Before ol' Blue Eyes was Chairman of the Show Business Board, before he was a Rat in a Pack, even before his ol' blue eyes were old, Frank Sinatra was a struggling actor. It is fortuitous, then, that he landed the role of Angelo Maggio in the star studded film of the year, From Here to Eternity.

Frank plays the drunken, Italian Angelo Maggio, a man always looking for a good time but one who is also thumbing his nose at the army every chance gets.

Frank's best scene is his last one, after he escapes from the stockade. He brought out true emotions in Montgomery Clift's Prewitt, not only for that scene but for the rest of the film as well. Frank is a welcome addition to the film but is nothing more than comic relief, to be sure. He plays the part of Maggio so well that anything but an Oscar nomination would have been a miscarriage of justice.

With a gross of $30.5 million equating to earnings of $12.2 million, From Here to Eternity was not only one of the top grossing films of 1953, but one of the ten highest-grossing films of the decade. Adjusted for inflation, its box office gross would be equivalent to in excess of $240 million U.S. in recent times.