For its 75th anniversary and Frank Sinatra's centennial: the Jazz Age
masterpiece that inspired the iconic Sinatra film and the hit Broadway
musical, and featuring the musical's libretto and lyrics
On the seedy side of Chicago nightlife in the 1930s, Joey Evans is a
poor man's Bing Crosby--a big-talking, small-time nightclub crooner down
on his luck but always on the make. In slangy, error-littered letters
signed "Pal Joey," he recounts his exploits with brash nightclub
managers, shady business partners, and every pretty girl ("mouse") he
meets. Charismatic yet conniving, Pal Joey is a smooth operator whose
bravado and big ideas disguise a far less self-assured soul, caught up
in the rags-to-riches dream of the Jazz Age.
Originally serialized in The New Yorker and the inspiration for the
1940 Rodgers and Hart musical of the same name and the 1957 film
starring Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak, and Rita Hayworth, Pal Joey is the
story of a true "heel," as complex and memorable as any antihero in
American literature.
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