subject matter which openly defied the Production Code of its era, made this a memorable classic for many and contributed to a better world.

This week on SUDDENLY, friend of the show Spike Vincent joins us to watch The Man With the Golden Arm, sharing his thoughts and personal experiences. Meanwhile, Rabia has been reading up on the MSIR and reports back on the experience of touring the facility to see what goes on first-hand. As a thematic wild card, we also watched an Australian DVD of the film called A Night at the Cinema with extra footage intended to replicate the experience of seeing this film in 1955 in a cinema in specifically Castlemaine, Victoria - including "God Save the Queen", a newsreel, cartoon, local ads etc - which leads us to compelling footage of the 1955 Maitland floods. Plus, an update on Bobby Long.

Sources for this episode: * The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) (watch in full - public domain) * Jack Pearl - Robin and the 7 Hoods (novelisation) (1964) * Lou Reed interview, "Reed Goes Public on Velvet Underground", The Canberra Times, 4 October 1987 * Nobody Dies Here: Inside Melbourne's Medically Supervised Injecting Room (2023) podcast * Judy Ryan - You Talk, We Die: The Battle for Victoria's First Safe Injecting Facility (2022) * Link to book tours of the MSIR (Melbourne Supervised Injecting Room) * Photo of the "You Talk, We Die" mural in North Richmond * Stimulant Treatment Program at St Vincents Hospital in Sydney * A Year to Remember - 1955 (1965) Newsreel including Maitland flood footage * Katie Carr, "The problem with the 'disabled villain' trope", The Nora Project, 7 October 2022. * Detective Pikachu (2019) * Where to obtain Naloxone - official advice from Australian Government * Brian Jeffery, "Gays come out of the closet", The Canberra Times, 13 March 1982

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In the final (?) part of our Wake Up and Live saga, Henry returns to the show to share his thoughts on Walter Winchell's legacy through the lens of the gossip landscape of 2024. Sources for this episode:

* John Mosedale - The Men Who Invented Broadway (1981) * Neal Gabler - Winchell: Gossip, Power, and the Culture of Celebrity (1994) * Snopes article on the Elon/Zuck kissing photo * Better Offline podcast hosted by Ed Zitron, "The AI Bubble is Bursting" episode * Rehash podcast, "Is Anyone Up?" episode * Sullivan's Travels (1941) * Fresh Air (1999) * The Sweet Smell of Success (1957) * Scandal (1950) * Winchell (1998) * "Should Non-Jewish Actors Play Jewish Roles?" Henry Giardina, Hey Alma, 18 August 2022 Henry's official site - henrygiardina.com.

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For the last few months, Justin and Rabia have been co-hosting TCBCast After Dark, a deep dive into the seamy underbelly of the Elvis conspiracy world available only on the TCBCast Patreon feed. As they approached Part 6 of an exhaustive investigation into the truth behind the grifters who perpetuated the false "Is Elvis Alive?" conspiracy throughout the 1980s, and reached the infamous 1991 Bill Bixby TV special The Elvis Files, they decided to bring in Felix for a fresh perspective on the whole thing.

Here, exclusive to SUDDENLY, is a 45-minute introduction in which Felix is caught up with everything that has come before it - a speedrun through the entire story of "Is Elvis Alive?" from 1977 to 1991.

Also captured here is the moment Rabia learns of Trump's attempted assassination, which bears an unbelievable coincidental parallel to an infamous moment on an oft-circulated tape in which a man attempting to sound like Elvis appears to learn of Reagan's assassination in 1981.

THEN, this is followed by the full Elvis Files episode, in which we attempt to make sense of the infamous TV special in its full context - and Justin uncovers that one of its most extraordinary claims, about declassified FBI documents, "Operation Fountain Pen" and a criminal organisation called The Fraternity, is actually true. You just have to hear this one to believe it, folks.

This episode will work fine to listen to as a standalone, and will serve as a 101 primer on the absurd world of "Is Elvis Alive?" For the rest of the story, before and after, subscribe to the TCBCast Patreon.

SUDDENLY will return to regular programming shortly.

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This week, we continue to act as if it were impossible to fail in part four of our exhaustive deep dive into Wake Up and Live. Picking up the story from the end of World War II, we look at the legacy of Dorothea Brande's book and the essentially identical self-help scam that generations of grifters have perpetuated on the world ever since. Wasn't this podcast meant to be about Frank Sinatra? Selected sources and references:

• Picture Search Video @ 139 Swan St, Richmond (IG: @picturesearchvideo)
• Teen Wolf (animated TV series) (1986)
• Stone Bros. (2009)
• The MousePack - Mickey and Friends Singing Classic Standards (2022)
• Jenny Nicholson - "The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel" (2024)
• Philip J. Deloria - Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract (2019)
• Catherine Russell - "Wake Up and Live" (2012)
• Universal Opportunity League - Wake Up and Live (1950)
• Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged (1957)
• Earl Nightingale - The Strangest Secret (1956)
• The Secret (2006)
• Joanna Scutts - "Fascist Sympathies: On Dorothea Brande", The Nation, 13 August 2013

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The history books forgot about the 1944 radio adaptation of Wake Up and Live, a bizarre and disastrous production in which a fascist self-help book adapted into a comedy movie about duelling radio shows is adapted back into a radio show in which several other radio shows exist within the world of this radio show, and characters with real people playing themselves are altered back into fictional characters again. And THIS was Sinatra's second ever acting role of any kind, fresh off the back of the similary convoluted film Higher and Higher. On top of that, this was also the first time he recorded both "Embraceable You" and "Dancing in the Dark" and he delivers show-stopping performances of both, truly making this a historic moment in time. Yet all of this has essentially gone undocumented. This week on SUDDENLY, you'll hear the original radio broadcast in full as we try to make sense of what this all is - and we're not even done with Wake Up and Live yet. contact: suddenlypod at gmail dot com website: suddenlypod.gay donate: ko-fi.com/suddenlypod

Please note that the accompanying graphic for this episode has not been chosen lightly and is intended in the spirit of historical education, criticism and artistic commentary. In part 2 of our investigation into the saga of Wake Up and Live, we look at the original 1936 self-help book by Dorothea Brande, the toxic ideas that the book perpetuates and the author's ties to fascism and Nazism. To understand why fascism became popular in the United States during the 1930s is also to understand why Wake Up and Live became a bestseller. This week we take a close look at both, from the infamous 1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden to the publication and editing career of Brande's husband, Seward Collins, before going over the horrible, horrible book in full detail. Selected sources for this episode:

• "Kendrick v. Drake, Beef of the century?" White People Won't Save You podcast episode, 10 May 2024.
• A Night at the Garden (2017)
• Nazi Town USA (2024) (PBS' American Experience, Season 36, Episode 1)
• Arnie Bernstein - Swastika Nation (2013)
• Joanna Scutts - "Fascist Sympathies: On Dorothea Brande", The Nation, 13 August 2013
• Albert E. Stone Jr. - "Seward Collins and the American Review Experiment in Pro-Fascism, 1933-37", American Quarterly, Vol. 12, No.1, Spring 1960
• John Roy Carlson - Under Cover (1943)
• Henry Hoke - It's a Secret (1946)
• Michael Sayers - Sabotage! The Secret War Against America (1942)
• FBI investigation on Maria Griebl, via FOIA-requested documentation
• Review of Wake Up and Live in The Saturday Review of Literature, 2 May 1936
• Hortense Finch - Classroom report on use of Wake Up and Live, from The English Journal, Vol. 27, No.2, Feb 1938

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This week we begin a three-part investigation into Wake Up and Live. What is it? Good question. It's a 1930s self-help book, a musical in which a real-life journalist/radio host plays himself, and later, a radio drama adapted from the film. All these things interrelate in a way that's confusing to make sense of in 2024. Just beneath the surface of Wake Up and Live lies an elaborate and shocking story we'll fully detail over the next three weeks. Sinatra won't enter the story until Part 3. What the hell is all of this? You're about to find out. contact: suddenlypod at gmail dot com website: suddenlypod.gay donate: ko-fi.com/suddenlypod

What if someone slashed Sinatra's vocal cords at the height of his powers? Would he still be able to cut it in showbiz off his charm alone? Could he get into comedy instead of music? More importantly, what would be left of the man without his act? Of all the fictional characters Sinatra portrayed in his early years of dramatic film roles, "Joe E. Lewis" was among the most iconic. This week, we're watching 1957's The Joker is Wild, in which the Lewis persona was presented over a timeline spanning more than 30 years from the early days of vaudeville to the post-war period - with all of this as a backdrop on which to project Sinatra's deepest anxieties and sorrows. This episode features a cover of Bob Dylan's "Jokerman" by John Cruz. website: suddenlypod.gay contact: suddenlypod at gmail dot com donate: ko-fi.com/suddenlypod

We went on Authorized Novelizations Podcast to talk about Jack Pearl's 1964 novelisation of Sinatra's Robin and the Seven Hoods. This episode was recorded around six months ago and just released by Authorized this week. They've graciously given us permission to repost it on our feed. If you like what we do on SUDDENLY, you'll definitely have a good time with this epic two-and-a-half-hour deep dive into not just a lesser-known Sinatra film project, but the 60-year-out-of-print trashy novelisation of same. We delve into the bizarre circumstances surrounding the making of the film, and examine the psyche of pulp author Jack Pearl who added original strange details and incredibly violent, misogynistic content to the book. One surprise twist follows another. We're in good hands with the Authorized gang being experts in the maligned genre of film-to-book adaptations, having read Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, Cowboys and Aliens and the Cheetah Girls trilogy amongst many others. Authorized is one of our favourite shows and we really recommend you check them out. Despite the cultural divide that comes with different regional spellings of "novelisation/novelization" and "authorised/authorized", everyone had a great time! Regular SUDDENLY programming will resume in April. AUTHORIZED: instagram, twitter - @authorizedpod patreon - patreon.com/authorizedpod SUDDENLY: website - suddenlypod.gay contact - suddenlypod at gmail dot com donate - ko-fi.com/suddenlypod